Chloe Wise
Plate Expectations
When VAULT Facetimes the New York artist Chloe Wise, she’s preparing for a solo show at Almine Rech Gallery in Paris. She’s also subsisting on a diet that befits one of the art world’s most prolific chroniclers of modern food culture, its abundant pleasures and surreal half-truths – 12-hour days painting and sculpting, “amazing” fresh figs for lunch, and late-night dinners followed by the latest season of Twin Peaks. She speaks to Neha Kale about the value of recasting Instagram-ready smoothie bowls as art-historical symbols, her fascination with Dutch Golden Age painters and the strange, abject nature of the substances we take with our morning coffee. Like milk, for a start.
Hi Chloe! You grew up in Montreal and studied at Concordia University. Was art
a big part of your life growing up?
Since I was born! I was painting and drawing, using any material that found its way into my tiny baby paws. I was drawing picture books, writing little stories and binding these zines when I was seven years old and so I skipped a grade.
The first piece you showed in New York was Star of Larry David (2013), a urethane sculpture painted to resemble bacon. Can you tell me about your early days in New York?
When I made that sculpture, I was attending classes at the Bruce High Quality Foundation, which is a post graduate, free, alternative, educational institution.
I was taking a class led by Sean Patrick Carney, who is an amazing, hilarious comedian and artist. He put together the Brucennial series of group shows and
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