how did ed ruscha cover an entire room at the MoMA with chocolate?

ed ruscha’s chocolate room comes to MoMa

New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) takes viewers inside the making of American conceptual artist Ed Ruscha’s Chocolate Room. Covered in multiple sheets of paper screen printed with chocolate, the installation is currently on view as part of the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work ever staged. Ruscha first produced the Chocolate Room while in Venice, Italy, in 1970, in the context of the American Pavilion’s exhibition at the 35th Venice Art Biennale. At that time, the interior walls of the room were adorned with 360 silkscreens featuring Nestlé chocolate.

‘During this period, he had been exploring all sorts of unusual substances in his printmaking, and he scoured local supermarkets looking for new materials. He ends up seeing little metal tubes of Nestle chocolate paste that remind him of the metal tubes for his oil paints, and so he decides to use chocolate, screen printing that chocolate onto hundreds of sheets of paper and tiling those sheets across all four walls of a room,’ explains the team at MoMA. 

Ed Ruscha, Chocolate Room, 1970/2004. Chocolate on paper, Sheet dimensions variable, installation dimensions variable. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Purchase with funds provided by the Acquisition and Collection Committee. © 2023 Ed Ruscha. Photo Brian Forrest

how did this room get covered in chocolate?

In a short video created by MoMA (find more here), the art museum explains how the installation by Ed Ruscha (find more here) came to life. The process begins with the melting of chocolate, which is then poured onto a massive silk screen. The chocolate is carefully spread across the screen and transferred onto sheets of paper. These sheets are left to dry until they are ready to be handled. Once dried, they are skillfully layered on the walls to form the installation.

 

 

 

 

 

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Η δημοσίευση κοινοποιήθηκε από το χρήστη MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (@themuseumofmodernart)

ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN

Chocolate Room is exhibited as part of ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, the American artist’s first solo exhibition at the MoMA. The exhibition is on view until January 13, 2024, and features over 200 works from 1958 to the present, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, artist’s books, and installations. The show highlights both Ruscha’s most acclaimed works and lesser-known aspects of his practice, offering new perspectives on one of the most influential figures in postwar American art.