You have undoubtedly burned a great deal of toast in your life, given that toaster technology has not advanced one bit since it was invented a century ago. Nevertheless, you probably never pulled out a burnt piece of toast and framed it on a wall. Weird concept, I know, but people pay real money to look at toast art.

Maurice Bennett, one of New Zealand’s most renowned artists, is known as the “toast man”, because he produces enormous mosaics portraits from hundreds of slices of toast. An exhibition of his rugby portraits, made from toast, features at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, to commemorate the Rugby World Cup of 2011.

As a hypermarket owner, with access to loads of old bread – Bennett got his toaster and began toasting bread into diverse shades and laid them out on his kitchen floor to form a simple pattern. From there he realized the full potential of his doughy discovery… (He doesn’t actually use a toaster to make his masterpieces; that would be impractical – He actually uses a blowtorch!)

The portraits require hundreds of slices of bread, toasted to different tones to create skin shade and highlights. The portraits measure many meters in width and height and are exhibited in large public spaces, since the best view of the image is obtained from being some distance from the work.

Nowadays, Maurice continues to push the limit with his use of toast as an art medium – including collages, cut shapes from the slices of toast, and creating of 3-Dimensional portraits.

Of course, toast isn’t the only breakfast food on display in museums.
Bulgarian-American artist, Ryan Alexiev, exploits various types of cereal to create colourful mosaics from iconic artworks – like that of Barrack Obama and several other recreations of pop artworks.

Cereal is the USA’s top breakfast choice and the third most popular product in hypermarkets; therefore it makes perfect sense why Mr Alexiev chose it as his art-medium to scrutinize the dogma of American consumerism – through his artworks. Ryan hand-positions hundreds of cereal bits to form extremely detailed mosaics that LITELARRY look good enough to eat.

Born in LA (USA) and raised in Alaska by two native Bulgarians, Ryan Alexiev has worked with a great deal of materials over the decades, but he is mainly known for his cereal mosaics and landscapes like Osama Bin Laden’s pop-portrait and The Land of A Million Cereals landscape.

His playful art isn’t simply for fun – there is a much more profound meaning behind every work. For example, Alexiev explains that by depicting saints made of cereal – he is actually investigating how present-day marketing functions through appealing to our sense of – and longing for – the divine /transcendental. Deep stuff…

{April 25, 2012}