Barbara Greindl & The Kitchen Company

This Belgian artist has been cooking up art her whole life. From her mother, a restorer of old paintings, she learned a few techniques, trained in painting at the Braine-l'Alleud Academy, and then undertook studies in painting restoration at the Saint-Luc Institute in Liège. Exploring the paradoxes of a consumer society that devours itself, her creative universe brings together all the ingredients of a delicious surrealism.

Her new applied and socially engaged art project was co-created at the initiative of a major Belgian kitchen manufacturer, The Kitchen Company, which primarily collaborates with building construction groups. To celebrate the company's 25th anniversary, the entrepreneur invited clients to his Rhodes-Saint-Genèse showroom in March, set in the inspiring decor of a former cardboard factory, and commissioned the artist to customize a kitchen, transforming it into a work of art of a new kind. This project is close to Barbara's heart, as her entire artistic vocabulary questions and subverts the conventions of the food industry.

Her kitchen is inherently functional, the artworks custom-made. In the black marble and dark, burnt-effect wood countertop—she selected all the materials for her striking furniture—she has integrated glass panels that cover, like a display case, the blue eggs that are part of her artistic language. In her view, the egg is a gastronomic food, one that should be revalued, so she has made it into a work of art. "You have to break it for life to emerge." She interprets them as culinary ex-votos, inviting us into a world of art-petal. On the backsplash, figures—fish swimming in circles and monkeys from her politically engaged bestiary—prefigure humans who are unaware of what is happening, and are composed of necklaces of water pearls. So many display cases for a permanent exhibition to admire while the egg cooks, a delectable cultural treat. Barbara Greindl added dishes of blue, gold, and naturally colored mussels, varnished but retaining their mother-of-pearl. Frog-shaped handles and gold-plated bronze gargoyles serving as faucets complete the artistic logistics of this kitchen, a reproducible and adaptable concept to make art accessible to everyone, every day, at the heart of the ultimate shared space. "It's not art on display; the works are part of the furniture." In the dishwasher, she has arranged gold cutlery and brightly colored plates, creating a display that inspires a hunger for beauty. In her post-Dadaist compost drawer, there are still eggs, mussel shells, and tins of sardines, ready to emerge and be reborn.

In addition to the kitchen, her works will be exhibited throughout the showroom. Cooking with art and pork, Barbara Greindl sculpts the absurd, and she sells dreams, quite literally.

By Elisabeth Clauss