PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA | ANNETTE KELM

Annette Kelm’s (Stuttgart, 1975) artistic research focuses on exploring the cultural processes of transition, particularly what leads any object belonging to mass culture to be considered an object of art.
Pizza pizza pizza (2016) is Kelm’s artwork composed of four identical prints derived from the same negative and installed side by side to form a square.

Two elements compose the represented scene: a piece of bark, found and collected, and a pizza box left over from a lunch of the artist herself. A uniform intense yellow was chosen for the background, in palette with the brown of the bark and the red of the ‘pizza’ writings on the box, although creating a chromatic contrast that enabling an abstraction’s process.
An additional important element, crucial for represent the depth of field and recognize the positioning of the objects in the scene, is represented by the black spot on the right, created by the artificial studio light illuminating the two subjects from the left.

In Pizza pizza pizza, the same photograph is reproduced four times – in a squared grid composed of two elements at the top and two at the bottom – but this seriality doesn’t add anything to the narrative of the work, nor does it serve to deepen or explore its content, as the perspective remains the same. Instead, it seems to be a reinforcing element, a kind of abstraction that invites the viewer to observe the objects of the composition from a single point of view, leaving the doubt that there is something elusive, a hidden meaning concealed from the viewer’s gaze.

In the creation of her works, Kelm plays with the concept of pattern, carefully selecting each level of representation and clearly distinguishing perspectives between foreground and background. Furthermore, through the interaction of different elements both formally and conceptually, the artist aims to generate new points of reflection and considerations.

Annette Kelm
Pizza pizza pizza, 2016
4 parts, each 61,6 x 74,8 cm (24 1/4 x 29 1/2 in), courtesy Gio Marconi, Milan and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.

11/11/2023