POST CULINARY ABSTRACTS / 2018

Our contemporary culture is obsessed with food. We spend countless hours in the kitchen, the dining room, and the restaurant. From the soil to the plate we watch food shows, collect cookbooks, and flood social media with snapshots of our food experiences.  But what happens after the meal is finished and all the Instagram shots have been posted? The home cook is left to face the underbelly of domesticity— cleaning up the disorder and waste left behind.  In his kitchen, David Daigle was compelled to confront the chaotic messes he created through his love of cooking and food consumption. Combining his passion for cuisine and photography he unconventionally explores the depth of beauty found in the sinks debris most of us painstakingly and thoughtlessly wash away.  Through monochromatic closeup abstraction David transforms and immortalizes that forgotten moment between the placing of the fork on the eaten dish and the clean stack of plates in the cupboard. While embracing an adoration of composition, David springboards from traditional photographic formalism by taking a myopic, almost documentary focus on burnt pots, grease covered pans, food waste, and even the kitchen sink, making them all relevant and extraordinary. Post Culinary Abstracts wanders through the labyrinth of shadows and light in the unsightly remnants which we culturally hide, recycling the banality of everyday life into art.