Last March the American Ballet Theater premiered "Whipped Cream", choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky and set on Richard Strauss's "Schlagobers".
The piece, as ballet fans may remember, revolved around a First Communion boy who, after eating too many cakes at a confectioner's shop, is taken to the hospital where he has a sugar-induced delirium. The boy's sucrose coma gives life to the shop's sweets and an entire group of bizarre characters comes to life, among them there are Marzipan, Sugarplum and Gingerbread Men, Princess Tea Flower, Prince Coffee, Prince Cocoa, Princess Praline, Don Zucchero and, an entire dancing Whipped Cream corps de ballet.
The most notable thing about "Whipped Cream" was the arty collaboration with pop surrealist Mark Ryden, the mind behind the kitsch sugar rush pervading the pink and frothy sets and the costumes of the fantastically surreal characters.
This combination of a burlesque version of "The Nutcracker" and an hallucinated "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory" with a heavy Tim Burton-like twist (the creepy "Worm Candy Man" in the ballet probably left many sleepless for at least one night...) will be premiered over the final week of the Hong Kong Arts Festival at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre (Thursday, March 22 – Sunday, March 25).
For the occasion the "Pop-Surrealist" artist has created a geometrical sculpture entitled "Dodecahedron - Quintessence 132".
Originating in his 2015 paintings and studies based on the geometrical figure and on his bronze sculpture that featured images of a tree, an eye, a fetus, a bee, an ammonite and Abraham Lincoln, "Dodecahedron - Quintessence 132" continues Ryden's previous explorations of geometrical forms and mathematical principles (math has actually got a strong influence on the artist's works that at times feature bewitched figures who seem intent on confronting arithmetic objects floating in the fantastically mesmerising space around them) with a philosophical twist added.
In Ryden's imagination the geometrical structure with its twelve sides whose perfect symmetry has been the source of extensive query by mathematicians and scientists since antiquity has almost got a magical power about it.
"The Dodecahedron is a special geometric form, permeated with mystery and connotations of divinity," Ryden explains in a press release. "Even before I fully understood the significance of the Dodecahedron, I was instinctively attracted to it, and it began to show up in my paintings. It is meaningful to me because it symbolizes a bridge between the physical world and the intangible realm."
The new dodecahedron seems to have some connections with "Whipped Cream" as it features the all seeing eye, but also enigmatically disquieting figures in pastel colours that call to mind the ballet characters.
Installed in the Cultural Centre throughout the duration of the ballet performances, the piece will then go on public display at PMQ in Central Hong Kong from March 26th to April 4th, during Art Basel Hong Kong.
Ryden will also be celebrated by an exhibition of 16 works (including the preparatory drawings and new paintings for "Whipped Cream") organised by Paul Kasmin Gallery in the Kabinett section of Art Basel Hong Kong , in a separate and delineated space, acting as a part of the gallery's main art fair booth (3D18). The events are highly recommended to all Ryden's Hong Kong-based fans eager to get lost in the monstrously eye-popping candyland of "Whipped Cream".
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