Zach Toppin
Yellow Brick Road, 2024
Oil on canvas
50 x 40 cm
19 3/4 x 15 3/4 in
19 3/4 x 15 3/4 in
These two works allude to sex and sexuality through non sexual symbols as food and objects, the inviting inside of a canele cake and a perfect orb of mustard. They...
These two works allude to sex and sexuality through non sexual symbols as food and objects, the inviting inside of a canele cake and a perfect orb of mustard. They are documents of dates, and think about the pleasures of food and sex, but charged with ideas of identity and politics. They start with the rituals of treats, gifts and indulgence within dating and romance.
In Yellow Brick Road we have an inside-outside split scene straddled by a flamboyantly gay handbag, sex screaming brazenly from it, accompanied by this golden blob of mustard waiting to be penetrated by a single sausage. Collected together the scene becomes highly suggestive.
Meanwhile, outside the window we are pulled in the opposite direction, into questions of identity and journeying. We have a yellow brick road of sorts leading round the corner into an unknown green mist, next to these door-portals advertising love and truth. Alluding to a queer path of enlightenment- the gold that’s down that road. Inviting to continue the journey of love, truth, to go forwards with these things in the pursuit of further uncovering our authenticity within identity. A message to stand strong in our queer and trans identity, and to keep going, in the face of political and societal oppression and hatred. The speared sausage is a fuck-you to those hetero-patriarchal voices. Dominated by a snakeskin handbag, proudly announcing its owner’s sexual identity in diamantes, the plate seems to be vibrating with the shaking shadows underneath, and the fragmenting wood grain- trying to scuttle off and move off the counter, out of the scene- threatened by the power of queerness represented by the authority of the bag, and the message through the window. We win.
In Yellow Brick Road we have an inside-outside split scene straddled by a flamboyantly gay handbag, sex screaming brazenly from it, accompanied by this golden blob of mustard waiting to be penetrated by a single sausage. Collected together the scene becomes highly suggestive.
Meanwhile, outside the window we are pulled in the opposite direction, into questions of identity and journeying. We have a yellow brick road of sorts leading round the corner into an unknown green mist, next to these door-portals advertising love and truth. Alluding to a queer path of enlightenment- the gold that’s down that road. Inviting to continue the journey of love, truth, to go forwards with these things in the pursuit of further uncovering our authenticity within identity. A message to stand strong in our queer and trans identity, and to keep going, in the face of political and societal oppression and hatred. The speared sausage is a fuck-you to those hetero-patriarchal voices. Dominated by a snakeskin handbag, proudly announcing its owner’s sexual identity in diamantes, the plate seems to be vibrating with the shaking shadows underneath, and the fragmenting wood grain- trying to scuttle off and move off the counter, out of the scene- threatened by the power of queerness represented by the authority of the bag, and the message through the window. We win.