THE FAILURE OF THE MODERN BREAKFAST by Justin Conley

"... the postmodern irony of 'The Failure of the Modern Breakfast', a fully avant- garde conceptual work, a total abstraction from beauty. Here my camera was used entirely as a tool, not unlike the hammer I used to pound the nails into the wood. Within the theme, the title becomes a comic element to the overarching mise- en- scene. The composition and placement of the objects is not careless, per se, but it is impossible to call it beautiful. It is harsh and industrial, full of right angles, like the wood and nails of the subject. The food items add another comic element in their over- the- top characteristics. The meat has been nailed into the wood, peanut butter is slathered onto the plank next to the toast, an egg is cracked onto the upright plank with the yolk having run down the length, etc. There is also a comic irony in the biblical imagery of the three spoons, covered with KFC side dishes and condiments.

"It is worth noting that the ugliness of the food might lead one to misinterpret the image as a critique of the food industry; however, further assessment proves this is not so. This is not red meat; rather, is is harmless breakfast items mixed with anemic looking refrigerated leftovers. The title also cannot support this interpretation. In the placement of the objects with the workbench materials, a textural element is added, with the wood compared to the slimy yolk, the grainy toast, the paste- like peanut butter, chewy meat, and the silver of the spoons. Beyond these analytic artistic qualities, at a literal level, the content of the image, with its nonsensical object placement, looks like the creation of an insane person. In the framework of postmodern irony, this rejection of rationality has a quality of comic negation (in a bold sense, within this context, eating a piece of meat would be to say 'yes', whereas going insane and nailing it to the wall would be to vehemently say 'NO!'). It is for this humor that I believe 'The Failure of the Modern Breakfast' to be a successful work of avant- garde conceptual art, in that we can not only think and appreciate, we can also laugh, if only cerebrally."