In Cutting Board, two butchers play chess out of a board made with steaks sliced into squares, re-organizing the natural in order to create the synthetic.

The steak is cut into 2″ by 2″ pieces, with 64 pieces cut total, half of them kissed by a frying pan and hence enhanced in color. The meat is then arranged on a 16″ x 16″ platform of clear acrylic and placed on top of a podium. On either side of the sculpture are LCD panels hung from the ceiling. Each panel plays a 20-minute loop of a butcher contemplating his next move. Video.

A work by Jiacong Yan.

More flesh art: Zhang Huan‘s meat bodysuit in My New York 4 performance (image on the left); The Animatronic Flesh Shoe, stitched together with pieces of latex rubber cast out of moulds made from the artist (Adam Brandej)’s own skin to comment on issues of sweatshop labour and content ownership. The shoe’s toe and heel raise and lower as it occasionally vibrates/pulsates, and twitches on the floor as if it were still alive.
Victoria Reynolds’s meat art series; Jana Sterback’s Meat armchair and dress.

Previous posts: Sascha reports from Wetware Hackers Day 1; what might the Meat of Tomorrow be like?: the Meat Helmet; collection of canned meat; Kuniko Maeda’s Table Manners; Communication Grill Chang-tei; Bioart – Taxonomy of an Etymological Monster; Victimless leather jacket.