Who loves food? Who loves art? I do, and that is why I love this artist. He does food art. Basically, he uses knife to carve on another type of medium which is relatively uncommon in the art world. Although, there has been increasing occurrences of food art in the art world, I feel that Ilian Iliev is the master of this art. Nobody carves fruits like apples, mushrooms and watermelons as well as him.
Ilian Iliev usually creates motifs and patterns on the surface of the fruit by manipulating the skins and the flesh of the food itself. Sometimes, he makes use of the thickness and natural coloured patterns of the skin of the food itself.
For example, in his watermelon carvings, he played with the patterned green surfaces when he carved his fruit. He usually carves patterns which consists of a lot of curvilinear and rounded forms. He employs the use of fluidity in his detailed patterns by incorporating the use of circles, swirls and waves, reminiscent to the late Post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh who also used a lot of swirls in his paintings like Starry Starry Night and series of Self-Portraits.
His works usually portray patterns of flowers. For example, he likes to carve images of roses on apples and mushrooms (seen above). His skill in doing so is really revolutionary as the forms are so realistic and it seems as though a rose had really grown out of the apple/mushroom itself. Pretty amazing!
In the work with the egg, Ilian Iliev cleverly cracks the eggshell with precise straight lines and stacks them together creating a stairs-like effect. The white colour of the shell also suggests a pure and angelic kind of atmosphere. The rose at the top of the shell further emphasizes on the heavenly-like aura of the work.
In general, his works consists of huge amounts of details in his patterns as he varies his deep gouges to shallow carvings. Thus there are different depths and dimensions in his works.
There is also another aspect of art in his works actually - Photography. Ilian Iliev is a food photographer by profession so he plays with the angles of which he takes photos of his subject matter (in most cases will be food). Hence, his photos also reflect his artistic take on photography and his positioning of his art in the photographs.
Seriously, his works are so beautiful that I cannot bear eating those works. From afar they look like waxed candles that were sculpted instead of food as the carvings are just too accurate and impeccable.
I love food, I love art and I most definitely love food art. Peace.
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