Scott Hove is a Los Angeles–based artist whose “Cakeland” is an ongoing series of artificial cake sculptures and installations. The self-taught artist writes on his website that his work is a comment on “our notions of comfort, pleasure, celebration and their dark counterparts in the form of carefully crafted artificial cakes.”
Hove’s new installation at L.A.’s Think Tank Gallery is part of a 7,500-square-foot maze in the form of a wood-and-acrylic faux gâteau that looks like something Marie Antoinette might have had nightmares about as she waited for the guillotine. It is part of a show and programming series called “Break Bread” that runs until March 14.
Hove says he chooses his materials “according to their own inherent beauty and/or violence,” using objects like fake fruit, switchblades, Swarovski crystals, stiletto heels, and taxidermy jaws to festoon his cake sculptures made with “fluffy, delicious-looking fake frosting, piped through a pastry bag using traditional cake decorator’s techniques, capturing my own idea of the perfect cake archetype.”
Using cake as a metaphor for talking about the dualistic nature of contemporary culture, Hove writes that each of his cakes and installations are intended to “attract and repel” and “engage the viewer’s emotions with a sense of imminent beauty and satisfaction, quickly followed with impending threat.”