Summertime in New York Metropolis has been sticky these days, but it surely’s about to get candy, too. On Saturday (28 June), the Decrease East Aspect gallery Olympia will welcome visitors to CAKE, a one-night show—and feast—of desserts donated by dozens of New York-based artists, amongst them Hannah Beerman, Mie Yim, Wells Chandler, Robin F. Williams, Hein Koh and Melissa Joseph. The ephemeral, edible present is a fundraiser for the small artwork dealership that may also perform as participatory efficiency artwork. Shopping for a $45 ticket will get hungry visitors entry to indulge, and a Tupperware container for taking any leftovers that stay.
In an Instagram submit, the gallery acknowledged: “In a time when entry, abundance and care are more and more stratified, CAKE embraces the concept that some lovely issues are supposed to disappear.”
The outside of Olympia’s two-level area on Orchard Avenue in Manhattan Courtesy of Olympia
The split-level gallery’s decrease stage will characteristic music by Olympia founder Ali Rossi’s childhood good friend DJ Package, plus drinks and ornamental pinatas. The true spectacle will transpire in Olympia’s upstairs gallery, empty and painted pink “like a candy field”, Rossi says. An extended desk will stretch throughout the centre of the room. Rossi provides that “one other inspiration positively is Final Supper”, referencing the Biblical scene famously painted by Leonardo da Vinci and numerous others. (Coincidentally, the exhibition will characteristic 33 artists, matching the purported age of Jesus Christ at that Final Supper.)
A confluence of omens led Rossi to conceive of CAKE. Again in February, the taking part artist Heather Benjamin introduced cupcakes with toy cockroaches atop them for the opening of her solo present. Rossi had been craving to work with the famend “cake artist” Madeline Bach, who is maybe higher often called the Frosted Hag, too.
“I additionally thought of summer time group exhibits,” Rossi says. “They have a tendency, for me, to really feel like fillers, as a result of the viewers shifts over the summer time. So I used to be interested by creating one thing that is a bit bit extra community-centric, brings artists collectively, and is just one evening.” All of the desserts will probably be photographed earlier than the consuming begins, so the artists’ confectionary creations will stay on in documentation.
Olympia gallery founder and director Ali Rossi Courtesy of Olympia
The present’s unconventional and ephemeral nature allowed Rossi to bypass the hierarchies that will sometimes make it extra difficult for them to work with artists represented by different galleries—although curatorial outreach began with Olympia’s roster and people artists’ pals. “I am not consigning something,” Rossi explains. “It is this new channel.”
Melissa Joseph, the Uovo Prize-winning Brooklyn-based artist, may also mark her Olympia debut in CAKE. What’s extra, it’s her first time translating her felt-based observe into cotton sweet. “I’m a mixture of excited and scared,” Joseph says.
Wells Chandler, Fortunes, 2025 Courtesy of Olympia
After experimenting with methods to adapt her baking observe for the white dice, Bach will contribute an actual vanilla cardamom sponge cake with strawberry rhubarb compote, lemon mascarpone filling and strawberry buttercream. Bach rose to reputation amid the wave of cake-mania and messy aesthetics through the Covid-19 pandemic, however stays dedicated to the shape long-term. Such tendencies “are inclined to fade”, she says, “which I used to be at all times anxious about, as a result of I by no means noticed [baking] as a bit stint”.
Thankfully, cake has endurance. Bach and her New York artist-baker friends proceed transferring desserts ahead like some other artistic medium. “It’s very fascinating for individuals to see one thing that you just wouldn’t count on to have the ability to be stylistically pushed in all these methods,” she says.
For Rossi, CAKE will probably be an experiment in crowdfunding and exhibition-making—in addition to community-building. “There actually are no guidelines with this present, from the participation standpoint of what persons are making, but additionally what our roles are as shoppers,” they are saying. “I assume quarter-hour into this present, there will probably be somebody that is available in who grabs a fistful of no matter dessert.”
CAKE, 28 June, 6-8pm, Olympia, New York
