Akira Ikezoe has recently been thinking a lot about all that can be done with milk. It can be obtained from a cow, packaged, sold, and consumed, yes. But what if you could paint with it, or bathe in it, or even become resurrected by drinking it?
These are all scenarios that appear in a new painting by Ikezoe that features an array of naked figures (and some skeletons) who are roped into a dairy-centric system that happens to involve a pit of fire and a large mural. In typical Ikezoe fashion, everything is depicted with the sobriety of a diagram in an instruction manual. It’s funny, bizarre, and more than a little terrifying.
Standing before the painting in his New York studio, Ikezoe pointed to the top of the canvas, where faceless people pull at the udders of two cows. “They are taking milk out of the cow, and they start using the milk as paint,” Ikezoe said, narrating the scene. “But someone kicked the can of paint and stepped on it, leaving footprints. Then some people fall into holes and die. On the right side, there are four boxes, almost like seasonal change—spring, summer, etc. In winter, a skeleton comes out. Skeletons help them mix milk, and the milk goes into these shoestrings and comes down.”
