Lobster Place (Sushi)

Trained as an architect, Ben Schumacher has an eclectic conceptual artistic practice. He has experimented with a wide range of mediums, including 3D printing, which he actively pursued from 2011 to 2014. This work is one of several he created from scans of leftover food. To produce this print, Schumacher sent takeout sushi from Lobster Place, a restaurant inside New York’s Chelsea Market, to a collaborator, Taylor Absher, who worked at a nearby 3D scanning studio. Absher scanned the leftovers of his lunch and then sent the scans to a 3D printer used to generate three life-size copies, two of which are displayed here. The scanner had significant trouble “reading” Absher’s lunch, mostly due to the reflective properties of plastic and grease; without its title, the work would be largely illegible, save for the chopsticks visible (to the knowledgeable eye) on top. The blue striations are an artifact of the scanning procedure itself, rendering the imperfect reproductive process of making the work a part of its final form, and perhaps its true subject. Accordingly, the AMAM now owns not only these prints, but also a digital file that can be used to produce more.