Inaugural Event Part of Idea Fund/Andy Warhol Foundation National Project

Artists Nestor Topchy and Robert M. Rosenberg, performing
as Gastronanza, will host an interactive art performance, Archetapas

Through Archetapas, Gastronanza will explore images, symbols, and characters from ancient prelingual tradition, and create new language by introducing a gustatory element to form.

Gastronanza will invite participants to enter their portable Gelatinearia, a welded steel chapel on wheels.

Once inside, ten unique customized flavored shapes of vegetarian pâté
de fruits gelatin, or Archetapas, will be available to sample. Upon ingesting the Archetapas,
participants will be invited to match flavors to shapes from geometrical designs similar to thosefound in pysanky, the intricately patterned Easter eggs created in Ukraine and other eastern European countries.

Gastronanza intends to marry images, symbols, characters, and colors stemming from
pysanky tradition, in which a story that predates phonetic language is articulated in the decorated egg’s designs and hues.

The event is a multi-sensory associative program that will introduce a gustatory element
to create a total, edible work of art for public consumption and empirical inquiry into the
universal experience of shape, color, and flavor, and to determine its archetypal significance .

According to Mr. Topchy, “What would be truly surprising would be to find that shape
does not evoke subject, that subject does not arouse color, and that color does not suggest flavor.

Seeing that things have always found their expression through a system of reciprocal analogy,
this may be a universal, verifiable truth which transcends specific cultures.”