(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Leane Jensen and husband Adam Finkle have a conceptual/photographic artwork "Slice2sliced" up at the Mist restaurant. The art is 8x8-inch prints of fruit mounted on large panels that decorate the restaurant. Patrons can instantly buy individual prints with a smart phone app that reads a QR code and does the transaction. The art work also calls into question how decisions on buying are made.

Salt Lake art project asks what is art — and what is it worth to you?

Visual arts » Edgy work that’s part of a pop-up restaurant is brimming with conceptual flavor.

By glen warchol

| The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Feb 02 2012 05:56 pm • Last Updated May 24 2012 11:32 pm

When Chef Gavin Baker launched The Mist Project, a "guerrilla" restaurant that popped up last month, he wanted art for the décor that reflected the cutting-edge culinary innovations of the menu.

Baker discussed his ideas with photographers Leane Jensen and Adam Finkle, and together they created "Slice2Sliced," four visual-art panels for Mist that are visually striking and food-themed, but also offer a gateway into a larger conceptual art project.

Each panel is composed of 45 8-by-8-inch prints of a fruit— a grapefruit slice, a kiwi slice, a starfruit slice and an avocado slice— printed on different grades of paper, using several production methods and in various colors. Each image is custom printed only one to five times, Finkle says.

"The art works so well with the concept of Mist," Baker says. "It’s not what it seems at first glance—which is a lot of what Mist is about."

The panels and prints, Jensen and Finkle explain, are only the tip of the art project’s conceptual iceberg. "Slice2Sliced" is an exploration of what value people place on art and how they make decisions about buying it, they say. It’s also an experiment in using digital technology to buy art.

"We are trying to ask questions about how art is created, presented and purchased," Jensen says. "We want to establish how people perceive value in art."

Patrons of The Mist Project are offered a booklet (a work of art in itself) that maps the "Slice2Sliced" art panels, assigning letters and numbers to the individual prints. To buy one, you download a QR code for your smartphone (which is similar to a bar code), scan the code, and the purchase is made through PayPal. If you’re a technophobe, have no fear: You also can buy the piece of art by voice on an old-school phone.

But here’s where the "Slice2Sliced" project gets interesting. Jensen wants buyers to ponder their art-buying decisions. Is it based on what fruit is depicted? The paper? The color? The décor of their kitchen at home? The ease of purchase? Or — and this is not a small matter — simply the price?

If that sounds like basic marketing research, here’s where the artists throw in the monkey wrench. The prints, which vary wildly on the time and quality of paper used to create them, are randomly priced.

For example, one print on a costly fine-art paper that took hours of artist time to create, is priced at $5. Meanwhile, an image created in 15 minutes on cheap copy-machine paper is priced at $225.

That means you can get a fantastic bargain if you can determine which image took 10 days to produce on French-made archival-quality fine-art paper, but has a lower price.

When it comes to a work of art, however, do low-price and longevity really matter?

"One of the pieces priced at $5 is one of the most time-consuming pieces to produce and it’s on the most expensive paper," Jensen says. "Price is part of the process of choosing art. But is that really important to you? Or is it more important to you to choose one that is more visually appealing to you?"

It’s a parallel to questions posed by The Mist Project, which charges $150 per person for 15 small-plate courses.

"Mist raises questions of value in culinary art," Finkle says. "Some people will scream about how much it costs and others will say, ‘Fifteen courses? Holy crap, what a deal!’ We’re asking the same questions about buying art in general."

It almost goes without saying that Jensen, Finkle and Baker make the final link between visual and culinary art. The Mist menu includes a palate cleanser made of a flavored image from "Slice2Slice" that is printed on edible paper and served in a cracker frame propped on a tiny easel.

"Then you get to eat it," Baker says. "You ingest it. It becomes a part of you."

gwarchol@sltrib.com; facebook.com/nowsaltlake

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