LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Swarovski crystals, mirrors and gallons of fake frosting and cherries are whipped together in an immersive Los Angeles art gallery built to feel like a giant multi-layered cake.
Visitors to Cakeland walk through a series of maze-like rooms built from the ground up out of what looks like lavishly decorated cakes, made entirely of artificial materials.
“Everything’s fake. It needs to look beautiful,” said artist Scott Hove, who created Cakeland.
“I’ve got to use acrylic instead of sugar. Otherwise, this is going to be Ant Land, there’s going to be bugs everywhere.”
Hove said he has long been fascinated by artificial representation of items, and collected fake food as a child. He said he chose cakes for the exhibit because they are beautiful and “fun to do,” though he adds in some darker elements as well.
“I love how weird it is. I love the dark rooms and the creepy things mixed with the happy pastel aesthetic of this room. It’s bizarre,” said Maggie Nelson, a 22-year-old Los Angeles resident, as she walked through the gallery.
“It feels like you’re inside the cake, but in like a layered way. It’s a very layered cake.”
(Reporting by Sandra Stojanovic and Omar Younis, Writing by Deepa Babington, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
