Gail Sachson owns Ask Me about Art, offering lectures, tours, program planning and consultation. She will be leading Gallery Hopping classes for the SMU/CAPE program in October.

Instead of a plea to take a starving artist to lunch, Berlin based artist Marco Bruzzone is inviting us to lunch. Yes, there is such a thing as a free lunch, and this one comes with a dash of Duchamp, Donald Judd, Jackson Pollock and fresh grated cheese and butter.

Drop by the Pollock Gallery at the SMU Hughes-Trigg Student Union lunchtime any Tuesday-Friday through October 22 and grab a seat at the replica of the Donald Judd 80″ x 160″ picnic table Bruzzone saw on a trip to Marfa. Squeeze in with about nineteen other art enthusiasts and hungry SMU students and allow art to nourish your body as well as your soul, as you wolf down really great-tasting pasta supplied by Jimmy’s on Greenville Avenue. Chat with the  Pollock Gallery Curator Sofia Bastidas in the  Duchamp-inspired readymade kitchen installed smack dab in the middle of the gallery, as she boils water for your pasta. She will determine when it’s ready, not by tasting it, but – as it is said Duchamp tested it – by throwing the pasta  (a la Pollock?) against the wall, where it  stretches and sticks and makes a most interesting and unique noodle-doodle design.

The kitchen installed for “Triple Carbs Society”

The casual drop-in probably need not know the symbolism, ramifications and influences  of Bruzzone’s participatory performance piece, titled ” Triple Carbs Society (The Built-in Kitchen of M. Duchamp)”. But knowing his intention  to evoke Duchamp’s  fascination with readymades  and references  to other artists and art history  does make one more aware and more  deeply engaged. The noodle-doodles on the laminated top  of the picnic table are seen as more than interesting graphic designs,  when one realizes they are inspired by the  pasta strands  still sticking to the wall  as a record of the daily encounters. The fabrication and detail of the picnic table becomes more important knowing that it is  a Donald Judd design.

Marco Bruzzone in his installation “Triple Carbs Society” at SMU.

Regardless of background, science majors, football players and alumni on tour through the Union will dine together, smile together. Joke. Think. Talk and share. They will question each other and themselves, “What is Art?”  Bruzzone says that one question  is at the core of his work. Every day, “Triple Carbs Society” will offer a different menu of experiences. The performers will change. The performances will vary. But one thing you can count on is perfect pasta.