In a world saturated by images, untangling a particular picture from its referents can be a thorny exercise. Pastry chef, horticulturalist, and artist Sharon Core embraces this layering game to create photographs that recreate paintings. The result is a complex play on sight and memory, similar to the contemporary trompe l'oeil practices of Vik Muniz and Thomas Demand.

Core's own meticulous baking artfully recreated pop artist Wayne Thiebaud's confectionary compositions in her 2003-04 photographic series Thiebauds. In order to faithfully mimic the fanciful desserts, Core devised tricky perspective shifts and shapes for her rows of cake slices and candied apples. The images recalled the frosting-like paint of Thiebaud's originals, reconciling that texture with the smooth surfaces of photographic prints. Following solo exhibitions at Bellwether Gallery and White Columns — both of which are considered New York talent incubators — Core's work has been acquired by the Guggenheim Museum and was included in the Phaidon's touchstone compendium Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography.

Her current body of work, Early American, finds fertile pictorial ground in the still-life paintings of 19th-century artist Raphaelle Peale. Using produce grown in her own greenhouse and highly choreographed lighting, Core transforms elegantly arranged fruits, vegetables, and flowers into painterly moments of an otherworldly hyper-reality. The small prints on matte paper oscillate between the detached crispness of the camera and the gestural expressiveness of brushwork. Moreover, the unadorned beauty of nature strikes a timely chord, as sustainable agriculture becomes increasingly desirable.

Similar to those sentiments raised by photographer Tim Davis' series Permanent Collection, Core points toward the disconnect of artworks in reproduction, examining the appearance of paintings reproduced in textbooks and catalogues. Core's work takes great pleasure in exhibiting each of these particularities, while continuously acknowledging the intricacy of culture's vast visual archive.

-Catherine Krudy