Rotting Food As Art?

Who would have thought the moldy orange at the bottom of your fridge's veggie drawer could be so beautiful? Austrian artist Klaus Pilcher seems to think so — and uses old, moldy fruit to demonstrate the wasteful food consumer.

Now at Anzenberger Gallery in Vienna, Pilcher's still-life portraits of rotting carrots, oranges, caulifower, and even fried veggie sticks are arranged to give viewers new thoughts about wasting food. The name, One Third, comes from a U.N. statistic that nearly one-third of the world's food supply — nearly 1.3 billion tons — goes to waste on a regularly basis. Plus, as Pilcher points out in his artist statement, it's the industrialized nations that waste the most: 95 to 115 kilograms of food in countries like the U.S. and Britain, compared to 11 kilograms in sub-Saharan Africa.

Check out the rest of Pilcher's work for an interesting, if not slightly gross, view of what expired food looks like. Or click here for food-art hybrids made with (assumingly) not rotted food.