ORELART PARIS Art Contemporain Russe et International

Son of an obstetrician and the town coroner, Stephen J. Shanabrook worked from childhood at a chocolate factory in a small town in Ohio. Overlapping these oppositional influences the artist created a unique vision of beauty, one on the threshold of death, pain and disaster. Shanabrook gives a new and often disturbing meaning to substances and forms otherwise associated with comfort, happiness and banality – chocolate, plastic toys and classical sculpture.

As an offshoot of his acclaimed Morgue Chocolates, Shanabrook’s “On the road to heaven the highway to hell “ is a chocolate sculpture that depicts a most unpleasant scene i.e. the molded remnants of a suicide bomber.
Paradoxically, the classical pose deceives the viewer into seeing peace in this most dreadful form of self-destruction. This sculpture has already made polemics in New York owing to this improved combination between timeless classical form and contemporary annihilation.

In a similar step of controversy the artist has created a new innovative process of melting and pressing together ready-made plastic objects. Using the world’s vast array of plastic bits as his color palette, the artist produces a fossilized still life of contemporary culture. These wall installations are organically composed with deliberate melted ruin. The works of the “Devil’s necklace” series are reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts, royal jewels, luxury candy, blood or other narrative miniatures, telling the beauty filled story of desire and destruction.