Photo By Gail

While working in commercial design for the H-E-B supermarket chain, artist Chuck Ramirez (1962 – 2010) began making photographs of familiar, every day objects – shrink-wrapped foods, jampacked trash bags, hospital flower arrangements – which he captured in great detail against a white void and at life-size.

Candy Tray Godiva 3(2002) is part of a series consisting of emptied chocolate boxes. Here, Ramirez transforms a chocolate tray from an object of mass consumption tied to feelings of love into a semi- abstract surface of dips and valleys left by the absent candy that may allude to loss.

Borrowing from the tools of commercial advertising to highlight the luscious and shiny golden hues of a tray reminiscent of gilded coffered ceilings, Ramirez charges the object with a sense of mortality. As the candy tray faces the end of its lifespan as a utilitarian thing, the artist invites viewers to confront the fragility of time on this earth.

Photographed in the Whitney Museum in New York.