Strangers with Candy

Still-life works are tricky buggers — their excitement-to-dullness ratio is unusually pear shaped, unless of course the artist’s normalcy-to-insanity ratio is also skewed towards the bottom. Luckily, the exhibit “Eye Candy: Objects of Wonder and Delight” is a collection of still-lifes by artists who lean towards the quirky. Featuring work by notable nuts like Robert Mapplethorpe, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Yinka Shonibare, “Eye Candy” aims to embrace the significance in the mundane aspects of daily life; which is a saner way of saying “it’s not just a basket of fruit, it’s a collection of nature’s tumors!”

In the exhibit, you’ll catch macabre paintings of dead birds set amid a host of spiders, creepy, sculpted dollhouses holding forbidden secrets, and abstract busts of two lovers, intertwined. There’s enough candy here to keep you sucking wind for days (think of it like the Everlasting Gobstopper of the art world). Set your mind right, and then get to the Norton Museum (1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach) through December 21. Admission costs $8. Visit www.norton.org.
Oct. 3-Dec. 21, 2008