PENTTI MONKKONEN

BARBECUE TRAIN

Barbecue Train was a functional sculpture, a barbecue posing as a classic locomotive engine.  Embers glowed and the smoke stack belched as great food was prepared. Susan Feninger of the Border Grill restaurant used the Barbecue Train for grilling some special food sold in addition to other foods prepared in their adjacent food truck.

Pentti Monkkonen is a multi-media artist whose work excavates familiar forms and images that occur as manufactured multiples or as valued cultural artifacts, reconstituting them as expressive and unique objects somewhere between sculpture and functional artifact. He has recently exhibited at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City and at the Uschi Kolb Gallery in Karlsruhe Germany. Monkkonen lives in Venice, California.