Cabbage

An infinite, befuddling, intricate, and beautiful labyrinth, Carlos Mateu’s Cabbage is a testament to how conceptual abstract art and quotidian material objects can be one and the same. The winding and endless contours of Cabbage appear as removed from the physical world as possible. The picture's home is in the realm of the imagination and calligraphic art history—a la Keith Haring and the indigenous artists who inspired him—not that of reality. But then again, it is not. While in no way an illusionistic figurative painting, Cabbage is beyond the shadow of a doubt, a faithful representation of a ubiquitous eponymous vegetable. I continue to find myself most awed by the abstract beauty of a freshly split pomegranate, but Mateu has certainly put cabbage in the running for one of our most visually engaging foods.