BRIAN'S WIENERS

Upstate Art Weekend 2024

KinoSaito & Camp Kingston

 

For 2024 Upstate Art Weekend, KinoSaito and Camp Kingston are pleased to present Brian’s Wieners, an interactive booth featuring ceramic anthropomorphized hot dogs by Lauren Cohen.

​

Conceived during the height of the pandemic, the project extends Cohen’s ongoing use of character, performance, and humor as tools for psychological inquiry. Through material exaggeration and satire, Brian’s Wieners examines desire, substitution, and emotional displacement, using the language of processed food as both comfort object and stand-in for intimacy.

​

The ceramic works operate between sculpture and prop, inviting participation while foregrounding themes of consumption, longing, and repetition. By merging absurdity with vulnerability, Brian’s Wieners situates humor as a critical strategy, allowing intimate and uncomfortable subjects to surface through play.

​

Photos by Chika Kobari courtesy of KinoSaito