Brett Littman, executive director of The Drawing Centre, was so enraptured by his dining experience at the famed (and now closed) elBulli in Spain that he completed his meal by purchasing a copy of A Day at elBulli. Within the book’s pages Littman noticed that it featured images of lists and diagrams head chef Ferran Adrià had made to record his ideas and document the immense body of technical knowledge required to create a constant stream of ambitious new dishes – like a nutmeg-sprinkled ostrich “eggshell” made of flash-frozen gorgonzola that had to be manually cracked open and consumed using only your fingers in 18 seconds before it turned into a puddle.
Fascinated by the way those outside the visual world use drawing as a part of their creative process, Littman contacted Adrià to ask if he might be interested in taking his drawings public. The result is Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity, an exhibition that includes plating diagrams that Adrià used to create new dishes.
The exhibition will be a walk into the mind of Adrià and his kitchen, showing the process of his art form. If you’re in New York, check it out at The Drawing Center until February 28 before it tours Los Angeles, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and the Netherlands.
