2sweet2kill at the Cain Shultz Gallery

Taking a page from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Yvonne Lee Schultz's work dwells in childlike purity and sensationalistic violence. The Berkeley-born, Berlin-based artist has made a trademark of repurposing the Walther PPK pistol (immortalized by international secret agent James Bond) to high-art ends, replicating its form in materials ranging from porcelain to chocolate. The fruits of her foray into sugary weaponry will be on view this month at South Beach's Cain Schulte Gallery.

For Schultz's provocative video 2sweet2kill, and the accompanying film-still series "Schoko Kids," the artist used molds filled with dark and bittersweet chocolate to replicate Mr. Bond's famed piece, then gave the resulting edible counterparts to children. Call it a pop-culture study of behaviorism with a playing-with-one's-food twist: The resulting footage documents children mid-bite or mid-"shot," chocolate-smeared smiles on their faces.

"The children don't question the enjoyment of this toy, in spite of the awful connotations," says Schultz, who believes that the viewer is instrumental in activating her art, and chose Bond's weapon for its accessibility as a point of entry for discussion. "James Bond translates cross-culturally," she explains. "The true art comes from the opinions of the observers. That is where [it] really starts." Indeed, the "schoko guns" are bound to elicit a spectrum of reactions, likely ranging from a Scharffen Berger craving to a profession of genius to a cry of depravity. But as the artist herself posits, in the end it all melts down to a matter of taste.

"2sweet2kill"
Yvonne Lee Schultz
Aug. 28—Oct. 4
Cain Schulte Gallery