Bloat (2020) deploys food as both medium and message, using protein bars pressed directly onto Stonehenge Pearl Gray 250gsm paper to generate oil transfers that gradually seep into the surface over time. Carmen Argote arranged the bars from right to left, spacing them as one might space words across a page, so that the resulting marks carry the visual grammar of written language without resolving into legibility. Crayon tracings follow the contours of each oil impression, coaxing a kind of latent script from the slow accumulation of nut oils and pressure. The pigmented inkjet print serves as the underlying field against which these handworked layers read, creating a work that bridges photographic reproducibility and intimate, time-dependent mark-making. The choice of protein bars is far from incidental. Products like RXBARs carry substantial cultural freight, marketed as transparent, no-nonsense health foods whose ingredient lists double as branding. By pressing them into service as printing tools, Argote quietly subverts that language of purity and legibility, transforming a commodity's promise of clean nutrition into something messy, indeterminate, and slow. The resulting marks communicate through accumulation rather than declaration, gesturing toward a written system that perpetually withholds its meaning. Argote, born in Guadalajara in 1981 and based in Los Angeles, holds both a BFA and MFA from UCLA and has exhibited at institutions including the New Museum, the Hammer Museum, LACMA, and Ballroom Marfa. She is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the Artadia Los Angeles Award, both in 2019. Bloat is a limited edition of three artist proofs and three printer proofs, each signed, and is offered unframed.