Will anyone ever forget that Barend de Wet tried to fob off pasta as art? It seems unlikely that witnesses to his seminal ''art disguised as pasta" performance in 1996, or those that ate the ''art" for dinner after the event, will consider art, or pasta in the same way again. A mounted photograph of this legendary occasion, on which De Wet made pasta for an audience in chef's whites is on display at his new solo exhibition at Smac Gallery Cape Town.It recalls the quirky performance art of De Wet's past, although his art today is mostly object-based.He did, however, provide a little light live entertainment during the opening with the burning of ''art works" (not real, of course).The line between art and life that he so doggedly tried to blur back in his "high-carb art days", as a friend put it, does inform some of the art on the show.Take the ''bread" sculptures - steel loaves, baguettes and rolls suspended from the ceiling at different heights in the installation wryly dubbed Opera, White Bread and Methylated Spirits.Painted white and with a neon light making the forms pop in the darkened room - this is bread elevated to its highest form. De Wet's ode to this high-carb food group might send shivers down the spines of the Banting crowd but it also has the artisanal bread-fetishist Hipster population applauding, though the abstract neon white shapes appear more like small-scale ''planets" on a sci-fi film set.De Wet could be mocking the Banting, Hipster crowds or maybe those collectors and artists worshipping at the fashionable temple of abstract art. He's very serious about his lack of seriousness. This is reflected not only in his art treatment of bread, but in the weird puzzle-like guide to the exhibition that presents a muddle of abstract ''terms" and the "lorem ipsum" dummy text-generator essay by a "very important author" in a book to coincide with the exhibition.In his sculptures, De Wet's brand of satire so closely mimics the real thing you can never be sure at what point it's art and at which point it's not art. The large exhibition of sculptures, big and small, rendered in black and white, reflecting the title of the show, Black & White & Everything In Between, are so pleasing, particularly en masse. It looks like art and smells like art. Yet because the forms are arbitrary, signify nothing, and his process demands detachment (reflected in allowing his assistant to make the decisions about its form), you know that a lack of seriousness underpins it all. De Wet is detached because he does not fully ''believe" in art - or what it stands for. He can't take its fashionable rhetoric and insider games seriously. His mockery and rejection of it is done by abiding to the rules vigorously, producing a good-looking exhibition of sculptures, which will be all the rage this art season. - This review was sponsored by Smac Gallery'Black & White &Everything In Between' shows at Smac Gallery Cape Town until July 23...