Nothing could be more benign and pleasant than chocolate truffles–but in the confections of Stephen J. Shanabrook, sweet treats turn into gruesome mementos of contemporary life. The candies you see above were cast from the fatal wounds of anonymous cadavers. According to Eat Me Daily, Shanabrook says the truffles skate “very close to the edge, the forbidden place for artists.”

Shanabrook, who worked in a chocolate factory as a kid, wasn’t done there. Here’s a casting that purports to be of the remnants of a suicide bomber:

And here’s a pair of choirboys, waterboarded with chocolate, which feature in a current art exhibition in New York, which ends on August 8:

Presumably, this stuff is meant for collecting and not consumption–Shanabrook’s gotta make money, after all. But that’s a shame, because if eaten, they’d be a couple notches more interesting, and a bit farther removed from mere shock art. Enjoying a sweet which harks to the world’s most troubling problems is a good metaphor for blithe consumerism and blithe self-absorption, no?