Daily News -
He seeks new home for 'Jesus'
Choc-statue artist sez offers abound
Artist Cosimo Gavallero with his controversial chocolate Jesus sculpture.
The chocolate sculpture of a nude Jesus is being held in a secret location, but it could have a new home soon.
The artist who created "My Sweet Lord" said he's gotten offers from around the world to buy or exhibit the controversial figure booted from a Manhattan gallery.
"I've got thousands of e-mails of help and donations, people who want to support it, give money, even offer exhibition space, from Holland to Japan," Cosimo Cavallaro said yesterday.
"It's quite amazing."
While Cavallaro weighed the offers, the uproar over his work was causing problems for a fellow artist who also carves religious figures out of chocolate.
George Heslop displayed a chocolate Jesus on a crucifix in his native England last year and was hoping to reprise the show in the U.S.
"Now I'm having second thoughts," he said.
Cavallaro's 200-pound sculpture was supposed to be shown at the Lab Gallery in the Roger Smith Hotel on E. 47th St. during Holy Week.
But a Daily News story about the work - which presents Christ with his arms outstretched and without a loincloth - sparked complaints from some Catholics, and the hotel pulled the plug.
Now the dark chocolate figure is in a refrigerated truck in a secret location, living a "gypsy" existence "going around and trying to find a home," Cavallaro said.
"I don't want to disclose the location because of people, some people who are fanatics," he said, adding that he's received threats.
When Heslop exhibited his life-size Jesus last year, it also ignited a firestorm, but the show went on.
He now lives in Arizona and expected to submit applications to show the sculpture to U.S. galleries - a plan he is rethinking.
"I probably won't send it now," he said.
"Obviously the U.K. and America are very, very different," he said.
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