One of the reasons I am so excited about materials this summer is because of a couple of shows at the MoMA. I went (twice each) to see the impressive Sigmar Polke show, "Alibis," and the brilliant, unforgettable, absolutely mind-blowing show of Lygia Clark's work called "The Abandonment of Art."
These two shows were significant for me.
On Polke:
I don't often walk into someone's life's work and become so interested in everything they've done. Polke is hard to define or place into an "art movement" retroactively, simply because of the sheer amount of stuff that he made. This guy touched so many angles of the history of art in so many different ways it was astounding. Abstract photography, rubber bands nailed to a board, mobiles, paintings on bedsheets, video, 3-D grids with growing potatoes, paintings on layered glass, paintings on bubble wrap, projected photography, manipulated images, and other combinations of abstractions, representations, and constructions all created with a prodigious love for the materials involved. At first, I was sort of overwhelmed at the eclectic and unfamiliar nature of everything all at once, but then I took a deep breath and realized that I wanted to look at almost everything in the exhibition. I guess if it captured my attention, it was good. The words of Donald Judd bounced around in my brain: "art need only be interesting," and I moved on and I began to love it. Polke has an affinity not simply for materials, but for color, structure, and formal intuition. Grids recur in his work, and structural dots (akin to Lichtenstein's ben-day dots; I called them "Polke-dots" to myself and then became embarrassed) develop extremely well, making their way into even the materials, the subject matter (in his more representational work) and the very fabric of his work. Polke touches on irony in his work but it isn't depressive irony. It's more of a toungue-in-cheek, Dada-esque, "we know the world is good but we're going to point out the absurdity" kind of irony. I was reminded of the Mike Kelley show at PS1 earlier this year and Polke seemed like even more of a genius. Kelley's irony by comparison seems forced and juvenile. Polke seems pithy, substantial, excited, and by far the better artist. Anyhow, words can't do the show "Alibis" any justice, so the only reasonable thing to do is to go see it for yourself!
On Clark:
I think I fell in love with Lygia Clark. I walked into the show "The Abandonment of Art" at first completely ignorant of her existence, but the experience I had in that series of rooms was something so far from what I was expecting that I was left bewildered that I had seen a show so good, and sad that she had passed away because I wanted nothing better at that moment than to meet her and get down on one knee.
Clark's love for the psychology of materials seems to be the most prominent thing in her work, at least from what I could pick up. The first room was filled with tactile things. Various fuzzy suits and masks for changing one's experience of the world through the senses. There was a soft rug to walk on and curly, pendulous abstractions hanging from the walls. The materials all looked very touchable, real, and interactive. At this point in the show I wasn't familiar with her or convinced of her yet. Maybe it was because it was in the same place, but I instantly thought "oh, more Isa Genzken, cool." But almost instantly when I walked into the next room, my assumptions and ridiculous associations (maybe not so ridiculous) changed dramatically. I felt that this deep, beautiful, crazy affinity for the materials that had shown up playfully in the first room took on a seriousness that buckled into shapes, shards, angles, circles, spaces, and abstractions that were all about the geometry and the materials and the psychology all at once. It seems that in the next rooms, Lygia Clark took her love for art and everything and focused it into a powerhouse of work. The sculpture was unreal. It doesn't happen very often when I'm forced to reconsider who I am as an artist. The feeling I had was this: I looked at this group of sculptures and paintings at first with surprise that nobody could make things this awesome. I looked away again, and thought to myself, "no, obviously I didn't see that, it couldn't have been that good." But then I looked back and it was still there. I couldn't argue with that. So I resigned myself to the fact that this woman was brilliant and ate up the rest of the show. I liked every single piece there. There was a series of "critters," which were made from disks, triangles, squares, and other geometric pieces of aluminum and other materials that were folded up and hinged in different ways. The paintings had a similar geometric sense that reminded me of the game of tangrams, izzi, and shadow puppets, all created with the most incredible sense of materials. There were even replicas that visitors were allowed to play with. I almost never had such a strong sense of the way someone thought behind their work. Clark had a subtle color sense, subtly holding back where she needed to, and being bold and divisive at other times. She had some of the strongest structural instincts I've seen. And the amount of things and people I saw in her work was immense. Futurism, Mondrian, Minimalism, Picasso, McKraken, Guston...I don't even know...I was so blown away. I can't even describe how good it was but perhaps that makes sense. I think they say that the better art is, the less that words can attempt to do it justice.
There was also an endearingly disturbing birthing piece on the floor downstairs by Clark that changed me a little bit but I'll leave that to you to discover. Go to MoMA.
Here's a thing: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/arts/design/lygia-clarks-many-twists-and-turns-at-moma.html?_r=0
Anyways, I just photographed around 200 drawings and am compiling some stuff and I'll probably update erratically again as I get more into the swing of things this summer. Cheers.
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