Month: June 2015

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Wael Shawky’s Cabaret Crusades surprised me when I walked into the small theatre. I knew very little about the crusades at the top of my head and the film being in a different language led me to scramble to understand the context of what I walked into. Despite the initial language barrier (there were subtitles) and little background knowledge, the film drew me in and kept me in my seat for longer than I expted. The glass marionettes, handmade by glassblowers from Venice were mesmerizing and incredibly detailed. The marionettes were controlled humorously and were meticulously animated to the narration. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the marionettes were much larger in person than I initially imagined. Each marionette’s mouth and eyes were controlled individually – I laughed every time I could hear the clinking of the eyes and mouth. With the number of attachments on each of the marionettes, it looked like controlling them was not an easy task. If we had had more time in PS1, I would have sat through the entire film.

marionette photo via momaps1.org

Living Sculpture

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New York City-based artist Agnes Denes, who adds life to the city’s skyline with a curving pyramid on the park’s East River waterfront in Long Island City, Queens. Titled The Living Pyramid, Denes’s new large-scale, site-specific earthwork spans 30 feet at its four-sided base and ascend 30 feet high, created from several tons of soil and planted grasses.

SculptureGarden

PS1

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PS1

PS1 is an exhibition space rather than a collecting institution, MoMA PS1 devotes its energy and resources to displaying the most experimental art in the world. A catalyst and an advocate for new ideas, discourses, and trends in contemporary art, MoMA PS1 actively pursues emerging artists, new genres, and adventurous new work by recognized artists in an effort to support innovation in contemporary art.

PS1 was refreshing in the sense that it was not your standard  walled museum. The installations were so unique and different than we have seen in the museums and galleries so far. My favorite installation was the video piece installed under the wood flooring and seen through a hole in the wood.

Noguchi Museum

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Noguchi is one of my favorite sculptors. I’ve always been moved by his use of space and the perceptions within space. The sky viewing sculpture on Westerns campus shows a framing if space where as the sculptures from his museum were more of a space occupation.  

    [wpvideo u0YuVifR] Good thing I know a geologist!

“Check out the myrolitic cavities on those pink lumps 😏 They occur in gas or fluid pockets in an already solidified rock body. As the rock is uplifted the pressure drops allowing fluid to form and flow upwards. As the fluid flows through the rock host it must deposit dissolved solids that can no longer be dissolved in the fluid. The deposited solids form really nice looking minerals because they can grow uninhibited into the fluid or gas. Most museum grade mineral samples come from myrolitic cavities. Kinda like geodes.” -WWU alumni Erik Lovelace, geologist extraordinaire.

I love having a different disciplines view on the same object. As artists and historians we need to sometimes know more to provide context and spark inspiration. Those in the natural sciences, observe very similarly to artists. I’m intrigued by my friend description of this sculptures natural aspects. I would love to learn more about minerals and somehow incorporate the visual aspects into my work.

-Celeste

The days are blurring together

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Its the end of the day and I’ve already forgot where we’ve been today. I have pictures to remind me though. 

   
         Today was pretty low key. Still don’t remember a whole lot of it or was visually impacted in any way. 

-Julie M. 

Long Island-Queens! 

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Sam gave a great presentation at PS1 MOMA today! Socrates Sculpture Park, The Nogughi Museum and Garden were both a treat as well.  It was also good to debrief at Sculpture Center and discuss impressions/reflect on what we have experienced so far. Look forward to more of the same tomorrow at DIA Beacon!

   
                          
             

  
     
  
   

                   

   

 

Wael Shawky: Cabaret Crusades

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At MoMA PS1 there was an incredible exhibit by Egyptian artist, Wael Shawky titled Cabaret Crusades. The exhibit included a movie trilogy that was all a marionette show detailing the crusades inspired by Lebanese historian Amin Maalouf’s text The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, as well as a display case showing all of the marionettes that were featured in the films. The first film used 200 year old wooden marionettes, the second used hand made ceramic marionettes, and the third used glass marionettes made by master Venetian glass blowers. They were all very nicely detailed and had working mouths and eyelids and were really beautiful and also a little bit creepy.

IMG_4787

I loved these movies but they were each over 30 minutes and the last one was two hours long, so there was no way to be able to see it all, which always frustrates me about seeing video work in a museum. It also isn’t available to view online which sucks because I was extremely interested in watching the whole series. It was cool to see such a playful medium be used to describe such a horrible event in world history, which sort of relates to the idea of the 9/11 flipbook I posted about earlier. The visible strings of the marionettes is a nice symbol for the people being moved to these actions by their belief in god or a creator (the artist) that they were trying to serve during the crusades. The films were all in Arabic, which I think is a beautiful language, and I loved the singing. It was a very cool take on the crusades and I’m glad that artists are still exploring this part of our history and telling the story from other perspectives, which is important especially to western cultures that usually only hear about it from a christian perspective and it isn’t talked about extensively in schools or anything, at least not for me. I want to pay this guy to watch the movies. I might email him about it since I couldn’t find the movies on the internet.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7U-pqjdHIY]

-Beaudry Allen