We visited the Guggenheim museum today. Although the entire exhibition they have on view right now is worth seeing and mentioning, there were a few pieces that caught my attention. On view there is a new piece from Doris Salcedo. Salcedo’s work is controversial in its subject matter, but it all inspires some sort of feeling from the viewer. These pieces functioned extremely well within the confines of the spaces in which they were kept, and flowed very well together.
The piece I kept remembering the most vividly of those by Salcedo was her exhibition entitled Atrabillarios. Constructed from 1992-1997, Salcedo cut into the wall and placed missing person’s shoes into the niches. Using surgical thread, cow bladders, gyproc, and timber, Salcedo and her team create a screen over the niches that conceal just enough to cloud the shoes inside of them.
Salcedo’s pieces all carry with them a theme of loss and allow the viewer to emotionally engage with the pieces in some way.
Although this piece is extremely visceral, I was also enamored by the sculptural work of Pawel Althamer. Even though this work in particular wasn’t my normal taste in art, I still couldn’t pull myself from the piece. Althamer uses plastic, plaster, and paint (among other items) to create sculptures that pay homage to sculptural practices of the old, traditional ways to create artworks. Althamer ran the plastic through extruding machines and in doing so, achieved a look reminiscent of long strips of taffy. This technique combined with traditionally plaster casted faces of his subjects, combine to create pieces that interact with the viewer and the lighting of the space
. 
-Rebekkah James