27 June, 2010

23 June - MoMA and Chelsea



LAUNCHPROJECTS - A morning cappuccino at Via Quadronno to catch the US vs. Algeria match in the World Cup (Landon Donovan and goal keeper Tim Howard pictured above). We then headed to MoMA to see the newly installed Bruce Nauman exhibition Days, created for the 2009 Venice Biennale. A "sound sculpture" of voices reciting the days of week in random order, it is brutal and fascinating, we couldn't help but wonder at the sanity of the guards after hours on end of the relentless words. It is described on MoMA's website as a "sonic cocoon." More like day of the week clown torture. I love the way Roberta Smith described his work in her 2009 NYT review when it was in Philadelphia.


They don’t “present” as art, yet they lodge in the mind and won’t let go, disorienting, irritating, inundating and exhilarating the senses. And with time, the best Naumans make clear their art-ness, laying bare life’s basic experiences, distilled and compressed. They do this profoundly yet, it seems, inadvertently, as if Mr. Nauman were simply providing raw material that we absorb and fashion into art in our heads.

Exactly, Roberta.

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