Gordon Matta-Clark: “You Are the Measure” at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Another guest blogger, Kat Parker, posted on March 12th, 2008 about this show so I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity to learn more about Gordon Matta-Clark and his work. MCA Curator Lynne Warren will lead a tour through the exhibition and discusses his work and process on April 1st at noon.
On view at the museum is a first full-scale retrospective in 20 years of the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and curated by Whitney curator Elisabeth Sussman.
As their press release states, “This retrospective celebrates the brilliance and radical nature of his work in various media: sculptural objects (most, notably, from building cuts), drawings, films, photographs, notebooks, and documentary materials. The Chicago presentation features additional never-before-displayed archival material from this project. The MCA presentation is coordinated by MCA Curator Lynne Warren.”
Gordon Matta-Clark is one of the original founders of White Columns ‚Äì where I was lucky enough to be part of for many years. Gordon Matta-Clark: “You Are the Measure” is on view Through May 4, 2008.
“Dan Flavin: Constructed Light” at the Pulitzer Foundation
There is an amazing exhibition of Dan Flavin’s work at the Contemporary’s neighbor, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis. Dan Flavin: Constructed Light will be on view until October 2008.
The exhibition showcases the power of Flavin’s work better than anywhere I’ve seen the work installed. This is partly due to the fact that Tadao Ando’s entire building has been turned over to Dan Flavin’s work and Tiffany Bell, who was the project director of the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné and who serves as curator and archivist for the Flavin Studio, curated the exhibition. The installation was realized with the oversight and assistance of Stephen Morse, who is the Exhibition Coordinator and Conservator of the Flavin Studio. This show equally shows off the talents of the architect Ando and the artist Flavin – and together the audience is given something magical.
Here’s a link to a video of Steve Morse as he describes the installation of the exhibition and where he answers: how can you posthumously install an exhibition of Dan Flavin‚Äôs work in a space he is not familiar with?
Maya Lin interview at the Contemporary
Here is an interview that the Contemporary’s Director of Education Kathryn Adamchick did with Maya Lin this season. The conversation was captured during Maya’s visit to St. Louis to install her exhibition Systematic Landscapes. What I appreciate about Art:21 is that it gives the viewers direct access to the artists. The value in being able to hear and to observe an artist at work or play is the greatest perk in being involved in contemporary art. As a non-collecting institution, and due to the ephemeral nature of our work, we find it crucial to document the exhibitions and even the installation process. Traditionally this was done through catalogs and photographs. With the new technology like podcasting and blogging, our ability to access information about artists and their work is easier than ever for those with internet access. The Art:21 series, in addition to its blog and the website, allows the contemporary art audience access to vast amounts of information on artists of our time.The exhibition Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes was organized by the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle. The exhibition featured among others, three monumental installations: 2×4 Landscape, Water Line, and Blue Lake Pass. Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis also commissioned a piece from Maya Lin titled Pin River, based upon the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Maya also created a special edition exclusively for the Contemporary based on the Mississippi River which can be viewed here: http://www.contemporarystl.org/artistseditions.phpMaya Lin is internationally recognized for her Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., which she designed when she was a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale University. Dedicated in 1982, the monument is widely recognized as one of the most important public art piece of this century. But since then, Lin has been justly celebrated for a remarkable body of work that includes sculpture, earthworks, architecture, landscape design, and public monuments. She continues to freely cross the boundaries of art, architecture, and design.
