today, four of us bravely crept out of the warm, heated home and went to the walker art center, the recently reopened contemporary art museum in minneapolis. the building itself, unfortunately, was quite underwhelming - too much aluminum! not enough windows! but fortunately the art and work within was quite the opposite.there was:
- a beautiful piece by yoko ono called a painting to hammer a nail in. the hammer was made of glass and the painting was made of a mirror, thereby making the viewer - you - part of the work. yoko ono rules, and i'll be sure to see her retrospective, grapefruit, at the berkeley art museum.
- an inspired collection of postwar abstraction, called the shape of time. the work ranged from robert rauschenberg and jasper johns (including two works by johns from the collection of my brother-in-law, jean castelli) to pop artists like roy lichtenstein and andy warhol.
- a massive walk-through installation by thomas hirschhorn called cavemanman. made primarily of cardboard and tape, with posters of pop and porn stars, cans of soda pop, and a library of left-leaning books on philosophy, oppression, and revolution, the piece is a series of caves, a labyrinth of tunnels, serving as a metaphor, hirschhorn tells us, for our minds - littered, distracted, and filled with garbage. curious? the village voice has more.
unfortunately, "my complement, my enemy, my oppressor, my love," the first full-scale american retrospective of the work of kara walker, wasn't yet opened and won't be until february 17. also filed under unfortunate: walker's screening of zidane: a 21st century portrait ("using 17 synchronized cameras, the film tracks the world-class athlete from the first kick until he leaves the field") takes place well after we leave minneapolis, between february 9-11.
