Artist's Choice: Vik Muniz, Rebus

도미노 화학작용을 보는 비디오 작품은, 보는 내내 웃음이 나는 최고 추천 전시중 하나다.

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=9695&ref=calendar

Artist's Choice: Vik Muniz, Rebus December 11, 2008–February 23, 2009 Special Exhibitions Gallery, third floor      Ellsworth Kelly. Yellow from the series Line Form Color. 1951. Colored Paper. 7 1/2 x 8" (19 x 20.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist and purchased with funds provided by Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, Sarah-Ann and Werner H. Kramarsky, Mr. and Mrs. James R. Hedges, IV, Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr. and Committee on Drawings Funds. © 2008 Ellsworth Kelly Kiki Smith. Yolk. 1999. Multiple of glass, overall: 3/4 x 1 1/2 x 1 1/2" (1.9 x 3.8 x 3.8 cm). Publisher: A/D Editions, New York. Fabricator: Johnathan Christie, Jersey City, New Jersey. Edition: 150. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. John B. Turner Fund. © 2008 Kiki Smith Rodolfo Bonetto. Timer Model No. 152. 1960. ABS polymer, 2 3/8 x 4 1/2" (6 x 11.5 cm). Manufactured by Veglia Borletti, Milan. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the manufacturer

Vik Muniz (Brazilian, b. 1961) is the ninth artist to participate in Artist's Choice, a series of exhibitions in which an artist serves as curator, selecting works from MoMA’s vast collection to create an exhibition. In his work, Muniz inventively questions the function and traditions of visual representation by using unlikely materials to render the subjects in his photographs. For this exhibition, Muniz has chosen a rebus—a combination of unrelated visual and linguistic elements to create a larger deductive meaning—as the organizing principle of his presentation. The exhibition will feature approximately 80 works of sculpture, photography, painting, prints, drawings, video, and design objects selected and installed by the artist in a narrative sequence to create surprising juxtapositions and new meanings. Among the artists whose work will be on view are John Baldessari, Gordon Matta-Clark, Nan Goldin, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Eugène Atget, and Rachel Whiteread. Design objects will range from a wooden pencil to a kitchen pail to a Rubik’s Cube to finally, an Exit sign. “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once” –Albert Einstein. As if to suggest time is not only a unit of measurement but an innate organizational method of the human brain, artist Vik Muniz follows Einstein’s quote with an observation about how the mind simplifies visual narratives. According to Muniz, the reason for such is due to the mind’s inability to process all the visual elements of a scene simultaneously. In other words, representation is an instinctual and unavoidable interpretation of our environment. But none of these lofty ideas matter much while experiencing Muniz’s show. A couple of weeks ago I toured through Rebus, an exhibition using art from MoMA’s collection to render the subjects of the artist’s photographs, and drew none of that. Of course, with all wall labels removed, viewers aren’t asked to do much more than to play an associative word game with the objects on display.  Marcel Duchamp’s shovel leads to Gino Colombini’s bucket; Kiki Smith’s Yolk pairs with Rodolfo Bonetto’s timer; A Dieter Rams record player sits next to an Edward Weston photograph of a woman singing. Historical context is not only irrelevant in this show; rather, it’s unwanted. Given the amount of time I spend listening to people talk about the virtues of layered meaning, multiple interpretations, and complexity in art today, I find the act of reducing art to one level of communication particularly fresh. So much so that I found myself wishing the exhibition wasn’t a singular reference to the artist’s work. I realize this is an act of bravado on the part of the artist, but if representation is powerful enough to render authorship meaningless, it would be nice to see that handled consistently throughout the show.

Organized by Vik Muniz with Eva Respini, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography.

The exhibition is made possible by Anne and Kenneth Griffin.

The Artist's Choice exhibition series is made possible through The Agnes Gund Artist's Choice Fund endowed by Iara Lee and George Gund III, Lulie and Gordon Gund, Ann and Graham Gund, and Sarah and Geoffrey Gund.