I visited the Museum of Arts and Design to view the “Dead or Alive” exhibit recently. I went because Time Out New York had an image of a skull made from cockroach wing fragments pasted to translucent paper in front of a light box – it was an unforgettable picture and I was struck by the color of the wings in relation to the image of a skull always in my mind – a seemingly perfect match. How did this artist think to cut-up cockroach wings to get this across? I had to see it in person and I dragged my husband along.
The entire exhibit was in environmental colors – as best as I can call it. Bones, feathers, leaves, beans, rice, fur, branches, yarns, and lots of art supplies to hold it all together. There were pitch-black trees with roots like skeletons and bright red bleeding drips falling from the ceiling. Brilliants colors on butterfly wings in mandala-like shapes and bird feathers surrounding rough diamonds that had been created from the carbon of the pet birds. Chirp. Chirp.
Sardines covered in resin and placed in a circle so that they looked like a golden mirror from a Mexican flea-market escapade. Mandalas reoccurring as an artist had used corn, beans, and rice to create words and bones in one corner of the floor. Flies in the thousands pierced with plastic fishing wire and hanging in a perfect cube – creating a swarm affect but in a graphic shape not found in nature – a single spider thrown in the mix. Metallic scarabs covering a human skull holding a stuffed animal in its mouth. Bees and beetles and bugs frozen in time and re-arranged to look like a futuristic warzone, muted tones and bright feathers intermixed to look like some sort of sick children’s stop-motion film. (I can only wish.) A pile of mouse skeletons taken from owl pellets sitting next to a loom with the fur taken from those same pellets in the middle of being woven in to a grey fabric.
Needless to say, the images and colors are stuck with me and I would say it is one of the best museum exhibits I’ve ever been to (especially in Manhattan) and stands right up to the “Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design” exhibit that I saw at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in July 2009. Both had colors used in such a way that both occurred naturally or made you want them to occur naturally outside your door. Brilliant hues, muted naturals, and sparkling crystals flinging light thrown-in for good measure. All in all, this macabre exhibit has me putting colors together that I wouldn’t have normally imagined and inspiring me in dark ways that actually seem to bring light in to my work. A wonderful color cultural experience!
Any exhibits you would recommend?
Happy Winter!
Yours truly...and somewhat morbidly,
Alex
PS: Speaking of Victoria and Albert...I watched The Young Victoria recently. Wow - I highly recommend it. Emily Blunt is terrific, I love to look at period design, and it's a beautiful love story.
No comments:
Post a Comment