Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Fruit Shooter


I played hooky from the studio Monday morning to go to the Hirshhorn and see the Ori Gersht work in the Black Box theatre. You may remember him from the food issue of the NYT Magazine with the huge Michael Pollan article in it. It was the exploded ear of corn.

The Pomegranate piece was staged the work like a Cotan painting. Then the pomegranate is shot, explodes and swings away in slo-mo for probably four minutes. He had me at Cotan, but that is pretty much where it ends. What do I do with this information after the fruit is exploded? I get the vanitas angle too, but what is the larger purpose I ask you?

In the theatre The Forest 2006 is on view. In this short you watch trees falling in densely wooded areas. The sound becomes a somethings of a character here through its editing. Sometimes you hear the trees creaking and falling over with a great crackle and thud . Other times you only hear the thud or nothing at all. You never hear the implements of cutting. I have to say that I found the mute tree-falls to be most insightful and most relevant to the koan about a does a falling tree make a sound if no one is there to hear it. Then again, I am an insatiable fan of silence.

Clearly we are there witnessing the video of falling trees, the artist was there to take the images. So we are, as technology permits us, there. Which kind of cheats the koan in a way, no?

The Hirshhorn also wins points for their Figuration show. It is made entirely of their permanent collection, but I really like it when a museum unleashes work that they usually keep hidden from view. AND the Otto Dix gallery was super fantastique.

2 comments:

Marissa said...

Ha! I was at the museum this weekend and stared at the exploding Pomegranate for a while myself. I loved the Schnabel portrait of Warhol though the best. Anything painted on velvet that doesn't look like it belongs in my grandma's house gets my vote.

MATTHEW said...

Yeah, the exploding stuff is hypnotic. Especially the Big Bang on the 3rd Floor.

Now that I'm thinking about it...Warhol is kind of like an Elvis figure isn't he? Makes sense that he's on velvet. Either way... NOT FOR GRANDMAS.