*This review is way too long. To make it more enjoyable for you I illustrated some of it.
“Eu desejo o seu desejo (I wish your wish)” 2003
When I visit the New Museum the first thing I do is go into the little lobby gallery by the cafe that you can enter without paying—I have a card now, proclaiming that I am an “artist” (strangely, it makes me doubt my own credibility), from the Institute of Contemporary Art (thanks), so I can get into the New Museum for free now anyways. . . but this is free for everyone and so means a little more.
I’m not as good with artist names as I am with pieces so I was a little taken aback to learn that I was already somewhat familiar with the work of Rivane Neuenchwander. The installation in the lobby is a wall of rainbow-colored ribbons that I first saw at the 2008 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh.
The piece was described by the Carnegie this way:
The wishes of various people are printed on textile ribbons, which relate to the church Nosso Senhor do Bonfim in São Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The ribbons are worn around the wrist where they are tied with three knots. A wish is made as each knot is tied. According to the tradition, the wishes come true when the ribbons tear apart and fall off the wrist. Visitors are welcome to take a ribbon and leave a wish behind. Wishes are collected and used to print new ribbons for the wall.
And the New Museum this way:
“I Wish Your Wish” will be installed in the New Museum’s lobby gallery space (always open to the public free of charge). At the church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil the faithful tie silk ribbons to their wrists and to the gates of the church, and, according to tradition, their wishes are granted when the ribbons wear away and fall off. For Neuenschwander’s installation “I Wish Your Wish” at the New Museum, hundreds of similar ribbons will be printed with visitors’ wishes from past projects, and will hang from the gallery walls.
Visitors will be invited to remove a ribbon, tie it to their wrist, and replace it with a new wish written on slip of paper, continuing the project that keeps generating new ribbons and dreams.
. . .So somewhere along the line the directions of tying the ribbons with three knots has become unimportant. At the New Museum there was a smiling volunteer or staff member to answer all my questions and encourage my taking as many ribbons as I wanted. At the Carnegie I distinctly remember being told that I could only take one. The ribbon I took from the Carnegie display was pale pink and I think it said “I WISH UNICORNS WERE REAL”, it fell off my wrist and was lost before I left the museum. Besides the Hirschhorn, Neuenchwander’s piece is the only one I clearly remember seeing at the Carnegie that day.
The wish-authors of my New Museum ribbons have had less luck as I still have both ribbons, which I secured to my bag with double knotted bows. I have a bright yellow one proclaiming “I WISH TO WIN THE LOTTERY” and a bright orange one that says “I WISH I COULD TURN BACK TIME”. Although it is very selfish of me, I have every desire to keep both of these ribbons. They are mine.
I like this ribbon piece, I believe I would like going to the church it is inspired by. (Read a very good travel blog on it here.) For a second, while picking out a ribbon and tying it to your wrist, you become much younger and you believe in such things as magic. It is nice to have this tradition removed from all religious connections, so that you can become mentally connected to positive thoughts about humanity while not having to have your personal god or godless beliefs play a part.
Thank you New Museum and Rivane Neuenschwander. I thought about ending my review now, so that I didn’t have to say that from my perspective, the exhibition goes slightly downhill from here–or perhaps I should say that I can only suspend my disbelieve for so long. One miracle per day is enough.
Interaction and the faint of heart
Besides “Eu desejo o seu desejo (I wish your wish)”, two other pieces in “A Day Like Any Other” called for me to interact with them in some way besides looking. I will describe them, relying on the verbiage from the New Museum press release because I am a lazy writer, then I will describe my hang-ups to all three. These are my hang-ups and I don’t expect you to share them, nor do I expect them to mean anything. If anything I am happy to have my boundaries challenged although I usually stubbornly decide to stay behind them.
“Primeiro amor (First Love)” 2008, a police sketch artist will sit with visitors and listen as those visitors describe the faces of their first loves; the sketch artist will then produce portraits of these “first loves” to adorn the walls of the gallery for the duration of the exhibition.
“Andando em círculos (Walking in Circles)” 2000, small halos of adhesive applied to the gallery floor by the artist will pick up dirt from visitors’ shoes. The work will create a physical and temporal map of the exhibition’s traffic patterns.
- I will take ribbons but I will not write my own wish.
- I have no problems with leaving dirt on glue circles.
- Under no circumstances that I can imagine taking place in a museum will I describe my first love to a sketch artist, even though sketch artist sketches are extremely cool.
As I was milling about the sketch artist table, trying to look but not join in–a silly thing happened. A reporter from some news organization asked me if I’d like to share my feelings about the show on television. I immediately said “no” and then I asked her if she was a part of the exhibition. She replied “No, does that change your mind about speaking for the camera?” and I replied “Not at all. I just wanted to know.” Later I was stuck in the elevator with her, the camera-woman, and a New Museum staff member. Awkward.
4th Floor
The immediate impression as I step off the elevator is of clocks ticking or/and rain falling and the color gray. Gray is the color of the New Museum’s poured concrete floors and the color of the buckets that have been suspended from the ceiling and also placed on said floor– “Chove chuva (Rain Rains)”, 2002. The suspended buckets each drip water to the floored buckets. There is a ladder left among the buckets, as if the person responsible for hanging them has only just left. It’s the height of summer but it could be a cool rainy day inside.
There are dirty circles on the floor, “Andando em círculos (Walking
in Circles)” 2000, and flip clocks that keep flipping to zeros– “Um dia como outro qualquer (A Day Like Any Other)”, 2008. There are framed maps of New York counties, “Depois da tempestade (After the Storm), 2010– that have been distressed in some manor. There is a video of someone walking around with an egg on a spoon, only it is a first person narrative—filmed as if the spoon and the egg are my own. All this means that someone wishes for me to think poetically about life, space, time etc. and I find the poetry a little heavy-handed even as I find myself enjoying everything but the video. (Does that stupid egg ever fall off the spoon?) I was left wishing that I could leave my cynical and hardened heart in the elevator for a moment so that I could whole-heartily believe in the wonder of it all.
People like me might find out for the first time (by reading the wall writing) that Rivane Neuenschwander is from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, that she is forty-three years old and that this is a mid-career survey of her work. Mention is made of movements like Neoconcretism and Tropicalismo and of predecessors such as Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica. If you are like me this will add next to nothing to your understanding of the work on the 4th floor but will come into some context when you descend to the next level. On the 4th floor everything could have been made by anybody, in any country—there is no sign of a visual colloquialism that might mark the work as being from a certain place—unless you count that the maps of New York were distressed by rain in Minas Gerais.
On the 4th floor of the New Museum in New York Minas Gerais, Brazil might as well be Cincinnati, Ohio.
3rd Floor
My descent to the 3rd floor was done by dark stairwell and embarrassingly, when I emerged from dark darkness to orange-carpeted gallery my first thought was “Brazil”. Paintings of interiors rendered in what might be described as non-mathematical perspective adorned the gallery space mapped out by orange carpet and I believe the carpet color changed with each new piece or idea on the 3rd floor. (I remember orange, yellow, and green. . . maybe there was also blue.)
The paintings turned out to be inspired by paintings called Ex-Votos that are left in churches as a kind of thank-you for a miracle that has happened. Usually, and here my knowledge comes only from the internet–there are people in the scene and the background is background. Neuenschwander has removed the people and description of the miracle and left us only the background, by placing these images in the art gallery she has also removed any religious significance and invites us to enjoy the simple beauty of the little paintings. This piece is very similar to the wish-ribbon piece—except that for instead of creating a sort of magic it only seems to remove it.
There is another video on this floor, similar to the egg piece only this time it is the journey of a soap bubble that never pops. There is a large installation in which the artist has torn up carpet to find monitoring devices, vitrines that hold structures created from trash that people have created absent-mindedly in bars, confetti constellations, a sketch artist that will sketch your first love, and a projector projecting 1001 moons.
It is while watching the soap bubble that I self-destruct and loose interest. I respect that the artist appreciates life as it is lived (the journey is more important then the length). It is beautiful that people create little sculptures in bars, that everyone is an artist. Tearing up carpeting to find. . . it’s all very nice and deeply layered with a mountain of references to other films and books and works of art but I can’t always swallow it. I want the soap bubble to pop, I want the egg to break—and maybe they even do break and pop . . . I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.
SHOW REVIEWED: Rivane Neuenchwander: A Day Like Any Other
*This review is way too long. To make it more enjoyable for you I illustrated some of it.
“Eu desejo o seu desejo (I wish your wish)” 2003
When I visit the New Museum the first thing I do is go into the little lobby gallery by the cafe that you can enter without paying—I have a card now, proclaiming that I am an “artist” (strangely, it makes me doubt my own credibility), from the Institute of Contemporary Art (thanks), so I can get into the New Museum for free now anyways. . . but this is free for everyone and so means a little more.
I’m not as good with artist names as I am with pieces so I was a little taken aback to learn that I was already somewhat familiar with the work of Rivane Neuenchwander. The installation in the lobby is a wall of rainbow-colored ribbons that I first saw at the 2008 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh.
The piece was described by the Carnegie this way:
The wishes of various people are printed on textile ribbons, which relate to the church Nosso Senhor do Bonfim in São Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The ribbons are worn around the wrist where they are tied with three knots. A wish is made as each knot is tied. According to the tradition, the wishes come true when the ribbons tear apart and fall off the wrist. Visitors are welcome to take a ribbon and leave a wish behind. Wishes are collected and used to print new ribbons for the wall.
And the New Museum this way:
“I Wish Your Wish” will be installed in the New Museum’s lobby gallery space (always open to the public free of charge). At the church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil the faithful tie silk ribbons to their wrists and to the gates of the church, and, according to tradition, their wishes are granted when the ribbons wear away and fall off. For Neuenschwander’s installation “I Wish Your Wish” at the New Museum, hundreds of similar ribbons will be printed with visitors’ wishes from past projects, and will hang from the gallery walls.
Visitors will be invited to remove a ribbon, tie it to their wrist, and replace it with a new wish written on slip of paper, continuing the project that keeps generating new ribbons and dreams.
. . .So somewhere along the line the directions of tying the ribbons with three knots has become unimportant. At the New Museum there was a smiling volunteer or staff member to answer all my questions and encourage my taking as many ribbons as I wanted. At the Carnegie I distinctly remember being told that I could only take one. The ribbon I took from the Carnegie display was pale pink and I think it said “I WISH UNICORNS WERE REAL”, it fell off my wrist and was lost before I left the museum. Besides the Hirschhorn, Neuenchwander’s piece is the only one I clearly remember seeing at the Carnegie that day.
The wish-authors of my New Museum ribbons have had less luck as I still have both ribbons, which I secured to my bag with double knotted bows. I have a bright yellow one proclaiming “I WISH TO WIN THE LOTTERY” and a bright orange one that says “I WISH I COULD TURN BACK TIME”. Although it is very selfish of me, I have every desire to keep both of these ribbons. They are mine.
I like this ribbon piece, I believe I would like going to the church it is inspired by. (Read a very good travel blog on it here.) For a second, while picking out a ribbon and tying it to your wrist, you become much younger and you believe in such things as magic. It is nice to have this tradition removed from all religious connections, so that you can become mentally connected to positive thoughts about humanity while not having to have your personal god or godless beliefs play a part.
Thank you New Museum and Rivane Neuenschwander. I thought about ending my review now, so that I didn’t have to say that from my perspective, the exhibition goes slightly downhill from here–or perhaps I should say that I can only suspend my disbelieve for so long. One miracle per day is enough.
Interaction and the faint of heart
Besides “Eu desejo o seu desejo (I wish your wish)”, two other pieces in “A Day Like Any Other” called for me to interact with them in some way besides looking. I will describe them, relying on the verbiage from the New Museum press release because I am a lazy writer, then I will describe my hang-ups to all three. These are my hang-ups and I don’t expect you to share them, nor do I expect them to mean anything. If anything I am happy to have my boundaries challenged although I usually stubbornly decide to stay behind them.
“Primeiro amor (First Love)” 2008, a police sketch artist will sit with visitors and listen as those visitors describe the faces of their first loves; the sketch artist will then produce portraits of these “first loves” to adorn the walls of the gallery for the duration of the exhibition.
“Andando em círculos (Walking in Circles)” 2000, small halos of adhesive applied to the gallery floor by the artist will pick up dirt from visitors’ shoes. The work will create a physical and temporal map of the exhibition’s traffic patterns.
As I was milling about the sketch artist table, trying to look but not join in–a silly thing happened. A reporter from some news organization asked me if I’d like to share my feelings about the show on television. I immediately said “no” and then I asked her if she was a part of the exhibition. She replied “No, does that change your mind about speaking for the camera?” and I replied “Not at all. I just wanted to know.” Later I was stuck in the elevator with her, the camera-woman, and a New Museum staff member. Awkward.
4th Floor
The immediate impression as I step off the elevator is of clocks ticking or/and rain falling and the color gray. Gray is the color of the New Museum’s poured concrete floors and the color of the buckets that have been suspended from the ceiling and also placed on said floor– “Chove chuva (Rain Rains)”, 2002. The suspended buckets each drip water to the floored buckets. There is a ladder left among the buckets, as if the person responsible for hanging them has only just left. It’s the height of summer but it could be a cool rainy day inside.
There are dirty circles on the floor, “Andando em círculos (Walking
in Circles)” 2000, and flip clocks that keep flipping to zeros– “Um dia como outro qualquer (A Day Like Any Other)”, 2008. There are framed maps of New York counties, “Depois da tempestade (After the Storm), 2010– that have been distressed in some manor. There is a video of someone walking around with an egg on a spoon, only it is a first person narrative—filmed as if the spoon and the egg are my own. All this means that someone wishes for me to think poetically about life, space, time etc. and I find the poetry a little heavy-handed even as I find myself enjoying everything but the video. (Does that stupid egg ever fall off the spoon?) I was left wishing that I could leave my cynical and hardened heart in the elevator for a moment so that I could whole-heartily believe in the wonder of it all.
People like me might find out for the first time (by reading the wall writing) that Rivane Neuenschwander is from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, that she is forty-three years old and that this is a mid-career survey of her work. Mention is made of movements like Neoconcretism and Tropicalismo and of predecessors such as Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica. If you are like me this will add next to nothing to your understanding of the work on the 4th floor but will come into some context when you descend to the next level. On the 4th floor everything could have been made by anybody, in any country—there is no sign of a visual colloquialism that might mark the work as being from a certain place—unless you count that the maps of New York were distressed by rain in Minas Gerais.
On the 4th floor of the New Museum in New York Minas Gerais, Brazil might as well be Cincinnati, Ohio.
3rd Floor
My descent to the 3rd floor was done by dark stairwell and embarrassingly, when I emerged from dark darkness to orange-carpeted gallery my first thought was “Brazil”. Paintings of interiors rendered in what might be described as non-mathematical perspective adorned the gallery space mapped out by orange carpet and I believe the carpet color changed with each new piece or idea on the 3rd floor. (I remember orange, yellow, and green. . . maybe there was also blue.)
The paintings turned out to be inspired by paintings called Ex-Votos that are left in churches as a kind of thank-you for a miracle that has happened. Usually, and here my knowledge comes only from the internet–there are people in the scene and the background is background. Neuenschwander has removed the people and description of the miracle and left us only the background, by placing these images in the art gallery she has also removed any religious significance and invites us to enjoy the simple beauty of the little paintings. This piece is very similar to the wish-ribbon piece—except that for instead of creating a sort of magic it only seems to remove it.
There is another video on this floor, similar to the egg piece only this time it is the journey of a soap bubble that never pops. There is a large installation in which the artist has torn up carpet to find monitoring devices, vitrines that hold structures created from trash that people have created absent-mindedly in bars, confetti constellations, a sketch artist that will sketch your first love, and a projector projecting 1001 moons.
It is while watching the soap bubble that I self-destruct and loose interest. I respect that the artist appreciates life as it is lived (the journey is more important then the length). It is beautiful that people create little sculptures in bars, that everyone is an artist. Tearing up carpeting to find. . . it’s all very nice and deeply layered with a mountain of references to other films and books and works of art but I can’t always swallow it. I want the soap bubble to pop, I want the egg to break—and maybe they even do break and pop . . . I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.