MoMA Talk to Me Exhibits

Katerie Notes on 3 MOMA artists - 

1) Alighiero Boetti - Game Plan - "First of all I prefer thought. This is the basic thing. I really think manual skill is secondary…. It is taking things from reality. Everything, however small and humble, always has a beginning and stems from reality."

Most often affiliated with the Arte Povera movement, Boetti creates art with things that are found in his world. 

A Biro (ball point pen) drawing from 1973, spelling out the title "Mettere a mondo il mondo" means "Bringing the world into the world." This is a big part of Boetti's work in that he is interested in bringing standard and recognizable objects into the gallery and placing for the audience to see and make judgements from. He is interested in working with objects produced from his home town, to produce further concept. 

The exhibition focuses on Boetti's works that deal with travel, geography, and mapping, many that relate to his many travels to Afghanistan where he operated the One Hotel. 

2) Senga Nengudi - R.S.V.P. I  - Panty - hose and sand, 10 pieces - 

In the Contemporary Galleries: 1980-Now in MOMA. In the work, there are dark hued panty hose that are suspended in air and manipulated by being filled with sand, pushed and pulled with string and other forms of manipulation to make them what they are. With-in the description, her concept explains, "I am working with nylon mesh because it relates to the elasticity of the human body," "From tender, tight beginnings to sagging…. The body can only stand so much push and pull until it gives way, never to resume it's original shape." I really enjoyed this idea because of the cause and effect aspect and how it relates to human lives. For example, events in life, or the sand in this case resembles experience and events in a person's life, things that they have done and have had done to them, and pressures of standard society. Upon bearing all of these burdens, what was once pristine and important turns to something that is worn from the struggles and breaking down, until it finally deconstructs itself in disrepair.

3) Do Ho Suh - Karma Juggler - etching with colored pencil additions - Shows a color field of balance or an idea of yin and yang. I enjoyed this piece because it looked like it took a traditional idea of two distinct sides and put it into fields that look like brains within a single sheet of paper. There are tensions and points of connection from the two fields, causing this balance and a sense of mutual existence.

4) Augmented Cookie - Mike Clare
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/talktome/objects/146406/
I thought this was interesting because it is creating another technological sense to the idea of the senses. Takes a cookie, an edible item and gives it more visual information through the use of a coding grid on the cookie. Creates a QRL code and gives the cookie a whole different meaning. Could give a negative connotation to the cookie through the information within it, or the opposite.