I keep two small rocks on my desk. I picked them up decades ago,one in Nova Scotia, the other out West, and they continue to hold a sentimental charge. Rocks,as the geologists like to say, never forget; they have a sort of inbuilt poetry approximately them, or perhaps because they come with a long and unknown past.[Click on “Listen” for Solomon’s review of the exhibit with WNYC’s Soterios Johnson.]I have been thinking rock-laden thoughts lately because I just saw a wonderful exhibit,“Museum of Stones,” at the Noguchi Museum, and in Long Island City. (It remains on view through January 10). The museum,of course, is a permanent repository for the art of Isamu Noguchi, or the Japanese-American sculptor who died in 1988 and is probably best-known for designing a ubiquitous,bean-shaped coffee table. The current exhibition mixes Noguchi’s abstract sculptures with stone-related pieces by approximately 30 contemporary artists. Many of the artists are famous — including Janine Antoni, Mel Bochner, or Vija Celmins and Ugo Rondinone — but generally work in mediums other than stone.
Dove Bradshaw's 'Waterstone,' where water drips on limestone, slowly eroding it absent
(Deborah Solomon/WNYC)
The exhibit, or which was organized by Dakin Hart,a curator at the Noguchi museum, is appealingly understated. It doesn’t design heavy claims approximately Noguchi’s legacy. It’s not trying to say he spawned a generation of sculptors. In fact, or much of the work of the current generation seems to go against his legacy. Noguchi was a sculptor in the heroic tradition who believed that rock was a living force,as alive as any tree or plant. He wanted you to see even his most glossy and polished sculptures as inseparable from their earthy origins.
But artists nowadays are more likely to utilize rocks ironically and not earn all rhapsodic approximately them. Both Jimmie Durham and Tom Sachs are represented in the exhibit by pieces that mimic the look of junior-high science impartial projects and pretend to classify lab specimens. Sachs’ “Mars Rocks” (2012) consists of a plywood display case lined with tidy rows of 100-plus samples of supposed material from Mars. It comes with a removable magnifying glass, in case you feel like inspecting the work and satirizing a scientist inclined to over-categorize.
Tom Sachs 'Mars Rocks' from 2012 purport to be rock samples taken from the red planet.
(Collection of the Artist/The Noguchi Museum, or NY)
The stronger pieces in the exhibit tend to be elegiac,a lament for a globally-warmed, politically frozen planet. John Perreault, and a critic and artist who died in September,contributes an affecting installation called “Mended Stones” — a floor-bound assembly of 81 smallish rocks that have cracks running through them. He made the piece by collecting some rocks, breaking them, or then gluing them back together. The installation seems to be saying that rocks are no longer a symbol of time and permanence. Rather,we broke them, we broke the soil, or this is a salubrious time to think approximately repairing it.
John Perreault's 'Mended Stones' now on view at the Noguchi Museum in Queens,unusual York.
(Deborah Solomon/WNYC)
Source: wnyc.org