235 Bowery, New York, NY
Each month the New Museum is adding a new layer of art for their inaugural exhibition, UNMONUMENTAL. For the first month the museum had only sculpture, now into the second month, they have put up collages and collage installations on the walls. In mid-February they will add a layer of sound art and Internet art. The exhibition wants to focus on the times we are currently living in. These fragmented and sometimes precarious forms reflect the opening of the 21st century- marked by moments of falling monuments (ie/ Twin Towers, Saddam Hussein, etc). It also reflects the current trend in art to use modest -unmonumental- materials. This isn’t a show of marble statues and meticulous oil paintings; it’s littered with broken furniture, paper clippings, and old clothes. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself bumping into a sculpture that looked like a turned over trashcan.
I wasn’t a big fan of the sculptures, they weren’t doing enough for me to give more than a glance. Maybe because I wanted those small intimate moments when artwork draws you into looking at a small fragment of itself, similar to a painting. I LOVED the collages. They were loaded with imagery. “Collage: The New Painting for the 21st Century” could be another title for this second installment. Thomas Hirschhorn had a wall full of collages that juxtaposed images of death and gore with porn ladies. On top of that he drew all over and around the clippings with a pen. My favorites were Martha Rosler’s framed works that collaged domestic interiors with happy advertisements with runway models with the War in Iraq. I know there is a glare on the photos I took, but if you look closely there is a Febreeze add of a lady cleaning a couch inside a bombed out castle. That says a lot right there- perhaps, as we are cleaning our homes our military is cleaning out other peoples’.
On the lower two levels of the museum were monumental collages. Monumental in their massive size and installations. Wangechi Mutu’s, “Perhaps the moon will save us” has flying pigs (with faux fur for wings), holes in the wall for stars, and a moon made of stuffed stockings, blankets, and various garments. Mark Bradford’s “Helter Skelter 1 + 2″ is an enormous collage on canvas which he sanded through to expose different layers. From afar is looks like, well- Helter Skelter, but when you come up close you can see the various fragments of images.
