Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams at MoMA

African art, Art 2018, MoMA

MoMA had an exhibition, Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams. I went to the museum to see other show but I went to a wrong floor and found this show. I was very lucky. I really got inspirational energy from Kingelez’s art work and his interview.

Based in then-Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), following its independence from Belgium, Kingelez made sculptures of imagined buildings and cities that reflected dreams for his country, his continent, and the world. Kingelez’s “extreme maquettes” offer fantastic, utopian models for a more harmonious society of the future.

Michelangelo at Met

Art, drawing, Museum, show and exhibition

I went to “the must-see” show, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer at Metropolitan Museum. It was very successful show. So many people! Met announced that the 10th most visited exhibition in the museum’s history. It’s brought more than 700,000 visitors for three months. I was one of them. It was so many (but not too many) works. They show not only his works but also other artists who worked with him. I’ve never get tired of seeing those masterpieces! Just beautiful.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564). Bacchanal of Children. Red chalk. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564). Studies for Christ in the Pietà of Úbeda for Sebastiano del Piombo. Black chalk. Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Paris (716)

Linda Benglis show at Storm King Art Center

Art, Outdoor sculpture

I went to Storm King Art Center to see Linda Benglis : WATER SOURCES.
It was first time me to go Storm King Art Center. It is located only one hour north of New York City, in the lower Hudson Valley, where its pristine 500-acre landscape of fields, hills, and woodlands provides the setting for a collection of more than 100 carefully sited sculptures created by some of the most acclaimed artists of our time. This is a huge beautiful sculpture garden. It was a really nice day trip from New York City. I enjoyed sculptures in natue.

Lynda Benglis: Water Sources is the first exhibition centered around the outdoor water fountains that the artist has been developing since the early 1980s. More broadly, this presentation takes as its point of departure the interest in water and landscape that Benglis has explored throughout the last thirty years of her career.

On Kawara at Guggenheim Museum

Art, Guggenheim Museum, Museum, New York Art, show and exhibition

I went to a very interesting show, On Kawara – Silence at Guggenheim Museum. Since On Kawara is a well-known Japanese artist, I know his work quite while. But I had never seen this volume of his work. This is the first full representation of Kawara’s output, beginning in 1964 and including every category of work, much of it produced during his travels across the globe: date paintings (the Today series); postcards (the I Got Up series); telegrams (the I Am Still Alive series); maps (the I Went series); lists of names (the I Met series); newspaper cuttings (the I Read series); the inventory of paintings (Journals); and calendars (One Hundred Years and One Million Years).
I think his work is performance art in funny way. We are not seeing when he is performing but seeing the record of his performance.

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at MOMA

Art, MoMA, Museum, New York Art, show and exhibition

What a pleasure to see Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at a day of middle of winter. I easily forgot we were still in winter. This show brought me spring to my eyes. Simple shapes and colors were blooming at MOMA.
This is a rare occasion to see Motisse’s cut-out pieces extensively. The last time New York audiences were treated to an in-depth look at the cut-outs was in 1961!

Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor at MOMA

Art, MoMA, Museum

Finally I went to the show, Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor at MOMA. It will end tomorrow.
The Heart Is Not a Metaphor is the first large-scale survey of Robert Gober’s career to take place in the United States. Gober (American, b. 1954) rose to prominence in the mid-1980s and was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of his generation.
This is the first time I saw his works with my own eyes. I had seen his works with photos and I hadn’t been interested in. I had thought that they were too conceptual and dry. But real works were really good. They were conceptual yet sensitive and poetic. They were opposite of my impression I had before. This is a lesson for me to learn that real works and their photos are sometimes different!

Puddle, pothole, portal at Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY

Art, Museum

Puddle, pothole, portal at Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY

Sculpture Center was celebrating their newly expanded facility and opening of Puddle, pothole, portal.

There were a lot of people. It was a fun Opening Reception and Community Day. Children enjoyed art works as well as adult visitors. The size of the show was just right. It was neither unsatisfied nor overwhelmed.

I love their building, – a former trolley repair shop built in 1907 according to their home page. Specially their basement floor! Narrow tunnel like space is good for site specific piece. I felt as if I was in ghost house. The works they showed basement floor were matched in their space.