Inspiration, Creativity and Art at the New ICA
February 2, 2007
What’s fun, fresh and free on Thursday nights? (No, TV fans, I am not talking about The Office or Grey’s Anatomy.) Here’s a hint: it is white, cube-like, and sits on the Boston Harbor. Why yes, it is Boston’s new Institute of Contemporary Art! Opened to the public since December 10 of 2006, this 65,000 square foot space designed by the New York-based architect firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is making a splash on the waterfront with its exciting array of art exhibits.
The ICA’s inaugural exhibit, Super Vision, is both aesthetically and intellectually stimulating, bringing together the works of 27 international artists whose work tackles the implications of newly evolving technologies on our idea of vision. Through a combination of photography, sculpture, painting and video installations ranging from the 1960s to 2006, this exhibit confronts us with the idea of how we see the world and, conversely, how the world sees us. The works displayed use new technology such as satellite imaging, surveillance tools, digital photography, and even medical apparatus to bring to light—and to make us question—the different ways in which we perceive the world every day.
Immediately upon entering the space, the exhibit’s first room plays with the visitors’ eyes and minds. A lustrous and graceful display of glass called Czech Modernism Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely, is Boston native Josiah McElheny’s trick on our vision. Here, the artist’s cleverly conceived optical effects make the viewer believe that he or she is looking at an infinite number of glass vases, perfume bottles, and cylinders, when in fact the illusion of the ever-repeating glass objects is created through the artist’s use of mirrors. Another work, James Turell’s installation titled New Light, offers an interactive and even tactile experience. In this piece, which confuses the eyes into seeing a three dimensional space as a flat surface, we enter a small, dark room and do not fully realize what we are actually looking at until forced to commit the ultimate museum visit faux pas: trying to touch the source of the mysterious glowing orange light, which is in this case allowed and even encouraged.
Lebanese-born artist Mona Hatoum, gets personal in her expression of Super Vision through her video installation titled Corps étranger (Foreign Body). In this short film, which is projected on the floor of a narrow cylindrical space, visitors have a chance to literally look inside themselves as they watch a movie showing the footage recorded by an endoscope passing through the artist’s body. A few steps away another video installation explores a more haunting side of vision. In this exhibit, Paris-based filmmaker Chantal Akerman builds a room filled with over a dozen television sets, each of which projects a different segment of the artist’s documentary From the Other Side, a film about Mexican immigrants attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico border. The film is created through footage from helicopter surveillance cameras as well as various interviews of Americans and Mexicans, but rather than watching the whole production in sequence, we walk through a maze of video clips and scenes.
These are just a few works from this thought-provoking display, which addresses many contemporary ideas such as identity, commercialism and iconic images in society. The show runs through April 19, 2007 and is definitely worth a look (as well as quite a few double takes).
Another intriguing show is the 2006 James and Audrey Foster Prize exhibit. On display through March 11, this show presents the creations of four Boston-based artists in an effort to showcase Boston’s artistic talent.
One of the finalists, Rachel Perry Welty, uses art to highlight the humor in daily life. In her piece titled Wall, the artist gives new life to discarded objects by making a wall display of countless twist ties laboriously twisted together by the artist’s family and several volunteers she found on Craigslist. In another work, Karaoke Wrong Number, Ms. Welty appears in a videotape showing her lip-synching to several phone messages left by accident on her answering machine.
A second finalist, Kelly Sherman, whose charts and collections inspire thought about peoples’ personalities and relationships, offers a series of seating charts for various wedding receptions. She stirs up interesting questions by showing, for example, a layout that juxtaposes different seating blueprints for the bride, the groom and both sets of parents in weddings.
Ms. Sherman’s portfolio also includes a pinup of over three dozen wish lists she found on the internet in which various people ask for items ranging from a sweater, to a kitchen, to 111 necklaces and 1,111 bracelets. This February, one of these four artists will be awarded a prize of $25,000.
The ICA’s new and developing permanent collection is also worth a glance. Begun in 2000, as a way to capture some of the art shown at the ICA, the collection now contains works of about 16 artists, each of whom has been on display at the ICA (and many of whom the ICA introduced to the Boston art scene). The collection consists of not only flat works, but also videos and 3-D installations. The ultimate goal of the ICA’s collection is to gradually build an autobiography of the museum’s artists and exhibitions.
The new ICA seems to have taken all the right steps to becoming a successful center for the sharing and display of contemporary art. Its beautiful glassy building creates a fluid dialogue between the art within and the world outside. And, like many of the best things in life, it’s free. Well, at least on Thursdays from 5 - 9p.m.
For more information, visit www.icaboston.org.
