Philippine Butterfly

Posts Tagged ‘Florida’

No matter what city I find myself in, I try to check out the local museums, whether it’s Kansas City, Missouri or Miami, Florida, I’m drawn to museums as an expression of that city’s culture and heritage, of what people there think of as art and how that affects their lives.  It’s true that some people never make it inside a museum, just as some people never go to the theater, but it’s a life experience that they’re denying themselves which has the capacity to enrich them in ways they would never think possible.  After all, art is communication with others — sometimes living, sometimes dead — but always communicating an emotion, an experience, an attitude, even ideas, whether they’re political or not.  There’s always something in the work itself that’s of interest.  Let’s use the Miami Art Museum (MAM) as an example.
 
Imagine yourself traveling to Miami, staying the night in its fine hotels, and, next day,  investigating the MAM.  Currently, until February 28th, you’ll find a Portuguese artist’s first solo exhibit, Carlos Bunga: Metamorphosis.  The exhibit contains two large structures, made from material that will perish, like packing tape and cardboard.  The idea here is to emphasize the idea of impermanence, of crisis and decay.  In part, they resemble street shelters and, placed in specific sites, create a discussion with its surroundings.  How do we get the idea of crisis and decay from structures of cardboard?  This is not just an exhibit to be watched, like a painting, but to be witnessed, like a performance, with the artist himself, one evening, cutting and tearing open the cardboard structures, exposing inner layers and meaning as he does.  For me, it’s sometimes difficult to find meaning in these works without program notes, but I always feel like I’m gaining something, exposed to the ideas of others, especially those outside my frame of cultural reference.
 
In this case, Carlos Bunga’s work seems to be a part of a larger whole.  The museum is also exhibiting as a group, Space as Medium, which explores the idea of the artist working directly with the physical spaces in which the exhibit is installed — reacting to the floors, ceilings, and walls.  These works are by artists William Anastasi, Rachel Whiteread, Lynda Benglis, Nicolas Lobo, Tom Burr, Ryan Gander, and Katharina Groose, as well as Wade Guyton, and meant to be, like most art, a conversation between the artists of the 1960s and the younger artists for whom the older artists were an influence.  I may not always understand what I’m seeing, but if I take away an idea, no matter how small or large, I’m satisfied.