tagged: AGO, art, color, compass in hand, glamour, heroin, jack pierson, kelley walker, lifestyle, lucas samara, modern design, MOMA, new york, photography, trends

the MOMA gets creative

Posted by Shayda in propaganda

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is currently exhibiting Compass In Hand, which is a collection of extremely expressive illustrations done in a multitude of mediums. Among the Bauhaus, Modern Design and Photography exhibit this one was definitely the most creative as well as expressive and I think that’s really important at this time because it reflects certain styles and trends that are going on today. A lot of today’s trends involve bold colors, powerful lines and type, which were reoccurring in the exhibit.

In particular there was an entire wall dedicated to Kelley Walker’s Nine Disasters, which was so overwhelming and almost hurt your eyes a bit because it was so graphic and involved so many different colors. Once I looked at the different layers in the image I realized that there was a grid of nine images of natural disasters underneath the constellations of multicolored circles. Another artist that uses bold colors expressively was Lucas Samara, however, his images were a less graphic and had softer lines. His work is for sure something that I would put in my house on my main wall; I could stare at his work every day and still find something new about it.

Compass In Hand contained a lot of images that also involved typography in a manner that expressed emotions and feelings through the use of typeface, colors and its composition. Jack Pierson cut the word ‘heroin’ out of floral print paper which at first puzzled me because I didn’t really notice the word or its meaning at first; I was more focused on the print of the paper. But I guess what Pierson is trying to get at is how the media’s coverage of coked-out celebrities has added glamour to the drug addicts’ lifestyle.

This obviously isn’t the case but much like how you don’t immediately recognize what Pierson has typed, we don’t immediately recognize what the media is doing. Every time I go to the MOMA I leave so inspired and just feel like buying a bucket of paint and pouring it on a car or something; I know we’ve got the AGO here in Toronto but I’d still travel to New York anytime to see art like that.

(ps if you can’t make it out all the way to new york check out the online checklist on the MOMA website…. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/311)