Direct Message Exhibit -- Harry Kowalczyk


At the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Direct Message exhibit, there were a lot of interesting pieces. The piece that intrigued me the most was a piece by Sarah Charlesworth that was made up of 36 front pages of the Herald Tribune from the Gulf War. The work has all the words, other than the Newspaper’s name, removed, just leaving the photographs on the pages. I found it interesting that most of the pages had two photos, one from the battlefield, showing soldiers, bombs, airplanes, and so on, and a second picture showing politicians. These pictures show both the operations and bureaucratic sides of fighting a war. With the text present, I feel like this would be lost on the reader.

Charlesworth, S. (1991). "Herald Tribune, January 18 - February 28, 1991" [Prints].


Another work I found interesting was a three-sided collage by Ralph Arnold. The collage focuses on three important political figures from the 1960s, all of whom were assassinated, President JFK, his brother, RFK, and Martin  Luther King, Jr. The collage is unfinished, and makes me wonder if the artist stopped working on the collage after RFK and MLK were killed, to mirror the fact that these important figures could no longer continue their work.


                        Arnold, R. (1968). "Unfinished Collage" [Collage].

The third piece that really caught my attention was a wallpaper designed by Jason Salavon. The wallpaper is basically a collage of many different webpages arranged so that the edges are dark, and the images get brighter as they near the center. This piece intrigued me because it exemplifies just how important and influential the internet is in the modern world.


Salavon, J. (2019). "Narrative Walk (Website)" [Wallpaper].


Comments

  1. Dolores WilberJanuary 25, 2020 at 8:57 PM

    Great selections! Next time, take a long/medium shot (like you have) and a closeup! Also check-out more information about:
    Jason Salavon
    https://creative-capital.org/projects/a-thousand:
    Sarah Charlesworth
    butterflies/http://www.sarahcharlesworth.net/series-item.php?
    R. Arnold
    https://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2018/10/the-many-hats-of-ralph-arnold-art,-identity-and-politics.php

    ReplyDelete

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