The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
(the b-sideThursday, November 2, 2006 56
Detroit's newest addition makes its mark
MOCAD
From page 1B
dialogue aboutccontemporary arts."
The last line challenges the reader
with the question "Where does art
begin?" The answer begins with
the collage's brilliant kicker. It's
concealed by a glass pane and the
material found on scratch-off lot-
tery tickets. Viewers are instructed
to take a coin and uncover the art,
thus staying perfectly inline with
the notion of viewer collaboration:
Artbegins with you.
In an interview for "Detroit, i.e.
Infrastructure," a collaboration
of writings from Detroit-based
artists, architects and designers,
MOCAD curator Klaus Kertess
explained rather bluntly that "the
sprawling low-rise building was
chosen because its abandoned con-
dition obviously reflects the physi-
cal distresses so visible throughout
Detroit." The displayed works,
while not always in direct dialogue
with Detroit, resonate more sound-
ly within the context of the city and
its newborn museum.
Mark Bradford's mixed-media
collage "Untitled (a.k.a. Gwen)"
is a hectic grid made up of scraps
of flyers and litter - a chaotic
cityscape. Underneath float quasi-
recognizable images (it takes sev-
eral minutes to realize they are
mostly shoes) underlining the
notion of cities becoming unrecog-
nizable, ambiguous blurs. It could
represent Detroit, New York, Los
Angeles - modern cities are either
symbols of modernity and progress
or testaments to regression and
false hope.
Jonathan Pylypchuk's instal-
lation "Press a weight through
life and I will watch this crush
you" ups the stakes Bradford sets.
Half of a large room is filled with
ramshackle, slum-like houses,
their inhabitants stuffed ani-
mals made from socks, ping-pong
balls -whatever Pylypchuk could
scavenge in Detroit. The result is
unsettling: Using the vocabulary
of children (dolls, fantasy and
make-believe), Pylypchuk effort-
lessly creates a tension between
the hope of youth and the real-
ity of experience. Children born
into deep poverty can only make
do with what is presented them:
the leftovers from society. By
using found material from the city
around him, Pylypchuk directly
invokes the city itself - and its
dire economic situation. The city's
recent public-school disaster fur-
ther accentuates this point.
Perhaps the exhibit's "star" on
display is Kara Walker, who, aside
from being exhibited at New York's
Museum of Modern Art and Whit-
ney Museum, was the recipient of the
illustrious John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation Achievement
Award in 1997.
Her video installation, "8 Possi-
ble Beginnings or: The Creation of
Africa-America, Parts 1-8, A Mov-
ing Picture," is easily the exhibit's
most arresting piece. She employs
silhouetted puppets as her char-
acters, with text interjected in the
style of silent movies. She critically
examines the origins, discrepan-
cies and blank spots of African
American culture with conceptual
narrative: a black slave engages in
intercourse and is impregnated by
her white, male master; a white
child tells an old black man that
he'll havehimwhipped if he doesn't
tell him a story; slaves crossing the
Atlantic are thrown overboard,
eventually floating into and digest-
ed by the "promised land," Ameri-
ca. Walker offers no answers, only
questions.
More than holding their own in
the same room are Nari Ward's two
installations, "White Flight Tea
Bar" and "Airplane Tears."
The first is an abstracted foun-
tain made up partly of pieces from
the museum's original ceiling
which dominates the room. Stark
white tables set for tea stay at the
perimeter of the exploding foun-
tain, at once plainly referencing
its title and the economic connota-
tions thereof.
"Airplane Tears" is monumental
in its appearance and effect. Doz-
ens of television backs are set up
in a perfect grid, inverting the con-
ventional image of a wall of televi-
sion screens. With a single tissue
hanging from each set, Ward deftly
addresses the notion that television
(reality shows come to mind) mis-
construes both the facts and our
emotions. With the feeling that the
televisions have turned their backs
to us, what's left is the disconcert-
ing feeling of being cut off from the
rest of the world.
The exhibit is so successful
because it creates a significant dia-
logue with just a handful of works.
From conceptualism and postmod-
ernismtosocio-economicandracial
issues, Kertess's tactful selections
stand as independent statements
as well as an interconnected group.
The viewer is given a wide array of
angles and lenses through which
he can better understand the city,
art or both.
The exhibits' enduring charm is
grounded in its grassroots begin-
nings.
Administrator Jeseca Dawson
described the uplifting effect of
"all these people coming out of
the woodwork wanting to help."
Detroit is obviously supportive of
its newestgem, and the efforts of its
creators and volunteers more than
pay off in what is and will continue
to be an integral part of Detroit and
the art world.
OHRI/
Installation art at MOCAD: The exhibit on the exterior of the museum's building featuring a mechanized painter.
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