Finally we’ve bought the flag with our visas on it so that should be here in the next week or so. We want to submit it for this project Temporary Alliance, which is held at the knockdown centre, and involves a 40ft flagpole that artists are invited to fly their own flags on. Home Depot was a place we found ourselves today, to purchase the final parts we need to make the wrapped up piece. We’re still sorting out what the invoice/delivery note would say; whether to have a section for putting in where the work has been sent from/delivered too, to have a name on it, or just a description.
We visited the Met for the first time since coming to New York. We saw the Sol LeWitt drawing which is installed there at the moment. ‘Wall Drawing #370: Ten Geometric Figures (including right triangle, cross, X, diamond) with three-inch parallel bands of lines in two directions.’ Something about these drawings that we’ve always enjoyed is that he celebrated the fact that they’re instructional meaning anyone can do them. He spoke of himself being similar to a composer, he creates a score that can be played by generations to come and while the concept remains constant, every time it’s realised it’s slightly different. There was also a Richard Tuttle exhibition on the lower levels. He uses these ‘humble’ materials, which are supposed to reflect the fragility of the world. He is very poetic in the way he talks about his works so we’re almost let down by how they materialise. What is apparent is the investigation of line, volume, colour, texture, shape, and form. But when you read into it he’s investigating language and the viewer’s spatial relationship to the aesthetic experience he’s creating. Some of our favourite works him were the wire drawings, which included in his show at the Whitechapel in 2012. They’re the sum of pencil lines drawn directly on the wall, combined with tethered wires and the shadows cast by them from the heavy spots. This low-fi choreography of 3 forms of line ignites a flash point between the conceptual and the material. They feel like the epitome of what he wants to portray; delicate arrangements that are mirroring the multifaceted nature of language.
There was also a photography exhibition there too which was about photography being used for criminal investigation and evidence gathering, to record crime scenes, to identify suspects and abet their capture, and to report events to the public. There is a particular thread running through the show that might have provided more substance and a sharper focus: that is the use of photography for identifying lawbreakers, which began soon after the invention of photography. This makes us think about ’Minority Report’, the story by Philip K. Dick and the movie based on the novel, where beings called precogs can foresee people committing murders, enabling police to arrest killers before they kill. As far as we know, such a system doesn’t yet exist, but computerised biometric identification technologies like facial and gait recognition software have significantly advanced the Bertillon approach (the duodecimal system for criminals; mug shots and finger prints). This is an exhibition tracking the uses of technical images by crime stoppers from the early days of photography to now and into imaginary futures could be eminently illuminating. The cherry on the cake of this day was going to the opening of the Cornelia Parker’s ‘Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)’. ‘California Gothic’ was supposedly how Alfred Hitchcock described the haunted house in ‘Psycho’. A late Victorian building with a mansard roof, only ever seen from below, looms on a hill. A replica of the house is what is displayed on the fifth floor garden rooftop of the Met. What appears to be a house on first view is revealed, when you walk around it, to be a propped-up facade, created in equal measure from reclaimed wood, memory, and imagination. Whether it’s a giant dollhouse or madhouse became secondary when we managed to pluck up the courage to approach her say how much we enjoyed the piece and her work in general.
We think our final few weeks will be spent soaking up as much art as possible - W A T C H T H I S S P A C E