Creative Destruction at MoMA

Paper: Pressed, Stained, Slashed, Folded is up at MoMA on the 2nd floor. It's a wonderful exhibit that feeds right into my enjoyment of artists who push their materials past the breaking point. As a matter of fact, it looked like a works-on-paper manifestation of my photographic Creative Destruction idea that I've been fooling around with here on Fugitive Vision. (I am in no way suggesting that MoMA curators got their idea from me!) There's a link to the MoMA website page for the exhibit here, but you'll have to go see the show because there's only one image from the show online and no exhibition catalog.

Just as the photographers I've been discussing have folded, cut, and stained their images, the artists in this show similarly "destroy" their materials in search of meaning and form. I thought that Dorothea Rockburne's folded aquatint series particularly presages photographic work of Wolfgang Tillman and Walead Beshty. Her website with some images of similar work here. Click here to see the actual works in the show. Click on the next button to see all 6 in the series.

There is work by familiar artists like Ruscha and Rauschenberg, but also a fine collection of lesser known Brazilian and South American artists. Check it out. Up until June 22nd.