Guggenheim Museum_ "Haunted" Exhibition

Yes. Summer is almost over believe it or not.

From roommate assignment to textbook ordering, I already feel like there is no time for playing or 12-hour sleep everyday. But the truth is, there is still time to have fun. I am going to be taking a foundry class (an introductory level class) from August 9th to 13th every day from 10am to 4pm at a place called the Crucible at Oakland. And I expect it to be very rewarding. So we will see.

Back to the main topic of this journal, I visited Guggenheim Museum (the one in New York) in June this summer when I was traveling with my brother, looking at different colleges. There are, in fact, more than one Guggenheim Museums around the globe (there are a bunch actually). The one in New York is designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is well-known for its mass collections of impressionist, early modern and contemporary art, etc. When I was there, the museum was holding an exhibition named "Haunted". However, there were also other permanent collections such as those of Pablo Picasso.

So Haunted mainly consists of modern photography, painting, films and sculptures, with which the artists(mostly young) comment on the mass, accessible media in contemporary society. Through their work, the artists analyze human's deepest fear and show a ghostly compassion/passion toward their past. At the film section, the artists use repetition and rhythm to showcase the recurring yet alluring aspect of life. Among many films exhibited, one of my most favorite was Anthony Goicolea's "Nail Biter". Nail Biter was a approximately 4 minute-long film recorded under night-vision mode. The film starts with a dark room with an obnoxious-looking boy sitting on a bed, biting his finger nails and letting them drop all over the bed sheet. The camera then focuses on the facial expression of the boy; it is completely distorted and very easily for the audience to taste the fear within his mind. Not knowing what is the cause of the boy's fear, the flashing black shadow that appears on the screen once in a while becomes the only possible reason. Similar to the Nail Biter, many other film possess a ambiguous fear and anxiety that the audience can easily perceive. The films at the exhibition are all replayed for many, many times; some of them are a lot longer than the Nail Biter. Yet they all seem to telling audience to perceive an emotion while looking at their works.

Haunted also has plenty collections of, as I mentioned, photography, sculpture, and painting, nonetheless film seems to be most captivating for me. I have always appreciated the transformation of art into motions that can like wise convey a central/ general idea created by the artists.

Therefore, as I walked through the exhibition, I really focused more on the "moving" parts rather than the still ones. There are also other cool installation art at Haunted. One of them is made out of a collection of the artist's (I can't recall the name..) senior pictures and head lamps. The artist blurs the pictures to the extent that their faces are nearly unrecognizable, and above each face is a head lamp that emphasizes the facial features(while blurry) of each face. It is created to convey the idea that pictures are ultimately images that cannot preserve the past. They only serve as memory because, as a matter of fact, some of the faces in the pictures are already deceased at their young ages. So really, I was amazed by the ability of these artists who really put their thoughts and emotion into their art work and meanwhile, very successfully communicate with the audience and let them be part of their emotional experiences.

Sadly, I wasn't able to take pictures during the exhibition because it is photography-prohibited.

link to the show: CLICK HERE