The El screeched to a stop, the iPod clicked off and the cellphone switched to silent. The doors opened and Minimalism passed over.
Simplistic new forms take shape with the old in “The Language of Less (Then and Now),” the new exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary Art.
The MCA translates minimalism from the old and new by dividing the exhibit into two parts, one devoted to classic Minimalist art from the 1960s and 1970s and the other featuring five contemporary artists working in the style of their forebears and in the mind of modern times.
Juxtaposed together, the exhibit’s two distinct parts suggests a nostalgia and struggle for simplicity in a world of digitized chaos.
“Then,” the exhibit’s first part, Minimalist art from artists such as Jo Baer, Robert Smithson, Robert Morris. shows a moment in time when simplicity was lucid. A film that lasts a lifetime is reflected in Tony Conrad’s “Yellow Movie 2/28/73” (1973), which blankets the wall with a black rectangle centered on a buttery white sheet.
Gordon Matta-Clarks’s “Untitled” (1974) beautifully captures minimalistic eloquence in one of his “cut drawings,” a series Matta-Clark developed by cutting geometric shapes into boards, reminiscent of Constructivism.
Clarity only echoes from the first part of the exhibit when moving to “Now.” Objects and disorder transfix the artwork and the only minimal portion of the art its conceptual development. Jason Dodge’s “Sleeping in the order of the slowing of time” showcases a pillow only slept on by Botanist Dorit Vath.
“Now” is smudged with objects and unsubtle in their shape and form. Many glimpse at the minimalistic concepts of the forbearing Minimalism art, but seem too transfixed with chaos for physical clarity and feature or physical and electronic objects. Gravity is sought to be reminded of by Dodge with a tipped-over bathroom scale.
“Now” looses the simple beauty framed inside Fred Sandback’s 1974 “Helium,” a “Then” artwork with the words: “There exists a sculpture consisting of all infrared radiation present in my studio on 11th street in Brooklyn” typed in small grey letters on a sheet of paper.
Minimalistic design strikes the hardest, a concept that pushed the iPod’s success. Carefully-crafted complexity—the device’ programming—is packaged in a sleek design making it beautiful to the user. Only first exhibit captures this iPod trait and “Now” is bogged down by minds shaped by today’s digitized chaos, a less than minimal irony.
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