Swung past the Musee d'art contemporain last night on my way home, completely unaware I was showing up on free night. When I arrived, the lady at the counter told me I had to wait around for five more minutes before going in, because after 5 p.m. there was no charge to enter.
So I went downstairs to the bookstore and leafed through a bunch of different publications. One caught my eye and I spent probably ten to fifteen minutes reading it, and even after leaving the museum -- after viewing enough stupefying 'works of art' that made me feel stupid -- I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd seen in that book. It provoked more thought than anything I'd viewed during my hour-or-so at the museum.
The work of Vancouver artist Brian Jungen was showcased in that book, and I was blown away by the chapter Prototypes on New Understanding, which detailed his recreation of First Nations' masks, using Air Jordans.
Now this may be old news to some of you, but this was the first time I'd come across it and I got such a kick out of how the artist took these powerful symbols of our consumer culture (let's not kid ourselves, the Nike Air Jordan is the most popular and over-priced piece of sports wear around) and deconstructed them, reshaping them into masks we'd normally see on totem poles. I felt like I could look at the masks all day. And although the meaning of what Jurgen was trying to get at was not lost on me -- I don't think -- I felt like the masks were so fun to look at: they were so well done and it's such a mind-fuck to think about how he's created them.
1 comment:
Oh I love Brian Jungen! He had an exhibit at the VAG a couple years ago, and the coolest part was this anatomically correct bow whale skeleton made entirely out of plastic lawn chairs. It was amazing. And yea, the masks are really neat, quite famous. And so much symbolism which makes them so fun to figure out.
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