New York's MoMA is an overwhelming experience, especially on a Saturday morning when, it seems, everyone in Manhattan goes out to get a little culture. My preference is to see a limited number of exhibits but to experience them deeply, so my mother and I concentrated on the Book/Shelf exhibit and an extraordinary passage of discovery that is Olafur Eliasson's Take Your Time.
Eliasson has described the viewer's experience of his artwork as "seeing yourself seeing." This statement captures my own impression perfectly; I did not look at the exhibit as much as I inhabited it. For example, in the work entitled I only see things when they move, an elaborate light-refracting mechanism occupied the center of a room, casting prismatic panes of light around the room, against which the silhouettes of museum spectators were cast in sharp outline. For example, here are my mother and myself:
Outside on the third-floor landing, another work entitled Room for One Colour involved the installation of a huge number of monochromatic yellow lights, which created a sharply-defined visual field reminiscent of sepia photographs. In fact, the light was perfect for taking photos, so I shot one of my mom:
Occupying Eliasson's works compelled me to take photographs, and this is what makes his "seeing yourself seeing" characterization so apt; his work requires you to participate, not merely to stand and view. A truly remarkable experience, if you get to be in New York while Take Your Time is on exhibit, go and put yourself in the picture, too.
Other resources:
A video overview:
