"The World as a Stage" at the ICA, Boston
The World as a Stage
ICA Boston
Feb. 1 - April 27, 2008
We were up in Boston this past week and stopped in to see the ICA and its snazzy new building. Barely a year old, this example of destination architecture is a dramatically cantilevered over Boston Bay in the city's gentrifying Seaport District. The building is designed by the New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the brains behind the ongoing redo of Lincoln Center and the High Line, and the subject of a rare architectural retrospective at the Whitney in 2003. Their designs are cerebral, but also playful. Case in point is their "Blur Building," a conceptual structure made of mist -- done for the Swiss Expo in 2002.
It's tempting to compare the ICA to that other recently opened contemporary art mecca -- the New Museum, which also happens to resemble a stack of boxes. But the differences are telling. The ICA's more than twice as old as the New Museum and has more than three times the gallery space. It's not difficult to presume that the ICA also has deeper pockets and a bigger permanent collection.
But at half the size of P.S. 1, the ICA's not huge either. It's possible to see everything in about two hours. Nearly all of the art's on the fourth floor, with the other levels housing a theater and multimedia studio, as well as the typical store and cafe.
Up now is "World as a Stage," a show organized by the Tate Modern with work by 16 artists dealing with performance, theater and other issues of the spectator and spectacle. A few highlights: "Self-portrait as a businessman" (2002-2004) by Pawel Althamer -- a pile of clothes, briefcase and cell phone that are the remains of a performance in which the artist lived as a businessman for several days before fully disrobing in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz; "Falha" (2003) by Brazilian artist Renata Lucas -- a series of hinged plywood sheets that the viewer can rearrange; and, best of all, "Little Frank and His Carp" (2001) by the awesome Andrea Fraser -- a video of the artist as she takes instructions from the pretentious and over-wrought audio guide in the Guggenheim Bilbao, culminating with her simulating sex with the "sensuous" curves of the Gehry architecture.
I enjoyed playfulness of this show, and found myself responding to a few humorous pieces in a second exhibit -- "Accumulations" (July 25, 2007 - July 6, 2008), a show highlighting some of the museum's recent acquisitions. The funny stuff included "Karaoke Wrong Number" by Rachael Perry Welty (2001-2004) -- a video of the artist lip-synching to answering machine messages of strangers; and two videos by German artist Christian Jankowski. In "The Hunt" (1992/1997), he shops for food in a supermarket with a bow and arrow. And in "Point of Sale," a three-screen video shows gallerist Michelle Maccarone and her retail neighbor, an electronics exporter named George Kunst, as they get small business advice from a consultant -- interesting material with the amusing twist that Kunst's lines are spoken by Maccarone and vice versa.
A smaller show of sculpture and prints by Louise Bourgeois -- "Bourgeois in Boston" (March 28, 2007 and March 2, 2008) -- was uninspired. Tellingly, the bulk of the art was on loan from one of the museum's trustees, also a major donor.
All together, I thought the ICA was refreshing and fun. I look forward to visiting again.
