jacque liu

anne fracassa

miroslav cukovik

marilyn zimmerwoman

jack johnson

lowell boileau

gary schwartz (video above/sculpture and installation below)

sara blakeman

davin brainard

mike connelly

john olson

jef bourgeau

taormina brothers (above/below)

ronald cornelissen

jamie easter

jeremy deller
Folk Song

siobhan liddell
WEAKNESS AS STRENGTH

lisa anne auerbach
Everything I Touch Turns To $old

carl pope
The Bad Air Smelled of Roses

kay rosen
Blurred

tauba auerbach
Telephone

jennifer west
Whatever Film and Yeah Film

ron terada
Stay away from lonely places

martin creed
Work No. 336

sam durant
Let’s judge ourselves as people

jonathan monk
Nostalgic for the Future

philippe parreno and rirkrit tiravanija
Stories are Propaganda

ryan gander
Encrypt Encrypt Encrypt

I was surprised to hear from everyone mixed reviews about this show. mocad, being a new museum always sparks heated debate when it comes to shows but I noticed a bit of indifference (or comments under this post). I, being a text art junky, enjoyed seeing the show and felt that the works flowed nicely and unlike other mocad shows, it was a better number of works compared to other overcrowded or sparse shows of works. I shouldn’t be that surprised though, because text art isn’t for everyone. Some people love text and associating meaning with single words or repeated phrases while others need tactile surfaces and picture planes to get off on. Text art is a tricky thing because while some might say, “oh, it’s so easy to put a word up on the wall and have it mean something grand,” frankly, more thought goes into it than you think. Some text art falls flat and doesn’t give enough info while others give too much diary-like meaning. A standout text artist, martin creed, graced the show with “feelings”, a perfect example of a dialog piece that is so simplistic yet says a billion different things! I end up remembering the works like creed and also rosen, terada and monk while passing on pope and a couple others. Ultimately, this is what a contemporary museum should be showing to the community: well curated shows with an international mix of emerging and contemporary artists and hey…maybe one of these days they will have curators that will actually visit many of the great detroit artists’ studios here and not just the few artists affiliated with mocad. Oh, a girl can dream