Do You Have An Opener?

When you find the time to walk into SFMOMA this month stop and go no further than the fan flying around the main entry powered by a carabiner suspended wire.  That's not actually what you should do but it was what I was thinking as I was walked around Olafur Eliasson's little funhouse on the 5th floor. 

Say it anyway you want but this show is as much a waste of time as a whorehouse is a waste of money.  Depending on your perspective and most of the smiles from the people coming off the elevator bathed in yellow light that might be okay.  The artist is quoted from the materials to say that what you are seeing are "devices for the experience of reality"...  Hmmm maybe in Icelandic this means something more than the load of bullshit it communicates in English.  I don't know...anyway let's proceed.

This show takes basic visual phenomena and parlays it into entertainment.  Art maybe? but mostly entertainment.  Apparently like a church gospel you're suppossed to take what you take in here into the outside world and make it better.  When I did go to church I believe the sermon was to let people get out of the parking lot without cutting them off or something to that effect.  The last thing I would like to see is anyone driving in San Francisco begin to bring the work of Olafur Eliasson into traffic.  Enough of the Bay Area does already if you watch the evening news.

Like I said when you get off the elevator you are bathed in what is yellow light.  Human eyes have evolved a peak sensitivity in the yellow end of the visual spectrum since that is also the color of our Sun.  As you "EXPERIENCE" the reality of this room your rods and cones seem to freak out a little and you sort of register black and white.  At the preview Wednesday alot of the old-foggies looked very smart in the suits and dresses bathed in luminescence and similar to black lights in a nightclub freckles on girls looked even sexier. 

Onto the next room you walk into what looks like a sculptors studio in 1970's Manhattan.  That's at least what it looked like to me.  It's a bunch of shelves with a bunch of nasty spherical wireframe maquettes that fall light years short of anything Ruth Asawa has done.  For a minimalist context this show gives new meaning to the word "busy" and ejects you into another mess as fast as you walk in.

The funhouse layout continues across the 5th floor bridge through a tunnel defined by a diamond lattice that is arranged so you are surrounded by dark colors as you walk out to a little portal with yellow circles.  On your way back towards the maquette nightmare studio and Berlin Sphere the diamonds become purple rainbow colored.  It is enough to divert your attention from the vertigo experience you already get when you cross the bridge anyday of the week when you look down to the first floor through the grating.

Heading through to the back there are these portals in the wall: One dark and mysterious with mirrors inside that go to infinity in all directions and another which invites you to step up and look down out of the building.  How goddamned whimsical! 

Elsewhere and towards the back there is a rubber lined pond of water with projected ripples on a perpendicular scrim.  The other side of the scrim shows the projected waves sans the puddle in the other room with two floor boards warping up from the floor instead. 

This whole show exemplifies how someone can really do a whole lot of nothing armed with the ideas of Robert Irwin, the minimalists and installation.  The dampness of gimick impedes reflection and the "self-awareness of seeing" because the content is so dispersed and vacant.  It's like a pretty girl: you either look at her, fuck her or buy her crap.  Chances are she doesn't exercise her brain much so no sense in seeing what she has to say...  Ok I'm done ranting.

Ohh, before you leave the show check out the frozen car in ice, moss wall.  Personally I couldn't bother and chose to regroup in Felix Schram's installations on the fourth floor - the true winner here.  I especially like the offset record piece since that was an installation I did in art school years ago - good times.  After that I contentedly grabbed another beer downstairs. 

No opener required...