Nov. 16th - Mass Moca + a HUGE post.

   

Yesterday we were able to spend our entire afternoon in Mass MOCA, the Massacusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, thanks to our friend Rachel which was fantastic. The museum was opened in 1999 in a huge old factory building and as of right now they have installation shows by Katharina Grosse, Nari Ward, Federico Diaz, Jorg Immendorff, and Sol LeWitt.

I'll get to the shows soon enough, but I think it will work better like this. When we arrived at the Museum we entered through an old wrought-iron gate made at the turn of the century, the other century, before parking in an enormous courtyard flanked by old factory buildings. As we began our walk towards the entrance we were overlooked by an amazing piece by Natalie Jeremijenko. I say overlooked because her piece is five trees, planted upside down and hanging from suspended planters. Even with their leaves shed for the season the piece is still strong. As we walked past the Jeremijenko we were greeted by yet another stunning piece this one by Federico Diaz titled, "Geometric Death Frequency-141," which was 420,000 black spheres made and assembled by robots. Both these installations were a fun introduction to what awaited us inside. The entrance seemed small compared to the buildings and installations which surrounded it but it held its ground with a large, painted, traffic yellow sign.

Once in we found Rachel she led us to Lickety Split, a small cafe in the lobby owned by one of her friends families. Normally lobby cafeteria's conjure up images of lukewarm coffee and plastic wrapped deli-sandwiches but not Lickety Split. The wonderfully expansive yet simple breakfast/lunch menu was adorned with handmade sandwiches, soups, salads, ice cream, wraps, and much more. Jena ended up getting a Turkey-Avocado-Brie half-sam with their Ginger-Butternut Squash soup and I ordered an amazing salad and a bowl of the mentioned soup. The food was delicious, the cafe was beautiful, and everyone was so friendly.

 After food, We went and saw a hallway lined with Wilco posters some of which were for a music festival at MOCA which Wilco organizes every year. Then Rachel took us on a tour of where she interned this summer, the Kidspace. I mainly wanted to see this place because they had awesome Shark Sculptures made out of recycled materials and a ton of handmade cardboard fish painted with vibrant colors. We ended up talking to a woman (I think Susan, or Sharon, or it started with an S, I'm so bad with names) who was in charge of all the kids demonstrations and such for the Kidspace before touring the installations which were all quite nicely, and brightly done.

 Once we had our fill of sharks we headed into the Workers exhibit. The Workers is a multi-faceted, multi-medium exhibition which showcases how labor is seen today and how some workers see themselves in today's society. The show brought artists from all over the world to create these different pieces which are really powerful, especially in these Occupy times.

 

After the Workers we headed up to Nari Ward's show which was enormous and included a full fishing boat, a 60 foot wood sculpture, 7? large foam/capacitor snowman-esque sculptures, and a wooden stall installation piece. The size of the sculptures and the fact that he found almost all of the materials in Mass MOCA's factory outbuildings made it all the more substantial.

 From there we ventured into Katharina Grosse's football stadium sized installation of painted soil and shaped Styrofoam. This piece was so large and impressive it was hard to quite grasp the whole piece and/or explain it via text. Just take a look for yourself.

 

 After Grosse, we went and saw 105 Sol Lewitt pieces in his Wall-Drawing Retrospective. Yep, they have 105 LeWitt pieces split into periods of his life via floors; 1st floor was his early works, 2nd mid-career, and 3rd was the newest, with one piece he never saw completed before his death. It was amazing to be able to see so many of these incredible pieces in front of me. Not only was I intimidated by the size of most of the pieces, but the line work and the colors (especially in his later works) are so intense and vivid you become engulfed by the pieces.

 We finished our tour with a quick run through of an exhibit called Memery, which was commenting on today's internet trends and society before they kicked us out for the day. All in all the museum is incredible, so intimidating and yet so open that you don't feel cramped even with the size of the exhibitions. We had a fantastic time and are a bit jealous that Rachel gets to spend her time here everyday. We ended the night with pasta, salad, garlic bread, PBR, cider, and some wild BananaGrams. Thanks again for everything, Rachel!

 To read more about the galleries, go here - http://www.massmoca.org/search_results.php?st=2&search=11