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September 10, 2006
noguchi museum
Some fragments:
Our ride out to the noguchi sets up the kind of oppositions that the day will be full of:
As a group we’ve been moving through phases of unfinished/rough and polished/worked. Stepping into the museum is like cracking a geode, as the neighborhood’s grit opens into quiet glow inside.
We wander the first floor, and at first it’s as if the works are inconsequential on their own, just marking out the geography of the space. Cumulative presence. Over in the corner a triangular break in the roof frames a slice of sky, impossibly white birch stretch upward into the blue. It’s as good or better than anything labeled “do not touch.”
And out in the garden is “the well.” I remembered this piece from a visit a few years ago, and was looking forward to seeing it again. I love the thought of it quietly bubbling away all these years, marking time with it’s slow current. The weight of the piece. The depth of that bowl-like pool. The way that the tiny imperfections (is imperfection always negative?) of the lip give way to the patterns of wet/dry and the design they map along the sides of the piece. And yesterday, the surprise of reflected sunlight bouncing off the bonsaied waterfall of the thing, and illuminating the first fallen yellow leaves of autumn. One of us (you know who you are!) plunges her hand in the pool. I want to do the same but can’t. Am I too reverential? The wet/dry patterns change.
So much of the stuff speaks to the “what looks easy is hard” thing. Invisible process butts up against a thousand visible drill holes. The compact form of a small girl drawing in the corner becomes another point on the map, stretching the space toward herself.
We move among each other, like so many new works, then disperse back out into the city.
Posted by Daniel Liss at September 10, 2006 10:18 AM