The Water exhibition at the Zimmerli Museum was very fascinating. You walked down the stairs into the gallery space and your eyes were instantly greeted with a work of art by Ross Cisneros called Ice and Ark. It’s an installation piece with fishing net and 200 plastic water bottles called Berg. The water inside these bottles is from a melting glacier in the North Atlantic hence its name. This was a great piece to put in the front room of the exhibit because it really draws the exhibit goers in. There is also text on the wall telling you all about water and how it is displayed in this exhibit. The water was interpreted in many ways. Through nature and an element, landscapes, gender roles, videos of water, books and facts on water, even poetry, allegory and reflections. Each room was centered around one of these themes. I believe that the message this show is trying to send is all about how important water is and how present it is in our everyday lives. It affects us in every way possible. This message I feel is very greatly displayed throughout the exhibition. The pieces had enough space to accommodate all and were able to stand on their own or as a whole in the description of the room they were placed.
The rooms were designed to be visually inviting from both sides. For instance, the front room was drawing you into it with its installation. Then as you peer into the next room, you are greeted by an installation piece by Maya Lin on the floor called Dew Point 18. This really drew my attention into the next room which was water as nature and an element. There were 18 glass blown spheres on the floor that looked like dew drops and were very artistically placed. The curator placed them in the corner so no one would ruin them and arranged them sporadically. The artist herself gave directions and said to arrange them in a random order. This was a great choice for both the artist and the curator because dew drops in reality fall and form at random. There would be nothing I would change about the placement of this piece.
Also in this element room was another installation piece that caught your eye and was place perfectly that you could walk all the way around it and it did not take away from the other art in the room. The Condensation Cube by Hans Haacke is a sealed cube with a little water at the bottom which was able to replicate the condensation process. What I really enjoyed about this installation was how the curator placed it in the room and with the way she had the lighting. The light hit the top in just the right spot to make the water on the top look like sparkling little crystals instead of water drops. You also could see the droplets fall and watch as the water rippled out in effect. It truly was an amazing piece of art and it was displayed in the best possibly way I could think of.
When looking on into the next room, you are drawn in by the beautiful landscape images of water. And as you turn the corner, right behind the wall of the Dew Point piece, there is another installation of Maya Lin’s on the opposing wall. It is called Pin River-Hudson. This landscape installation was made up of hundreds of steel pins! It took the installers at the gallery three days to install the whole thing! It is placed on the wall going down and looks like the Hudson River. The artist had templates on how to hang this piece so the curator only had control over what wall it went on and the lighting. I must say the placement couldn’t have been more perfect because it was on the opposite wall Maya’s other installation. It instilled the artist in your mind as you moved through to the next room instead of having the second piece a few rooms away. What was very interesting was the curator’s choice of lighting for this piece. She chose to light it from the top at a slight angle. This angle gave the pins shadows, giving them depth. This was a great choice on the curator’s part.
The next room about women in the water and men in boats, I did not really like that room as much. The pieces in there were good but none of them really caught my eye to really invite me into this room. To be honest, I could have skipped over this room without a second glance and I probably wouldn’t be that upset about it. The next room as well with the video I could have passed over and not really missed much. Honestly it made me kind of sea sick and nauseous. And I really did not get it and did not hold my interest. I don’t exactly know how I would do those two rooms better. I don’t believe the video room could have been improved considering it was the video I did not like. The ambiance of the room was actually relaxing. Maybe if there was a different movie playing which was also calm and relaxing I would feel differently.
The four images I chose to curate were the Ice and Ark, Condensation Cube, Dew Point 18, and Pin River-Hudson. I would arrange them in that order because they could all lead you into the rooms and leave you wanting more. These four pieces could definitely stand alone and be in their own show of water.
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