Word: ica
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With the pornographic quality of the work, some people have said that the "The Boston School," now at the Institute for "Contemporary Art (ICA), is just "A 'gay hustler' show." It can look that way, but such a dismissal does not do the exhibition justice...
This coming weekend, the entire squad will travel to Franklin Park for the Boston Invitational. The meet will also be a training session of sorts, as Franklin Park will be the course for the ICA's championship in November...
Cockroaches and Jews? The connection Bedarski makes in displaying an edited version of Bayer's promotional tape as art (Cockroaches, 1993-94) is creepily potent. Her monitors are set up on the lowest level of the ICA, in a corner draped in black, appropriately damp and smelling faintly of sewage. Cockroaches accomplishes a disturbing transference of emotion. Already slightly queasy at the sight of six inch cockroaches, the viewer is easily horrified by the appearance of Germans in gas masks speaking calmly and matter-of-factly about efficient modes of extermination. Bedarski's parallel is clever, subversive and electric...
Small imperfections aside, the general white flatness of the space is strategic, according to the documentary video prepared by ICA video Curator/Director Branka Bogdanovich. (Incidentally, the video space is also plagued by a slight sewer smell--less appropriately than in the cockroach exhibit.) The exhibition space is supposed to represent the sterilization of the Holocaust--the way in which it is rendered historically innocuous. Hopefully, the viewer will stick around long enough to figure that...
Burnt Whole's set-up is a case of mistaken form-and-content parallel. The sterilization of mass memory is much more skilfully represented in specific pieces. The ICA's surgical ambiance serves only to deaden their effect. In the documentary, the art is more powerfully arranged on an exposed brick wall...