FROM LINES TO MATTER, AKA GENTLE GIANTS AT THE KAMPA MUSEUM

Late summers bring me back to Prague and invite exploration of the local cultural offerings. Today, on my stroll through town, I came across a good one: Vojtech Kovarik’s “From Lines to Matter” show at the Kampa museum.

The show, a collection of monumental paintings centers on ancient myths, gods and goddesses that this young artist shows breaking out of their sizable frames and filling the room with their commanding, colorful presence. The ancient myths re-awaken your interest in antique mythology and the artist helps you by providing an ever so brief glimpse of the story you’re seeing on the canvas. The bright, saturated colors pull you in and you find yourself mesmerized, standing in front of these gentle giants enjoying every moment in their company.

The artist studied drawing and painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Ostrava and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw He won the Critics Prize for Young Painters in 2019 and has been exhibiting extensively abroad since then, building a presence in the international arts market.

The show runs at the Museum Kampa through early September, so if you are in Prague and looking for a late-summer cultural interlude, stop by. I truly enjoyed it.

ART IN NEW YORK CITY: MOMA AND THE STREAMLINED WORLD OF DONALD JUDD

When a pandemic grounds you in New York, you adapt and explore more art locally. So, while we wait for the lockdowns and vaccines to start working their magic and returning us to normalcy, expect to see more local art stories here. First up, MoMA’s recent show on Donald Judd.

MoMA IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA

Museum of Modern Art is one of my favorite museums in New York both for the clean lines of its architecture and the amazing richness of the art inside.

MoMA’s sixth-floor special exhibit space

The building itself is worth a visit. I loved the 2004 design by Japan’s Yoshio Taniguchi. The Keio University and Harvard School of Design-educated Taniguchi got his training working with the likes of Walter Gropius and Kenzo Tange, one of the prominent modernist architects in Japan, and, later on, Isamu Noguchi. After opening his own studio, he became known for museum projects, including the Nagano Prefectural Museum, the Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, and the Gallery of the Hōryū-ji Treasures at the Tokyo National Museum. In 1997, Taniguchi won a competition to redesign the Museum of Modern Art, beating out several architecture powerhouses such as Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. MoMA, his first project outside Japan, let the artwork breathe by expanding the exhibition space, adding skylights to the galleries and offering visitors lots of unexpected lookout points that allowed them to experience the art and the space in a new light.

In 2019, MoMA morphed again, this time based on the work of Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. The renovated space includes an additional 165,000 square feet of gallery space and it is to the architects’ credit that the design, in many ways, disappears in favor of a seamless experience, letting guests focus on the art without noticing that they are moving between multiple buildings. The expanded space gives MoMA the ability to showcase a much broader range of art and visitors have a chance to learn about a more diverse set of artists.

In the summer, grab a book and ice cream and enjoy the outdoor sculpture garden. It is lovely.

DONALD JUDD’S STREAMLINED ART

Donald Judd, MoMA 2020

Earlier this year, MoMA put on an extensive show of Donald Judd’s streamlined, minimalist (a term that he himself avoided) sculptural work. Judd, one of the best known sculptors of modern time, made his fame through innovative use of industrial materials, production approaches and use of color and surface that let audiences experience his work in new and different ways.

Judd started his art career as a painter but quickly moved from figurative to abstract work and by the early 1960s, was concentrating on straight lines and angles. By 1963 he had moved on to forms — ‘stacks’, ‘boxes’ and ‘progressions’ — that he would become known for over the next thirty years. His use of simple, often repeated forms and everyday materials such as metals, plywood or plexiglass lent itself to exploration of use of space.

The MoMA exhibition showcased the full evolution of Judd’s work and, in what turned out to be a silver lining of the pandemic, due to the socially distanced crowds, allowed you to really engage with the art at your own pace.

Donald Judd, MoMA 2020

Although the show itself has now closed, you can still see one of Judd’s pieces in the outdoor sculpture garden. Those who are willing to explore further afield can venture out to Dia:Beacon that has a long-term exhibition of his plywood work or take a road trip to Marfa, Texas and the Chinati Foundation where the permanent collection includes many large-scale works by Judd and his contemporaries such as Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin and John Chamberlain. Marfa is on my list and when we can travel again, expect a post about it here as well. For now, you can also explore Judd’s work through one of the books showcasing his work.

NEW YORK CITY: THE ART OF SILENCE

New York City. The city that never sleeps. The dream for many. My adopted home. A city that I love. And for the last few months, an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. A pandemic that forced this bustling, colorful place to come to a screeching halt. Where noise was once omnipresent, only silence rules.

No-one can predict what kind of city will emerge on the other end but one thing is clear already: there is art in the silence. The forced pause emptied the streets, slowed down the pace and gave those who dared to venture out an entirely new, peaceful and captivating side of our city. Words feel superfluous, so come along for a visual walk with me instead. I am glad you can join me.

LINES, TRIANGLES AND SQUARES IN THE CANYONS OF MANHATTAN

When you no longer have to watch for the incoming traffic, moving out of the way of rushing pedestrians and weaving through the crowds to get to your destination quickly, you start paying attention. Noticing the details. Tilting your head upwards to admire the shapes, the lines, the angles that surround you at every step. And they captivate you.

SILENCED ICONS

The big pause has taken away most of the activities that I love and that used to fill up my days. Art galleries, concerts, theater performances are all out of reach for now. So, every now and then, one indulges in revisiting them at least from the outside…

ABOVE ALL, STAY HUMAN AND HOPEFUL

Throughout the early quarantine days, the city’s silence was punctuated by ambulance sirens (a heartbreaking sound) but also by the clapping and cheers for the medical and other essential workers, every night at 7pm. Hearing your invisible neighbors’ cheers and the occasional Frank Sinatra’s or Alicia Keys’ ode to the city that we all share is that other delightful surprise emerging out of the silence… a shared sense of human gratitude and hope. Stay human, my friends and we will come out of this stronger than before.