Miroslaw Balka, Robert Gober, and Seamus Heaney: Three Stanzas
January 16 - March 7, 1999
Institute of Contemporary Art, Phila.
Three Stanzas is a meditation on memory and loss. The exhibition
concentrates on the affective nature of art by exploring the work's
appeal to the emotional receptiveness of viewers, as opposed to the
intellectual response normally addressed by museum exhibition. Central
to the exhibition is a poem by Seamus Heaney (b. Ireland 1939), 1995 Nobel
laureate in Literature, dealing with the poignancy of loss and remembering.
The show also included work by renowned sculptors Miroslaw Balka (b. Poland
1958) and Robert Gober (b. Connecticut 1954). Balka and Gober share a
retentiveness, an unwillingness or inability to let go of something once
loved, though now lost. Balka's work utilizes the proportions of his own
body and the geometry of his childhood home in Warsaw. He annotates his
minimalistic forms with personally symbolic substances, such as ash or
felt, to trace the passage of events, spaces, and memories that makeup a
lifetime. Gober has created a body of forms that deals with the vulnerable
nature of our existence. Recently he has combined banal handmade objects
such as sinks, beds, and doors with parts of the human body to reflect upon
the fragmentary and isolated nature of art and life. By bringing together
artists of different nationalities and media, Three Stanzas proposes a
poetic universality based on the conditions of loss, sadness, memory, and
vulnerability.
Curator: Patrick T. Murphy
Institute of Contemporary Art | University of Pennsylvania
118 S. 36th St. Philadelphia, PA 19104-3289 | T 215.898.7108 | F 215.898.5050
Copyright © 2004-2008, Institute of Contemporary Art. All rights reserved.
Website developed by Zero Defect Design LLC.
|
