Rivers and tides

The movie rivers and tides was actually pretty interesting as far as I am concerned, the art itself was quite interesting, very geometric. As was the time lapse footage and the destruction of the pieces as part of the overall performance.

The artist definitely seems to have a fascination with water as he is constantly exploring the the meanderings of old rivers and the shifting of the tides and there influence on the surrounding environment...

The artist also has an insane amount of patience to work with some of his media, like the icicles and the stick and the stones with no adhesives  or bonding agents of any kind, but it was also sad to see some the pieces crumble before completion, making me wonder how many great pieces have been left behind?

The one thing I wish they had explained more were those stone monuments, I would have liked some more back story on those, how he came up with it, why it repeats throughout his work etc, cuz those are not easy to build I'd imagine. The one thing that bothered me however was that he seemed to be making the art smarter than it needs to be, its a bit cliche but when I hear him talking about "trying to understand how this happens and how did that river get there" (when its well established how they occur) he tries to be philosophical where I don't believe its really necessary, he almost sounds like the student returning home from his first semester of college that has been "enlightened" in the ways of the world, when personally I think his works stands just fine on its own.

 The Gates is a piece in which I don't really know how I feel, yes its interesting from an aerial view, and its not really a bother to the people in the park, however the part I don't understand is that they spent 21 million dollars on the gates, and when asked what they want people to feel when experiencing it they say "nothing, its up to the viewer, we like all true artists make the work for ourselves, and if other people like it then OK."

That's one thing if you are buying up some space in a gallery to display your work, its a whole other selfish thing to thrust your work onto millions of people in one of the biggest public parks there is and say "we dont care how you feel about it" kind of rubs me the wrong way, also their is no real artistic skill its more of an experience which is certainly what Jean Claude and Cristo are about.

as a side note however the work of Cai Guo-Qiang is very visually interesting, there could be symbolism behind it or not, but almost anyone could come into that gallery and really enjoy the experience, His work is very cool, and actually quite entertaining 

Art 21 comments Mark Dion and Janine Antoni

After having watched the Art 21 dealing with these two particular artists, there is definitely one that I am drawn to more. And that would be Mark Dion.

First of all Mark has a piece that I find more interesting in that tree ecosystem that is in the sculpture park, I have always been drawn to science and tend to use it in my own art so it was very easy for me to appreciate, I think he did a very nice job designing the housing as well which would have been no easy task especially to try and create that forced perspective. 

Another reason I prefer that piece is that anybody, man, woman, or child has the ability to walk into that room and appreciate what they are seeing weather the see it as art or not, personally it seems more like a biological experiment than a social one. But on the other hand we have Janine Antoni.

While I don't feel that either of these individuals are great traditional artists (from what was shown)  The main problem I have with Antoni's work is that if she isn't right there in the gallery telling you what its about like she is in the video, the viewer would be at a loss, and the only piece I found aesthetically interesting as a stand alone no explanation piece was the rawhide sculpture, she uses alot of completely different non traditional media and seems to have alot of different talents she tries to utilize but seems to fall into that old adage "Jack of all trades, master of none"