New York MOMA - Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing

Working as a flight attendant offers myself chances to visit different exhibition and gallery. The MOMA museum in New York City is one of my favorite places to go. This museum of modern art contains a worldwide collection of modern arts from the late 19th century and continues to the current contemporary works of art. Despite the permanent collections like the Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory and Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night. (This two works, however is now on loan to the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.), the MOMA also held different kind of exhibitions, which involve all forms of visual expression. In the role of a modern art museum, the MOMA plays an important role in transcending the national boundaries, bringing all forms of art together to create a dialogue between the established and the experimental, the past and the present.

In this review, I will focus on 3 temporary exhibition in the MOMA, they are the Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing, Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave and Artist Choice + Vik Muniz = REBUS.

Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #260, Crayon on painted wall, 1975

Drawn by Charles Allen, Andrew Colbert, Anthony Sansotta, and Nobuto Suga

Sol LeWitt is one of the early artists who explores the possibility of art to go beyond the canvas and paper. Sol LeWitt produces more than 1200 paintings, which draw directly onto the wall. In this exhibition, his Wall Drawing #260, 1975 is installed on one of the gallery space in MOMA. In this wall drawing, Sol LeWitt had drawn numerous white arcs from corner and side, and also white straight, non-straight and broken lines on a black wall. Like what Sol LeWitt said, “The white lines maintain their grid and by changing offer clues to the system. The plan is always presented so that the viewer will know that the changes are not capricious but systematic, becoming a language and a narrative of shapes.” Besides the systematic idea, Sol LeWitt ‘s wall drawing also evokes the questioning of the gallery space. Instead of hanging the paintings or drawing on the wall of the gallery, he intentionally put his drawing onto the wall of the gallery, which shows a mergence of the gallery space and the artwork itself. As a conceptual artist, Sol LeWitt offers the priority of an idea and concept than the physical appearance of an artwork. Experiencing an artwork like this is therefore not a two dimension one, but a three-dimensional perception.

Focus: Sol LeWitt
December 5, 2008–June 29, 2009
Fourth floor, MOMA, NYC