ICA

Went to the ICA in Boston with some friends yesterday to have a look at some modern art. The building is just gorgeous! As for the exhibits, I found that I engaged with about half of what was there... There was one video exhibit (Christian Jankowski's "The Hunt") that opens with a guy walking down the street. He stops in front of a grocery store, pulls out a bow and arrows and goes in. He gets a cart and then shoots the arrows at the items on the shelf. When he hits one he can load it into his cart to buy it. It was a fun idea--pointing up how removed the "hunt" for our food has become. Another video exhibit (Rachel Perry Welty's "Karaoke Wrong Number") showed a woman lip-synching to wrong-number voicemails she had received.... It was eerie, and funny and kind of sad (Rachel, please tell me that you finally did call Marguerite back??). Some of the visual pieces were just gorgeous and/or inspiring (I loved Cornelia Parker's "Hanging Fire"), the majority were depressing--why is it that "happy art" is not often considered as seriously as "tortured art" in the modern art world??

All in all it was a very thought-provoking day...