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These days, MOCA is bustling with activity and energy. Part of the buzz stems from the recent announcement that the institution is planning to build and move into a new facility in University Circle. This, coupled with a recently launched two-year collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art which will bring work from the Museum’s modern and contemporary collection to MOCA’s third-floor Mezzanine Gallery, makes MOCA the place to be for established patrons, and also for a new crowd of art-starved CMA members. The current exhibitions are sure to wow old and new friends, particularly two shows that are as different from one another as they are stunning: ALL DIGITAL and Peggy Kwong-Gordon: Life Studies.
ALL DIGITAL includes work by renowned international new media artists. The installation design and layout are as much a work of art as the artworks themselves; glowing, digital labels are hung throughout the show, providing a patently slick solution to the problem of reading artists’ statements in a necessarily dark gallery. Aside from these impressive details, several pieces in the exhibition prove that digital artists have clearly transcended — and made intelligent use of — technology-based media.
Charles Sandison’s Index may be a perfect work of art in that it is theoretically and critically engaging, sublimely beautiful and well-conceived, especially in its site-specificity. Sandison appropriates and projects text in varying formats, which drifts about the floor, ceiling and four walls of the gallery, as well as across viewers as they enter and move about the space. As sentence fragments connect with each other, disparate sections and singular words also float randomly about. Being in the midst of the text — being one with the text — is an overwhelming sensory experience. Index is the antithesis of its title, as it is a sort of physical manifestation of Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction. Nouns, adjectives, dates, and names of historic places, people and events fly about the room, land on ceiling, floor, walls, and people in random ways, gathering varying associations and meanings as they travel about and as they are read and interpreted by individual viewers. Moreover, the piece is about process and play, not about any definitively finished thought or idea. French theory aside, Sandison’s installation is a fundamentally engaging work that will appeal to viewers of all ages.
Anne-Marie Schleiner’s PS2 Diaries is a modified video game, which has been reconfigured to create narratives that are socially critical. To experience the piece at MOCA, viewers sit on legless video-gaming chairs — a familiar fixture of the suburban family room — and listen via headphones as a narrator verbally recontextualizes the scenes on the screen before them. In one part of PS2 Diaries, the female voice tells listeners about a time when she and others took a disabled friend dancing. Through this narrative frame, the robotic dance moves of the “disabled” male figure on screen take on a hindered quality. Yet without the commentary, one would not question the awkward dance steps of the digital man, as his movements are characteristic of video game technology and aesthetics. While video game makers are often criticized for blurring lines between reality and the virtual game world, Schleiner reveals the variances between these realms, ultimately exposing obvious visual and cognitive distinctions between the two.
Unfortunately, many installations in ALL DIGITAL pale in comparison to these two works. John F. Simon, Jr.’s piece, Fountain, may be impressive for his innovative use of coding, but the projected kinetic imagery lacks visual appeal and is aesthetically retrogressive, reminiscent of digital art circa 1985. Equally disappointing is Lynn Hershman Leeson’s DiNA, a “networked artificial intelligence agent,” who interacts with viewers through voice-recognition and speech-to-speech software. DiNA, who appears as a projected, animated head-shot of a red-haired white woman, demonstrates the limitations of technology, as her responses to viewers’ questions and comments are akin to those of the “Magic 8-Ball,” the familiar low-tech toy oracle.
Peggy Kwong-Gordon is the featured artist in current iteration of MOCA’s Pulse series, which regularly highlights the work of Northeast Ohio artists. Her solo exhibition, Life Studies, features an impressively meticulous body of work based on Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu’s text Tao Te Ching, which serves as the basis for Taoist philosophy. Taoism promotes modesty and moderation, and, according to the exhibition brochure, Kwong-Gordon’s exhibition “examines the omnipresent questions of life and the meaning of existence.” The artist’s pristine, finely rendered drawings and sculptural objects are in vivid contrast to the flashy, high-tech work in ALL DIGITAL; the juxtaposition of the two was a smart curatorial decision.
Kwong-Gordon’s large-scale drawings hang on the gallery walls and from the ceiling in column-like configurations that are subtly rendered in pencil on handmade or finely wrought specialty paper. A drawing titled double-portrait faintly portrays the profile of a human figure whose body is formed from Chinese text, and outlined in English text. The piece is imbued with a powerful yet tranquil presence, and the deliberately patient and skillful hand of the artist is evident in the carefully drawn lines. A striking departure in the Life Studies is a series, writing happiness, of colorful gouache or ink renderings on paper. Kwong-Gordon’s cadenzas: spring morning; summer night; fall afternoon; and winter evening abstractly yet pointedly depict the seasons the titles reference, as Kwong-Gordon exceptionally chooses and mixes colors, juxtaposing them with suggestively playful lines and shapes.
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Together, Peggy Kwong-Gordon:
Life Studies and ALL DIGITAL explore the complexity of
the human condition circa 2006. Life Studies is a gorgeously
serene exhibition that evokes steadfast spirituality; ALL DIGITAL
conjures the cognitive, demonstrating where we as a culture are heading
technologically, as well as how our minds are shaped, and how we adapt,
to an ever-changing environment.