Hasta La Ideas

Yesterday saw the opening of Swept Away: Dust, Ashes and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design, the Museum of Arts and Design’s latest exhibition in their ongoing examination of materials and process. As its title suggests, all of the works are composed of materials that are overlooked or otherwise ignored, if not eliminated altogether—unsavory scourges of sanitation that accrue over time, infinitesimal residues man-made and otherwise—dirt, dust, soot, ash, smoke and sand.

James Croak – The Persistence of Modernism

The smallest units of detritus have been gathered, organized and ultimately mastered in some two dozen artworks on display on the fifth floor of the museum. Chief Curator David McFadden noted that he’d initially expected to include works by a scant half dozen artists—sculptor James Croak and Zhang Huan, both of whom are in the show, came to mind—though the list eventually ballooned to 50 candidates, half of which are included in the exhibition. Indeed, the scope of the exhibition is more diverse than it is homogenous, featuring works in two dimensions and three, from representational (Vik Muniz) to abstract (Jim Denevan), with varying degrees of conceptual content behind the disparate approaches to visual execution.

Glithero – Burn Burn Burn

The ineluctable meaning of particulate matter—that from which we come and to which we will return, in so many words—was especially prominent in a few ephemeral works that are presented as photo or video documentation par excellence. Fuses burn with fearlessly self-destructive determination and tides rise with unsentimental predictability, leaving unmistakable scars (Glithero’s Burn Burn Burn, above) or effacing the work entirely (Andy Goldsworthy’s Bones/Sand/Ball/Tide, below)

Andy Goldsworthy – Bones/Sand/Ball/Tide

Cai Guo-Qiang – Black Ceremony

Nevertheless, the works in the exhibition are predominantly representational—even Cai Guo-Qiang’s Black Ceremony culminates with (spoiler alert) a puff of rainbow—and, in a couple cases, the artist is literally using dirt (or dust, ash, etc.) as a medium, i.e. for drawing or sculpture.

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