Yesterday I took a day trip to Providence to check out the new RISD Museum wing and the exhibition of Dale Chihuly's work in honour of RISD. The show was mildly interesting (I am not a fan of class art) and well presented. If you love his work then you will be happy. Yes, there are chandeliers. That is his "Glass Forrest #1" circa 1971 above.
The new "special" exhibitions space is quite large and they have also added a student gallery. The building itself is attractive enough. As I was standing in line a team of firemen were running about with lots of equipment. Apparently there was something wrong with the HVAC system. Building's got a few bugs still I guess.
The student gallery honestly had work I found more interesting that Chihuly's. Titled A Varied Terrain it was curated by a group of MFA students. Not all of the work was good. I did find a couple of pieces a bit weak and "student-y." But the stronger more than made up for it.
Rachel Menashe Dor's work was intriguing. It worked spatially and actually fit thematically more then others. That is her "Memories of landscape" from 2008 down below. Leslie Kwok's "Memory Floorplan" was also successful. Her piece is down at the bottom. Unfortunately this show ended today but you can check out more of the work at their blog which is linked above.
I also checked out the "Views and Reviews" exhibition of Soviet graphic art at the Bell Gallery at Brown. Now, that was a fascinating show. I'll go into more detail about it later. Needless to say, you should check it out if you can. It is pretty amusing to see work that is critical of the West in light of this week's collapse of capitalism. Some of the jokes are pretty spot on over fifty years later.
