 "Photo: The Museum of Contemporary Art")
Have you ever passed by a nail screwed into the wall and stopped to consider the artistic statement it makes? Or stepped into an elevator and thought, “This would make a great place for an art exhibit?” Or passed by a church bulletin board and contemplated the social implications displayed by the advertised support groups? The Museum of Contemporary Art decided to take on these questions of what constitutes art and how it can be displayed in their new exhibit Hide and Seek.
Elevators, stairwells, water closets, bathrooms, postcard stands, screws, envelopes, street signs and church calendars are only a few of the venues for artwork in the exhibit, but it’s not as straightforward as it seems. Not only are most of the works everyday objects you may never go about noticing, but they are also displayed throughout the museum with no placards to identify the name or artist. Instead the viewers are given clues as to what the art may be and must go find it themselves.
Some of the works stood out immediately, such as Alan Rath’s “Wall Flower V,” a 10-foot tall speaker system, while others, such as Jeppe Hein’s “Screw On Wall,” literally a screw on the wall, could easily miss scrutiny as tools of installation. Others, such as the nonsensical ramblings of Paul Dickinson’s “Sleep Talk” played in the elevator, were surprisingly displayed in unconventional galleries. These works seemed to question whether the venue or medium is vital to the work as a whole; in other words, does the fact that we needed the help of a museum employee to notice it take away from its value as art?
Meandering through the museum in search of works, the exhibit began to take on the qualities of a scavenger hunt. The set up of the exhibit as an active search, as opposed to a passive stroll through a gallery, creates a much more accessible interaction between the audience and the art: The works become a goal, rather than objects your eyes slide past as you peruse gallery upon gallery. Even if the intention of the piece is entirely ambiguous, viewers are still given some consolation that they have succeeded in picking the works out from the background, rather than bypassing them as everyday objects.
Hide and Seek also gained strength by encouraging interactive works of art. “Everyone Together All At Once” by Natasha Wheat asks viewers to reach into an envelope, pull out a written piece of advice, write down their own advice and place it back in the envelope. I pulled out an Argo Tea receipt with the advice “Tomorrow is another day,” and replaced it with advice I recently got from a fortune cookie: “You’ll get more work done if you have a little fun this weekend.” This interaction gave me a practical and tangible memory of the art at hand, and easily impacted me as significantly as a ten-foot masterpiece on canvas.
Contemporary art can be a bit intimidating for those unfamiliar with the art world, but Hide and Seek attempts to feature works that are more straightforward. You can appreciate Louise Lawler’s “Bird Calls,” a seven minute recording of human bird calls piped into the bathroom, commenting on the environment’s place in a crowded city and giving literal meaning to the cliché “nature calls.” You can appreciate the irony of Erika Rothenberg’s “America’s Joyous Future,” which displays a church message board listing activities for every night of the week such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Abused Spouses, but prominently displays the Sunday morning sermon as “America’s Joyous Future.” These works deal with sounds and objects we experience every day, but never stop to think about their implications.
Hide and Seek is a multi-medium, interactive and accessible exhibit that happily forces the audience to question not only the nature of an art exhibit and what constitutes itself as art, but how we perceive direction, information and connectivity. It is an easy step into art for those not as versed in the technicalities of the contemporary art world, but an exhibit even the most avid art fiends will find fascinating. Hide and Seek draws you in and makes you question your sense of the world around you, fostering discussion that will extend further than the walls of the museum.
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