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Lauren Gallo Lauren's Review of The Bollingen Journey at Isamu Noguchi Museum A Secret Garden At noon on a Monday, I walked down 36th Street in Long Island City, in step with a hooker on the opposite side, side-stepping syringes and empty bottles of Jack Daniels. On my way to the Noguchi Museumâs Bollingen Journey exhibit... But donât let the galleryâs location be a deterrent; once youâre inside, youâve truly stepped into the rabbit hole (shout out to Caroll). The windows are covered in white chambray, allowing light but not the sooty buildings and Mack trucks on 43rd Ave. to pass through. And the spaceâs support beams, painted white, oddly fit into the architectural scheme of the place; the entire place is a work of serene, open art. In 1949, Isamu Noguchi began a six-year creative journey around the world to explore, analyze and document leisure time and space in various cultures. Made possible by the Bollingen Foundation, Noguchiâs portfolio includes a wealth of photography, sculpture, pottery and sketches, all of which contributed to the artistâs later artwork and public parks, plazas and playgrounds. But the fellowship itself, and the work compiled during the years from 1949 to 1955, is impressive in its own right. The walls of the gallery, painted white and orange, are lined with steel shelves on which his exclusively black-and-white photographs lean. Despite their lazy posture, and lifeless pigment, these images contain such a multitude of texture, shape, movement and tone, that the eye is tricked into believing the pictures are actually one great motion picture. A mini-golf course in Venice gives way to bicycle races in Bergamo. From there, Noguchi moved through Barcelona, Crete, Greece and onto Egypt. Photographs of stone steps rest beside laughing people playing native percussion instruments and woven baskets. Foot prints and front yards weave themselves into images of ancient deities and children painting. From Cairo, Noguchi proceeded on to Bombay, India, exploring the subcontinent from Sri Lanka to Manipur to Bali. In Delhi, at the site of Mahatma Gandhiâs cremation, the artist proposed a memorial to the philosopher, as documented by a photograph in the exhibit. Moving on to Cambodia, Thailand, and then Japan, Noguchi tinkered with pottery and continued his photographic and sculptural documentation. The photographs are not individually captioned, if for no reason but that there is such an abundance, and so our eyes are left to direct our minds and bodies as they see fit. Only general guidelines, such as the country of origin, guide us in our visual journey. Making my way along the gallery walls, around the model playgrounds and gardens, and getting lost in their own tiny game-board worlds, I found myself face to face with a gem of a garden. Short of singing flowers and opium-smoking caterpillars, this was Aliceâs place of utter rapture. Quoting from my own barely legible notes, ãI want to stay in this place forever, get lost in it...ä A bed of rocks, surrounded on two sides by wooden boxes of tall bamboo, house a collection of vertical rocks and one fountain. Skylights and spotlights give the illusion of perfect, dappling sunlight, and a barely audible trickle of water drowns out the lull of the rest of the gallery. Noguchi once said, ãthere is a live and a dead side to each stone,ä and for the first time I can attest to this claim. The vertical rocks, alternately polished and carved and left to their own roughness, are inexplicably luring. And the bench on which I delight, composed of a similar, though horizontal structure, itself seems to distract any ideas of release or escape. And then I return to the broken glass and broken women of 36th Street... |
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