This is the third blog on my Clore Fellowship/Wellcome Trust sponsored study visit to the USA. See the others here.
There is a free exhibition of Kahlil Robert Irving’s work at MoMA. Initially I was confused by the show partly because of the close proximity of another free exhibition on Chinese architecture, and partly because the floor-to-ceiling decals used in Irving’s show are reminiscent, for me at least, of corporate imagery from buildings housing large bureaucracies. Spending time in the presence of the works revealed pieces made with nuance, skill and flair. There were four monstrous Merz-ish ceramic pieces adorned with text, graphic images and logos - I believe achieved through applying decals onto the vitrified clay. There were two or three delicately constructed collages, brimming with energy and fragility. One of these was illuminated by a light box. The collage, political subject matter, memes, technology and use of social media all came together to provide me with a vital, contemporary Schitters-rsque commentary on our current situation.
I am the Wellcome Trust sponsored Clore 16 Fellow. In 2022 as part of this Fellowship I travelled to New York, Santa Fe and Los Angeles. I met an artist in New York thinking about criminal justice by using shape, an artist pushing the boundaries of interspecies collaboration, and the climate team in the New York City Government who brought artists in to transform the cuture of the workplace. Read about them and others here.