INSIDE OUT PROJECT

Yesterday I made a quick little trip to the Highline—a beautiful elevated park in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York—to give some people a presentation on the Whitney's new building. Well the weather was so beautiful, I decided to stroll the rest of the park (which is looking extra lush these days) before I headed back to work. At the end of my walk I stumbled upon this beautiful mural-sized portrait and, not surprisingly, had to snap some shots to share with you. After all, it incorporates two of my favorite things in the whole world: photography and polka dots!


    

Looking a little closer at the work, I was impressed by the way the portrait had been carefully pasted over a number of obstacles, including wiring along the wall, window panes, and indents in the brick. Clearly this was done by a professional. Far to the right I spied one polka dot with writing on it and suddenly everything clicked into place! The mural is part of street artist J.R.'s latest project (remember when I wrote about him here and here?), which is called the Inside Out Project. Here's a description of the super-cool project from their website:

"INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities. People can participate as an individual or in a group; posters can be placed anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a full stadium. These exhibitions will be documented, archived and viewable virtually."

A fabulous idea, right?





I immediately went and checked out some of the other projects completed in New York (above in East Harlem and the South Bronx, respectively). Check out Inside Out locations near you and all over the world here.




Still jonesing for more info? Watch this video; it gives you a fabulous sense of the spirit, optimism and joy behind this global initiative and let's you see some of the brilliant uses already in place.

SOL LEWITT: WALLED IN

Have you heard about the Sol Lewitt wall drawing retrospective at MASS MoCA? It looks absolutely beautiful and is up for twenty-five years (until 2033)! Here are the details:

Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective comprises 105 of LeWitt’s large-scale wall drawings, spanning the artist’s career from 1969 to 2007. These occupy nearly an acre of specially built interior walls that have been installed—per LeWitt’s own specifications—over three stories of a historic mill building situated at the heart of MASS MoCA’s campus. The 27,000-square-foot structure, known as Building #7, has been fully restored for the exhibition by Bruner/Cott & Associates architects, which has closely integrated the building into the museum’s main circulation plan through a series of elevated walkways, a dramatic new vertical lightwell, and new stairways.

LeWitt—who stressed the idea behind his work over its execution—is widely regarded as one of the leading exponents of Minimalism and Conceptual art, and is known primarily for his deceptively simple geometric structures and architecturally scaled wall drawings. His experiments with the latter commenced in 1968 and were considered radical, in part because this new form of drawing was purposely temporal and often executed not just by LeWitt but also by other artists and students whom he invited to assist him in the installation of his artworks.

Having gone to college very close to MASS MoCA, I can attest that the museum already has a fabulous collection and incredible buildings/grounds. But with this long-term exhibition in a newly-renovated building, I think I we now have even more incentive to make the trip up to the Berkshires!

Read more about the retrospective (and watch some great time lapse installation videos) here.