The Brooklyn Museum's second installment of
inviting contemporary artists to alter their period rooms does not disappoint
with Valerie Hegarty’s contribution. Hegarty, a New York-based artist, brings
her characteristic motifs of bright, smashed fruits and destructive black crows
to the museum’s previously manicured period rooms. With these motifs she blends
her themes of colonialism, manifest destiny, and the myth of the American
dream. Hegarty's previous work often exploded (quite literally) out of her
canvas paintings on the wall and she is no stranger to producing entire
environments, such as her Breakthrough
Miami installation from 2010.
Her additions to the period rooms are constructed of modest materials:
paper, papier-mache, wire, paint and glue yet they almost completely become an
old wooden chair, a gilded picture frame, or an intricate floor rug. Hegarty
does not abandon her trademark neon pinks and yellows in Table Cloth With
Fruit and Crows. Her choice of
color is my only reserve about this installation, but I’m willing to accept the
bright palette although it’s the only boldly non-realistic aspect of the
installation. In the second room, the Cupola House, I was intrigued by the faux
tiled floor that Hegarty had made but was bothered by being able to see the wrinkles
and tattered edges of her mat.
Hegarty’s inductions are successful in converging the past with the present in intriguing and thoughtful ways. The painterly qualities that she manages to maintain in the installations bring them to life in an alluring way, while simultaneously questioning the darker side of our history. Still, many questions arise from these modifications. For instance, why has the whole room not been altered? Paintings are torn, grass grows through the floorboards, and birds have pecked straight through chairs, yet other elements such as the walls and fabrics seem un-aged. Certainly the museum would likely not allow extreme or permanent alterations, but we are left to wonder which actions were the decisions of the institution, and which ones were Hegarty’s?
I like how you refer back to her earlier work. How does Hegarty add her style and flow to the period room. The combination of a site-specific work of Hegarty, mixed with the artificial period room, becomes a new hybrid, but also confusing form. Therefore I like your precise observation of how Hegarty has a lack for details. I am still surprised that your review is so positive. The questions you bring up, seem to me very critical, but strong and thoughtful. Their convincing me more than the way her concept comes through. It almost seems you are defending her work for her. You describe Hegarty's topics very general by using big words. If I don't know her work, it is still unclear how, e.g. the myth of the American dream is related with her piece here.
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