Wednesday, April 27, 2016

"Queens Internation 2016" at Queens Museum

Thirty four artists who work in Queens participated in this biennial group show at the Queens Museum. The show presents a huge variety of material. The mixture of the artwork represents a circumstance that combines with divergent regional and cultural elements. However, the show is hard to enjoy.

The space is too crowded. In the gallery, all the artwork are squeezed into a narrow hall. The space between each piece is isn't clear. Since each individual piece has a strong content, they are basically cancelling each other because of the lack of distance. Moreover, according to the huge amount of the selected work, the artwork aesthetically failed to fit together. Some of them are dominating, meanwhile the others are just ignorable. Some of them are yielding, meanwhile others just whisper. Those are parts(artwork), but they do not fits each other to compose a whole(the show). From a curatorial point of view, the arrangement of the space is unsuccessful.

 Since the show itself is an open call, the direction of this event is way too broad. The goal is to curate work of international artists who live in Queens. The show displays a hodgepodge, and the curating is lack of guiding. The audience are not able to know where and how to engage the show. The voice of the show is loud and noisy.

1 comment:

  1. I think your argument is a valid one, and your “part to machine” analogy works. I would expand on that part of the argument. You speak of the spatial issues with the show, but I also want to know about how and why you thought the other (non-spatial) curatorial decisions failed. I think you could also elaborate on individual artworks, and how they succeeded or failed within that curatorial context. Your review is quite short, so adding in some analysis of specific pieces could help both to strengthen your argument and add some length. It also might strengthen your argument to discuss some things that did work, even if its just one work out of the whole group.

    ReplyDelete