A day at Guggenheim Museum

The Guggenheim Museum invited six artists to select a theme from 1900 to 1980 and display it in each one of the six ramps. Each artist had previously exhibited his work at the Guggenheim and now they are having the opportunity to be curator and choose a select number of pieces out of 300 paintings, sculptures, works on paper and installations.

Artist, Paul Chan, had created an environment to describe the role of pleasure and water as a form of renewing the human. His exhibit starts with a blue carpet rising up the ramp. His style is a multidisciplinary practice including documentary videos and computer animations, charcoal drawings and conceptual typefaces. His subject matter goes from catastrophic abstracted shapes inspired from his time in Iraq to architectural structure with a sense of rebirth. In that exhibition, he is focuses on inviting us to “reflect on how pleasure renews us “ looking to water as a universal source to cleanse and heal.

It’s always a breathtaking experience to be inside this building with its ramps and curved walls. The architecture helps the display, in a way, to be more modern.

We meet Julie Barten, senior painting conservator in charge of restoring and keeping the Guggenheim collection in excellent shape. She explained that every painting is positioned on the wall with a 3 degree angle of inclination to appear to the viewer as straight. Barten’s knowledge about science, materials and chemicals is astonishing. She combines her wisdom of math and science with great philosophy to follow the protocols of installation; paying close attention to light and climate using microscopes, X rays in order to analyze durability, conservation and also teaches people to tolerate some level of natural degradation. She showed us one restoration of Yayoi Kusana, oil on canvas with rice blossoms. That particular work of art had caught my attention early in the morning because of its purity.

Another painting that inspires my work nowadays is from Cai Guo Quiang, with hues of blue using powder material and glass. The texture and the impact is very glossy and I relate it to the galaxies that I paint.