21C Museum Hotel
Posted on March 21, 2012 20:46
On a recent trip to Louisville, KY I visited 21c Museum Hotel (http://www.21cmuseumhotel.com/overview/default.aspx). Located in the heart of the city, “21c Museum is North America’s first museum dedicated solely to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art of the 21st century. With over 9000 square feet of exhibition space, 21c Museum hosts dynamic group and solo exhibitions featuring emerging artists alongside acclaimed international artists, such as video artists Bill Viola and Tony Oursler, photographers Andres Serrano, Sam Taylor Wood, and David Leventhal, sculptors Yinka Shonibare and Judy Fox, and multimedia artists Chuck Close, Alfredo Jaar, and Kara Walker.”
As I walked down a corridor, after checking out the art in both the women’s and men’s (yes, I did that), washrooms, I was stopped dead in my tracks by an installation piece nestled between two exterior walls. I was looking at Cloud Rings, the 2006 work of California artist, Ned Kahn. (Check out his website here: http://nedkahn.com/, and be sure to look at the videos of some of his installations!)
I think that there are entirely too many superlatives used in contemporary descriptive passages BUT it is hard not to fall prey to that which I dislike when discussing this particular work. So, I will leave it up to the artist ‘tell’ you about it: “A series of devices set into a sunken courtyard that continuously shoot rings of fog up into the space between two buildings. The billowing rings are seen from the street as well as from the windows of the surrounding buildings. This exhibit produces rings of mist (similar to smoke rings) a few times every minute. The torus shaped smoke ring travels straight up. The exhibit uses an ultrasonic humidifier to generate the mist, which collects under the domed top and is ejected out when the exhibit pulses. A gear-motor rotates a cam, which pushes a diaphragm against spings to store energy for the pulse.”
Cloud Rings and many of the site-specific artworks that are featured on Kahn’s website represent, for me, the best of contemporary art. In a political climate of repression and non-support of truly visionary thinking (yes, Harper’s Canada, I mean you), the international success of Kahn and other like-minded artists reassures me that art (whether it be visual art, music, literature), has the power and potential to bring us to a realization of our best selves.
