This exhibition highlights works from the MOCA permanent collection that engage with the not always obvious relationship between objects, theater, and performance. Fictions of Display builds upon Claes Oldenburg’s The Store (1961-62), a performative project that staged the commercial transaction of selling an artwork in a bodega-like environment, as well as other economies determined by gestures, transactions, and bodies in works by Colette (or her alter ego Justine), Rebecca Horn, Brian Jungen, Mike Kelley, Terence Koh, Beverly Semmes, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Martine Syms, among others. Several works on view have never been exhibited at MOCA before, including the painting Monsieur On Sait Qui (1982), by influential Polish theater director and happening artist Tadeusz Kantor; the five-channel video installation Big Hunt (2002) by Catherine Sullivan, who was trained as an actor as well as visual artist, and performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s photograph The Loneliness of the Immigrant (1979-2011).
Fictions of Display is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator, with Paula Kroll, Curatorial Assistant.
For more information, click here.
