Maybe I’m still too tired from last week’s craziness to appreciate this show. I’m still a little burnt out from putting together FR8.
I know that there’s a map of sorts that explains the organizational principles behind the arrangements of works, and there’s some obvious instances where clear relationships are created, but the whole thing looked like a muddle to me. It was nice to see some of the works in person, but I’d almost rather just read the catalog than view the show. Having spent the afternoon looking at it, it’s really hard to even write about it, so I won’t write a lot about it.
I come to the show with mixed feelings. I guess generationally/personally I feel so post-feminist that much of the work comes across as naive or alien. Too some degree it’s difficult or impossible for me to really understand or appreciate the context of much of the work in the show.
Everyone I know who’s seen this show has derided it as a vagina-fest, and that’s not a far off description. The Judy Chicago nook comes immediately to mind. There’s also a huge amount of work in WACK! that strays far from cliche-territory, like Marta Minujin and Richard Squires’ Soft Gallery, a cube-like structure made out of mattresses strapped to an aluminum support structure, which was one of my favourite things in the show. Back on the “genital centric feminist art” angle, it was great to see Cosey Fanni Tutti’s work in the gallery (I’m a huge Chris and Cosey fan), her pornography based work got stronger reaction from viewers than anything else that I saw there.
The exhibition struggles in the Geffen Contemporary space, which has to one degree or another handicapped every show that’s ever been installed there. I can never quite figure out why nothing seems at home in the space, but nothing does. I’m never quite sure if it’s a flaw of the space, or a failure of MOCA to employ the space. It’s massive, and massive spaces aren’t common in Los Angeles. Maybe the Los Angeles viewer is more accustomed or interested in the intimacy of smaller spaces - I finally got to Danial Nord’s show at Haus just before coming to see WACK! and I was much more interested and comfortable in his “two rooms and a hallway of ajar doors” installation that I was in the installation of works at the Geffen.
