So I was at MOCA…

…and I checked out the Grand Avenue museum store, and it’s surprisingly well equipped, from a book selection standpoint. The selection of non-book stuff, bags, pens and household goods is surprisingly good, too.  But it’s not without the evilly cute finger of Takashi Murakami’s devious merchandising empire. No Vuitton in sight, though.

above – Buy this flower, be mesmerized by its hypnotic powers, and it’s $9 price tag.

above – Buying one of these will make you feel like you’re with it, and keep the monsters at bay at night. It will also put you into debt – the cheapest one was $60 and the most expensive was $95. There was also a dusty Takashi Murakami designed soccer ball on a high shelf nearby – I just found one listed on Ebay for $450. Thank you Michele for being my glamorous hand model for the above products.

Oh, and There’s a Museum Too

MOCA’s not a place where one is usually able to shoot photos, but they let me snap two of their new acquisitions.

above – Thomas Hirschhorn’s Non-Lieux – Basically a melted candle wax mountain, covered in cut out Taliban fighters and topped by the faux-wind blown from a pair of two air conditioners that blow twin lavender flags emblazoned “Democracy.” It’s sort of Tora Bora-ish. There are two walls of what looks like full page fashion ads, and the landscape is strewn with boxes of laundry detergent. A train goes around and through the mountain as well. I’m not sure what the purpose of the piece is, but it sure is fun to look at. It has a skirt with lots of pages of text, both pages from a book, and photocopied. I couldn’t help but look at it and think “Wow, what a big ass crate MOCA has to keep in storage for this thing – there’s no way to break it down, and it’s not like a statue that can be mounted on a stand and wrapped.” That’s what I think of when I think of art. Label here.

above – Roxy Paine’s Weed Choked Garden – I’ve seen images of this before, and I wasn’t too into it, but it has a real presence in person. That’s Jessada Kongsommart examining the piece in the background. I think he really liked MOCA. Label here.

We also toured the Poetics of the Handmade show,since it closes tomorrow. Really excellent installation throughout, good work. I’m not sure if a lot of people saw the show, though. The giant oval pedestals with hand molded lipsticks was intense, and intimidating. All of the pieces in the show seemed to really be in conversation with one another.

And Back to the Museum Store, Because I Just Remembered This

They now sell “graffiti stencils” in the store at MOCA.   Stencils of wrestler’s masks, spraypaint cans, turntables and other staple images, in little kits.  Graffiti is now officially over.  You read it here, graffiti is dead, now all that’s left is irony and pain.

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