Smallish but quite wonderful; even allowing that I have a weakness for stuff that combines video, projection, lights and installation like this, I reckon it's pretty definitely the best contemporary show I've seen this year.
My favourites were probably the two two-channel video projections that alternated near the start of the exhibition, "Ever Is Over All" (1997), in which a woman joyously smashes car windows with a large, stemmed flower, and "Sip My Ocean" (1996), in which the screens shows a series of mirrored oceanic vignettes, many in close-up and with plenty of ugly to go with the dreamy and pretty, to the strains of a warped version of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" (which shazam tells me is called "I'm A Victim Of This Song"). Both of them, and especially "Ever Is Over All", reminded me of how powerful a poetic sensibility can be in a work that's otherwise heading in the direction of abstraction.
Also delightful, and packing a more immediate visceral-experiential punch, were "Administrating Eternity" (2011), involving a dozen or so hanging net curtains with various looping projections playing and diffusing across them, and "Pixelwald Motherboard" ("Pixel Forest Mutterplatte") (2016), which made me think of Christmas lights, then stars, then ice, then dreams, and which the exhibition notes say imagines a television screen exploding into a room.
And nearly at the end there was "Your Room Opposite the Opera", apparently collecting 14 individual works from 1994 to 2017, and setting them within a decorated 'apartment' in which we were invited to sit in the chairs and sofas, lie in the bed (onto which projections were also being cast - stars and people flying), and sit at the desk to add some lines of our own poetry ... including one tiny work, about the size of a 20 cent coin, visible through a hole cut in the carpet underfoot.
As an aside, this was the latest in a run of very good experiences with the MCA: Olafur Eliasson (Feb '10), Anish Kapoor (Feb '13), Tabaimo (Aug '14).
My favourites were probably the two two-channel video projections that alternated near the start of the exhibition, "Ever Is Over All" (1997), in which a woman joyously smashes car windows with a large, stemmed flower, and "Sip My Ocean" (1996), in which the screens shows a series of mirrored oceanic vignettes, many in close-up and with plenty of ugly to go with the dreamy and pretty, to the strains of a warped version of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" (which shazam tells me is called "I'm A Victim Of This Song"). Both of them, and especially "Ever Is Over All", reminded me of how powerful a poetic sensibility can be in a work that's otherwise heading in the direction of abstraction.
Also delightful, and packing a more immediate visceral-experiential punch, were "Administrating Eternity" (2011), involving a dozen or so hanging net curtains with various looping projections playing and diffusing across them, and "Pixelwald Motherboard" ("Pixel Forest Mutterplatte") (2016), which made me think of Christmas lights, then stars, then ice, then dreams, and which the exhibition notes say imagines a television screen exploding into a room.
And nearly at the end there was "Your Room Opposite the Opera", apparently collecting 14 individual works from 1994 to 2017, and setting them within a decorated 'apartment' in which we were invited to sit in the chairs and sofas, lie in the bed (onto which projections were also being cast - stars and people flying), and sit at the desk to add some lines of our own poetry ... including one tiny work, about the size of a 20 cent coin, visible through a hole cut in the carpet underfoot.
As an aside, this was the latest in a run of very good experiences with the MCA: Olafur Eliasson (Feb '10), Anish Kapoor (Feb '13), Tabaimo (Aug '14).
