MOCA North Miami

Merce Cunningham: Dancing on the Cutting Edge. Part I From Jan 26th through Apr 29th, 2007Dancing on the Cutting Edge. Part I is the first of a two-part exhibition on the work of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham. Like many visual artists that have embraced “the performance” and the use of the body as a medium for their artistic expressions, Merce Cunningham, throughout more than five-decade career, have engaged with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Olafur Eliasson or Gabriel Orozco – just to mention a few – as to create scenographic works and costumes for his presentations. Many of those works are now presented in the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). They are brought back to the Visual Arts realm by the careful selection of the museums’ Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater. It includes works created by artists coming from the most diverse manifestations, ranging from set design and installations to multimedia presentation and video projections. What’s interesting here is how these same works that were specifically created for live presentations, can now be viewed as mere installations works. The absence of music, performers, or a radical audience shift, will not dim the “spectacular” in the works, neither will limit their readiness to communicate independently. Within the frame of this exhibition, works like Convex / Concave by Olafur Eliasson, a large circular mirror foil on a frame, connected to a pneumatic pump, or Ernesto Neto’s Otheranimal, one of his large mixed media installation of nylon and netting – far from lacking context – would appear in all their visual splendor. They are a good example of how artworks can interact, feed and grow from collaboration experiences, and yet keep their identity. Other artists included are Sandra Cinto, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Richard Hamilton, Rei Kawakubo, Charles Long, Christian Marclay, Jacqueline Matisse Monnier, The Open-ended Group (Marc Downie, Shelley Eshkar, Paul Kaiser), Henry Samelson, and Terry Winters. For more information, please call: 305.893.6211