DC

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Reflection is important, and it’s never too late to reflect even if that reflection comes 3 months later than expected. I want to take today to reflect on my favorite art from 2019.

Exhibition: It’s a tie between Wes Anderson’s exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Basquiat exhibition at the Guggenheim, and Ancient Nubia at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

VR: nothing ☹. I experienced no VR in 2019 which is quite sad. I love VR and think it has an extremely promising future. The last VR experience I had was Carne y Arena in DC, which if you ever have the chance to experience, I highly recommend it. It takes immersion to a new level and integrates the physical world with the virtual. If I had the resources and time last year, I would have visited Alexey Marfin’s Kowloon Forest which showed in Hong Kong over the summer.

artist (painter): Oliver Lee Jackson

artist (sculptor): Simone Leigh

landscape: Roberto Burla Max at the Botanical Gardens

architecture: tie between the honey room at the Phillips Collection and palm haus in Wien

meal: NYE at Pagu (see some photos above); I really love prix fixe dinners and one of my goals for this year is to go to more prix fixe dinners and interesting restaurants

museum: Museum of the Palestinian People

film: 3 way tie between parasite, us, and werk ohne autor (US title: never look away). I loved all 3 of these films for different reasons that I will discuss at a later date. I know some of y’all will drag me for not saying ari aster’s midsommar since I was pretty morose on halloween when I missed out on the director’s cut screening and I droned on about midsommar months before it showed, but eh I was slightly underwhelmed.

 A few weeks ago, I visited the Phillips Collection in DC. It is the first modern art museum in the US. I was absolutely taken aback, even considering that they were in the process of installing new exhibitions (which I am over the moon to see). I checked this place out for a few reasons but its biggest draw was its proximity to my hotel. I was in DC for work so I had limited free time. I am also a huge fan of smaller art museums, one of my all-time favorite museums is the Berggruen Museum in Berlin. I also love modern/contemporary art, I definitely lean more towards sculpture but I’m down for some good 2D art. While there were many beautiful paintings, my favorites were the Wolfgang Laib’s Wax Room, Per Kirkbey’s untitled works, and Van Gogh’s House at Auvers; to be fair I’m a sucker for Van Gogh so if his work is present then I’m definitely going to include it.

For brevity, I’m only going to discuss one of these works—Wolfgang Laib’s Wax Room. As far as immersive and thought-provoking built artistic environments go this is tied with/second to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Carne y arena VR experience. There is nothing quite like the Wax Room. It’s about a 5ft by 3ft by 9ft room covered in beeswax and illuminated with a single lightbulb. It smells warm and slightly sweet but also very waxy. The walls are kind of sticky but it feels extremely cozy. The way that sound moves about the room is also pretty interesting as noise and sound immediately stop. There was no echo or reverberation. I couldn’t help but imagine the amount of work and energy the bees who produced this wax had to expend to create it. It is also worth thinking about the amount of work people had to expend to harvest and process the wax into something usable. It would be unfair for me to also not mention that this room reminded me of time in Colombia, my childhood, and my design work which has focused on bees and sustainability in the past.