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GALLERY REVIEW: Joan Jonas: Ice Drawing—Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Written by HEATHER KAPPLOW Posted November 9, 2017 Filed Under: A+E, Visual Arts

Joan Jonas, Ice Drawing, 2012, installation consisting of video (color, silent, projected through structure) and structure with metal armature and hanging crystals, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Joan Jonas, Ice Drawing, 2012, installation consisting of video (color, silent, projected through structure) and structure with metal armature and hanging crystals, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 

Enter through the Seeking Stillness exhibition if you can—Jonas couldn’t have asked for a better prelude to her work. The artifacts you first encounter in the darkened, theatrical Krupp Gallery greet you as if you were an archaeologist. They were used as tools for something, but what?


The “what,” as it always is with Jonas’ work, is a multilayered, intuitive working of symbols, sounds, and textures.


The two videos feature hands drawing with ice in different ways, and the difference between the two ways is a clue to the “what.” In the show’s eponymous piece, ice cubes move through ink and reflect back on the viewer through pendant crystals.


Reanimation, performed at the MFA in 2014, shows a mystery tool in use—and at first it seems the opposite of a tool—in the drawing of an ice crystal. But in fact, it’s an aid for showcasing our ineptitude in preserving the natural world racing by us—or melting away from us.

 

Show runs until 7.1.18. Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston. mfa.org

 

These shorts are being simultaneously published at Delicious Line, deliciousline.org. Heather Kapplow is a Boston-based conceptual artist and writer, heatherkapplow.com.

HEATHER KAPPLOW
Website | + posts

Heather Kapplow is a Boston-based conceptual artist and writer.

    This author does not have any more posts.

Filed Under: A+E, Visual Arts Tagged With: Boston, gallery, Heather Kapplow, Ice Drawing, installation, Joan Jonas, Museum of Fine Arts, review, visual art

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