Art I'm Seeing #41

At one point in the morning I trotted over to the Hirschhorn Museum. Haven't been there in a long time. And it's frankly a lousy time to visit there. Much of their gallery space is closed for renovation or transition of exhibitions. The only way to access the lobby from the first floor was to take the elevator. With their escalators such a prominent architectural feature, who even knew that they had an elevator? And for the record, it would take more saliva to cover the average postage stamp from 1990 than the floor surface of the Hirschhorn's public elevator.

And yet, there was one little shining star. The exhibition of artist John Gerrard entitled "Directions" was a powerful burst of light. The Irish born artist does this really amazing thing with photographs and video described here from the Hirschhorn website: "...[his videos] present actual scenes from desolate corners of the American landscape and unfold in real time so that patient viewers can experience the progression of the day from morning to night in each setting; however, what looks like a live shot is, in fact, a manipulated, fabricated image. Gerrard photographed every site from 360 degrees and then animated the stills into seamless cinematic panning shots." The final effect is simply mesmerizing, beautiful, and transcendent--and these are my words.