it's in the details.

The Christo installation "The Gates" opened on Saturday in Central Park, NYC. Though there was a sudden flash of press leading up to it - and most everyone I knew was trekking up to the park to see it for themselves - there has been little to nothing on the news since the work was unveiled. Perhaps it is because essentially, it is mediocre. I adore Christo's wrapped everything, but this is mundane + un-clever. For $20 million dollars, I'd like just a touch of clever. Or appealing. or something. And I had a thought that it might be something as stupid as a poor choice of materials. See pix:




The drawings are quite beautiful. The fabric is a more golden orange color that the sun can shine through, more transparent. And the doorway that holds it up is in a darker color so that the golden orange color is more visable than the entire structure. The color glows against the skyline and has a luminescence to it. In the final photos of the realized installation, it is classic safety orange - a heavy ripstop industrial fabric that doesn't flow well in the wind and light cannot get through. For some reason it now looks cheap, machine made, plastic. If his [their] intention was to add a plastiche to the park, then it was achieved. But nothing like that is in any of the writings of what the piece is supposed to do.... it just looks like something synthetic that is disordered as there are so many pathways that it covers, that at most junctures all you see is a mess of crappy orange. It isn't clever - or attractive - or makes any kind of statement worthy of all that money. Just glad none of it came from my tax dollars. I'd like to reserve mine for when he wraps something up again.

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