Beyond belief: nothing is as it seems in the MSU Broad’s latest exhibition
Installation view of ‘The Transported Man’ at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in Michigan. Courtesy of The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at MSU
‘I needed a new challenge – you have to take risks,’ says Marc-Olivier Wahler of his decision to become director of the five-year-old Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, following stints at Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Swiss Institute in New York. The Swiss-born curator, scholar, and critic makes his debut at the MSU Broad with ‘The Transported Man’, a dazzling opening act of a show that fills the museum’s Zaha Hadid-designed home in East Lansing with the work of 40 artists. True to his word, Wahler observed the opening from a precarious perch: inside the belly of a giant alligator named Freddy.
The enormous reptile shuffles deliberately along the museum’s gleaming blonde-wood floors in Christian Jankowski’s What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (2017), an opening-day performance that lives on in the exhibition as a short video. When a breathless reporter aims his microphone at the creature’s belly to procure an ‘exclusive’ interview with the imperiled director, Wahler calmly explains the theme of the show. ‘When you see an illusion, a trick, you have to believe it’s something magic,’ he says, in a voice muffled slightly by his predicament. ‘But at the same time, you know it’s not. Both are equally important.’
The notion of belief — and just how far it can be stretched — animates and unites the 52 works of the exhibition, on view through 22 October. The title is borrowed from a trick depicted in the 1995 novel The Prestige, Christopher Priest’s tale of dueling magicians in fin-de-siècle London (the exhibition includes a newly discovered George Méliès film from 1904 that chronicles a similar battle of prestidigitators, both played by Méliès himself).
The exhibition examines the power of interpretation and the systems of belief at stake when facing objects. Courtesy of The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at MSU
Alluring illusions float throughout the show, gaining further dimension from an abundance of mirrors, including a looking glass autographed by Marcel Duchamp and Ugo Rondinone’s rainbow wilderness of mirrored windows arrayed on a wall plastered with pages from recent editions of the Detroit Free Press. The disembodied cast hands of Urs Fischer and Jonathan Monk allude to sleight-of-hand finesse; a trio of large weeds that have taken root beneath Hadid’s pleated steel walls reveal themselves to be the painted bronzes of Tony Matelli; and Roman Signer’s wooden Table (2009) hovers several inches above the floor.
‘The idea of levitation carries through this exhibition in different ways,’ says Steven Bridges, assistant curator at MSU Broad. ‘The overall tension of the show is that these encounters between what you see in front of you and what you know is physically possible don’t boil down to singular points. If anything, they expand into greater moments and explorations.’
Which brings us to the (900lb) elephant in the room. Daniel Firman’s Loxodonta (2017) is an extraordinarily realistic simulation of a life-sized elephant hanging — with all of the acrobatic elegance a pachyderm can muster — from the soaring double-height ceiling of the largest ground-floor gallery. Firman has managed to evoke a determined energy in the animal’s splayed limbs; this is a performer, not a corpse. The work, which was completed on site, is also indicative of Wahler’s grand ambitions for the Broad Museum MSU. ‘We’re interested in broadening the conversation around art rather than narrowing it down,’ adds Bridges. ‘There really is the sense that anything is possible.’
Ugo Rodinone’s mirrored glass windows, Clockwork for Oracles, 2008, provide a colourful backdrop.
INFORMATION
‘The Transported Man’ is on view until 22 October. For more information, visit the the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum website
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
ADDRESS
MSU Broad College
632 Bogue Street
East Lansing
-
Alcova 2024 offers up contemporary independent design in historical domestic backdrops
Alcova 2024 moved to Varedo to take over the spaces of Villa Bagatti Valsecchi and Villa Borsani (on view until 21 April)
By Sujata Burman Published
-
Ama Bar, in Vancouver, is sexy and a little disorienting
Ama Bar features ‘Blade Runner 2049’-inspired interiors by &Daughters
By Sofia de la Cruz Published
-
Kembra Pfahler revisits ‘The Manual of Action’ for CIRCA
Artist Kembra Pfahler will lead a series of classes in person and online, with a short film streamed from Piccadilly Circus in London, as well as in Berlin, Milan and Seoul, over three months until 30 June 2024
By Zoe Whitfield Published
-
Peter Blake’s sculptures spark joy at Waddington Custot in London
‘Peter Blake: Sculpture and Other Matters’, at London's Waddington Custot, spans six decades of the artist's career
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Oozing, squidgy, erupting forms come alive at Hayward Gallery
‘When Forms Come Alive: Sixty Years of Restless Sculpture’ at Hayward Gallery, London, is a group show full of twists and turns
By Hannah Silver Published
-
New glass sculpture creates a verdant wonderland at Apple’s Cupertino HQ
‘Mirage’ at Apple Park is the work of Zeller & Moye and artist Katie Paterson, a shimmering array of glass columns that snakes through the grounds of the company’s monumental HQ
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Man Ray’s sculptures go on show in New York
‘Man Ray: Other Objects’ opens at Luxembourg + Co, New York, revealing their author’s ‘artistic revolution’
By Hannah Silver Published
-
The best London art exhibitions to see now
Your guide to the best London art exhibitions, as chosen by the Wallpaper* arts desk
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Erwin Wurm’s pop-coloured fantasy land at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
In Erwin Wurm’s first UK museum show, ‘Trap of the Truth’, the artist transforms Yorkshire Sculpture Park into a slightly warped wonderland (10 June 2023 – 28 April 2024)
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro transforms Fendi’s Rome HQ into a theatre of myth and magic
Fendi’s Roman HQ sets the scene for ‘Il Grande Teatro delle Civiltà’ a major show by Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, who has also created a one-off edition of the house’s iconic Peekaboo bag. Read more in the July 2023 Issue of Wallpaper*, on newsstands 8 June
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Superflex on building an underwater city for fish: ‘there are different rules down there’
Danish art collective Superflex discuss their ambitious Super Reef, an underwater urbanisation project aiming to restore more than 55 square kilometres of stone reef in Danish seas
By Alice Godwin Published