cross pollinating catalysts in contemporary art

Tech tools and modern mobility connect and expand individuals outside ourselves and our lives in just about every imaginable aspect, immediately and increasingly.

Agnieszka Kurant, The End of Signature, 2015

As social media brings the virtual online world in touch and interactive for us all, so too does storytelling weave itself into contemporary art. 

At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in New York City, on exhibit now until September 9 are over 100 works in diverse mediums by 48 international artists from its contemporary collection.

Installation View: Writing on the Wall

Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim explores mediums and methods current art and artists are harnessing to tell their stories and expand on conventional narrative devices such as plot, character and setting. Much of these pieces are on view for the first time. 

The show is enhanced by the contributions of renowned novelists andpoets, who were invited to reflect on individual artworks as points of departure for their own creative work. 

Accompanied by gallery readings, screenings, and performances, including an all-night dance party, Storylines is on view in the rotunda from June 5 to September 9, 2015.

In the 90s, a new generation of artists opted out of the deconstruction of representation, embracing instead more intimate, open-ended acts of storytelling - weaving in their own accounts of beliefs, race, gender, and sexuality. 

Haegue Yang Series of Vulnerable Arrangements - Voice and Wind 2009

Embedding their stories in abstract contexts, symbols and forms, this new born art minutely and infinitely exploited and expounded a variety of facets within forms. This then were often multiplied and set loose on platforms encouraging input and interaction from viewers. 

Where art was an individual and introspective experience in the past, contemporary art is inclusive and interactive - exploding out into a social and communal world, connecting and engaging art between artist and audience. 

Natascha Sadr Haghighian's I can't work like this 2007
Read Neil Gaiman's writer response here.

Taking the historical moment of these works as its starting point, Storylines offers an updated view of how the museum’s global collection practices have evolved over the past decade. 

Numerous works acquired through international collaborations, such as the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, demonstrate the ways artists have engaged narrative forms to communicate ideas about identity, history and politics. 

Kevin Killian wrote The Harlequin Tea Set,
reflecting on Fujiwara’s 2011 video installation Rehearsal for a Reunion (with the Father of Pottery)

A number of the works in Storylines were produced as a part of commissioning programs, continuing to build upon the museum’s rich history of catalyzing the creation and exhibition of new work.

Catch this exhibit before it end on September 9. Allow yourselves the opportunity to get caught up in a fine tale. 

Ellie Ga Four Thousand Blocks 2013-2014