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| "Airship Orchestra," by ENESS |
If you want relief from the growing national crisis — and at this point, who doesn't? — the Balloon Museum, which opened last Thursday at the Fields Studios, 2828 N. Pulaski Road, offers escape for an hour or two to a place where inflation is a good thing, and denizens are puffed up only with air, not ego and malice.
"EmotionAir: Art You Can Feel" is less museum, more sprawling play zone along the lines of Meow Wolf, the "artertainment" immersive experiences out West whose purpose is to give visitors something big, colorful and unusual to pose in front of on Instagram.
Workers were busily tacking down carpets when I got a sneak peek last Wednesday, which might have detracted from the overall effect. Though I also didn't have to pony up $39.83, the weekday toll for teens and seniors (more for adults, and more on the weekend) which no doubt honed my sense of childish wonder. Kids under 3 are free.
I admired the colorful benignity of ENESS' "Airship Orchestra," the first of 18 tableaus — artworks if you're feeling generous — 16 stolid, striped, violet and blue squashlike balloons, some with bunny ears, all with eyes, to get visitors off on a cheery, anthropomorphic foot.
Then came large grey cylinders that slowly collapse — rather like our democratic norms — and reinflate, a hopeful touch. Leading into "ADA," by Karina Smigla-Bobinski, a white room with an enormous clear helium-filled balloon, studded with charcoal sticks like a sea mine, a "self-forming artwork" that will cover the walls with black streaks by the time the show ends April 6. It did make me think of an actual artist: Iceland's Olafur Eliasson, who had a diverting show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2009.
The enormous ball pit is clearly a highlight, though concern that I not lose my phone in the thing squelched whatever gleeful abandon one is supposed to experience. Here being ahead of the crowd helped. One visitor during the Balloon Museum's New York run reported the wait to get into the pit "felt like forever."
"Invisible Ballet," a storm of silver balloons, is disorienting fun. I felt compelled to take a video and toss it onto social media, where the first response taught me a new term, "timeline cleanse," meaning something that isn't an Edvard Munch scream of shock at the latest offense against social decency.
Next came Momoyo Torimitsu's "Somehow, I Don't Feel Comfortable," the one display that — in my opinion — rose to the level of actual art. Truly, you could cart it over to the MCA and it would fit right in.
A trio of enormous inflatable pink rabbits, crammed against a too low ceiling, "Somehow..." is a comment on kawaii, the culture of cuteness that has gripped Japan for the past half century. Kawaii sells $4 billion a year worth of Hello Kitty stickers and backpacks. But it is also the happy face on a straitjacket of enforced helplessness and passivity, an attractive trap of being "something innocent, pure and small that should be protected" that many women spend their lives trying to escape.
The enormous ball pit is clearly a highlight, though concern that I not lose my phone in the thing squelched whatever gleeful abandon one is supposed to experience. Here being ahead of the crowd helped. One visitor during the Balloon Museum's New York run reported the wait to get into the pit "felt like forever."
"Invisible Ballet," a storm of silver balloons, is disorienting fun. I felt compelled to take a video and toss it onto social media, where the first response taught me a new term, "timeline cleanse," meaning something that isn't an Edvard Munch scream of shock at the latest offense against social decency.
Next came Momoyo Torimitsu's "Somehow, I Don't Feel Comfortable," the one display that — in my opinion — rose to the level of actual art. Truly, you could cart it over to the MCA and it would fit right in.
A trio of enormous inflatable pink rabbits, crammed against a too low ceiling, "Somehow..." is a comment on kawaii, the culture of cuteness that has gripped Japan for the past half century. Kawaii sells $4 billion a year worth of Hello Kitty stickers and backpacks. But it is also the happy face on a straitjacket of enforced helplessness and passivity, an attractive trap of being "something innocent, pure and small that should be protected" that many women spend their lives trying to escape.
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| "Somehow, I Don't Feel Comfortable," by Momoyo Torimitsu |
Sounds overpriced and doubt many could afford that. Better to spend it on a larger museum.
ReplyDelete$40 is way too high, a ripoff!
DeleteJust clicked on your vid of the invisible balloon. I'd need a dramamine pill for that.
ReplyDeleteBased on its location in an up and coming soon to be trendy neighborhood I would say you're on the mark with ( B) High.
ReplyDeleteI understand your take on what does and doesn't qualify as art, but as soon as I get back from my trip to silver City New Mexico I am headed to see Yoko Ono at the MCA. Seems like I'm headed there on my own because I can't find anybody who has any interest in going with me maybe it's me but I think it's Yoko
Wow...if Diversey and Pulaski is an up-and-coming, soon-to-be trendy neighborhood, then I really have been away from Chicago for a long time. A third of a century, to be exact. Thirty-three years. That neighborhood was so featureless and characterless over the decades that I don't even think it had a name.
DeleteWould go with (C)...something to do on a date. But forking over a Benjamin for a fairly brief encounter with artistic whimsy sounds like a raw deal.
Is this place part of a chain, Mister S? Asking this only because Cleveland has had a chain museum downtown since last year. It's called the Museum of Illusions, and there are about fifty of them scattered around the world. It specializes in optical illusions, immersive art installations, and interactive exhibits that challenge your perception. What you see there can often trick your mind.
The immersive nature of the exhibits provides a golden opportunity for photographs and capturing the moment with a selfie, if that's your thing. There are illusion rooms that manipulate perspective and give the senses a twist.
Best of all, a couple only has to pony up half-a-Benjamin.
For maybe an hour's fun. Might have felt longer if we had been high.
Not a chain — though there seem to be several Balloon Museums going on at the same time around the world — so much as a trend. The Museum of Illusions is, I gather, a similar thing, as is Meow Wolf.
DeleteNew York prices should stay in New York!
ReplyDeletetate