Modern Art Exhibit

When I first entered the exhibit, I was actually pretty surprised at how vacant the museum seemed to be. There was just one huge open room near the entrance and a few pieces of art on the surrounding walls. This took me as a shock because previous art museums I have gone to have had a ton of art amongst the entire facility, while this one did not. Yet, my faith was briefly renewed when I heard that there was a lower level to the art museum. I say briefly because the lower level had just as few pieces on display. Even though there were few pieces, however, the majority of the pieces of art that were presented were very intriguing based on their originality. The exhibit truly did feel "modern".

The piece of art that I chose to examine in-depth was Jorge Mendez Blake's Hotel Monturiol (2011-2012). The entire piece consisted of 2 piezographies (with colored pencil), 6 piezographies, 1 collage on paper, 3 colored pencil on paper, and a bronze sculpture. Dimensions vary. The piece was created in 1974 in Mexico. Where in Mexico is unknown. Of this entire piece, one of the main pieces I examined was the second piece of the details of the hotel's interior. The original piece can be found here, and this is my poor attempt at sketching it:

 

This specific piece displays an entirely vacant room in what is supposed to be the 'Monturiol Hotel'. The room is extremely dark, but there appears to be two small skylights that are allowing a small amount of light in. The entire room is made out of marble, and thus, reflections are abounding on all of the walls. I think this piece could be argued to represent the concept of life itself. Our lives can be hard and there are several moments of adversity that we face throughout our lifespan, but there are also these 'bright' moments in our life that shed light on us and make it worth living. This is conveyed through this picture because of how dark it appears the room is initially; however, the small amounts of light seem to really brighten up the room entirely. The use of marble material as a means for reflection could be used to convey the fact that we reflect upon on lives by looking at these bright moments in them. In this piece, if there was no light shedding through the skylight, there would be no reflections either. For the most part, we like to reflect and look upon the good moments in life, rather than the 'dark' or bad ones.

As stated above, I believe that the purpose of this specific piece from Blake's Hotel Monturiol is to represent life itself. Now of course, not everyone agree that this is the pieces purpose, but it is how I view it. I don't think it works to persuade anyone to think religiously or politically, or is directed toward a popular appeal because of how bland the piece really is. The blandness of the piece just being a picture of an empty room with some light allows for the audience to interpret it so vastly that there is no concise common purpose. Looking at this piece the way I did actually made me re-look at my perception of life. The bright moments in our lives can be the moments that make our lives. These moment overpower dark times we experience, and that in itself, is the beauty of life.