Dead or Alive

This afternoon I went to The Museum of Arts and Design at Columbus Circle to see the Dead or Alive exhibit.

This fabulous group show features art made from previously live materials. Feathers, bones, insects, etc.

Each work was intriguing, evocative of pagan spiritual practices, witchcraft (yeah, it was a little on the Blair Witch side), and nineteenth century cabinets of curiosity.

Some of my favorites included Ango Design/Angus Hutcheson's Eight Thousand Miles of Home, a suspended sculpture made of tons of silkworm cocoons; Tessa Farmer's Marauding Hordes, also suspended, like a creepy mobile, mummified insects, bats, etc; Tracy Heneberger's Moon, a shiny disc made of shellacked sardines; Fragile Future 3 by Studio DRIFT:Lonneke Gordijn/Raph Nauta, a sculpture made from illuminated dandelion seeds; Tim Tate & Marc Petrovic's clever Apothecarium Moderne, depicting aspects of contemporary life through odd objects placed in apothecary jars; Helen Altman's complexly textured installation, Spice Skulls -- a grid of skulls each made with a specific spice or dried ingredient, such as cedar berry, coconut, and artichoke leaves.

My absolute favorite, however, was Jennifer Angus' Victorian Fancy, a large, box, decorated with Victorian style wall paper, with inked images of insects superimposed; magnifying windows are placed on each wall of the box, and when you look inside you see a delightfully creepy little world, covered in pretty wall paper, but with actual beetles and bugs forming shapes and formations. In the center is a dollhouse, also decorated with insects. It was truly lovely and enchanting.

I was less taken with a life size, ride-able motorcycle made in part from cow bones (and looking like skeleton on wheels), Damien Hirst's butterfly wing piece, Prophecy; or a three-walled room covered in rooster feathers.