MoMA Print/Out

I was unable to make the trip to the Museum of the Moving image, and so went to the Museum of Modern Art instead.  I visited the special exhibition Print/Out, which gathered together hundreds of digital and screen prints, text based posters, and other graphic art pieces from dozens of artists.  The first piece that caught my eye as I entered the exhibit was a series of prints by Martin Kippenberger.  They were large scale copies of photographs that depicted sculptures made out of destroyed paintings.  The artist described this as appropriation of appropriation and a sort of “double kitsch.”  In another area, an interactive installation had been set up.  Museum visitors photocopied images of lamps onto semi-transparent paper and affixed them to cube shaped wooden frames with light sourced inside them to create real lamps.  One room featured several large posters printed with phosphorescent ink.  The lights would alternate switching on and off every 60 seconds, the darkness making the barely visible ink glow brightly and reveal the images and text.   The exhibit included many examples of works utilizing layout design elements such as grids, proximity, and alignment, many of which were text based and made use of a great variety of fonts to differing effect.  Some pieces juxtaposed many font styles and sizes to evoke emotion or feeling, or simply to highlight the interaction of the text.  The best piece by far, however, was one by Rirkrit Tiravanija.  It was a timeline of his life and work over several years, depicted with a huge variety of different print and text techniques in a giant scrolling piece covering an entire wall.