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As seen in issue 51 of Closer Magazine, published on 2008-03-08 in the "LocalArt" section.
Wonders of Wynwood
The Margulies Collection’s modern bounty
By: JULIE KAY
Can I state the obvious and say how lucky we are to have Martin Margulies in our midst--a world class art collector who opens his amazing collection to the public free of charge?
Yet many of us, particularly in Broward and Palm Beach, don’t even know the collection exists. I didn’t, until last year, and I’ve lived in Hollywood since 1991.
The collection is comparable to that of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but low-key and personal, set in a former DEA warehouse in a dicey, weed-infested area of Wynwood--the last place you’d expect to see internationally recognized art.
Nothing is behind glass here, nothing is roped off, and no guards wander around telling you can’t take photos. In fact, you can touch most of the art, adding another dimension to the experience.
The works on display through April 26 are billed as sculpture--and there is plenty of modern sculpture--but there is also film, neon light art, video art and installation.
Two pieces by pop sculptor George Segal--Three People on Four Benches and Subway--are incredibly lifelike and ghostly. The all-white figures are realistic down to the folds in the dresses, individual hairs, and toes sticking out of sandals—an effect the late Segal attained by taking plaster molds of models and then keeping the “shell.”
Pop fans will immediately recognize Andy Warhol’s 1970 work Brillo Boxes, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1977 gold-and-black Picture & Pitcher and a 1977 fluorescent light sculpture by Dan Flavin. All are grouped together in the far left side of the collection on the first floor.
Ever wonder where superheros go to retire? In the show’s unquestionable pièce de résistance, L’Hospice, French artist Gilles Barbier imagines them in a nursing home.
The life-size superheroes are hanging out in front of a tv--Superman with his walker and white toupee, a sagging Wonder Woman with long gray hair standing beside Captain America on a gurney and hooked up to an IV, and an out-of-shape Batwoman collapsed in an armchair wearing fuzzy slippers. The figures are lifelike down to the age spots on the hands, the bushy eyebrows and the bifocals.
What is Barbier trying to say? That age gets everyone eventually, even the most powerful among us? That no one is immune from the long arm of the Grim Reaper? The work is a jaw-dropper.
A similar piece is Circle of Trust, by Dutch artist Folkert De Jong, in which a macabre family of life-size clowns huddle around a fire in an oil drum. The sculptures are made, unconventionally, from industrial insulation materials --Styrofoam and polyurethane foam, painted pink and baby blue.
The sprawled and kneeling homeless man in Respect!, by German artist Roth Stauffenberg, also emphasizes realism. This one is realistic down to the sound effects (breathing? burping? snoring?) and the street person attire--sweatshirt, tattered sneakers and work pants. So lifelike, some people will wonder how this guy got in here.
A different sort of illusion is created by Chul Hyun Ahn’s The Well. The Baltimore sculptor manipulates fluorescent lights and mirrors inside hand-built wooden boxes to create optical structures that seem to occupy an infinite amount of space. Ahn’s interest is Buddhist theories of infinity and historical concepts of space. But the bottom line is: “How did he do that?”
Beyond sculpture, the collection includes Doug Aitken’s riveting video, Sleepwalkers, which follows actor Donald Sutherland, recent Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton, and three other actors through an endlessly boring, sterile, New York City workday.
Aitken--who calls the project “a silent film for the 21st century” or an “urban ballet”--doesn’t let dialogue or the actors’ faces give away any plot, forcing viewers to create their own narratives. The work was projected on the buildings of Manhattan last year, visible from various parts of the midtown area for 28 straight days.
A small outdoor exhibit on the Margulies Warehouse roof features Your Now is My Surrounding, the first full-scale project created in the United States by Olafur Eliasson. The prominent Danish/Icelandic artist is known for large-scale, site-specific installations that use light, mirrors and windows to immerse viewers in optical illusion, like walk-in kaleidoscopes.
First famous for 2003’s The Weather Project--a gigantic artificial sun installed in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern--Eliasson says he is examining the intersection of nature and science and exploring the boundary between the organic and the artificial. His installations are created on sky bridges, walk-through tunnels and atriums.
The Margulies Collection is open from 11 to 4 Wednesday through Saturday. For more information, call 305-576-1051 or visit
www.margulieswarehouse.com.
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