The language of the sound structures of our understanding of the world: a “composition” is both a piece of music and the composition of a whole; The unique contribution to a text or illustrations is their “voice”. For decades now, the artist from New York, born in Ohio, Jennie C. Jones, has translated between music and the physical world in paintings, sculptures, installation and sound works, responding to the inheritances of minimalism, modernism and the black avant-garde. “Together”, which opens today on April 15, on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, extends this survey through a specific installation of the site of three sculptural forms and a floor piece. Seeing until October 19, it is the final commission of the museum in space before it undergoes renovations to create its Oscar L. Tang and HM Agnes HSU-TANG for contemporary art, scheduled for 2030.
The installation is made up of aluminum and concrete shapes coated with deep and red and red red powder, especially those found in the vast collection of the MET. A squat and inclined sculpture is based on a zither; A large and thin piece is based on the Wind; and tripartite work with twin vertical pieces and a long horizontal section recalls a rope. These are partially circumscribed by a piece of ground which gradually thickens two points along the edges of the balcony towards their intersection.
“Jones' fidelity to abstraction invites its viewers to pay attention to the quietest ways where deep meanings reside,” said David Breslin, curator of modern and contemporary art, in a press release.
As the above paragraph could suggest, these works are difficult to describe. They are undoubtedly surprising, changing considerably from different angles: the sculpture which echoes a link, for example, appears as a large rectangle which resembles a flattened bench on its side from a point of view, and as a vertical shape barely with slots that you can see directly through another. They play tips in perspective: half of the twin pieces of the work inspired by a rope tilting behind the other and also shrinks from the base to the top, creating the illusion of a more dramatic depth. They are set up with the care of a Stradivarius violin (or, for a more local example, a Steinway & Sons piano), with subtle details such as a small lip where two forms meet – but do not fear their manufacture, with rivets visible in certain places. The three sculptures are confronted in the center of the play of bright red floor similar to a driver, who seems to organize not only works of art but also people.
“Together” also borrows the vernacular language of the museum. The concrete blocks recall the travertine stone found in the large room of the museum, and the strings suggest the stands that distance visitors from the works, transforming the museum itself into a sort of instrument. But they also talk about the larger environment in the city and the period of the year. Their angular forms, for example, recall the horizon behind them, and their industrial colors invoke both municipal aesthetics and art history.
“Red is called pure red '', that we are joking should be called” public art red “because it looks like a calder or picasso or a great red public art,” said Jones Hyperalgic. “I was interested in using a color that would change throughout the day and throughout the season.”
While “ensemble” occupies the roof of the MET across the fall, repeated visitors can connect as the sculpture changes its tone throughout the months.
