Chanel Mobile Art

Due to my current West Nile/Oxford flu/bitch of a cold, I haven't made it to the Chanel Mobile Art exhibit in Central Park yet. Luckily a good friend of mine works at an art museum and sent me her  critique.

I just got back. It was entertaining but overall disappointing. The works themselves were not the strongest examples from these artists, and it was evident that this was an assemblage of commissioned -- not curated -- artwork designed to highlight it's architectural home ("how would the Araki video look over the sofa?"). The structure is classic Hadid and looks fantastic in that surrounding, but the viewer is really forced to interface with it as a "mobile art containter," not an artwork in its own right.

The highly controlled experience of being told how long you can interact with each space or artwork and when you have to keep moving (by an mp3 player you're forced to listen to) breeds resentment towards the project very quickly. At the end, you are told you must write down a wish and attach it to Yoko Ono's wish tree. Even though I've found this a moving piece in the past, I seized upon my one opportunity to rebel and refused to write anything down...I kept wondering if the guards, in Chanel windbreakers, were going to throw a dustbag over my head and throw me out the backdoor...