2015: Lionel Maunz at MoMA PS1
Parasite, 2015 / Cast iron and concrete, 63 x 18 x 28 inches The recollection of a work of art is possessed of intense energies, and can continue to communicate us well after the moment has passed. It is important because it sets one event apart from all others. The realization attendant to the warmth of aesthetic beauty or the shock of the sublime are each a way by which we commune with something far deeper than everyday life. I had a moment like this in 2015 while attending “Greater New York” at PS1 MoMA in Long Island City. Three sculptures by the New York artist Lionel Maunz, whose work I had never seen before, or since, though he has now landed within my radar. What I witnessed in the three works that comprised his section of that exhibition, located in a room that carries with it intimations of being the belly of the beast, the boiler room of the original public school in which PS1 was instituted. My history with PS1 goes back to well before it became part of The Museum of Mode...