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 Modern Art, and that room is one to which I have repeatedly returned. This time it had been renovated and expanded, and seemed cleaner and grander than before—as much as a basement room can seem grand. There was something in the refurbished space of an excavation. Even more fitting that it be used to present the sculptures of Lionel Maunz, which, cast from steel and bronze, presented oblique and vaguely menacing forms.

Looking back upon an art work in exhibition is one thing, but I would be critically remiss if I did not attempt to educate myself in the process. So I have, as they saying goes, done my research. Maunz has been aggressively interviewed about his work, probably because writers and even editors may have felt nothing would speak for it as eloquently as the artist’s own words. While reducing obliqueness, this approach further mythologizes the oeuvre of Lionel Maunz by reducing his critical context to a series of interrogations instead of copious expository renderings on the subject of his art and its building legacy. What awaits are those important chances to display the work in a larger scale or in a more widely exposed context.


Fertilize My Mouth, 2015 [Cast iron, concrete, and steel; 30 x 36 x 128 inches]


I Need Love, 2015 [Cast iron and concrete; 56 x 40 x 40 inches]