Veggies and Sculptures

Fabulous weather made this weekend a very nice experience! It cooled down a quite a bit which made the city much more bearable. With the sun was out it made for a very nice combination. Perfect, at least for me, to take a stroll over The Union Square Greenmarket, a huge farmers market in the middle of Manhattan, where I got myself some tasty veggies, fruit, and some fresh goat cheese. And as it seems so, I am in perfect company there, given that most New York chefs supposedly hang out there (see Kitchen report 2007, in: TimeOut New York, Issue 620). My veggies made for a lovely and healthy ratatouille - delicious, and maybe a reminder that there is still time to catch one of the few remaining screenings of this most recent Pixar oeuvres of Parisian rat Rémy and its dream to become a famous French chef. Well, while this movie is about to run out here, it seems that Europe is still waiting for its release in fall.

Something else is about to run out: Richard Serra's Sculpture: Forty Years exhibition at the MoMA is about to close (September 10). An exhibition not to miss, given that Californian Serra left one of his sculptures called Intersection on a major public place (Theaterplatz) of my hometown after it was shown during the 1992 exhibition "Transform". It's twin ("Intersection II") can currently be found in MoMA's "Sculpture Garden".

The steel sculpture Intersection represents not only an important example of Serra's work in the 1990's. It also made it on the cover page of the exhibition leaflet. According to MoMA, "the sculptural object is almost entirely supplanted by the experience of traveling through spaces created by enormous plates of steel. (...) Serra tilted four identical conical sections in opposite directions (...). The result is three distinct, contiguous spaces within a single sculpture. Despite the weight of the weatherproof steel used for this work, the sculpture presents a certain buoyancy - the four plates evoke the hull of a ship. the size of the plates (i.e. 3.6 meters high in the case of Intersection) was carefully determined; they are just low enough to allow for the sky or ceiling above to remain visible, and high enough to make a significant impact on the viewer." --- Well, keep this in mind when you - unimpressed - pass by Intersection on Theaterplatz next time and have your dog do wee-wee alongside one of those weatherproof steel giants! And even if you don't, enjoy my impressions of Intersection II as currently shown at MoMA...