For some reason, the SFMoMa has paid all this advertising for the Lee Friedlander show across town. But it's kind of like saying the special on the menu for the evening is a bland hamburger, the kind of lunch you get for punishment on Hell's Kitchen for losing a round, when there is a beautifully complex frozen foie gras cured with sake, freshly caught sashimi and delicately robust arugula salad also on the menu in small print. The tightly curated and more individual pieces at the SFMoMa are simply wonderful. They are enjoyable in a sense that they make you feel like a kid on an art playground with friends and everyday objects transformed into something greater but not in a big showy way. In "Cut", curated by Henry Urbach, their new Architecture and Design Curator who also commissioned the visionary frozen BMW by Olafur Eliasson, Peter Wegner delivers two great installations: his photographs of upside down skylines which make you turn your head slightly and his sublime color piece of papers stacked on their side creating an industrial sunset. A Gordon Matta-Clark hallway shows his "Splitting" video documenting the physicality of sawing light through a house and slanting its foundation. Upstairs "wonderful" continues to describe the Joan Jonas video where you are transported to a playing field with her friends in the cold enacting games which could be warm up excercises for a Fellini film. Bundled up, they roll past the camera performing cartwheels, strike wooden blocks above their heads to make plonky sounds, follow chalk lines that lend structure to their movements, and have multiple conversations painting an audio depth of field for the camera. But perhaps the well-known name of Friedlander is a tool to bring in the masses and hopefully they will be lured into one of these other great pieces. Or, like the Guston exhibition that showed simultaneously with their well publicized Manet show years ago, perhaps the hardcore art fan can rest assuredly enjoy his or her trip in peace, while the general public cues up outside the museum in droves for what they have been told is important by textbooks. Afterall, their ticket stubs do help pay for these other shows, and illustrate how marketing can be successful. I guess... but maybe you decide.
