This exhibition presents a series of discrete installations by Aernout Mik (Dutch, b. 1962), placed in both non-gallery and gallery spaces throughout the Museum. Mik—whose work encompasses motion picture, sculpture, architecture, performance, and social commentary—interrogates the nature of reality and subverts the traditional relationship between viewer and viewed. The exhibition includes eight time-based works, including Mik’s earliest 16mm film Fluff (1996), shown on television monitors in several locations. A newly commissioned two-screen work is projected in the corridor facing the second-floor Special Exhibition Galleries, where the six-screen Vacuum Room (2005) and the single-screen Training Ground (2006) are also on view. Raw Footage (2006), Mik’s only piece edited from actual newsreel documents, hangs in the Theater 1 Gallery, while the widescreen Osmosis (2005) floats inside the Museum’s main lobby near the Fifty-fourth Street entrance. The single-screen floor piece Middlemen (2001) greets visitors in the main lobby near the Fifty-third Street entrance.
Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film.
