Walk down the street anywhere in New YorkCity with your purse or backpack even a little unzipped and

Walk down the street anywhere in New YorkCity with your purse or backpack even a little unzipped and it won’t take longbefore a stranger’s voice will sound behind you. “Excuse me,” the voice willsay quietly, and if you’ve been here a while, you’ll probably ignore it. Thestranger, not expecting you to turn around, will continue, insistent: “Yourbag’s open.” This small way that New Yorkers look out for each other while alsohinting at potential danger has always charmed and perplexed me. Apparently theartist Nobutaka Aozaki feels some kind of way about this too, as shown by his2013 work Open Bag. For this piece, Aozaki walksaround the city with his backpack open; inside, a voice recorder capturespeople issuing the same warning. A recording of those voices is then placedinside the backpack and played back as he again strolls the streets of NewYork. Gentle humor and interaction with strangers characterize much of Aozaki’swork, such as From Here to There, which I first sawhere at the Brooklyn Museum during our Crossing Brooklyn exhibition.Dressed as a tourist, Aozaki asked strangers to draw directions to the BrooklynMuseum. These scraps of paper in delicate shades of white, tan, andyellow, pinned in clusters on the wall, look from a distance like abstractpainting—Agnes Martin comes to mind. At the intersection of Aozaki’s interestin bags and abstraction is my personal favorite of his works, Chips Paintings, in which he paintsover the text on unopened potato chip bags with colors carefully mixed to matchthe text’s background. The result is a series of tiny, beautiful paintingsrepresenting the only bags of chips on earth that I wouldn’t bust open andimmediately devour in one sitting. I do respect art, even if I don’t respectmyself.In the Museum, there are more traces ofAozaki’s fascination with bags—in our office, staff portraits in permanentmarker on shopping bags hang on the wall, a reminder of the time Aozakiactivated his ongoing participatory art project, Smiley Bag Portrait, here at themuseum. This Sunday, April 12th, we have the privilege of hostingAozaki one again, this time as a visiting artist for Arty Facts, a drop-inprogram for children from 4 to 7 years old. With Aozaki’s playful and subtleapproach to art-making, and his ability to turn everyday objects magical, Ihave no doubt that the program will be fun and inspiring for the whole family.To get the full details on about Arty Facts, visit our website.Posted by Sam Kelly -- source link

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