Contemporary art, also labelled as modern art in a derogatory tone by traditionalist art critics, has been seen as a new wave of the 21st Century in terms of art movements. However, despite being bizarre and unique to the casual viewer, the art world has been years ahead of this type of style, as evident by the Bruce Nauman’s Disappearing Acts exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA for short. One out of many of the artform found within this massive exhibit was what normal people could have perceive it as bad construction in a certain context outside of the museum.
The stereotype that people see within the narrow sight in the realm of modern art is a white, blank canvas untouched yet somehow sells for millions compared to even mediocre pieces of art made by normal people via sketched. Despite how close-minded this type of art critic is, they aren’t wrong when they react in such a negative way. This was how I reacted for a split second to “Corridor Installation”, which was made in 1970 . Since I was in a museum, I knew it was a piece of art, but if I didn’t recognize the context surrounding this unusual spectacle, I would suspect a mistake or two in many walls. I even tried to go through the narrowest gap between these plain, white walls when all of a sudden, a security guard warned me not to travel through these walls.
Aspects of this piece of art that would catch the attention of a museum visitor would be the uneven ratios of space that the walls between each other occupy. My first reaction is disorientation as many people enjoy the symmetry in everything they see despite not being OCD. However, it transitioned from disorientation to comfortability as I recognized that the artist’s goal was to disorient with modern art, changing what I saw as a mistake as an intentional attention grabber. Another aspect that intrigued me was the lighting between these asymmetric walls. I spotted that the most narrow gaps between a certain set of walls was darker in terms of lighting compared to the open spaces, which had brighter lighting. This contrast and analogy to light and dark to claustrophobic and wide makeshift hallways made by these walls could be characterized as the message of this whole piece, whether narrowness can be compared to a limit of choices of life, a dark saga in one’s life, and etc.