I had a day off and we went en famille to see a piece of experience art. It’s called Silent Fall by A A Muramaki (an art duo).
Art critics hate it because it riffs on an Instagram and what they might view as a surface culture. This misses the point, IMHO, in the same way poetry critics misunderstand Rupi Kaur. Poet Rishi Dastidar talk about this to me in an early podcast.
It’s expensive (£12) for 12 minutes but the work is a small piece of experiential magic. The experience gives you a few minutes in playful relationship with smoke filled bubbles, in a low lit-mirrored room. You can pop the bubbles or dance them on your gloved hands or clothes.
A distant cousin to Yayomi’s mirror rooms. If art can be colour and light, surprise and joy, if it can be suspending your sense of self or the world then this gives it to you. Sure many other experiences can do this too, and it’s not looking at, say, at Willem De Kooning’s $300m Interchange (top 3 most expensive art work in world).
Interchange, de Kooing
I can’t recommend it over a wander round the Tate modern, which I would still view as superior art. But as a gateway drug into thinking about what art might be, and as a few minutes where a child can play with a smoke filled bubble in surprise and joy, I’d suggest to try it out.