Uncanny architectural elements framing changing tableaux and films of street- level views of clusters of cardboard boxes make up Grenier’s investigation into the sometime incompatibility of art and architecture. The work concerns the fact that the vast majority of art produced over the centuries is stored or displayed within works of architecture that impose largely unrelated issues of context, site and presentation. Grenier observes, “The indeterminacy of art is uncomfortably archived, if not impounded, in a built environment.” His point of view concerns primarily constraints placed upon the artist. While New York’s Museum of Modern Art is the only structure scrutinized here, the questions raised can be applied to other architectural encounters.

Grenier was inspired in part by French cultural theorist Georges Bataille’s writings concerning the metaphoric displacement of social institutions onto architecture — the Pentagon standing for military might, MoMA the modernist art canon, e.g.— as well as the Museum’s recent homelessness. Featured is a scale model of the façade made of cardboard through whose windows can be seen fifteen dioramas based on institutional anecdotes — some rooted in reality, others myth. Scenes range from the 1935 display of Van Gogh’s severed ear — a hoax that drew hordes of visitors — to the brazen daytime theft of Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel” in 1995. Also on view are a recreation of a section of the most recent installation of the permanent collection and three 8mm films that reference the idiosyncratic classification system used by MoMA’s first director, Alfred H. Barr, to understand what he felt were the major influences and precursors of the Modernist movement.

Grenier’s juxtaposition of stories — folklore and fact — with Barr’s attempt to codify the unclassifiable implies that the Museum’s communal purpose and social effects are both subtle and fascinating.

For more information, please contact Tia Shin at info@silonyc.com or (212) 505-9156.