Blog post by Kat Souza March 20, 2014
At Mass MoCa, I observed Darren Waterston’s work, a new exhibition taking place until February 1st, 2015. I payed special attention to his piece, Filthy Lucre. This installation piece was incredible, with extravagant detail in every corner of the room. Waterston played off of the famous Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, by James McNiell Whistler in 1876-1877, adding his own character and twist on his interpretation. Waterston clearly imitated Whistler’s work with the elegance of the peacocks, however, he recreated the peacocks to be pulling at the innards of one another’s guts, rather than Whistler’s version where the peacock’s were feathered and proud. This is significant of the era in particular. Whistler kept his work clean and organized, while Waterston emulated corruption and dismay that was based on a piece of tradition where gold and blue colors arose to a higher quality of life. Whistler had a pristine appeal to his work and in Waterston’s version, everything Whistler tried to create was in ruins; ceramics pots were broken, melted, and smashed, leaving shattered pieces on the floor and draped over the broken shelves which they resided upon. I believe Waterston was trying to focus on the deeper meaning of how this was the end of the traditional era that once was. Waterston wanted the night time feel; he was successfully able to capture that with the presence of dim lighting, equipped with the same traditional lighting fixers that hung from the ceiling and eerie, gloomy music to represent the corrupted feel of the room. The representation that Waterston gave made it feel very modernized in a sense, almost giving it the feel of the childhood story, Alice In Wonderland, where everything is tipped upside down or has a skewed perspective, giving life a false sense of reality. With that false sense of reality came decay. Waterston’s installation was incredibly miserable, in a soul sucking kind of way. Misery was upon the traditional take on life.
Please visit: http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=847
“Darren Waterston: Uncertain Beauty.” Mass MoCa. MASSACHUSETTS MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
