Miranda July's latest endeavor, the sculptural installation titled Eleven Heavy Things, is currently on exhibit at Union Square Park.
The multi-talented artist/actress/writer/director displays her usual off-kilter sweetness and sense of humor in both the works themselves and the idea behind them. The sculptures are intended to be posed on, or within, for photographs, and to convey playful (sometimes even naive) textual messages and imagery. The resulting photographs will be taken by and shared with countless acquaintances of the tourists and visitors who pass through the park. The format all but guarantees an audience far more diverse than a typical gallery, museum, or even public art showing; exhibiting an optimistic/populist view of art consumption. It's a view that mirrors a lot of her work.
If you're familiar with any facet of Miranda July's creative output you already know that she's a prolific, bizarre, and singular artist. She's an important voice of a fragmented generation, capable of finding strange beauty in highly unlikely circumstances. Her collection of short stories, "No One Belongs Here More Than You", is the most distilled articulation of her weirdness, inexplicable optimism, and vulnerability.
At the Grocerystowe our first exposure to Ms. July was through the exceptional film "Jesus' Son" (based on the equally exceptional collection of short stories of the same name by Denis Johnson). Ms. July had a small, but memorable role in that film. She went on to write, direct, and star in the quirky and poignant film "You, Me and Everyone We Know".
Sadly, the installation is the final public project to be presented by Deitch Projects.
