Blind spots

I told you about the Vija Celmins exhibition I saw at the Met Breuer with my mathematician friend J yesterday: an education in really seeing. Above is "Reverse Night Sky #4" (2015-17), which makes the aspiration to take verisimilitude beyond verisimilitude clear - we never see the sky in negative. Or the ocean without movement as in "Ocean," 1973, below.

But I didn't mention that we saw another exhibition, too, "Home is a Foreign Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context," and not because it wasn't satisfying - it was altogether fantastic, brilliant work from every part of the world. I hesitated to mention it because, as we went through it, I kept saying "I've seen this one before" and even "I've seen this before here at the Breuer," before finally realizing that I must have seen this very exhibition! Funny, until it isn't. I still don't really remember the experience of being there. I recall racing through some shows here before I left the City for the summer, but am mortified that I seem to have seen so little. Pardon the lilt of my walk and Blogger's lo-res and and look with me again at Elias Sime's Tightrope (2009-14), Kazuo Miyamoto's Untitled (1977), Anwar Jalal Shemza's Love Letter I (1969.)