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Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist's
Eye, Kari Dahlgren, Kamilah Foreman, Tricia
Van Eck, editors.
Taking aim at tourism, the largest
industry in the world, curator Francesco Bonami compiled
a diverse range of artwork for the Universal Experience
exhibition at Chicago's Museum
of Contemporary Art. Filling the whole museum and its
exterior, obvious pieces like Andy Warhol's Empire
and Double Mona Lisa are present alongside lesser
known works artists Zhan Wang, Thomas Hirschhorn, and others.
Photography, film and sculpture dominate; the first two
are appropriate for tourism's exposure to "the other"
and its transient nature, while the latter allows the galleries
to become immersive, abstractions of what the first two
try to represent. The companion book to the exhibition breaks
down travel to ten chaptered themes, like "Reflections
in the Tourist's Eye" and "The World for a Buck."
Texts excerpted from various books and articles alongside
exhibition images help to explicate these categories, non-existent
in the exhibition but, for some reason, seen as necessary
for the book. The companion's small format (6x9"),
its content, and its layout make for a pleasing alternative
to large-format exhibition catalogues that tend to have
a series of plates with the artwork, an introduction and
perhaps the occasional essay.
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