Founded in 1996, the MCA Denver was formed to provide the city with its first contemporary art museum. The MCA opened on new ground last year with a phenomenal new building commissioned by British architect, David Adjaye.
Tim Noble & Sue Webster were commissioned to make this beautiful light sculpture of Toxic Schizophrenia. 
St Sebastian will be on view from October 7th through 2009
11 comments:
Why is this called TOXIC SCHIZOPHRENIA ... in what way is the mental illness evoked by this sculpture? And the MCA looks like a standard office building. Very disappointing.
Yogchick, you dont get it!!
Why dont you read about Tim & Sue's work and maybe you'll understand. As far as David Adjaye why dont you do the same!! and name a standard office building that looks like this!!
If you actually visit the site you'll notice David Adjaye's good use of space and light within the exhibition space. This building is also LEED certified.
The Hirst piece you are loaning will be great for the MCA and the Denver scene.
Thanks so much.
Okay, I read about their work and I still don't understand: why is this light sculpture titled TOXIC SCHIZOPHRENIA? Please explain your theory. It's a provocative title, to be sure, but what is behind it?
In Plato’s Republic we are drawn to the image of Man shackled in chains to face the far wall of the dark cavern in which he finds himself imprisoned. Outside, illuminated by vivid flames, phantasmatic creatures carrying sculptures and effigies dance across the cave’s threshold to cast shadows and vague silhouettes onto the back wall. We are enslaved, Plato tells us, to the inferiority of indirect phenomena; only through the play of art and poetry, represented by anecdotal silhouettes and unappreciable casts, can we hope to detect the slightest essence of metaphysical truth; only the enlightening flame of art can save us from the concrete fetters of bland physical matter and base thoughts.
It demands little evidence to realise that Plato’s notoriously literal metaphoric illustration of appearance and essence has scoured its effect upon the collective artistic psyche; causing shadows and lights of all description to flicker and creep inside the cavernous interiors of blacked-out galleries everywhere. Yet Noble and Webster’s contribution to the dubious Platonic light/shadow-genre is enmeshed both in self-doubt and in the cautious irony that self-doubt engenders; since, if they seem to be aiming to incorporate the usual procession of humanist essences that have been so earnestly flogged to death and pimped out as the sincerest of sentiments - of love and death ad infinitum - then the sheer libidinal Wattage of Noble and Webster’s illuminations threaten to solarise the very heart of the Platonic soul, which, in Toxic Schizophrenia (1997), finds itself stabbed and reduced to a vacillating digitised grid of little coloured bulbs that fills and empties itself of blood.
Actually, I was going to say that it appears to be about the expression of human feelings in a hyberbolic, mass consumerist culture.
Cool museum, nice for Denver...
Someone should commission a David Adjaye building for Dallas.
Good job on the MCA loan, its going to be good for Denver.
I ride by the MCA every day on my way to work and I love going by at night when the sculpture is lit up. Very attractive piece.
DALLAS NEEDS SOMETHING LIKE THE MCA DENVER BECAUSE WHAT WE HERE SUCKS
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