Tate Modern

On tuesday I visited the Tate Modern to attend the EY exhibition The World Goes Pop. I went to this particular exhibition with an open mind as this was an attempt to step out of my comfort zone and to see artists works that I had never been aware of before. The aim was to try and understand the works that were on display, some of which I couldn't even after reading the descriptor. However many left me feeling rather disappointed after reading the descriptors. Most dealt with serious issues but seemed rather obvious, lacked thought or were just too abstract to understand, for me anyway. Even the image above is something I found interesting and was what actually enticed me to go in the first place. However seeing this image in person was not as effective or dramatic, the artist used many materials including cut out plastics to create this piece. After a while I found it difficult to get enthusiastic about this exhibition. After seeing such works as Ai WeiWei and the Waterloo Cartoon the art on display felt rather cheap and tacky in comparison. There were two pieces which I did find interesting, the first played on the cold war and showed silhouettes of both leaders on separate canvasses. The other which I did really like for it's dramatic impact was a piece by Rafael Canogar. This work showed the plight of brutality by authority, the person being beaten was sculpted lying on the ground. This sculpture was missing the head and and hand which were displayed on an upright board. The board showed a silhouette of the missing head and hand, also shown was the shadowy figure of brutality administering a beating to the person lying on the ground. By removing the head from the sculpture and the authoritarian figure only being in patchy silhouette the piece then opened up to interpretation. This would allow each person to see this as any person, place, country, regime or time that came to their mind. This was very clever as the characters being faceless allows the viewer to project any face the wish onto the piece. These works were sketched and shown below along with a sketch of the Tate Modern with school children drawing outside.