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Marina Abramovich's show at MoMA is the most incalculably imposing art exhibition you're likely to see anywhere. The performance artist presents herself in the gallery's atrium, staring down anyone game enough to sit opposite. The challenger can sit for as long as they're able, all day if they can, while hopefuls sit waiting in the wings for the chance to continue their predecessor's stare.

The concept is simple. Two people, two chairs, separated by a table. No communication passing between them other than that contained in a gaze. Weird? Certainly. Interesting? Most definitely.

The piece, in which Marina Abramovich takes part all day, every day, for 3 months, is a placid opening to one of the most provocative installations ever to grace the MoMA environs. In the adjacent rooms, live models stand in doorways less than a foot apart, subjecting their naked selves to the invited and uninvited contact of passers-by; a woman lies naked with a skeleton lain against her torso; another is poised on a bicycle seat suspended from the side of a wall, arms extended, naked and somehow militant; more young females sit back to back tied together by their ponytails; and another couple stands, staring into each other eyes, connected only by pointed fingers. All he while, videos of a younger Marina show the provocateur repetitively walking into walls, crashing into her former performance partner, screaming until her voice gives out, and flailing herself to the point of absolute exhaustion.

While many of the early works were designed to bring attention to a litany of causes - the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church, communism vs. socialism, the massacres in Albania, Bosnia and elsewhere - others seem to exist just to sustain their own merit, and the artist's merits as the most interesting, and institution-backed, performance artist, in the world today (Vegas not included). Abramovich is not a stuntperson, nor a magician, she simply uses herself, her body, and now the bodies of her team, to enact her art pieces.

Somehow, the show that started as curious, transforms first to traumatic and becomes, by its end, an absolute triumph. No matter how I dissect the work, the fact remains that I just cannot stop questioning its impact, cannot stop obsessing about its purpose, cannot stop staring at it in my mind's eye. 



All photos (c) Elliot V. Kotek, 2010