2016 exhibitions

Richard Nonas: The Man in the Empty Space     
For five decades, artist Richard Nonas has created work whose terse, reduced vocabulary belies its power to fundamentally alter our sense of landscape and architecture. In the artist’s first East Coast museum show in thirty years, The Man in the Empty Space transforms MASS MoCA’s largest gallery with a monumental sculptural installation featuring existing works and a new site-specific commission occupying 15,000 square feet of space. Richard Nonas: The Man in the Empty Space opens on February 13, 2016, with an artist reception. 

Alex Da Corte: Free Roses
In his first museum survey, Alex Da Corte’s provocative, puzzling, and visually seductive works merge the languages of abstraction and modern design with the banal. With rigorous formal logic, Da Corte combines products of consumer and domestic life—1970s family living room meets day-glow strip club—with wit, sincerity, and a libidinal energy. Alex Da Corte: Free Roses will be on view beginning March 26, 2016; an opening reception with the artist takes place on April 16.

Sarah Crowner: Beetle in the Leaves 
Sarah Crowner’s first solo exhibition in a US museum features existing paintings and major, site-specific tile works, including work that invites visitors to step onto a veritable stage to view her paintings. Crowner mines the legacy of abstraction from both the fine and applied arts, treating art history as her raw material. By sampling, collaging, and rearranging geometric forms, she creates utterly new ones, revealing patterns and associations between her own colorful, graphic work and their surroundings. Sarah Crowner: Beetle in the Leaves opens with an artist reception on April 16, 2016.

Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder 
Harnessing the concept of wonderment, Explode Every Day features works by 21 international artists, each touching on certain facets of wonder, including: the perceptual/visionary, the technological/scientific, the philosophical/meditative, time/cosmos, and illusion/fear. Accompanying the exhibition will be a comprehensive catalogue that will include essays by Lawrence Weschler (author of creative nonfiction), Kay Redfield Jamison (clinical psychologist and author), Maria Popova (writer and blogger at brainpickings.org), Barbara Maria Stafford (art historian), Jill Tarter (astronomer and former director of the Center for SETI Research), Robin Ince (comedian and co-host of BBC radio’s The Infinite Monkey Cage), Stefan Sagmeister (graphic designer), Mary Ruefle (poet), Sam Green (filmmaker of The Measure of All Things), and the exhibition curators, MASS MoCA’s Denise Markonish and Columbus, Ohio-based artist Sean Foley. Explode Every Day will be on view beginning May 28, 2016.

Nick Cave: Until 
Nick Cave exploits MASS MoCA’s football field-sized space to create his largest installation to date, comprised of thousands of found objects and millions of beads. Viewers will feel as if they have entered a rich sensory tapestry, like stepping directly inside the belly of one of his iconic Soundsuits. For Until—a double play on the phrase “innocent until proven guilty” or, in this case, “guilty until proven innocent”—Cave addresses issues of gun violence, gun control policy, race relations, and gender politics in America today. Conceived as a one-year concatenation of performances, community events, and art, Until incorporates special appearances by internationally known dancers, singer-songwriters, pop artists, poets, and composers, together with panel discussions, community forums, and other forms of creative public debate and engagement. Nick Cave: Until will be on view beginning October 16, 2016.