Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD)

Fall 2016 exhibitions

10-year gala and art auction: October 7, 6:30pm

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD)
4454 Woodward Avenue
Detroit, MI 48201
United States

mocadetroit.org
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Sanford Biggers: Subjective Cosmology
September 9, 2016–January 1, 2017

For his solo exhibition Subjective Cosmology, Sanford Biggers will create an immersive interactive experience throughout MOCAD, incorporating video installation, visual art objects, and new media. Imagined as an unseen world made visible, the exhibition gives physical form to hidden landscapes where the past, present, and future synergize into an atemporal experience. Subjective Cosmology can be seen as the link between the pieces in Biggers’ three-part film suite Shuffle, Shake, Shatter. His recent works challenge the viewer to address pressing social issues and reimagine history through sculpture, painting, mixed media, and performance. Biggers creates art that upends traditional narratives and creates platforms for discussion about topics ranging from hip-hop to Buddhism and American history.

DETROIT CITY/Detroit Affinities: Matthew Angelo Harrison 
September 9, 2016–January 1, 2017

Matthew Angelo Harrison does not think in closed and resolved terms, but embraces open-endedness. His outlook combines a strong sense of community, both local and global, with the systems of the digital world. While firmly participating in conversations around the African and African-American experience, his work has qualities that are universal. He is also interested in aspects of manufacturing, in particular its oft-hidden performative characteristics. Harrison’s 3D printers on view at MOCAD produce clay replicas of traditional African masks. All of the devices are homemade constructions, DIY gadgets using low-tech parts (and in this case natural materials) suggesting more kinship with abstract sculpture than with anything state-of-the-art. The tension between authentic and inauthentic, organic and nonorganic, and the pulls between repetition and difference, original and clone, nature and culture, all play a major part in Harrison’s artistic considerations.

Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead: It's Your Party!
September 9, 2016–January 1, 2017

Don't Swap Horses in the Middle of the Stream, In Your Heart You Know He’s Right, and Not Just Peanuts. Are these titles of country songs or campaign slogans? If you guessed campaign slogans you’re correct! But who won these elections and who lost? Find out this fall when we celebrate the winners and losers alike with It’s Your Party, an exhibition of presidential campaign memorabilia drawn from the vast collection of Morry “The Button Man” Greener. Campaign posters, bumper stickers, posters, pennants, and other ephemera from elections past and present will fill the Mobile Homestead. In the garage we’ll be screening election related films and historical debates and broadcasting the live coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign. Join us for debate and election night parties where you are welcome to commiserate or celebrate with your friends and neighbors.

2016 art benefit auction exhibition
September 9–October 10, 2016

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit is proud to celebrate its 10th Anniversary in Detroit’s reemerging Midtown neighborhood and cultural center. In its 10th year, MOCAD continues to premiere exhibitions by internationally acclaimed artists while supporting and honoring Detroit’s own. This year’s auction exhibition will include a special section highlighting Detroit-based artists. The auction will be curated by MOCAD's Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at Large Jens Hoffmann and Executive Director, Elysia Borowy-Reeder.

MOCAD is where adventurous minds encounter the best in contemporary visual, literary, music, and performing arts. A responsive center for diverse audiences, MOCAD presents art that contextualizes, interprets, educates and expands culture, pushing us to the edges of contemporary experience.

Current MOCAD exhibitions and funders