Balloon Exhibit Fills Nasher Gallery

‘Half the air’ exhibit: artistic gold or hot air?

Commentary
by Bruce Felps

Art, like beauty, resides in the eye of the beholder.

It’s up to art fans to behold a new installation at the Nasher Sculpture Center and decide for themselves whether or not “Half the air in a given space” qualifies as art or, well, not.

Martin Creed filled a gallery room with 9,000 gold balloons. That’s it. Nine thousand gold balloons in a room. Not exactly balloon animals, but it’s up to viewers to decide if the concept exceeds the sophistication of a balloon wienie dog or falls short.

A reviewer with the SMU Daily Campus said the exhibit made her “giddy” as she walked through. A review in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News, which, curse their website, I cannot find online, called the creation a “sensory experience” … twice.

So there are two, three words for it.

At 10 bucks admission it’s probably worth the experience -- the static electricity alone has to be pretty impressive -- and opportunity to decide for one’s self if it achieves the lofty goal of “art.”

But why gold balloons? Is that color more expressive than, say, blue?


Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. He doesn’t know art, but he knows he doesn’t know art.
 

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