Contemplating the Void

Taylor Green has been musing on the Guggenheim's exhibition "Contemplating the Void," in which the curators asked 200 contemporary artists to propose something to go in that big space in the middle of the museum. First he focused on environmentally themed responses, then on responses that had to do with torture, and there's more yet to come this week. The exhibition has its own Web site, too, so you can poke through interpretations of the space on your own, although they're a bit scattered. Make sure you have some time, in other words, and aren't easily frustrated by the weird, Flash-based navigation system or by artists' tendency to believe their work already clearly explained by a quick drawing. We find ourselves drawn to the more colorful options, like Ball Nogues Studio's proposal that appears to have something to do with a giant candy-making machine (above) or Fritz Haeg's idea to paint the ramps as a rainbow, but Green's analysis has been bringing out some interesting themes.