Water Is Sexy

Hello fellow hipsters and hopsters,

 Your friendly neighborhood BoMa bloggers have returned from an exciting and invigorating day at the Institute of Contemporary Art a.k.a the ICA. Upon arrival, we were greeted with our first challenge: opening the indestructible and unimaginably heavy glass doors. After pushing and shoving past the one negative quality we found in the museum, we finally entered the portal to exciting and contemporary art. The first piece we examined was the elevator. You may be imagining a small compact box with awkward music stifling our creative minds, but instead, we encountered a 20 ft by 7.6 ft (dimensions simply approximated) see-through glass cube that lifted us through the museum to a scenic overview of the Boston Harbor.

After exiting this exquisitely designed transportation device, we found ourselves surrounded by the provocative designs made by Mexican tattoo artist, Dr. Larka, whose exhibit opened today. This artist is not really a doctor though. He merely enjoys the contrast between the title “doctor” which commands respect and the name Larka, which in Spanish slang means “delinquent.” His work includes photographs of iconic images of women tattooed with gothic images and Aztec and Buddhist symbols. His work also includes murals painted directly on the ICA walls showing more primal and gothic imagery. We then journeyed to the other side of the museum to view photographs of water. At first, we rolled our eyes too and smiled at what seemed like the obvious idea to put many pictures of water next to a window of the Boston Harbor. But we were in way over our heads. These were not just simple photographs of water. Each wave and area of water was footnoted with the artist, Roni Horn’s musings about her subject. The ideas flowed like an internal monologue just like the waves of the water flowed in the picture. The ideas covered the bases of “1. Is water sexy? 2. Yes water is sexy,” to 18. Looking at an image like this you may never get to the idea of water at all, 19. Looking at an image like this, if you get to the idea of water at all, then you’ll have to wonder what water really is.” Our group was very amused by these witty photographs and enjoyed our time at the ICA immensely. We were very impressed by our interview with the Educational Director at the museum and will post a transcript of that very successful encounter soon.