Molt (New York-Lethbridge-Los Angeles-Toronto-Chicago-)

April 8, 2023 - Feb 11, 2024

The MCA’s Atrium Project invites artists from all points in their careers to respond to the museum’s bright, two-story entrance through a new large-scale work. In the latest iteration of the series, artist Lotus Laurie Kang continues her exploration of entropy and continual becoming. Elegantly disordered and richly layered, Kang’s site-sensitive works explore the relationship between time, personal history, and cultural knowledge.

Kang’s piece, a commission by the MCA titled Molt (New York-Lethbridge-Los Angeles-Toronto-Chicago- ) (2018–2023), is suspended from the museum’s atrium ceiling. Lengths of light-sensitive, unfixed photographic film, or “skins,” as Kang calls them, were exposed to natural light in various environments, resulting in colors that evoke the body and landscape. Silvery chimes made of cast aluminum and bronze in the shape of lotus roots and fish hang alongside these light-sensitive surfaces.

Installed in the light-filled atrium, Molt (New York-Lethbridge-Los Angeles-Toronto-Chicago- ) will evolve and change over the year, emphasizing that in Kang’s work—as well as in the world around us—change is the only constant.

Atrium Project: Lotus Laurie Kang is organized by Jack Schneider, Curatorial Associate.

Photos: Shelby Ragsdale