It's as if the entire Twin Cities reopened this month. With the mask mandate gone and nearly half of Minnesotans fully vaccinated, art galleries and museums are inviting people back inside with new shows and hand sanitizer galore.
Coincidentally, three of the five exhibitions in the following roundup specifically allow — and even encourage — people to touch the art or physically interact with it in some way.
Rayyane Tabet at Walker
A blue light welcomes Walker Art Center visitors to Tabet's installation "Deep Blues" — the Beirut/San Francisco-based artist's first commissioned work for a U.S. museum. Inside the gallery, a cascade of decommissioned IBM Eames chairs hang from the ceiling, forming a downward-sloping, pyramid-like shape that feels at once monumental and corporate.
Blue, of course, is IBM's signature color. Ten shades of blue create an encompassing atmosphere while a computerized voice guided by artificial intelligence recites IBM's history. It ends with a couple coincidental facts about Minnesota superstar Prince: He was born on June 7, 1958, three months before IBM's campus opened in Rochester and one month before U.S. Marines first invaded Lebanon. And he finished his song "Computer Blue" one day before Tabet was born in Beirut.
The project was sparked by Tabet's discovery of an Eames chair in his home that came from the Rochester facility. The possibility of "coincidence" feels like a search for meaning somewhere between globalization and destiny, yet in a true twist of fate, the story leads back to the artist, which feels both spiritual and absurd. Simultaneously, America's global influence feels the same way, making Beirut feel close at a time when physical location is more like an abstract concept in our increasingly remote world. (11 a.m.-9 p.m. Thu., 11-8 Fri.-Sat., 11-5 Sun. through Oct. 24, 725 Vineland Place, Mpls., $2-$15, 612-375-7600, walkerart.org)
Iris Scott at Burnet Fine Art
In an introductory video to Scott's show "Shakin' Off the Blues," the New Mexico artist passionately explains how afraid she felt to paint dogs because maybe it wouldn't be taken seriously, but she had to take the leap. She fingerpaints dogs shaking themselves, and explains how it can be a very emotional process.
You might think the video is a parody if some of the paintings weren't selling for $43,000. Like petting a dog, visitors are encouraged to touch the paintings. While it must be hard to fingerpaint, this gimmick has become highly profitable. At least some real dogs will be helped — 5% of proceeds go to the Animal Humane Society. (11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sun. through July 17, 775 E. Lake St., Wayzata, 952-473-8333, burnetart.com)
Eric-Paul Riege at Bockley
Riege's first solo show feels like entering into a friendly brain filled with a hanging loom and three sets of giant, plush, touch-friendly earrings.
An artist of Diné and German-American descent based in Gallup, N.M., he comes from a family of weavers. The soft-sculpture earrings become totems of memory that incorporate both synthetic and natural materials, including hair from his cat and from himself.
In a Zoom talk last week, Riege admitted that he didn't have the best memory, but "everything that I make is activated by my body in some way … and by strangers, by family, by ancestors, by my future self, so they hold this space for me that was a weaving of many time periods, lives, people." He encourages viewers to touch the work, to metaphorically weave themselves into the story. The show's expansive approach to spirituality and interconnectedness is curious, tactile and obtuse, a mystical must-see. (Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. through July 10, 2123 W. 21st St., Mpls., 612-377-4669, bockleygallery.com)
Pedram Baldari & Nooshin Hakim Javadi at SooVAC
Baldari, who is Kurdish, grew up on the Iran-Iraq border during a time of Kurdish ethnic cleansing. He brings his experience of physical displacement — memories awakened by the pandemic — to his show "Your Games And, Your Gains." The piece "When the War Ended, We All Wondered: What Should We Do Now!" is an oversized cornhole game with satchels too heavy to throw, a game one can actually play. Other work, though, comes off as heavy-handed, particularly the "Equalizer Series," which reimagines NyQuil and DayQuil as ways to combat fear, a lie symbolic of the myth that consumerism can "protect." We already know this is false, and don't need to hear it again.
Born in Iran, Hakim Javadi invites viewers to re-enact global conflicts through a series of children's games such as seesaws, darts and tic-tac-toe. In "Exporting Liberty," a Statue of Liberty toy can be thrown like a dart at a map of Iran, with major cities as targets. Misses equate to "blowback" with "unintended consequences," a way of framing the history of U.S. involvement in Iran. The work feels obvious, and doesn't reach deeper conceptually. (1-6 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun. through July 11, 2909 Bryant Av. S., Mpls., 612-871-2263, soovac.org)
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