Over spring break I took a trip to New York City and visited two museums: MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art) and MAD (Museum of Arts and Design), both of which had amazing pieces of artwork. Since there were so many different galleries within both museums, I am going to have a series of different blogs talking about the pieces of artwork that caught my eye the most.

MOMA has 6 different floors of art work. For this post I will be talking about Floor 6 which was Special Exhibitions, meaning that these shows stay up for a period of time and then are taken down so that another show can be put up.

This exhibition on display was named The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World. Four artists stood out the most to me in this exhibit. Those artists are Mark Grotjahn, Laura Owens, Michael William, and Charline Von Heyl.

Mark Grotjahn was probably my favorite and to me the most interesting. He had three huge paintings that were hung up. He used oil on cardboard. When I first looked at the paintings what stood out to me was the different colors that he used, as well as the movement through the paintings. Yet I really couldn’t see what he was trying to accomplish or show his audience. Then I read the little description next to the paintings which said that he started these paintings with a face, and from there the painting became obscured. Once I read that I looked closer at the paintings and could pick out a few spots where I saw eyes or a nose. Which to me was fascinating. Here is a picture of Mark Grotjahn’s paintings.

Laura Owens was another artist featured in the gallery. She used acrylic, silkscreen inks, flash oil and gesso on linen. She combined a lot of different mediums in herartwork, which I found interesting because they all worked well together. Here is a picture of one of her pieces that was in the show.

Michael Williams, another featured artist in the gallery, uses inkjet and synthetic polymer paint on canvas. His work was a little different from anything that I had ever seen before. It was sporadic in motion, and different in subject. Here are two pieces of work done by Michael Williams.

Finally, the last artist’s work that caught me attention was Charlene Von Heyl. The piece I admired most was an artwork was titled Carlotta. She uses oil, synthetic polymer paint, and charcoal on canvas. The artwork below caught my attention because I am always intrigued by the way that artists portray people’s faces. Everyone has their own style and I love looking at different ways artists can turn a human face into something amazing.