Seeing contemporary art in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, renowned for its collection of Italian Renaissance paintings, may surprise visitors. Indeed, the special exhibition "Su-Mei Tse: Floating Memories" is jarring at first, as it contrasts so sharply with the rest of the museum's collection.
Artist Su-Mei Tse had the opportunity to live in the museum through the Gardner's Artists-in-Residence program. As a result, her work is intimately connected to the museum in nuanced and reflective ways. "Floating Memories," located in the Gardner's special exhibition gallery, consists of a raised wooden panel situated on the floor and a streaming video projected on the rear wall of the gallery. The panel, which nearly matches the color of the gallery's wooden floor, incorporates both a rich gold rug and an intricately-carved pattern, and the video displays a continually spinning vinyl record.
The gallery in which "Floating Memories" is displayed is dark except for a few lights concentrated on the raised wooden panel, and the sound of a spinning record played by speakers in the gallery enhances the video's presentation.
"Floating Memories" is very different from the museum's stunning courtyard — decorated with classical sculpture, mosaics and columns — around which visitors must walk to reach it. Upon closer inspection, though, the work is linked to the museum in subtle but compelling ways.
As the gallery's explanation indicates, the panel is carved with the partially-worn and faded pattern of the Italian silk damask that covers the walls in the Dutch Room. The Dutch Room, located on the second floor of the museum, is home to part of the museum's collection, but it is also the room in which several empty frames hang on the walls in the place of the works that were stolen in an unsolved crime from 1990.
Perhaps in a reflection of The Dutch Room's now-incomplete nature, the artist did not correct the fabric's imperfections in her carving. This conveys a sense of loss that is complemented by the gallery's darkness and the projected video. The streaming video of a rotating record, which plays continuously on the wall behind the raised panel, references a childhood memory of artist Su-Mei Tse's. It adds a bizarre dimension to the work and, as the exhibition's title suggests, encourages visitors to reflect on both the museum's tragic losses and also on their own personal experiences.
Su-Mei Tse is a contemporary artist who splits her time between Luxembourg and Berlin. She has exhibited in museums and galleries around the world and was invited in 2007 to live in the Gardner museum to interact with and be inspired by its collection. After this opportunity, which has been routinely offered to artists since 1992, she created "Floating Memories" to reflect her experience in the museum and to blend her subsequent inspiration with her own artistic style.
Although the majority of the museum has remained unchanged since the early 20th century at the express wish of its creator, this contemporary exhibition is something that Isabella Stewart Gardner would have likely enjoyed.
Gardner, an eccentric Boston millionaire, assembled the museum's remarkable collection in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and built an elaborate Venetian-style palace in which to house her art. She left the mansion to the public after her death.
While she was alive, Gardner was a devoted patron of the contemporary arts, a facet of her personality that is reflected in the Artist-in-Residence program.
At first, "Floating Memories" appears to share little with the museum's esteemed collection of paintings by Titian and Botticelli. But, as a result of Su-Mei Tse's unique relationship with the museum, she has created a work that links to the collection in subtle ways and encourages viewers to reflect upon both the institution and their own lives.
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Su-Mei Tse: Floating Memories
Through Oct. 18
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
280 Fenway
617-566-1401
