Lost in the mirrors!
Keep continuing the tour around the most iconic art galleries, we landed at the museum of modern art, IMMA is the acronyms.
We choice this museum to have a crazy view of art in a beautiful location as the old Royal Hospital. It is a little bit far from the city center, we took red line of Luas to Huston and we walked about 5 minutes. We did not expect that location, the entrance gate is enormous and there is a little climb to the main entrance. As I told the location was an old Hospital, nowadays it seems an aristocratic quartier, arches and columns are the architectural motif of the front porch. In fact it seems not Dublin but reminds some Italian renaissance building, as the Hospital of innocent in Florence. The entire exhibition is placed in the wings of a square in two floors. If you are searching for the same modern art you are in the wrong place, they always change the exposition to offer possibilities to different artist all around the world to show their projects. We arrived at 3 and we stayed about 2hours, it took all this time because it was very huge and transporting. The tickets are free for underage people, students and member of the museum, in case you are not in this range you will pay a very little fee.
The main exposition at the moment is Sunset, Sunrise by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Are you a narcissist? Do you want to admire your-self 100 times in a minute? Keep going! This retrospective exhibition is a long works of an Iranian artist, she is a female and she tried her best to emerge in that difficult and strong culture. One of the meanings of the museums is to promote and encourage the power of women. Talking about the space, at the beginning
we were catapulted in a different place, black walls and lights coming out from nowhere.
We finally realized that all the mirrors took light from ours positions and when we were moving it is was a light beam following us around the room. It was a bit annoying because in some moments you can see properly but guys you have to try. The name of the collection is Sunrise and Sunset, the artist gave that name because reflects a life lived between two cultures and across histories of East and West. Do you believe that all the west wing of the building is dedicated to her? Believe or not the answer is YES, IMMA has exposed more than 70 artworks ranging from painting, sculpture, jewellery, tapestry to collages and works on paper. Around the gallery there were a lot of students, everyone was holding a scratch book and was dedicated in drawing the details of the mirrors.
There are some benches you can sit and draw or take your time to have profound looking at the pieces in the exposition. At the end of the exposition there was Sunrise, it is really,really, incredible. It takes too long and you probably get lost in counting all the little pieces of glasses used, I guess more than five thousand. Sunset and Sunrise invokes the sky that both separates and connects the East and West and the moment of dawn and dust that captures the elusive emotive quality of life. both mark the beginning and close of the collection in a poetic reflection between nature and the human heart. As teen we had taken some random photos in the mirror and we become as Picasso artworks.
Unfortunately the East wing was closed for installation and we went back at the ground floor.
In the left side of the main entrance there is a little yellow door, we thought that maybe it was private but we opened it and we saw another room of the museum. This was the historical part, in the open space we found a plastic of all the area, the park and all the building built for the hospital. There were a lot of description on the walls about the history and the diseases of the most famous patients.
At the end of the room there is a bad with a soldier and the soldier is still snoring, it is funny story. In this museum we followed all the instruction and we dressed like the nurse and the doctor of the time and then we send the picture to the museum, maybe we will remember!!!
Last part but not the last, is located in the East Ground. This collection is called When We, the artist is Andrea Geyer. I loved this part. It takes inside the screams of all the feminists. In the first room the artist put an enormous tale in which the she studied our present by mapping histories through a transgressive feminist lens. Walking thought the four rooms you can see different sceneries, one room is all covered by curtains. These curtains are drawn by symbols of gossip, friendship, students, gay associations and other. It seems to be in a utopic good place to live in without any fear.
We miss the garden because we were near to the close time, if you go in the morning have a walk in, you can see some of the established exposition by Irish modern artist and more.
There is also an other little building missing, this time is not our fault! This is the Freud Centre, it will open in a few days and it is going to host Freud Project “ Gaze”. We should come again and try to get the chance of seeing this.
The superiority of this museum is the biggest possibilities that offer to different artist to be known, also the beautiful location. If you are free and it is Tuesday you must go there.