In a new exhibit at the Aspen Art Museum, viewers have to be careful not to step on the art. “The Discipline of the Cave” by Mexican artist Gabriel Rico asks them to engage different senses.
“The Discipline of the Cave” takes over two galleries. In the first, viewers choose their way through the room on sandy paths, stepping around brightly colored ceramic objects, like Coke bottles, dice and cacti with sausages and eyes growing off them.
At a preview of the exhibit, Heidi Zuckerman, Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director of the Aspen Art Museum, said the arrangement on the floor invites a different kind of museum experience.
"We’re sharing this space, and it's a super-different relationship than when you’re looking up at something on a wall," she said.
The sand stops in the second gallery, but then the viewer is hit with the scent of pine. It’s coming from branches piled along the walls and at the feet of a bear, a fox and several other real, taxidermied, wild animals from the Aspen area. They all face an image of the sun at the front of the room.
Zuckerman said the show’s title “The Discipline of the Cave” alludes to how one uses different senses to orient themselves in a cave’s darkness.
"The idea is you have to use your physical being to find out who else is in there with you, or what else is in there with you," she said.
Artist Gabriel Rico works in Guadalajara, Mexico. All of the ceramic items in “The Discipline in the Cave” were manufactured at a textile plant by his studio. This is his first solo show in the U.S.
The exhibit is on display through June.
