Transparent Monument

The Metropolitan Museum rooftop gallery is showcasing the work of one artist, Cai Quo Qiang- we have posted on him before (crocodiles) but he has more than one work exhibited. This piece, Transparent Monument, is giant sheet of glass at the base of which lie a number of exact replicas of dead birds. The implication is that they didn't see the glass, were stopped dead and slid down to the base. They appear to be either starlings or small crows. The birds seem like unfortunate victims of circumstance, killed while going about their business, by the intervention of some inexplicably placed man made material, as so often happens in "real life". [Another piece of his occurs every day at noon, when one of the guards fires a special gun which shoots a cloud of black smoke into the sky, that slowly dissipates at a rate determined by the atmospheric conditions. It gives a very ephemeral feeling to the whole concept of watching whatever happens before you in life.] Even in this current heat wave alternating with thunderstorms we have had lately, the rooftop garden gallery at the Met is a good place to go to step out of the busy, crowded, humid atmosphere in the streets and have your thoughts played with by this artist...