In this grueling presidential election season, our chance to expand serious action against catastrophic climate change is hanging by a thread. One candidate who has taken difficult if inadequate policy steps in that direction is up against another candidate who denies the problem even exists. An all-or-nothing vote looms.
Those extreme stakes make a sprawling new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art at once timely, tantalizing and, unfortunately, altogether unsatisfying. “Josh Kline: Climate Change” is a letdown. Informed and deeply committed, it’s also strangely bloodless — more an informative, science fair-like show and tell.
The anemic immersive installation hits routine and familiar targets without upending stalled or opaque perceptions, which is what’s needed. The show was organized by MOCA associate curator Rebecca Lowery and curatorial assistant Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo. Kline, 47, a Brooklyn-based artist, has built six rooms inside the museum’s Grand Avenue building for sculptures and installations he’s been making for years.
The sequence of galleries is introduced by an antechamber fronted by a large blank wall featuring two closed doors, each embedded with tattered fragments of British and American flags. The legacy of the Industrial Revolution and Anglo-American empires is announced. A gallery attendant invites visitors to choose whichever exhibition entrance they want.
It’s a “Lady, or the Tiger?” set-up, implying an apparently random c.
