By Rachel Newdorf

Nickelodeon’s “Double Dare,” or even NBC’s “Fear Factor” is nothing compared to the new interactive exhibit now on display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. You might not be made to eat worms, or hit your Mom in the face with a pie, but you will experience art in a new way.

“Supersensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space” explores what most people don’t consider art: their senses and their perception.

Five artists are showcased in this spectacular show making people look at art with more than just their eyes.

One of those interactive pieces is “Cosmococa-Program in Progress, CC1 Trashiscapes” by Helio Oitcia and Neville D’Almeida. As you walk behind a nylon, stringed curtain into a small room with beds lying on the floor, Jimmy Hendrix-type music plays as orange and yellow pictures of a newspaper and a man’s face are projected onto the far end of the room and on the ceiling (you are encouraged to lie down on the beds to get the full experience). You can’t help but feel as though you’ve been transported in time to the 1960s. Awash with these visual and auditory queues, the piece makes you forget the outside world, and delve into a new, unfamiliar experience.

The next piece takes you to an enormous structure holding hundreds of blue nylon strings. Artist Jesús Rafael Soto encourages visitors to walk through the piece, something unfamiliar in a museum setting — where they usually don’t let you touch things. As you walk through the strings you feel as though you are swimming. In terms of color, light and space, it isn’t as visually stimulating as the rest of the exhibit.

“I felt like a car going through a car wash when I walked through it,” said Dorothy Bonica, a 20-year-old sophomore majoring in art and visual technology at GMU. “I felt like it put everyone on the same level of understanding.”

It does make the viewer rethink the space they interact with, but it feels more like the exhibit was looking for an attraction to the masses, rather than to comment seriously on art that moves beyond paint on a canvas.

The  most memorable, thought-provoking piece makes the viewer look up onto the third floor of the museum at Lucio Fontana’s “Neon Structure for the IX Triennial of Milan.”  The massive neon light structure floats above your head and illuminates the floors below. It looks flat at first glance, but it’s three-dimensional when you actually take a closer look. A real visual puzzle, this piece is essentially two pieces in one and incorporates perception and light to make the viewer take a another look at what they are actually looking at.

This entire exhibit is about exploring the world through your senses. Whether you find it to be art or not, it does make you think differently than you have before.

To find out more about “Supersensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space” and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, go to the museums website at http://hirshhorn.si.edu/

1

2

3