Here’s the staff at Brooklyn Museum hanging Ghanian artist El Anatsui’s monumental bottle cap wall sculpture, a triumph of art handling no doubt worthy of the Art Handling Olympics. Only takes them about a minute, too — sort of.
Anatsui’s first solo exhibition opened last Thursday, featuring a number of these massive installations made from found aluminum and copper wire. The artist collected bottle caps made at a distillery in his current home in Nsukka, Nigeria as a way to weave personal history and national identity into a long tradition of abstraction. Each installation, many of which look an awful lot like three-dimensional Gerhard Richter paintings, takes on a completely new shape with each hanging. “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,” Feb 8 – Aug 4, Brooklyn Museum
