chanel mobile art.

*photo from VanityFair

Chanel's Mobile Art now has landed in NY, exactly in the city's largest chunk of green, Central Park. The contemporary art container designed by Zaha Hadid houses 20 artworks by 20 international artists all inspired by Chanel's iconic quilted bag. Ofcourse, who would pass up on this opportunity to see the much talked about travelling exhibition (now on it's third leg) housed in a very UFO looking structure/shell which is also dubbed as the "orb of insanity". So this morning, that's exactly what I did.

Tickets were "sold-out" despite entrance being free. However, the website says that tickets were available for same day exhibition viewing. So I opted to hop on the Q train to 57th st. at around 7:30am to get there early and have sure shot tickets. My friend Ricky went last Monday and had to be on stand-by for 30minutes before they let him in. I got there a quarter past 8:30am and was able to get a ticket for a 9am viewing. I was even the first one to qeue up for the 9am slot, sweet!

Waiting to get in (total wait time was about 15 minutes) I noticed how indeed space like everything was. From the structure itself to the staff's uniforms consisting of a black military-inspired Chanel wind breaker down to the music piped in thru the speakers while one waited in line. It felt like I was waiting to ride some amusement park rollercoaster.

Once inside, a staff member guided me to the waiting area and asked me to take a seat on the bench while she put on my earphones and explained to me how the exhibition is designed to work. All visitors of the exhibition are given headphones and an mp3 player where the audio guide narrated by Jeanne Moreau is played. They recommend that one follows the audio guide strictly as they have designed a way to navigate thru the exhibition... all I had to do was closely listen to the enigmatic raspy voice.

I don't have photos from inside, ofcourse it wasn't allowed. But I did take photos while I was outside while waiting to get in and view the exhibition. My feelings for the exhibition is somewhat mixed. I'm a little disappointed at the show's length and while some of the artworks did not fail to visually entice me like Sylvie Fleury's gigantic quilted bag a few of the works caught myself in a downward spiral.