This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 29, 2010 - "Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other," now at the Kemper Art Museum, is a terrific mid-career survey of the artist's work organized by the New Museum, New York, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
It's an utterly bracing show, each work more engaging than the last. The Brazilian artist is one of the most fascinating figures working in contemporary art today. Her interdisciplinary approach employs found material, film, sculpture, painting, installations, audience participation and inventive homages to the works of other writers, artists, and filmmakers.
What is perhaps most striking about Neuenschwander is her incredibly light touch. As an artist, she remains resolutely off stage, allowing quiet, poetic subjects and echoes of her processes to fill the viewer's imagination. These works incite a sense of wonder, but it's the wonder of the everyday world, of empty rooms and floating bubbles, raindrops and recollections.