Last night's party at MoMA to kick off the Björk retrospective (opening March 8th) was a heady mixture of art world cognizenti, designers, press, society mavens and those dozens of diehard fans and followers that came dressed in full costumes of their own creation. Open bars were humming on all floors with friendly and attentive staff; bowls of beef jerky and deep fried potato chips were a welcome and imaginative offering for the evening.
Spanning from 1993's "Debut" after the breakup of the Sugarcubes to the present with her latest album, "Vulnicura", the retrospective covers (most) of her body of work, with the exception of, oddly, the soundtrack from "Dancer in the Dark". The many (let's just say wacky) costumes and concepts exhibited spoke loudly to her commitment to pushing her ever-morphing envelope at the intersection of music, sound, fashion and film.
Shown in a black-box felt volcano-lined viewing room, the short film "Black Lake", an ode to love, pain and lament, (presumably based on her breakup with artist Matthew Barney) filmed in and around Iceland's many volcanoes and caves, shows Björk at one point cracking open, bleeding blue lava to aching violins and heavy percussion. In another viewing room, the extended film includes everything from "Debut" to "Biophilia", with arresting, beautiful and sometimes disturbing imagery that could never be accused of being derivative.
The retrospective runs from March 8-June 7, 2015
Images ©2015 KoS