Janice Kerbel: Slip

Exhibition Website

May 28 2017 - Dec 2019

At once poetic and darkly comedic, Janice Kerbel’s Slip uses graphic musical notation to imagine the trajectory of a body in mortal peril as it slips on a banana peel. Moving from very small to very large print along an upward curve before suddenly crashing downward, Slip unfolds across more than 100 running feet of wallspace in MASS MoCA’s newly renovated Building 6. The work calls on the history of graphic notation, physical comedy, and concrete poetry to create a visual representation of a brief moment across both space and time. Situated just outside of the new galleries devoted to the musical instruments of Gunnar Schonbeck and works by experimental musician and artist Laurie Anderson, Slip conflates visual art and musical performance — cornerstones of MASS MoCA’s program — at a grand architectural scale.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

  • Works on Paper
  • American
  • Contemporary
  • Janice Kerbel

Exhibition Venues & Dates