Review

"All Most All Ways," Site-Specific Installation.

Rachel Hayes
All Most All Ways

Noon-5 p.m.

Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art
12345 College Blvd.
Overland Park, KS
913.469.3000

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday.
Runs through: Feb. 13.

Gallery site: http;//www.nermanmuseum.org

So ... here's the rhetorical question of the day.

Is Rachel Hayes' big, colorful twofold structure at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (a) art, (b) a device for making art, or (c) both?

The money here is on (c), in the case of Hayes' All Most All Ways, part of the Nerman's Museum Interrupted group exhibition.

Granted, the two huge slanted panels — one black, one white and both marked by brightly hued plastic "windows" — do loom large in the Barton P. Cohen and Mary D. Cohen Gallery on the museum's second floor. In that sense, the museum is most definitely interrupted.

But as the detail photo above shows — and an in-person visit even more ably demonstrates — there is far more to the piece than its solid elements.

Light might reflect off the white panel and be absorbed into the black, but it is transformed by the colored blocks ... and then goes on to fall on the walls and the floor, making them as much a part of Hayes' work as the central installation. (There's a definite difference between the black side and the white ... yet another reason to see the piece for yourself.)

Anyone passing through, similarly, becomes a part of the show as well — both by being illuminated and by casting shadows. It's interactivity without fingerprints, randomness following the rules of physics.

That makes (c) the best answer, I'd say.  Hayes' massive centerpiece grabs attention both for what it is and by what it does ... as art, as tool, as good reason to let oneself be interrupted.

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