ART
“Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams”
Museum of Modern Art
The Congolese sculptor, who died in 2015, is the subject of a phenomenal exhibition, curated by Sarah Suzuki and wonderfully installed with help from the German artist Carsten Höller. It presents scores of imaginary buildings and cities made mostly of cut and painted paper, card stock, and plastics, with occasional urban detritus (used packaging, bottle caps, soda cans). In shape, these “extreme maquettes,” as Kingelez termed them, are variously tiered, towering, serpentine, pinnate, finned, and scalloped. Colonnades and grand staircases abound, as do decorative grids of circles, stripes, diamonds, stars, and floral motifs. Kingelez was a great and subtle colorist, with a palette anchored by the red, yellow, and green of the national flag of Zaire—he once said, “A…
