Guido in the BlackBox

Guido van der Werve's Everything is going to be alright is one of the most somatic works I have seen this year. Walking into the dark room, before I even sat down on the bench, I could feel the power in the work. It hit me right in the gut, and the feeling slowly went from bodily to mental to back to bodily, tying the two realms together in ways that most contemporary works cannot. As the bass rumbled in my belly, my rational mind reeled with the realization of how dangerous this seemingly simple walk was, and how pitifully small he was in front of that giant boat! I thought of all those painters I never admit that I really like, Friedrick and Church and that whole bunch of landscape painters who were concerned with the now poo-pooed notion of the sublime. I guess this is the part where I should talk about being a hopeless Romantic, as a preface to admiting that watching the work maybe even made me cry. just a little bit. I made sure to pretend everything was cool as I walked out of the BlackBox. But really, I wanted to grab the woman who was watching the video with me and point out, in case she wasn't getting it, how awesome this video was. Here is Guido preparing for an earlier piece he did where he built a rocket to try to send home a meteorite he found.
And here is what the Hirshhorn website says about him: An accomplished classical pianist, composer, and chess player, he studied industrial design, archeology, and Russian before focusing on fine art—first on painting, then performance work, and finally, film. To date he has completed ten short film works that he describes as “possible scenarios of imaginary realities.”

Damn. I know at least one of my classmates has a crush on him. For me the feeling is a little bit different, but equally salient. I just want to give him a big hug and be like, "can I tell people you're my brother?" I think it would be ok, going along with those possible scenarios of imaginary realities, and all.