Christine Sun Kim and Claes Oldenburg
This fall, the Whitney Museum in New York invites visitors on a dual journey where art becomes language and everyday life turns into poetry. Two exhibitions, two voices, respond to each other: Christine Sun Kim and Claes Oldenburg.
With All Day All Night, Christine Sun Kim transforms silence into material. A deaf artist, she explores how sound permeates our lives, even when it escapes the ear. Her drawings, installations, and performances translate the invisible: subtitles freed from screens, vibrations traced in ink, gestures amplified into visual signs. The viewer does more than see — they learn to listen differently, to feel what normally eludes perception.
Just a few rooms away, Drawn from Life reveals Claes Oldenburg’s sketches. A master of Pop Art, he elevated everyday objects to the status of monumental icons. Here, his drawings reveal a lighter intimacy: hamburgers, melting ice creams, and electrical plugs become occasions for humor and tenderness. Under his pen, 1960s America appears both familiar and exaggerated, as if every detail of modern life deserved to be celebrated.
Two exhibitions, two universes, one shared idea: broadening our perception. With Christine Sun Kim, language goes beyond the audible; with Oldenburg, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. The Whitney brings together these singular voices to remind us that a museum is, above all, a space of transformation, where we learn to see the world through different eyes — and sometimes through different senses.
One leaves with the feeling of having read a silent poem and tasted a giant ice cream, taking another step in discovering a city that, like art, constantly reinvents itself.