This Monday we met up outside of the imposing Boros Bunker, a private art collection housed in an air-raid bunker from WWII, owned by the Boros family who now occupy a penthouse they had built on the roof of the building. As we were congregating outside of the large, windowless, grey steel doors a buzzer sounded–to my surprise–and we were allowed entry to this fortress of the aesthetic. We were greeted in the lobby by a man whose name escapes me now, who introduced us to the history and the layout of the bunker, and who would guide us through the exhibitions. Once we had all stashed our belongings in a back room, he lead us into the first room where we were confronted with a pair of large conglomerations of rubber cords anchored to different points in the walls/floor/ceiling and then intricately woven together into nebulas of depth which were very difficult for the eye to fully comprehend in their repeating and overlapping layers. The larger of the two also held plastic bubbles within it, and the cords between the walls and both pieces were arranged in such a way that one had to duck under them to move about the room and inspect them from different angles. These would be some of my favorite works throughout the whole of the tour, which was filled with extremely varied styles, mediums, and concepts. Our guide did a wonderful job of leading us through the exhibitions and of providing information about the artists, their works, and the bunker itself, which had quite an intriguing history as a bunker (obviously), but then also a concert/party venue, a paintball arena, and many other things I’m sure. The walls appeared to have been left pretty much bare and in the condition in which their new owners had found them, which I found to be quite the addition to the general ambience of the place. There were other great pieces that reacted to their viewers upon entering their little alcoves, such as a tire against a wall that was designed so that it would start spinning when a person came in to look at it–destroying itself and the wall that it was placed against little by little as long as it was being viewed. There were too many great pieces contained in this bunker for us to see them all, let alone for me to write about (600 altogether, including the members of the Boros collection that weren’t currently on display), and the hour and a half that we spent inside seemed to me to fly by. I think it’s also interesting to note that the Boros family supports artists–some of whom they have been following for years–by funding/purchasing their works

I think that this has been my favorite of our group outings thus far, and I only wish that I could have spent  more time there and seen the rest of the works that were on display (130-some, if I’m not mistaken) because they were nothing if not impressive.