Big Bambu at the Met

As kind of a last minute thing, I took off to New York for the weekend, and in the 36 hours (minus sleep) I had to spend there, I managed to take in the Starn twins' (Mike and Doug's) mind-bendingly great (however oddly named) installation "You Can't You Won't You Don't Stop," a vertiginously parasitic-seeming, two-story high tangle of bamboo installed on the roof deck of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

That deck has always been one of my favourite places on earth, a rare oasis of tranquility amid the madness of the city; with the installation, you'd think its zen-like vibe would be disrupted by an inevitable sense of claustrophobia, but not really; rather, it makes you aware of not just itself, but the built structure with which it bluntly intervenes. In a revelatory sort of way, its chaotic, organic assembly of material counters the ordered stone structure of the building, that softening and and balancing both (its uncanny ordered filtering of the piercing sunlight was extraordinarily gorgeous, too). It's also a powerful comeback for the Starns, whose career peaked in the early 90s and seemed to taper off; this is as triumphant a return as you're likely to see -- ever.

Whatever the case, my 2-year old daughter sure loved it, as you can see below, and to me, that's not a bad test; art that elicits pure experiential joy as a starting point is all right in my books. And if it takes its title from an anthem of my youth -- the Beastie Boys' "Sureshot," from 1994's classic Ill Communication -- more's the better, however nonsensical it may be.