David Byrne, “Tight Spot,” cold air inflatable with audio, 2011 (photo by twi-ny.mdr)
Pace Gallery
510 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
“Tight Spot” through October 1
“Social Media” through October 15
www.thepacegallery.com
tight spot slideshow
In 1983, David Byrne wore a really big suit on the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense tour. In the summer of 2008, he wired the cavernous Battery Maritime Building for “Playing the Building,” in which visitors could sit down at a specially programmed organ and, essentially, play the building. Size is at the center of his latest performance installation as well, “Tight Spot,” a 19.5′ x 46′ x 46′ inflatable globe squeezed into a former garage on West 25th St., directly under the High Line. In fact, sections of the oval orb spill out against the High Line beams, stretching the names of geographic locations featured on the three-dimensional map, from North and South America to Europe and Africa. Meanwhile, a vibrating chant emanates from inside the globe, Byrne’s voice filtered through a computer program to make it sound, among other things, nonhuman. The closer you get to the work, commissioned by the Pace Gallery, the more powerful the sounds, until you can feel it humming in your ear if you place your head against it. Yes, the world has got itself in one tight spot right now, and Byrne makes that abundantly clear in this crowd pleaser, which remains on view through October 1. Meanwhile, Byrne has two pieces next door inside Pace, where “Social Media” continues through October 15. In addition to works by Miranda July, Penelope Umbrico, Christopher Baker, and others that incorporate elements from YouTube, Craigslist, Twitter, Flickr, Google, QR codes, and other forms of computer interactivity, Byrne has contributed “Democracy in Action,” a wall hanging in which twenty digital frames show video of parliamentarians around the world engaging in physical altercations, and four of his Apps, large-scale vertical advertisements for humorous fake apps he made up, including Coverup, which claims to be able to put clothes on you; Buzzclip, which purports to remove body hair by using smartphone vibrations; Weaselface, which promises to “add snark and satire to any text”; and Bigamist, which helps people cheat on their spouse.