27
Jul/14

PAWEŁ ALTHAMER: QUEEN MOTHER OF REALITY / ŽILVINAS KEMPINAS: SCARECROW

27
Jul/14
(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

A collaborative closing ceremony will bid farewell to Paweł Althamer’s “Queen Mother of Reality” on August 2 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Blvd.
Daily through August 3, free
718-956-1819
www.socratessculpturepark.org

Socially conscious Polish artist Paweł Althamer has followed up his wide-ranging, vastly entertaining one-man New Museum survey, “The Neighbors,” with the engaging “Queen Mother of Reality,” on view at Socrates Sculpture Park through August 3. Originally commissioned by Performa 13 and seen in Williamsburg last fall, the interactive work, of a large-scale reclining woman that people are invited to walk inside of, lies luxuriously in the shade in the south side of the Long Island City park. The fifty-foot-high, eighteen-foot-long piece is named for Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely, the founder and president of the New Future Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to “facilitate international and domestic economic social development, community outreach, education, and health”; in 1995, Dr. Blakely became the first woman Community Mayor of Harlem, and she is also the UN Ambassador of Goodwill to Africa. Constructed of all kinds of found materials and scraps with the help of such volunteers as artists Noah Fischer, Roman Stańczak, Rafal Zwirek, and Eric Gottshall as well as Althamer’s sons Bruno and Szymon — using some rather inventive objects for various body parts — “Queen Mother” is a symbolic public gesture “to protect mothers against eviction,” offering people the opportunity to go inside, take a seat, write down a wish, and contemplate their own living situation as well as that of the many displaced and homeless people in New York and throughout the world. The interior includes a chair-throne, Chinese lanterns, flowers, fencing, and plates honoring such women as suffragist Susan B. Anthony, first lady Michelle Obama, civil rights leader Queen Mother Moore, artist Frida Kahlo, and Occupy activist Cecily McMillan. Socrates has hosted a slew of events involving “Queen Mother”; the closing ceremony is set for August 2, when Althamer will lead visitors in “A Draftsmen’s Congress,” a collaborative gathering in which anyone and everyone can come and create their own paintings, drawings, and collages in, on, and around the impressive structure.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Žilvinas Kempinas’s “Scarecrow” invites people in rather than frightening them away (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Žilvinas Kempinas, whose “Double O” was a highlight of MoMA’s recent “On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century,” regularly uses fans in his immersive, often kinetic sculptures. For the 250-foot-long, 13-foot-high site-specific “Scarecrow,” the largest installation in Socrates’s history, the Lithuanian-born, New York-based artist relies on the natural environment to bring the work to life. With minimal materials—two parallel rows of slender stainless-steel mirrored poles joined by an open “roof” of fluttering Mylar strips overhead, “Scarecrow” physically and energetically reflects the surrounding river and sky, seamlessly amplifying and responding to the movement of water and air. The near weightlessness of the Mylar allows it to twist in the wind and wink in the sun continuously, depending only on natural power. Without engines or electricity, the installation nevertheless is in constant motion, even more so as you move through it, making your way across the green grass. Without solid walls and a ceiling, it nonetheless encloses you, shaping and accentuating their experience of the surrounding park space, especially as a woman passes by pushing a stroller, two people stop and chat as their dogs sniff each other, and a shirtless man practices martial arts at the far end. Using the bare essentials, Kempinas has created a truly monumental work. (Also at the park through August 3 is Meschac Gaba’s psychedelic “Broadway Billboard: Citoyen du Monde” and Austin+Mergold’s “Folly: SuralArk.”