Eight-channel installation offers audiovisual respite
Claire Oliver
513 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 10 (closed Sunday & Monday)
Admission: free
212-929-5949
http://www.claireoliver.com
If you’re like us, things have been pretty hectic ever since the summer ended. But we recently found a wonderful way to relax in Chelsea, watching Nezaket Ekici’s meditative “Kopfsonate.” A Turkish Muslim raised in Germany, Ekici makes living installations in which she is part of the art. For the eight-channel video “Kopfsonate,” she filmed herself dunking her body into the Black Sea and then popping out, later adding a lovely piano soundtrack — even though she had never played the instrument before. Each monitor displays a differently edited four-and-a-half-minute version of the footage, resulting in a visual sonata that echoes the eight octaves of a piano. Ekici’s “Lifting a Secret” is also at the gallery, for which she wrote on a wall using coffee and Vaseline; you have to see it (and smell it) to believe it.