Roni Horn, “Becoming a Landscape,” detail, twenty chromogenic prints, 1999–2001 / © Roni Horn
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Admission: $18 (Pay-what-you-wish Fridays 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
This might be the last weekend to catch “Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction,” an examination of the painter’s development from dark abstract works to her more familiar, repetitive flowery canvases that often feature a palette tailor-made for warm-weather living rooms (however, be sure not to miss the room of intimate photographs of O’Keeffe taken by her longtime lover, Alfred Stieglitz), but there’s a little more time to see the far more interesting and rewarding “Roni Horn AKA Roni Horn,” which runs through January 24. In this wide-ranging midcareer retrospective, Horn searches for the nature of identity in photography, sculpture, drawing, and installation, incorporating images of landscape and language while playing with perception and duality. Horn forces the viewer to question their own place in an ever-changing world in such works as “You are the weather,” comprising one hundred photos of the same woman in Iceland gazing into the camera, her mood shifting based on how hot or cold she is; “Becoming a Landscape,” in which Horn places side by side pairs of photographs taken an instant apart, with only the barest hint of difference evident; “This Is me, This is you,” two large grids of multiple pictures taken of her niece over a few years, consisting of pairs of shots that seem like duplicates but are not; and “Dead Owl,” two pictures of the title subject that are indeed the same. Spread over two floors, “Roni Horn AKA Roni Horn” offers a unique and fascinating perspective on both art and reality.
Alice Guy Blaché, A HOUSE DIVIDED, 1913 (courtesy of the Library of Congress MBRS Division / photograph by George Willeman)
Also continuing through January 24 is “Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer,” screenings of the little-seen films of the first woman director and studio owner, a series of shorts and longer works that are worth sitting down and spending time with in the Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video & Video Galleries, while “Omer Fast: Nostalgia,” in the first-floor Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Gallery through February 14, displays Fast’s three-part film that investigates fact vs. fiction, reality vs. invention. (Fast fans can also check out his new exhibit at Postmasters in Chelsea, which includes the videos TAKE A DEEP BREATH and DE GROTE BOODSCHAP.)