Yearly Archives: 2012

ANNUALS, BIENNIALS, TRIENNIALS

Lesley Dill’s “Woman in Dress with Star” and Glenn Ligon’s untitled oil painting are cleverly juxtaposed at 2012 Annual (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE ANNUAL: 2012
National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 29, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

In an artistic convergence that occurs only once every six years, the National Academy’s annual, the Whitney’s biennial, and the New Museum’s triennial are all on view at the same time. And in a perhaps unexpected convergence, all three reveal that less is more with shows that avoid jam-packing galleries with brand-name artists and instead concentrate on fewer works with a focus on installation. At the National Academy, a mix of cross-generational academicians and invited non-academicians makes for an effective examination of contemporary American art, albeit through a more traditional lens than at the biennial and the triennial, using juxtaposition as a means to an end. Figurative paintings by Burton Silverman, Daniel Bennett Schwartz, Gillian Pederson-Krag, and Philip Pearlstein are seen alongside abstract works by Dorothea Rockburne, Richard Mayhew, David Driskell, and Eric Aho. Sculptures by Barbara Chase-Riboud, Jeffrey Schiff, and Arlene Shechet line the center of a hallway of paintings. Lesley Dill’s “Woman in Dress with Star” stands in front of Glenn Ligon’s untitled oil painting, each incorporating text. The annual also includes a trio of video installations: Joan Jonas’s “Lines in the Sand,” Kate Gilmore’s “Break of Day,” and Carrie Mae Weems’s three-channel “Afro-Chic,” which keeps the funk pumping on the second floor. The 2012 Annual is the best the National Academy has put on in several years.

Gisèle Vienne with Dennis Cooper, Stephen O’Malley, and Peter Rehberg, “Last Spring: A Prequel,” mixed-media installation, 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2012
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Fifth Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 27, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm (pay what you wish Fridays 6:00 -9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

“Art discourse serves to maintain links among artistic subfields and to create a continuum between practices that may be completely incommensurable in terms of their economic conditions and social as well as artistic values,” Andrea Fraser writes in “There’s no place like home,” an essay that serves as her contribution to the 2012 Whitney Biennial. “This may make art discourse one of the most consequential—and problematic—institutions in the art world today, along with mega-museums that aim to be all things to all people and survey exhibitions (like the Whitney Biennial) that offer up incomparable practices for comparison.” As it turns out, curators Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders have not turned the biennial into all things for all people, instead putting together a manageable collection of contemporary American art that leans heavily toward performance and installation, showing off the space of the Marcel Breuer building instead of cluttering every nook and cranny with anything and everything. Visitors can walk through Oscar Tuazon’s “For Hire,” Georgia Sagri’s “Working the No Work,” and Wu Tsang’s “Green Room” and watch the New York City Players get ready for Richard Maxwell’s new site-specific play in an open dressing room. Gisèle Vienne’s “Last Spring: A Prequel” features a young animatronic teen standing in a corner, mumbling text by Dennis Cooper. More traditional art forms like painting and photography tend to get lost in these kinds of shows, but the disciplines are well represented by Nicole Eisenman’s uneasy figures, Andrew Masullo’s eye-catching small canvases filled with bright colors and geometric patterns, and Latoya Ruby Frazier’s photographic examination of her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. If you’re thirsting for some music, there’s Lutz Bacher’s “Pipe Organ,” Lucy Raven’s “What Manchester Does Today, the Rest of the World Does Tomorrow” player piano, and Werner Herzog’s “Hearsay of the Soul,” a four-channel video installation that brings together Hercules Segers’s etchings with music by Ernst Reijseger. And then there’s Robert Gober’s exploration of the career of Forrest Bess, which has to be seen to be believed. For a closer look at the myriad live performances, talks, and workshops, visit here.

Triennial visitors can take a seat on Slavs and Tatars’ “PrayWay” while contemplating Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE UNGOVERNABLES: 2012 NEW MUSEUM TRIENNIAL
New Museum
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 22, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm (free Thursdays 7:00 -9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

Three years ago, the New Museum’s inaugural triennial featured international artists who were all younger than Jesus was at his death at age thirty-three. The 2012 edition, “The Ungovernables,” comprises sculpture, painting, video, and installation that challenge the status quo often in subtle ways, commenting on world economics, corporatization, and politics through creative methods. In Amalia Pica’s “Eavesdropping,” a group of drinking glasses stick out from a wall, referencing both the surveillance and the digital age. Danh Vo’s “We the People” consists of sheets of pounded copper that are actually re-creations of the skin of the Statue of Liberty, a different way to look at freedom. Pratchaya Phinthong’s “What I learned I no longer know; the little I still know, I guessed” is a square collection of Zimbabwean paper money whose specific value continually decreases. Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado’s O Século (The Century) shows debris being thrown from a building, resulting in a visual and aural cacophony of chaos. The Propeller Group’s multichannel “TVC Communism” details the creation of a modern advertising campaign selling communism. Slavs and Tatars’ “PrayWay” is a folded prayer carpet on which visitors are invited to sit and get lost in contemplation that need not be religious. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings examine race and gender. Hassan Khan’s short video, Jewel, depicts two men dancing using signifiers set to a propulsive Cairene song. José Antonio Vega Macotela’s “Time Exchange” details a four-year collaboration with Mexican prisoners in which tasks are exchanged instead of money. Pilvi Takala’s riotous “The Trainee” follows the Finnish-born artist’s intervention as she pretends to be working in a Deloitte office. And Gabriel Sierra’s interventions involve placing such objects as a ladder and a level, which he refers to as devils, directly into the walls of the museum. As with the National Academy’s Annual and the Whitney Biennial, “The Ungovernables” avoids clutter and overt political statements, steering clear of the obvious and instead offering a varied and intriguing look at the contemporary art world

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: POLISSE

POLISSE follows a Child Protection Unit as it performs its daily duties in Paris

POLISSE (Maïwenn, 2011)
Thursday, April 19, SVA Theater, 9:30
Friday, April 20, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 9:30
Thursday, April 26, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 3:30
www.tribecafilm.com

Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and nominated for thirteen Césars, Polisse is an intimate portrait of the men and women who work in the Child Protection Unit of a Paris police precinct. After seeing a television documentary about the CPU, French writer-director-producer-actress Maïwenn (Le bal des actrices, Pardonnez-moi) spent time with the team, basing the screenplay, which she wrote with Emmanuelle Bercot, on her own experiences as well as the stories she heard while embedded with the plainclothes officers. Maïwenn plays a fictionalized version of herself in the film, starring as Mélissa, a young woman who has been embedded with the CPU, taking photographs of the unit in the station house, out on calls, and even in their off time. Polisse does a fabulous job depicting the myriad intricacies of investigating claims of child abuse and pedophilia, showing how careful the team must be when speaking with the children as well as the adults, knowing that the slightest misunderstanding could result in devastating circumstances. Maïwenn includes only bits and pieces of the interrogations, placing the audience in the position of wondering what the truth is and understanding how hard it is to make those decisions. The first half of Polisse is absolutely gripping, but the second half gets bogged down in the soap-opera relationships of the members of the unit as well as a special detail they get assigned to that makes little sense. The large cast, which also features Karin Viard, Joeystarr, Marina Foïs, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Karole Rocher, Frédéric Pierrot, Frédéric Pierrot, and Bercot as Sue Ellen, do a terrific job creating the camaraderie among the officers, from supporting one another to going out drinking to getting into serious arguments, like an extended family that, in this case, spends much of its time investigating dangerous problems in other families.

IMAGES FROM THE EDGE: JAR CITY

Tense thriller based on award-winning book is part of Icelandic film series at Lincoln Center

CLASSIC & CONTEMPORARY ICELANDIC CINEMA: JAR CITY (MYRIN) (Baltasar Kormákur, 2006)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, April 20, 6:15; Tuesday, April 24, 2:00
Series runs April 18-26
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Writer-director Baltasar Kormákur’s adaptation of Arnaldur Indriðason’s award-winning novel Jar City (Myrin) is a bleak but compelling police procedural that focuses on a fact-based controversial government initiative that is cataloging genetic research on all Icelandic families. When an aging man named Holberg (Thorsteinn Gunnarsson) is murdered in his home, brooding inspector Erlendur (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) heads the investigation into the death, leading him to a thirty-year-old rape, a dirty cop, a trio of criminals (one of whom has been missing for a quarter century), a woman who killed herself shortly after her four-year-old daughter died, and a doctor who collects body parts. The divorced Erlendur also has to deal with his troubled daughter (Augusta Eva Erlendsdottir), a pregnant drug addict who hangs out with some very sketchy company. Meanwhile, a mysterious man (Atli Rafn Sigurdarson) is up to something following the traumatic death of his young daughter. Kormakur weaves together the story line of the two fathers side by side — in the book, the unidentified man appears only near the conclusion, although who he is still remains a mystery for most of the film — centering on the complex relationship between parents and children and what gets passed down from generation to generation, both on the outside and the inside. Sigurdsson plays Erlendur with a cautious seriousness, the only humor coming from the way he treats his goofy partner, Sigurdur Oli (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson). Iceland’s entry for the 2007 Foreign-Language Oscar and winner of the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Jar City is a dark, tense intellectual thriller. Indriðason has turned Erlendur into a continuing character in such follow-ups as Silence of the Grave and Voices; here’s hoping Kormákur and Sigurdsson do the same. Jar City will be screening on April 20 and 24 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Images from the Edge: Classic & Contemporary Icelandic Cinema” series, comprising nineteen works from Iceland ranging from Loftur Guðmundsson’s 1949 Between Mountain and Shore and Ævar Kvaran’s 1950 The Last Farm in the Valley to Árni Ásgeirsson’s 2010 Undercurrent and Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson’s 2011 Either Way, with the directors present for many of the screenings, including Kormákur following the 6:15 showing of Jar City on April 20.

E-MOVES

Evolving artist Sheetal Gandhi will collaborate with mentor David Rousseve on contemporary dance as part of “E-Moves” series (photo by Cedar Bough T. Saeji)

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Ave. at West 135th St.
April 20-21, 27-28, $15, 7:30
www.harlemstage.org

The thirteenth season of the “E-Moves” dance series will take place at Harlem Stage over the next two weekends, pairing emerging and evolving choreographers with well-established mentors, creating works in a variety of styles. On April 20 and 27, the emerging artist section joins Nikki Hefko with Nia Love (ballet), Daisuke Omiya with Patricia Hoffbauer (contemporary/tap), Simone Sobers with Kevin Wynn (contemporary), and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko with Tania Isaac (postmodern), followed by evolving artist Sheetal Gandhi with David Rousseve (contemporary). The April 21 and 28 sessions feature emerging artist Jenni Hong with Francesca Harper (contemporary), Leslie Parker with Edisa Weeks (contemporary), Franklin Diaz with Ronald K. Brown (contemporary flamenco), and Marjani Forté with Earl Mosley (contemporary), followed by evolving artist Souleymane Badolo with Reggie Wilson (contemporary). The program also includes screenings of Joan Frosch’s Movement (R)Evolution Africa: A Story of an Art Form in Four Acts and Rousseve’s Two Seconds After Laughter. All of the emerging artists are local choreographers from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan (including two from Harlem), while Badolo is a native of Burkina Faso who is currently based in Bennington, Vermont, and Gandhi arrives from Los Angeles. “E-Moves” offers a fabulous opportunity to experience what is coming next in the world of dance.

DAVID LYNCH

David Lynch, “Boy Lights Fire,” mixed media on cardboard, 2011

DAVID LYNCH
Tilton Gallery
8 East 76th St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through April 21, free
212-737-2221
www.jacktiltongallery.com
davidlynch.com

In such films as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Blue Velvet and the television series Twin Peaks, Montana-born writer-director David Lynch created off-kilter worlds that reveal the dark underbelly of contemporary society, an alternate reality that is both oddball and frightening. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his artwork explores similar territory. Lynch, who has also made such albums as BlueBob, Polish Night Music, and last year’s solo debut, Crazy Clown Time, is currently in the midst of his first gallery show in New York since 1989, an eponymously titled display that continues through Saturday at the Tilton Gallery on the Upper East Side. Lynch’s offbeat combination of humor and danger is evident throughout the two-floor exhibit, which ranges from dreamlike, surreal black-and-white “Distorted Nude” photographs of body parts to haunting yet playful small watercolors to large-scale mixed-media paintings that include snippets of text and figures and brownish clumps that evoke such artists as Dieter Roth and the Brothers Quay in addition to Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, and Henri Matisse. In the triptych “Boy Lights Fire,” a child with impossibly long arms is playing with matches over the head of a “neighbor girl he likes a lot.” In “Bob’s Second Dream,” a tiny creature sticks out from the cardboard base with the note “his head was shaped different,” a woman’s face is split in half by the words “I don’t love you,” and nearby it is declared that “everything is fuckin broke.” Jolly old St. Nick floats off in the distance in “No Santa Claus.” And in “Boy’s Night Out,” a father is grasping a plug while his son, holding a battery, announces, “daddy’s home,” setting the stage for one very strange connection. The show also includes the forty-two-second Mystery of the Seeing Hand and Sphere, a surreal short film that encompasses Lynch’s bizarre worldview.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: ROOM 514

Anna (Asia Naifeld) is determined to uncover the truth no matter the cost in ROOM 514

ROOM 514 (Sharon Bar-Ziv, 2011)
Saturday, April 21, AMC Loews Village 7, 7:00
Sunday, April 22, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 9:45
Thursday, April 26, AMC Loews Village 7, 3:00
www.tribecafilm.com
www.room514.com

Writer-director Sharon Bar Ziv’s feature-film debut, Room 514, is a claustrophobic thriller about an idealistic young woman trapped between two worlds. Asia Naifeld stars as Anna, a military investigator who, as she is coming to the end of her term in the army, believes she has uncovered a serious breach of ethics involving a unit commanded by the well-connected Davidi (Udi Persi). Despite being told by her superior, Erez (Ohad Hall) ― an engaged man she is sleeping with ― to leave it alone, Anna pursues her questioning of Davidi and potential whistleblower Nimrod (Guy Kapul), a sergeant who is terrified of admitting the truth but can’t seem to just bury the lies. Bar Ziv sets most of the film inside the small Room 514, where Anna confronts Davidi and Nimrod and also has sweaty sex with Erez; only a few times does the camera venture outside to show the exhausted Anna taking the bus home, where she still lives with her mother. A tough interrogator, Anna is often interrupted by calls from her mother, which she takes even in the middle of the most heated questioning; although these scenes reveal Anna’s youth and immaturity, it is also hard to believe that her character would actually answer the phone at such moments, a serious flaw that nearly breaks down the film (which also cops out when Anna is later confronted by an army general major [Rafi Kalmar]). But it recovers once Anna is back on track and getting to the heart of both the charge of brutal violence against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as well as her relationship with Erez, which might be a whole lot more complicated than she is willing to admit to herself. Inspired by actual events, Room 514 is a compelling look inside contemporary Israeli society as the next generation faces the ongoing battle against the Palestinians while also dealing with long-standing issues of gender and sexuality.

FAYE DRISCOLL: YOU’RE ME

Faye Driscoll and Jesse Zaritt explore each other’s ― and their own ― identity in YOU’RE ME (photo by Christy Pessagno)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Thursday – Sunday through April 21, $15, 8:00
212-255-5793 ext11
www.thekitchen.org
fayedriscoll.com

New York-based choreographer Faye Driscoll examines the complicated, ever-changing nature of interpersonal relationships in her latest evening-length work, You’re Me. As the audience enters the space at the Kitchen, Driscoll and dancer Jesse Zaritt are standing still and ridiculously tall at the back of the stage, wearing a bevy of costumes that reference Lewis Carroll’s Red and White Queens as well as Winnie from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, combining humor with absurdity. Pieces of their outfits start to fall off until the performers are reduced to their basic selves and begin exploring each other through a series of awkward movements as if on a first date, feeling out the possibilities as they touch, squirm, hug, eat, and experiment with their bodies, learning about themselves and their partner. This first section, which is performed with little or no background music and evokes silent films at times, goes on slightly too long but eventually morphs into a middle piece in which the duo goes crazy with spray paint before ending with an exhilarating display of props and costumes (courtesy of Emily Roysdon) changing at a furious pace. You’re Me, part of which was presented as not…not (part 1) at last June’s Gotham Dance Festival at the Joyce, is another strong, intricately conceived work from Driscoll (There is so much mad in me, 837 Venice Blvd), a talented choreographer who is not afraid to take chances and challenge both her audience and her dancers. Here she delves into the very essence of art and creativity as she and Zaritt keep going for ninety breathless minutes that allow plenty of room for improvisation, so you never can guess quite what is going to happen next.