Yearly Archives: 2012

ERNESTO NETO: SLOW IIS GOOD

Ernesto Neto, “The Sun Lits Life, Let the Son,” polypropylene and polyester rope, plastic balls, plants, terra cotta, black pepper, turmeric, cumin, and cloves, 2012 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through May 25, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com
slow iis good slideshow

Brazilian mixed-media artist Ernesto Neto, who filled the Park Ave. Armory three years ago with the giant exoskeleton “Anthropodino,” has created another organic treat for the senses, “Slow iis good, with my back to the world!” On view at Tanya Bonakdar through Saturday, “Slow iis good” consists of two floors of colorful crocheted polypropylene and polyester cord works highlighted by several pieces that invite visitors inside, engaging their senses of sight, smell, touch, and hearing. On the first floor, the sonic “SoundWay” (be sure to shake the sides) leads to “The Island Bird,” which resembles the lower half of an enormous body, with the extended feet serving as an entrance to a playful central area that dangles from the ceiling. With your shoes off, you can follow the unsteady path as you walk over plastic black balls and relax in a cushioned rest stop. While inside, you not only merge with the piece, becoming part of it, but you can look out and see other smaller works, such as “Grub” and “Sorry, I Don’t Know Exactly Where to Go,” hanging on the walls and residing on the floor, offering a different perspective from the usual gallery experience. Upstairs you are greeted by the cozy “Labor,” where you can sit down and examine one of the spinning machines used to do the heavily detailed and time-consuming crocheting. Next, in a small gallery off to the side, you can take a load off in “Blue Hammock” or “Green Hammock,” which are as comfortable as they appear. The last room holds another surprise, “The Sun Lits Life, Let the Son,” a bridgelike structure with rocks and more plastic balls, surrounded by hanging plants and spices, the scents of black pepper, turmeric, cumin, cloves, and greenery combining with the feeling of antigravity to lift you into another dimension. As the title says, “Slow iis good”; take your time making your way through the works, which are certainly fun but also disorienting, as you have to be careful to maintain your balance in the two larger pieces, but it’s well worth it.

TRIBES

TRIBES examines language and communication in a severely dysfunctional family

Barrow Street Theatre
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Through September 2, $75-$95
barrowstreettheatre.com

Nominated for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Director by the Drama Desk, Nina Raine’s Tribes is an intimate examination of communication, language, and family. Originally presented at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2010, Tribes delves into the trials and tribulations of a wildly dysfunctional family that emerge when prodigal son Billy (Russell Harvard) suddenly returns home. Although Billy was born deaf, his parents, Christopher (Jeff Perry) and Beth (Mare Winningham), tried not to raise him differently, deciding not to have him learn sign language or be treated as if he has a handicap. Back home, Billy reconnects with his brother, Daniel (Will Brill), a bitter, ne’er-do-well wannabe writer, and his sister, Ruth (Gayle Rankin), who has dreams of becoming an opera singer, while his father spouts off against the establishment and his mother attempts to improbably keep the peace. But when Billy meets Sylvia (Susan Pourfar), a young woman who is slowly losing her hearing because of a genetic condition, he takes a closer look at his upbringing and doesn’t like what he sees. Tribes is a searing, poignant drama that takes place around a central table surrounded on all four sides by the audience, as if the crowd is part of the characters’ extended family. Director David Cromer (Orson’s Shadow, When the Rain Stops Falling) makes excellent use of the tiny space, which subtly references the claustrophobic nature of this rather unwelcoming, extremely selfish and self-absorbed family, then takes things to another level in a series of later scenes that ingeniously explore the world of the deaf. Tribes is a splendid achievement, one of the best plays of the year on or off Broadway.

LORRAINE O’GRADY: NEW WORLDS

Lorraine O’Grady discusses her latest exhibit at Alexander Gray Associates (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Alexander Gray Associates
508 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., #215
Tuesday – Saturday through May 25, free
212-399-2636
www.alexandergray.com
lorraineogrady.com

For more than thirty years, Lorraine O’Grady has been exploring the African diaspora and the African American art world itself through such multidisciplinary exhibitions, series, and performances as “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire,” “Miscegenated Family Album,” and “Flowers of Evil and Good.” In her seminal 1990s text “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity,” the Boston-born, Manhattan-based visual artist wrote, “What happened to the girl who was abducted from her village, then shipped here in chains? What happened to her descendants? . . . Perhaps they have internalized and are cooperating with the West’s construction of not-white women as not-to-be-seen.” The African American body is central to her latest exhibition, “New Worlds,” on view at Alexander Gray Associates through May 25. The centerpiece of the show is the nineteen-minute video Landscape (Western Hemisphere), which consists of extreme close-ups of O’Grady’s hair, accompanied by a soundtrack that includes rustling wind and animal noises. The abstract images are mesmerizing, impossible to identify on their own, a combination of beauty, mystery, and fear. Landscape (Western Hemisphere) is joined by a pair of revisited photomontages from O’Grady’s 1991 “BodyGround” series. In “The Fir-Palm,” a hybrid Caribbean palm / New England fir rises out of the body of a naked black woman, representative of O’Grady herself, whose parents were West Indian. O’Grady gets overtly political in the diptych “Body/Ground (The Clearing: or Cortez and La Malinche. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me),” which depicts, on the left, a white man and a black woman making love as they float above the Clearing at O’Grady’s alma mater, Wellesley, with two children playiing beneath them, while on the right a clothed man with a skeleton head sexually touches a naked black woman feigning death. It’s a powerful image about slavery, colonialism, interracial relationships, and one of O’Grady’s core concerns, hybridity. “In The Strange Taxi: From Africa to Jamaica to Boston in 200 Years, where the subject was hybridism itself, my literal ancestresses, who to some may have looked white, sprouted from a European mansion rolling on wheels down the African woman’s back,” O’Grady wrote in “Olympia’s Maid.” “Although they may have been controversial, I liked the questions those beautifully dressed, proudly erect, ca. World War I women raised, not least of which was how the products of rape could be so self-confident, so poised.” Those issues and more are explored in this fascinating show.

SONGS FOR PEOPLE I WILL NEVER SEE AGAIN

Lucy Foley will debut her new multimedia show May 24 at apexart (photo by Lucy Foley)

apexart
291 Church St.
Thursday, May 24, free, 6:30
212-431-5270
www.apexart.org

New York–based Irish singer and photographer Lucy Foley will be presenting her latest multimedia work, Songs for People I Will Never See Again, on Thursday night at 6:30 at apexart on Church St. The free performance will consist of live music and stories by Foley, with Ross Bonadonna on guitar and laptops, Gavin Smith on accordion, synths, and steel drum, Andy Mattina on bass, and Tom Pope on drums, accompanied by projected images. The tales are inspired by real-life unique individuals she has come upon, “people frozen in the moment of their appearance and of their disappearance,” Foley explains on her website. The show will consist of new songs as well as new arrangements of all the tracks from her 2010 debut album, Copenhagen, on which she also collaborated with Bonadonna. “Your life sprang a leak and out I flew / Along came a song and moved into your home with her / So we went out into the street / And we all fell apart together,” Foley sings on the record’s “Kiss You Free.” Foley will also be playing next month at Freddy’s Bloomsday Party on June 16 for Katie Welty’s art opening, along with the Highland Shatners, Plastic Beast, ScriptBreaker, and Cancion Franklin.

MAD. SQ. EATS SPRING 2012

You can load up on some mighty fine Mighty Balls at Mad. Sq. Eats (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Worth Square
Broadway & Fifth Ave. at 24th St.
Daily through June 1, free admision, 11:00 am – 9:00 pm
www.madisonsquarepark.org

The spring edition of Mad. Sq. Eats is up and running in the pedestrian plaza known as Worth Square at the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Ave. at 24th St., where more than two dozen gourmet vendors are serving culinary delights through June 1. People flock to the area, just outside of Madison Square Park, to amass their own international multicourse tasting menu. Among the myriad options are chili salted shrimp from Hong Kong Street Cart, steak tacos from Calexico, bulgogi burgers from Asiadog, truffled mozzarella crepes and fries from Bar Suzette, crawfish fritters from Gravy, the pressed chicken sandwich and Phoenician fries from ililli, empanadas from La Sonrísa, the short rib brisket sandwich from Mayhem & Stout, smoked meats and sour pickles from Mile End, the bacon and belly grilled cheese from Resto/Cannibal, the lobster BLT from Red Hook Lobster Pound, ravioli from Quartino, Tostilocos from Mexicue, calzones from Eataly, Nero di Seppia from Arancini Bros., and meatball sliders with Not Your Average Brown Sauce and Gorgonzola cheese from Mighty Balls. And then comes dessert, which features brownies from Hot Blondies, corn-flake cookies from Momofuku, truffles from Nunu Chocolates, truffle-cheddar pretzels from Sigmund’s, shaved ice from People’s Pops, and our favorite, the amazing beauties from Macaroun Parlor, where we go crazy over such flavors as candied bacon with maple cream cheese, red velvet, s’mores, Nutella, and caramel fleur de sel.

FLEET WEEK

An international contingent of military vessels and tall ships will pull into the metropolitan area for Fleet Week

Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and other locations
Pier 86, 12th Ave. & 46th St.
May 23–30
Admission: adults $22, children three to six $10, seven to seventeen $17 (if purchased online in advance)
www.intrepidmuseum.org
www.fleetweeknewyork.com

Started back in 1984, Fleet Week takes place May 23-30, when thousands of men and women from the U.S. Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard come ashore in New York City for a week of special events and all-night partying. The official Parade of Sail begins Wednesday morning, May 23, at 8:11 at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, making its way past the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center site. Twenty-one ships from around the world will dock in the metropolitan area, with many available for boarding; the lineup includes the USS Wasp, the USCGC Eagle, and the USS Donald Cook at Pier 90 in Manhattan, the USS Mitscher, Roosevelt, San Jacinto, and Gonzalez and the tall ships Cisne Branco and KRI Dewaruci on Staten Island, the USCGC Seneca and Willow, the RAF Argus, JS Shirane, and FNS Pohjanmaa, and the tall ships Etoile, La Belle Poule, Buque Escuela Arm Cuauhtemoc, and Juan Sebastian de Elcano in Brooklyn, and the tall ships ARC Gloria and BAE Guayas at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Among the special events are the USN Leap Frogs Parachute Jump on Coney Island on May 24, U.S. Marine Corps Day in Battery Park on May 25, an Explosive Ordnance Team demo in Eisenhower Park and Military Day in Times Square on May 26, the Staten Island War of 1812 Commemoration on May 27, and the Manhattan Memorial Day Parade on May 29. The Intrepid will host a fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Mercury-Atlas 7 mission on May 24, Broadway showcases featuring performances by the casts of Ghost, Sister Act, Chicago, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Rock of Ages, Godspell, Porgy & Bess, Peter and the Starcatcher, Anything Goes, Memphis, The Unauthorized Harry Experience, Traces, and The Gazillion Bubble Show on May 25, screenings of Men in Black 3 (May 24) and Top Gun (May 25), the annual Tug of War on May 26, a USCG Search & Rescue Demonstration on May 27, and a lunchtime talk with former USS Mason crewmember Lorenzo DuFau on May 29. You can get an advance look at the ships by taking New York Water Taxi’s Special OpSail 2012 Preview Tour on May 22 ($45-$60) and the up-close-and-personal OpSail VIP Parade of Sail Tour on May 23 ($55-$75).

THE STEINS COLLECT: MATISSE, PICASSO, AND THE PARISIAN AVANT-GARDE

Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Tisch Galleries, second floor
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 3, $25
212-570-3949
www.metmuseum.org

Like last year’s “Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore” exhibition at the Jewish Museum, the Met’s “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” does an extraordinary job revealing the fascinating life of a family dedicated to the love of art. In the first decade of the twentieth century, siblings Leo, Gertrude, and Michael Stein, along with Michael’s wife, Sarah, moved to Paris, where they became entranced by the work of such artists as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, Odilon Redon, and Edgar Degas. Although not wealthy, the upper-middle-class Steins had some extra money from the family’s old clothing business and real estate holdings, so they decided to spend whatever they could on up-and-coming artists whose work they could afford. Soon they were showing off paintings by the relatively little-known Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, hosting Saturday salons, and counting among their friends Claribel and Etta Cone, art dealer Ambroise Vollard, art historian Bernard Berenson, and such artists as Henri Manguin and Picasso and Matisse, whom they famously introduced to each other in 1905-6. The Met exhibit ranges from works that are known to have directly influenced the Steins to want to start collecting art to the many paintings that ended up hanging on their walls, complete with photographs and a site-specific video projection that shows exactly where they were hung in their Paris apartments. Leo, at one time an aspiring artist, and Gertrude, who became a famous and controversial writer, wrote often about their adventures in the art world, so the accompanying text is filled with delightful quotes that display the likes and dislikes of the siblings. “All our recent accessions are unfortunately by people you never heard of so there’s no use trying to describe them,” Leo Stein wrote in 1905, “except that one of those out of the salon [Matisse’s ‘Woman with a Hat’] made everybody laugh except a few who got mad about it and two other pictures are by a young Spaniard named Picasso whom I consider a genius of very great magnitude.”

But Leo grew unhappy later on with the direction Picasso was taking, at the same time that he was not thrilled with Gertrude’s growing relationship with Alice B. Toklas. “Both [Picasso] & Gertrude are using their intellects, which they ain’t got, to do what would need the finest critical tact, which they ain’t got neither,” he wrote in 1913, “and they are in my belief turning out the most go’almighty rubbish that is to be found.” In the 1930s, Gertrude admitted, “It is very difficult now that everybody is accustomed to everything to give some idea of the uneasiness once felt when one first looked at all these pictures on the walls.” And what pictures they are hanging on the walls of the Met in a smartly curated display, highlighted by Matisse’s revolutionary “Woman with a Hat,” Picasso’s justly famous portrait of Gertrude Stein, Cézanne’s “Bathers,” and three versions of “La Coiffure” by Manguin, Matisse, and Picasso. The exhibition also includes Jo Davidson’s sculpture of Gertrude Stein (another cast of which sits in Bryant Park), family photographs, a painting by Leo Stein and drawings by Sarah Stein, a clip from the 1934 opera Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson, home movies of Sarah and Michael Stein at their villa designed by Le Corbusier, and Gertrude’s handwritten will. In conjunction with “The Steins Collect,” the Met will be screening a series of related films, including Perry Miller Adato’s Paris the Luminous Years on May 29 at 2:00 and Jill Godmilow and Linda Bassett’s Waiting for the Moon, about the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Toklas, on May 31 at 2:00.