this week in art

SOUL SEARCHING: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI AND BABE

The Light and the Dark looks at the life and times of Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (photo by James Leynse)

THE LIGHT AND THE DARK (THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI)
Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St, between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 15, $66-$131
www.59e59.org

After seeing Kate Hamill’s The Light and the Dark (the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi) and Jessica Goldberg’s Babe on the same day, I was hard-pressed to figure out why every woman doesn’t just go all Judith on their own Holofernes. While both plays explore misogyny, sexism, control of a woman’s body, and the dominant patriarchy in the arts, one does so much better than the other, although neither is ultimately successful.

At 59E59, Primary Stages is presenting The Light and the Dark, about Artemisia Gentileschi, the early Italian Baroque painter whose career was temporarily derailed by sexual assault and gender discrimination. Hamill’s previous feminist-driven works include stirring adaptations of Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Vanity Fair, and Dracula. She has portrayed such characters as Becky Sharp, Elizabeth Bennet, Meg March, Renfield, and Marianne Dashwood; in The Light and the Dark she inhabits the title role with a tender ferociousness as Artemisia matures from a precocious seven-year-old girl to one of the most talented and important artists of her era, even as she’s held back by men and social mores every step of the way.

Artemisia knows what she wants from a young age. Her Tuscan-born father, Orazio (Wynn Harmon), is a naturalistic, technically skillful painter who delivers precisely what his patrons desire. Admitting he doesn’t know how to raise a girl on his own, he decides to send her to a nunnery for her education, telling his daughter, “Think, if I build a big enough fortune and you mark the sisters well enough, you may be a fine lady — the wife or the mother of the great artist of tomorrow!” Misia, as he calls her, responds, “I don’t want to be a lady! I am I, your Artemisia. And I want to be a painter!”

When she is nine, Orazio lets Misia begin working in his studio, and six years later she is allowed to start painting alongside Agostino Tassi (Matthew Saldívar) and Cosimo Quorli (Jason O’Connell), which could be considered scandalous, especially when Orazio brings in a nude model, a sex worker named Maria (Joey Parsons). Soon the arrogant Agostino takes a personal interest in Artemisia, who is proving to be an exceptional artist with a unique perspective on traditional biblical scenes, and scandal does indeed ensue, against Artemisia’s will.

Artemisia Gentileschi has been undergoing a renaissance of her own this century, a heroic figure for the current time, spurred on by the 2002 Met exhibit “Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy,” such books as Mary D. Garrard’s Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe and Gina Siciliano’s I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi, and such plays as Sara Fellini’s NEC SPE / NEC METU and Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution. Artemisia often repeats “I, I, I” when talking about herself, trying to establish an identity that her father and his friends will not allow her to have because she is a woman, and she is prone to cursing like a sailor, dropping F-bombs again and again.

“Before Caravaggio, painters / Started with the light. / Blank canvas, blank fresco, / And painted layers upon that blankness — / But Caravaggio starts in the darkness / And carves his way out from the shadows,” she says in a way that refers to her own situation. She also declares, as if for all women, “Why should I suffer for nothing? / If I cannot undo it — and I cannot undo it. . . . / I can make it right. / I can control it.”

The show is visually beautiful, from Brittany Vasta’s alluring studio set to Jen Caprio’s lovely period costumes, Seth Reiser’s lighting, and Kylee Loera’s projections of such masterworks by Artemisia as Judith and Holofernes, Susanna and the Elders, The Allegory of Inclination, and Madonna and Child. The cast is effective, but Hamill and director Jade King Carroll too often get caught up in overly earnest monologues and preachy explications; Artemesia speaks at the audience instead of to them. Several didactic art lectures could have been cut or shortened — the play is too long at two and a half hours with intermission — in favor of the narrative itself, which can be compelling.

However, Carroll and Hamill do make The Light and the Dark feel relevant to what is happening today, particularly in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Both female actors, Hamill as Artemisia and Parsons as Maria, ultimately take ownership of their bodies away from the men while subverting the male gaze; each gets fully nude, standing boldly onstage, not mere naked subjects to be depicted on canvas but real women shouting out their independence. They might not be holding daggers, preparing to cut off a perpetrator’s head, but you can see and feel their weapons nonetheless.

Gus (Arliss Howard) and Abby (Marisa Tomei) wonder about a new employee in Babe (photo by Monique Carboni)

BABE
The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 22, $99-$119
thenewgroup.org

Jessica Goldberg’s Babe has much in common with Kate Hamill’s The Light and the Dark (the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi); instead of taking place in the world of Baroque painting, it is set in the contemporary music industry, where an old-school record producer, Gus (Arliss Howard), spews sexism and misogyny in his search for artists with a soul. He gives short shrift to his longtime right-hand person, Abby (Marisa Tomei), who discovered 1990s sensation Kat Wonder (Gracie McGraw) but has never received the recognition she deserves.

When a young Gen Z woman, Katherine Becker (McGraw), comes in for a job interview and ultimately gets hired, each character’s flaws become exposed, as well as their strengths, but it is hard to care in this lackluster story searching for its own purpose, never filling in the blank canvas it started with.

Comparisons abound between the two shows. “I don’t want to make people feel great, I want to destroy shit! I want the girls in the front, moshing the fuck out of each other!” Kat declares in a way Gentileschi never would have. Abby, who is gay, explains, “People think if you’re a certain age without a partner, you’re alone. But it’s not true,” evoking Artemisia saying, “I have no interest — in marrying,” but with less conviction. While Hamill empowers Artemisia, having her stand onstage naked, using her body as a model for the self-portrait Allegory of Inclination, Goldberg makes Abby sexless, having had a double mastectomy as a result of cancer. “So it doesn’t really make me feel —” she tells Katherine, implying she lacks physical and emotional desire and confidence. While The Light and the Dark references Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Donatelli, and Botticelli, Babe brings up Liz Phair, Bob Dylan, Joan Jett, and Kathleen Hannah.

At one point in The Light and the Dark, men assume that Artemisia did not actually paint anything, that a woman is incapable of creating high-quality art and that someone else must be behind it all, which is one of the reasons Artemisia signs her name on her canvases “in bold type . . . And wait for my accolades to roll in!” In Babe, a New Group production at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Abby eventually asserts, “I want my NAME. On the record.” As women in fields run by men, neither receives those accolades, but Abby has settled for compromising where Artemisia keeps up the fight.

Marisa Tomei, Arliss Howard, and Gracie McGraw star in the New Group’s Babe
(photo by Monique Carboni)

During the job interview, amid outdated questions that would drive a human resources department to drink, Gus asks Katherine, “Do you have a soul?” Unfortunately, it’s Babe itself that lacks heart and soul. Even at only eighty-five minutes it drags on, like side two of an old record that doesn’t live to up to the flip side.

Derek McLane’s office set is attractive and BETTY’s original music is fine, but the narrative and time shifts are bumpy; director Scott Elliott never gets a handle on the rhythm. Interestingly, although Gus has a disdain for groups, preferring solo artists performing songs written by others, he wears a Killers T-shirt, the Las Vegas band led by lead singer and chief songwriter Brandon Flowers. The costumes, which never change, are by Jeff Mahshie.

Whereas it is obvious why Hamill made The Light and the Dark, celebrating a woman who faced tremendous obstacles in order to express herself through her remarkable art, it is decidedly unclear what points Goldberg (Refuge, Good Thing) is trying to make in Babe; it’s like a concept album without a concept. It purports to be about “the American spirit of individualism,” as Abby says, as well as the resistance to the DEI movement, but it’s as flat as an LP that is not going to go gold or platinum anytime soon, instead gathering dust on a shelf.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

TIME KEEPS ON TICKING, TICKING, TICKING . . . INTO THE FUTURE — AND THE PAST — AT MoMA

Christian Marclay’s twenty-four-hour masterpiece, The Clock, unfolds in real time (photo courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube)

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: THE CLOCK
MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art
11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through February 17, $17-$30
www.moma.org

In 2010, the Whitney presented “Festival,” a thrilling interactive retrospective of the work of Christian Marclay, featuring multiple multimedia site-specific installations and live performances. The New York–based multidisciplinary artist followed that up with a supreme work of utter brilliance, the captivating twenty-four-hour video The Clock, which premiered at White Cube in London, then won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. Over the years in New York it has screened at the Paula Cooper Gallery, the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, and in 2012–13 at the Museum of Modern Art; it is now back at MoMA, where this must-see experience will be on view through February 19. “I can’t believe a decade has gone by since The Clock was last shown at MoMA,” Marclay said in a statement. “We’ve all aged except the actors on the screen, who never age. They may die but on the screen they live forever.”

Time is of the essence in Christian Marclay’s dazzling film The Clock (photo courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube)

The film, always presented in a large, dark space with roomy, comfortable seats, unfolds in real time, composed of approximately twelve thousand clips from movies and television that feature all kinds of timepieces showing the minutes ticking away. Masterfully edited so that it creates its own fluid narrative, The Clock seamlessly cuts from romantic comedies with birds emerging from cuckoo clocks to action films in which protagonists synchronize their watches, from thrillers with characters battling it out in clock towers to dramas with convicted murderers facing execution and sci-fi programs with mad masterminds attempting to freeze time. Marclay mixes in iconic images with excerpts from little-known foreign works so audiences are kept on the edge of their seats, wondering what will come next, laughing knowingly at recognizable scenes and gawking at strange, unfamiliar bits.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock premiered at White Cube Mason’s Yard in London in 2010 (photo by Todd-White Photography)

Part of the beauty of The Clock is that while time is often central to many of the clips, it is merely incidental in others, someone casually checking their watch or a clock visible in the background, emphasizing how pervasive time is — both on-screen and in real life. Americans spend an enormous amount of time watching movies and television — and now addictively glued to social media platforms and videos on their phones — so The Clock is also a wry though loving commentary on what we choose to do with our leisure time as well.

The Clock is open during MoMA’s regular hours, with members getting priority. It is not necessarily meant to be viewed in one massive gulp, but it will be shown in its entirety on December 21 at 7:00, in conjunction with the Winter Solstice, and again on New Year’s Eve; ticketing will be announced soon. Since the film corresponds to the actual time, midnight should offer some fascinating moments, although you might be surprised how exciting even three o’clock in the morning can be. Expect huge crowds whenever you go — capacity is limited, on a first-come, first-served basis, and you can stay as long as you want — so be prepared to do something with all that valuable time spent on the digital line. But wait you should — it’s well worth every second.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FRUITFUL JewCE! CONVENTION BACK FOR SECOND YEAR

JeCE! THE JEWISH COMIC EXPERIENCE CONVENTION
Center for Jewish History
15 West Sixteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 10, $15-$25, 9:00 am – 8:00 pm
jewce.org
www.cjh.org

Jews played key roles in the development of the comic book industry in the United States, as artists, illustrators, editors, and publishers. In 2006-7, the Jewish Museum presented with the Newark Museum the outstanding exhibit “Masters of American Comics,” which explored the work of fourteen artists, several of whom were Jewish.

On November 10, the Center for Jewish History is hosting the second annual “JewCE! The Jewish Comic Experience Convention,” focusing on Jewish history, culture, and identity as depicted in comic books. There is a full slate of lectures, panel discussions, workshops, artist booths, and more, and awards (the jewcies!) will be handed out Sunday night in such categories as Jewish Tradition and Folklore, Diverse Representation, Historical Narrative, Autobiographical/Biographical Content, Contemporary Topics, and Combatting Prejudice, hosted by Roy Schwartz, Danny Fingeroth, Miriam Mora, and Fabrice Sapolsk. There will also be a special tribute to Trina Robbins, winner of the 2023 inaugural JewCE Award for Career Achievement who passed away in April at the age of eighty-five.

“In its second year, JewCE is more than just a superpowered celebration of Jewish comics and culture — it’s a beacon of resilience and unity,” Center for Jewish History president Dr. Gavriel Rosenfeld said in a statement. “With the troubling rise in antisemitism, it’s never been more crucial to tell our stories. Comics have always been a medium for the underdog, and JewCEshowcases the triumph of Jewish creativity over adversity.”

The impressive roster of speakers, awards judges, and artist alley participants include Chari Pere, Josh Edelglass, Fabrice Sapolsky, Tony Kim, Amit Tishler, Dean Haspiel, Emily Bowen Cohen, Paul Levitz, Miriam Mora, Danny Fingeroth, Koren Shadmi, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Ben and Max Berkowitz, Roy Schwartz, Neil Kleid, Barbara Willy Mendes, Mathew Klickstein, Barbara Slate, Athena Finger, Cheryl Rubin, Mike Reiss, Josh Neufeld, Terry LaBan, Chris Claremont, Arie Kaplan, Ari Richter, Uri Fink, Amy Hungerford, Sholly Fisch, Omri Rose, Dr. Sean Wise, Hilary Price, Peter Kuper, Jeff Newelt, Heidi MacDonald, Jenny Caplan, and Lillian Laserson.

Among the special events are “American (Jewish) Splendor: Celebrating Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner,” “Jewish Mythology and Fantasy in Adventure Comics,” “DC Comics in the 80s — A Magic Moment,” “Exploring Jewish Humor in Comics,” and “Israeli Graphic Novels After October 7.” Below is the full schedule.

The Best-Known Comedy Writer You’ve Never Heard Of, with Mike Reiss, moderated by Mathew Klickstein, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 10:00

Drawing from Memory: From Archive to Graphic Novel, with Ari Richter, moderated by Amy Hungerford, Kovno-Shavl Room, 10:00

Jump into Drawing Comics!, with Josh Edelglass, Rennert Chapel, 10:00

American (Jewish) Splendor: Celebrating Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner, with Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, Jeff Newel, Peter Kuper, and Arie Kaplan, moderated by Danny Fingeroth, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 11:30

Jewish Mythology and Fantasy in Adventure Comics, with the Berkowitz Brothers and Amit Tishler, moderated by Neil Kleid, Kovno-Shavl Room, 11:30

Comic Strip Workshop, with Chari Pere, Rennert Chapel, 11:30

DC Comics in the 80s — A Magic Moment, with Cheryl Rubin, Lillian Laserson, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Paul Levitz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 1:00

Exploring Jewish Humor in Comics, with Arie Kaplan, Chari Pere, Hilary Price, Terry LaBan, and Uri Fink, moderated by Jenny Caplan, Kovno-Shavl Room, 1:00

Jewish Comics Trivia Game, with Sholly Fisch, Rennert Chapel, 1:00

Batman at 85, with Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Athena Finger, Danny Fingeroth, and N. C. Christopher Couch, moderated by Roy Schwartz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 2:30

Leadership and Legacy: Trina Robbins Tribute, with Barbara “Willy” Mendes, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Heidi MacDonald, Kovno-Shavl Room, 2:30

JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience Documentary Special and Q&A, with Miriam Mora, Tony Kim, and Danny Fingeroth, Rennert Chapel, 3:00

An Xciting Conversation with Chris Claremont, moderated by Roy Schwartz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 4:00

Israeli Graphic Novels After October 7, with Uri Fink, Koren Shadmi, and Omri Rose, moderated by Sean Wise, Kovno-Shavl Room, 4:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ALVIN AILEY: ON THE CUTTING EDGE

Carmen de Lavallade performs with Alvin Ailey at Jacob’s Pillow in 1961 (photo by John Lindquist)

EDGES OF AILEY
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Wednesday – Tuesday through February 9, $24-$30 (eighteen and under free; Friday nights and second Sundays free)
212-570-3600
whitney.org

“I’m trying to hold up a mirror to our society so they can see how beautiful they are, Black people, you know?” Alvin Ailey once said.

When I was in junior high, we were visited by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. I had never seen anything like it, certainly not in my all-white class on Long Island. It opened my eyes to a world of possibilities, now highlighted at the end of every year when I go see AAADT in their annual season at City Center. I was even pulled onstage once by Ailey dancer Belén Pereyra to join her and others for an audience participation section of Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16.

The continuing legacy of Alvin Ailey himself and his company is celebrated in the exhilarating exhibition “Edges of Ailey,” on view at the Whitney through February 9. The dazzling multimedia show features painting, sculpture, drawings, photography, postcards and letters, video, notebooks, posters, and more, along with a multichannel loop of rare archival footage of the troupe’s remarkable history, circling around the top of the gallery in an awe-inspiring video installation. The artworks are divided into such categories as “Blackness in Dance,” “Black Spirituality,” “Black Liberation,” “Ailey’s Collaborators/Nightlife,” and “After Ailey,” arranged in sections that encourage fluid but random movement; you can wander through at your own pace, following your own path.

The exhibit is supplemented by several vitrines filled with wonderful ephemera, from family photos, programs, and research notes to epistolary exchanges with Dudley Williams, Langston Hughes, and Ailey’s mother, Lula Cooper. The notebooks are utterly fascinating, with exciting and revealing notations, early drafts, intricately detailed schedules, and such quotes as “One must discover what the music is about + visualize it if possible.” and “Very important: The choreographer as storyteller / story inventor.”

Exhibit includes notebooks filled with intimate and intricate details of Alvin Ailey’s life and career (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

A handful of the pieces were created specifically for the show, while others date back to the 1860s. Among the artists represented are Carrie Mae Weems, Jacob Lawrence, Lorna Simpson, James Van Der Zee, Alma Thomas, Kevin Beasley, Elizabeth Catlett, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Driskell, Purvis Young, Horace Pippin, Theaster Gates, and Lyle Ashton Harris. A poem by Nikki Giovanni, “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars),” hangs on a long, narrow vertical panel. Three stark 1970 woodcuts by Aaron Douglas are titled Bravado, Flight, and Surrender.

In the center of the space is a daring untitled sculpture by David Hammons made of human hair, wire, metallic mylar, a sledge hammer, plastic beads, string, a metal food tin, panty hose, leather, tea bags, and feathers. Faith Ringgold’s United States of Attica map is in the red, black, and green colors of the Pan-African flag. One of the most poignant sections is “Black Women,” a gathering of such works as Emma Amos’s 1985 Judith Jamison as Josephine Baker, Elizabeth Catlett’s 1947 I Am the Negro Woman, Beauford Delaney’s 1965 Marian Anderson, Geoffrey Holder’s 1976 Portrait of Carmen de Lavallade, Kara Walker’s 1998 African/American, Mickalene Thomas’s 2024 Katherine Dunham: Revelation, and Karon Davis’s 2024 Dear Mama, paying tribute to Black women artists and performers — and, particularly, longtime Ailey dancer and artistic director Judith Jamison, on whom Ailey choreographed the 1971 solo Cry, a birthday present for his mother that he dedicated “to all Black women everywhere — especially our mothers.”

Ailey collaborator Romare Bearden’s “Bayou Fever” series is a colorful depiction of joy and movement. Choreographer and visual artist Ralph Lemon’s Untitled (On Black Music) consists of forty-one ink and watercolor on paper drawings, leaving one slot empty at the lower right. Video stations show performances by Jack Cole, the Katherine Dunham Company, Martha Graham, Duke Ellington, Lester Horton, Pearl Primus, and Ailey himself, including in the three-minute black-and-white A Study in Choreography for Camera, directed by Maya Deren and Talley Beatty.

Ailey was born in Texas in 1931 and died from an AIDS-related illness in New York City in 1989, at the age of fifty-four. He left behind a thrilling legacy of movement and music honoring the African American experience and supporting civil rights and social justice. It’s evident not only in the exhibition itself but in the accompanying program of live performances, which has already featured Ronald K. Brown and Matthew Rushing and continues November 7-9 with Yusha-Marie Sorzano’s This World Anew, November 16 with Bill T. Jones’s Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin… the un-Ailey?, December 13-15 with Will Rawls’s Parable of the Guest, January 17-19 with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Solo Voyages, January 24-26 with Excerpts from New Works, February 6-8 with Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born’s let slip, hold sway, and Ailey II: Harmonic Echo November 20-24, December 21-22, and January 22-26.

Hope Boykin’s Finding Free makes its debut at Ailey season at City Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 4 – January 5, $42-$172
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Before or after visiting “Edges of Ailey,” you must see the real thing, taking in a a show or two at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s five-week season, its sixty-sixth, at New York City Center, running December 4 through January 5. As always, it’s a combination of world and company premieres, classic favorites by Ailey and other choreographers, and presentations with live music; many programs conclude with the AAADT’s masterpiece, the thirty-six-minute multipart Revelations.

“This season we celebrate the lineage and legacy of Mr. Ailey, highlighting his acclaimed works as well as new ballets by choreographers for whom he paved the way,” interim artistic director Matthew Rushing said in a statement. “As I look at the repertory for our season, I am reminded that dance is both a reflection of our past and a guide to our future. We are excited to welcome audiences this holiday season to be inspired by Ailey’s extraordinary artistry and rich story, as it continues to be written.”

“All New” evenings feature former Ailey dancer Jamar Roberts’s Al-Andalus Blues, set to music by Roberta Flack and Miles Davis; former company member Hope Boykin’s Finding Free, with an original jazz and gospel score by pianist Matthew Whitaker that he will perform live at several shows; Lar Lubovitch’s Ailey debut, Many Angels, which explores St. Thomas Aquinas’s question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?,” set to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5; and Rushing’s Sacred Songs, built around music from the original 1960 version of Revelations that was eventually edited out because of length.

There will also be new productions of Elisa Monte’s twelve-minute duet, Treading, and Ronald K. Brown’s spectacular Grace, which premiered at City Center twenty-five years ago. The opening night gala honors dance educator Jody Gottfried Arnhold with presentations of Grace with Leslie Odom Jr. and Revelations with a live choir.

Other highlights are Dancing Spirit, Brown’s tribute to Jamison; Roberts’s 2019 Ode; Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish’s Me, Myself and You; Amy Hall Garner’s CENTURY; Hans van Manen’s Solo; Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream; and Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings? Among the Ailey classics on the schedule are Memoria, A Song for You, Cry, and Night Creature. Saturday matinees are followed by Q&As with the dancers, which this year welcome newcomers Leonardo Brito, Jesse Obremski, Kali Marie Oliver, and Dandara Veiga and the return of Jessica Amber Pinkett; closing night will celebrate what would have been Alvin Ailey’s ninety-third birthday.

And to keep your Ailey fix rolling, you can stream the eight-part Ailey PBS documentary Portrait of Ailey here.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE POSTPOETIC MACHINE: INSTALLATION AND ACTIVATION

THE POSTPOETIC MACHINE: MAFE IZAGUIRRE’S VISIONARY EXPLORATION OF HUMAN-MACHINE SYNERGY
Theaterlab Gallery
357 West Thirty-Sixth St., between Eighth & Ninth Aves., third floor
November 4–10, discussions free with advance RSVP
theaterlabnyc.com

Maria Fernanda (Mafe) Izaguirre continues her examination of the relationship between art and technology, humans and machines in the interactive, immersive installation “The Postpoetic Machine: Mafe Izaguirre’s Visionary Exploration of Human-Machine Synergy,” running November 4–10 at Theaterlab. The Venezuela-born artist, whose previous work includes “The Mind Project,” “Flowers of New York,” and “Sensitive Machines,” explains on her website, “In 2022, I created the Postpoetic Machine™, a device that explores vibration as universal language. I use this machine to challenge the limits of human language and radically experience otherness. I collect and transcribe fragments of human and nonhuman voices, then compose them into unrestricted spatiotemporal and metatextual realities.” Mentored by Venezuelan poet Eleonora Requena, Izaguirre incorporates resonance realms, interspecies communication, and a hybrid chorus into the cybernetic piece, which will be on view daily between noon and 6:00 and will feature four two-hour experimental performance sessions with New York City–based artists.

Izaguirre will discuss hybridization at the opening reception on November 4 at 7:00. On November 6 at 7:00, Tokyo-born movement artist Yoko Murakami focuses on moving interaction. On November 9 at 5:00, Syracuse-born interdisciplinary performer and educator Peter Sciscioli delves into sounding bodies. And on November 10 at 5:00, Caracas native Enrique Enriquez probes bird talk, followed by a closing Q&A.

“I am exploring pre-linguistic patterns understood and mediated by a human-machine hybrid language,” Izaguirre continues. “I set on the horizon of possibilities willing to expand myself into an open and endlessly flowing existential abyss.”

Admission is free, but advance RSVP is strongly suggested for the activations.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

IMMERSIVE DREAM THEATER: REIMAGINING NIGHTMARES IN MULTIMEDIA MUSEUM INSTALLATIONS

“Music Box” is one of fifteen multimedia installations at Mercer Labs inspired by Roy Nachum’s nightmares (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

DARK MATTER: NIGHTMARE BEFORE MIDNIGHT
Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology
21 Dey St. at Cortland St.
Through October 30, $46-$52
mercerlabs.com
roynachum.com
dark matter online slideshowthe dragon

“Everyone knows two things about dreams, namely 1) other people’s dreams are dull and 2) they’re going to tell you about them anyway. And as they burble on,” Black Mirror co-showrunner Charlie Brooker wrote in the Guardian in 2013, “it’s hard not to fall asleep and start dreaming yourself.”

Multidisciplinary experimental artist Roy Nachum, who was born in Jerusalem, lives in New York City, and works in New York and Italy, doesn’t shy away from sharing his dreams in the multimedia exhibition “Dark Matter: Nightmare Before Midnight,” continuing through October 30 at Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology, the downtown institution he cofounded with Michael Cayre that opened in February. The immersive, interactive exhibit features fifteen rooms, each containing audiovisual stimuli with images that range from fun and fancy-free to strange and horrific. In a statement, Nachum elucidates, “‘Dark Matter’ examines the role of darkness in art history. Revealing how the subconscious uncertainty and the unknown has shaped artistic movements and expressed cultural anxieties across time. The exhibition is a mirror to our fears and fascinations with the unknown.”

Visitors begin their journey with “The Window,” a circle on the ceiling that morphs into a trompe l’oeil dome opening into a swirl of cool shapes and colors, set to grand music, that practically sucks you in like an alien ship beaming you up. In “The Cave,” short films of a mysterious monkey appear amid a landscape of pink flowers (and a bar where you can purchase specially concocted nonalcoholic drinks). In “Archetype,” a robotic machine endlessly rakes sand, reminiscent of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s Can’t Help Myself but more meditative than dystopian. In “The Game,” people can play chess with large-scale creature-pieces on a board that emits screams and other loud noises as you walk across the squares. In “The Map,” you can sit on central cushions or on one of several swings as a barrage of sound and images pour over the walls, floor, and ceiling.

“Infinite” might make you dizzy with its twisting, mirrored images of snakes and innards. “Freedom” is a peaceful respite. “The Dragon” is like an endless zone of swirling shapes and colors. “Music Box” is a giant gold music box in a mirrored room, the central figure wearing a crown like those that form a tower in Nachum’s 2016 Kings statue that reigns in front of a Tribeca condo. “Ecosystem” unfurls at your feet, depicting a cinematic chase and, well, I’m not quite sure what to call some of the other fantastical adventures.

In “Ball Pond,” visitors can slide into a pond of little balls. “Pneumatic Transmission” is a futuristic mirrored room of interweaving tubes that could be a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “Drawing Station” gives everyone the chance to see their own sketch appear on a projection of a spinning skull. (Around the corner are a few kiosks where you can create images using your finger on a screen, but beware the hellish monster.) And in “4DSound,” Nachum’s personal favorite, a dreamlike enclsure appearing to be floating offers a soothing soundscape; visitors are encouraged to lie down on the floor and let it all envelop them.

In 2015, on BBC Radio 4’s Four Thought, interdisciplinary historian Dr. Shane McCorristine said, “The ubiquity of the Freudian model of dreams as repressed wish-fulfilments . . . played a key role in making people think that dreams were internal, private matters, and not the kind of thing you discussed with others.” Nachum must not be a Freudian.

While “Dark Matter” might be Instagram-friendly in the way that immersive exhibitions of beloved artists (van Gogh, Klimt, Monet) are, it is a deeper experience. Don’t just keep your phone out taking pictures and video but try to feel each installation. Like your own dreams, some will titillate you, some frustrate you, some bewilder you, some bore you, and others delight you. You might not want to sit down with Nachum and listen to him tell you his dreams and nightmares and try to interpret them as repressed wish-fulfilments — he can’t sleep very well — but for an hour or so, it’s worth walking through the wild and unpredictable internal scenarios that haunt him night after night and now are public, for all of us to encounter.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

GRAFFITI MEETS DANCE IN BELLA ABZUG PARK

Imani Gaudin and Jakob Vitale will premiere site-specific work October 3 in Bella Abzug Park

jakob & imani
Bella Abzug Park, Hudson Yards
Enter between West Thirty-Fourth & Thirty-Fifth Sts. along Hudson Blvd. East
Thursday, October 3, free, noon-3:00 and 4:00-7:00
646-731-3200
baryshnikovarts.org

Baryshnikov Arts takes it outside with the world premiere of jakob & imani, a site-specific piece conceived by choreographer Imani Gaudin and visual artist Jakob Vitale for Bella Abzug Park at Hudson Yards. Commissioned with the Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance, the durational work explores the symbiotic relationship between graffiti and dance. It will be performed by Gaudin, Vitale, and Marcus Sarjeant, with a set by Gaudin, Vitale, and Louis James Woodworks and photography by Sinematic Studios; Gaudin and Vitale, both graduates of Purchase, also created the sound score and the costumes.

Gaudin, who was born and raised in New Orleans and is artistic director of the Brooklyn-based Gaudanse Inc., seeks “to create a collaborative space for all artists alike while exploring what it means to delve deep into how movement languages bring forth new ideas and translates into what we call dance.” The company has presented such previous pieces as nanibu, 二時二分（2:02), and mamihlapinatapai. The Bronx-born Vitale, who is based in New York and Los Angeles, states that “art can reach in any direction, but in its most basic form it can either steer an observer into fantastical distractions or it can build off of life and evoke a thought/reaction to the prevalence of the real. . . . It comes down to the viewer to determine the significance of the art and evoking its effectiveness towards making the world fair and peaceful.”

Admission to jakob & imani, which takes place October 3 from noon to seven with a one-hour break at three, is free. Baryshnikov Arts’ fall season continues with such other programs as Oliver Tompkins Ray’s Woolgathering, featuring Patti Smith, with choreography by John Heginbotham; PRISMA’s Origins, with ARKAI and SPIDERHORSE; and the Charles Overton Group in a salon-style concert.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]