this week in art

MARIA HASSABI: PLASTIC

(photo by Julieta Cervantes / (c) Museum of Modern Art)

Maria Hassabi rehearses PLASTIC at MoMA on October 30, 2015 (photo by Julieta Cervantes / © Museum of Modern Art)

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
February 21 – March 20, free with museum admission ($14-$25)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
mariahassabi.com

In a 2011 twi-ny talk, Cyprus-born, New York City–based dancer and choreographer Maria Hassabi declared, “I was born flexible!” That statement is true not only of the remarkable things she can do with her body but also of where she performs her impressive, often painfully slow movement. We’ve seen her wrestle with a carpet at PS122, maneuver through a packed house seated on the floor at the Kitchen, and crawl down the cobblestoned path of Broad St. Ever investigating the relationship between performer and audience as well as dance and object — in 2012, Hassabi collaborated with Lutz Bacher and Tony Conrad on “Chandeliers,” in which more than a dozen light fixtures descended from floor to ceiling over the course of the day at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève — Hassabi next will set up shop at the Museum of Modern Art, where she will present Plastic for one month. Every day from February 21 to March 20, Hassabi and her team of dancers will be at several locations in MoMA, moving among the visitors, so watch out where you walk, because there will be no barriers separating them from you. You’ll find Simon Courchel, Jessie Gold, Neil Greenberg, Elizabeth Hart, Kennis Hawkins, Niall Jones, Shelley Senter, RoseAnne Spradlin, and David Thomson in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, Hassabi, Hristoula Harakas, Molly Lieber, Paige Martin, and Oisín Monaghan on the Marron Atrium and Agnes Gund Garden Lobby staircase, and Jones, Michael Helland, Tara Lorenzen, and Mickey Mahar on the staircase between the fourth- and fifth-floor galleries. The sound design is by Morten Norbye Halvorsen, with song fragments by Marina Rosenfeld. “Taking place underfoot in the transitional spaces of a museum known for its crowds, the work can be seen from multiple vantage points and inverts the typical relationship between performer and viewer so that it is the dancer who appears static and the onlooker who moves,” writes MoMA associate curator Thomas J. Lax in the brochure for the living installation, which was co-commissioned by MoMA, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. On February 24 at 7:00 ($8-$12) in the atrium, Hassabi will discuss the work with Philip Bither of the Walker Art Center.

GUIDO VAN DER WERVE: NUMMER ZESTIEN, THE PRESENT MOMENT

Three-channel audiovisual installation by Guido van der Werve explores the id, ego, and superego in provocative ways (photo © Guido van der Werve / courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York)

Luhring Augustine
531 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through February 17, free, 10:00 am — 6:00 pm
212-206-9100
www.luhringaugustine.com

Locations for Dutch artist, triathlete, and classically trained pianist Guido van der Werve’s previous films have included Mount St. Helens, the San Andreas Fault, the summit of Aconcagua in the Andes, the North Pole, and the Arctic Ocean, where he walked across an iceberg while being trailed by a huge ship. For his latest work, Nummer zestien, the present moment, making its debut at Luhring Augustine in Chelsea through February 17, van der Werve, a classically trained pianist who is based in Finland, Amsterdam, and Berlin, takes viewers inside his head, where he explores characters relating to his id, ego, and superego. The three-channel installation follows a trio of groups, one depicting older, naked men and women as they go through such daily activities of waking up, eating, and napping; a second consisting of a mixed-age collection of men and women barefoot and dressed in black, doing yoga and meditating; and the third comprising younger men and women (professional porn actors) engaging in ever-more-intimate acts of sex, with nothing (and we mean nothing) held back. In the center of the gallery is a player piano, which plays a lovely score written and performed by van der Werve, who is not appearing in one of his films for the first time; there’s not even a piano bench for visitors to contemplate his physical presence. The film is divided into twelve sections, each dedicated to a different sign of the zodiac and time of year; the camera movement on all three screens slowly traces the outline of the constellation in the sky. The action on each screen is set in a black room with a soft floor, a kind of visual psyche that highlights the whiteness of the all-Caucasian cast. In addition to relating to Freud’s theories about personality, Nummer zestien, the present moment also brings up issues of life and death as the three groups of people continue their own explorations of the mind and/or body. Van der Werve, who specializes in making films that portray durational activities, has created yet another involving, provocative work, one that will have you considering your own place in the universe, at the present moment.

TWI-NY TALK: EIKO / PLATFORM 2016

Eiko makes her way to the Fulton Center subway hub in June 2015 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eiko makes her way to the Fulton Center subway hub in June 2015 for “A Body in a Station” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

PLATFORM 2016: A BODY IN PLACES
Danspace Project
St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
131 East Tenth St. between Second & Third Aves.
February 17 – March 23, free – $20
866-811-4111
www.danspaceproject.org
www.eikoandkoma.org

Based in New York City since 1976, Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma have been creating uniquely fragile and evocative dances and “living installations” for forty years, taking place on proscenium stages as well as site-specific indoor and outdoor locations around the world. Here in New York City, they’ve performed Grain in an East Village loft, Event Fission on the Hudson River landfill near the World Trade Center, Water in Lincoln Center’s reflecting pool on Hearst Plaza, and Offering, Tree Song, and Cambodian Stories Revisited in the graveyard of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. In 2014, Eiko began her solo project, A Body in Places, consisting of free, site-specific works in nontraditional venues, including the new Fulton Center subway hub.

The Tokyo-born Eiko is returning to St. Mark’s as the focal point of Danspace Project’s 2016 Platform series, consisting of live performances, discussions, art, movie screenings (at Anthology Film Archives), special duets, and more, curated by Judy Hussie-Taylor and Lydia Bell. This tenth Platform festival runs February 17 to March 23 and will include “Talking Duets” with such artists as Ishmael Houston-Jones, John Kelly, and Elizabeth Streb; “Precarious” guest solos by Eiko, Beth Gill, Donna Uchizono, Koma, and more; Delicious Movement Workshops for participants as well as observers; a book club examining works by such writers as Kenzaburō Ōe, Tamiki Hara, and C. D. Wright; an art installation and readings with writer Claudia La Rocco, visual artist Paul Chan, painter and rapper DonChristian Jones, and others; a twenty-four-hour remembrance on the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster; and weekday solos by Eiko in unannounced locations around St. Mark’s Church. Eiko recently discussed Platform with twi-ny as she prepared for this exciting month-long multidisciplinary program.

twi-ny: How did the idea of your being the centerpiece of Platform come about? It’s quite a major undertaking.

Eiko: A year ago, when Danspace’s executive director, Judy-Hussie Taylor, invited me to “the third Platform focused on a single choreographer,” I was surprised. First, I hardly consider myself as a choreographer and more a performer with a multidisciplinary practice. We had previously talked about Danspace possibly sponsoring a long and intimate run of my solo performance (and this does happen as a part of Platform). However, her proposal of the shift to a multifaceted project was unexpected. “Platform is all about relationships,” says Judy. But, while I have choreographer/dancer friends, I do not have the kind of dense relationship with the dance community that other choreographers have. While many choreographers work with dancers and each other and they frequent the same studios and classes, I have, for decades, worked with only Koma without a dance studio or classes.

But through many long and dense dialogues with the patient and persuasive Judy, as well as Lydia Bell, Danspace Project’s program director, who was Eiko & Koma’s Retrospective Project coordinator from 2009 to 2011, the Platform programs have evolved! Some were my ideas and some were Judy’s and/or Lydia’s. Together, the programs are now very expansive in scope, with many activities and participants. I am endlessly thankful and in awe of Judy, Lydia, the rest of the Danspace staff, and the participating artists.

Eiko & Koma perform at MoMA in 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eiko & Koma perform “The Caravan Project” at MoMA in 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: As you noted, the Platform series will focus on your recent solo work; what made you decide to do the solo project in the first place, and how did Koma take it when you first told him about it?

Eiko: After working as Eiko & Koma since 1972, we had four very intense years creating and touring the Retrospective Project, followed by the Archive Project. That made me see and remember so many works Eiko & Koma had created. So while I felt proud, I also started to look for ways that I can work differently. Teaching also encouraged me to think independently. I wanted to find ways to work outside of theaters. Koma happened to have suffered a series of injuries that required care, so it actually made sense that I work alone. He is now feeling better and working on his own solo project.

twi-ny: How did you go about choosing which dancers and choreographers you wanted to participate in “Precarious: Solos,” which was inspired by a quote Hussie-Taylor selected from Judith Butler’s Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence?

Eiko: “Precarious: Solos” was more or less Judy’s idea and it is a continuation of what she has done under the same title. My contribution was to encourage all artists to present not group works but solos with low tech.

twi-ny: What was it about the quote [“When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. . . .”] that made you and Judy want that to be the inspiration behind the solos?

Eiko: The Butler quote also came from Judy, and she thinks my work with Fukushima resonates with her thoughts.

twi-ny: What are some of the unique characteristics of St. Mark’s Church and the surrounding neighborhood that have gotten you excited about performing there again?

Eiko: St. Mark’s Church is a uniquely familiar and austere space with a rich history. I love to go there and I love to perform there. Because the church is open to so many activities, it is not easy to present heavy set pieces there, but that limitation served well with many choreographers. The East Village is also where we have hung around with friends. I love that diversity, and I owe to the memories. There have been many, many artists and activists in the area, some dead. And I had many, many nights of seeing and talking.

twi-ny: You’ve taken A Body in Places to Fukushima, Philadelphia, New York City, Hong Kong, and Chile. How did your performance change with each location? With the exception of Fukushima, where you had only one “witness,” did people react the same way to you, or does the response differ from city to city?

Eiko: You forgot Middletown, Connecticut! I teach one course a year at Wesleyan University, and its Center for the Arts has supported my experimentation since 2006. Wesleyan has been an incubator of many of the things Eiko & Koma and I have created. So for the Body in Places project, it helped me to create a photo exhibition, “A Body in Fukushima,” and it also presented my project at four different locations: a school library, a town library, an observatory, and an un-lived-in old house with a gallery. In general, I would say individual differences in response to my work are always bigger than city, country, and race differences. But performing in Middletown means I have young students as viewers who are invested in and interested in what I do. To perform there is a challenging practice, and I deliberately planned multiple performances in possible locations so as to train myself toward this platform through real performance practices.

In Hong Kong, I performed at the site where people who participated in the 2014 Umbrella Revolution had camped out for three months, stopping a major highway. Everyone who saw me perform there knew and remembered the place as a site with such important public memory. In Chile, my friends Forrest Gander and C. D. Wright came and invited Chilean poets to see me perform. [Ed. note: Wright, who was married to Gander, passed away last month at the age of sixty-seven.] Two poets recited poems each night as part of my performances. These and many more memories make each place I danced a very unique place for me and for viewers.

Eiko performs “A Body in Fukushima” in 2014 (photo by William Johnston)

twi-ny: You and Koma have lived in New York City for nearly forty years now. What is your impression of how the city has changed since 1976? How different might your edition of Platform have been if this were 1976, 1986, 1996, or 2006?

Eiko: Of course, the city is sooooo different. It is so much more expensive to live here, and because of that the city is bigger as friends now live in far places. But I love New York for its intensity. I would not be able to do this Platform any earlier than now.

twi-ny: Without giving away some of the locations where you will be performing your daily solos, what are some of your favorite public spots in New York City?

Eiko: I like many places I performed in this project and as Eiko & Koma. To name a few: St Mark’s Church graveyard, Bryant Park, community gardens, the Whitney Museum, the Fulton Center, Governors Island, etc., etc. But these are very different places from where I will perform for this Platform. It is winter and I need to be indoors and in intimate places.

twi-ny: You have written, “I fight without any potential to win but I fight because they should not stand unopposed.” Do you really see no way to win this fight?

Eiko: I meant I do not know really how to win, as I am not a political activist. But I think it is important for artists to know what you are against, whether you have a prospect to win or not.

twi-ny: Which battles are most important to you right now?

Eiko: I am against corporate greed and human arrogance.

twi-ny: Your movement is intensely slow, often set to silence or natural, environmental sounds. When you’re not performing in front of a crowd, do you ever just blast music and dance like crazy?

Eiko: No. I do not have the desire to do that now. But when I am really down I can listen to some special song, like Nina Simone’s “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon.”

ALICJA KWADE: AGAINST THE RUN

Alicja Kwade’s “Against the Run” offers a unique view of time at entrance to Central Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Scholars’ Gate, Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Central Park entrance, 60th St. & Fifth Ave.
Through February 14, free
publicartfund.org
against the run slideshow

“I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!” the White Rabbit, checking his pocket watch, declares in Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland animated movie. If you don’t act fast, you’ll be too late to catch visual artist Alicja Kwade’s first solo public project in America, “Against the Run,” which will be on view through Valentine’s Day on Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the Sixtieth St. entrance to Central Park at Fifth Ave. In her 2006 video Ein Tag in 7 Minuten und 23 Sekunden, the Berlin-based Polish artist showed the progression of one day through a series of existing film clips of all kinds of clocks — four years before Christian Marclay debuted his twenty-four-hour installation, The Clock. Kwade often focuses on complex issues of time, space, and light while using found, ready-made objects (clocks, lamps, and mirrors are among her favorites) and tweaking them to turn them into something new. In the Public Art Fund group exhibition “Lightness of Being” two years ago in City Hall Park, Kwade, who has won the prestigious Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture and the Hector Prize, contributed “Journey without Arrival (Raleigh),” a bicycle that seemed to have gone through a rather rough trip. For “Against the Run,” also for the Public Art Fund, Kwade has taken a classic nineteenth-century-style city street clock and played around with the internal mechanisms so that the face runs counterclockwise and the hands appear to be standing still. Nevertheless, the clock is always telling the correct time, even if it appears to be crooked and running backward. It forces you to stop and take some extra moments to understand what’s going on, offering a much-needed contemplative respite from the crazy busyness of now, especially in this overcrowded part of Midtown. As she has done so often, Kwade, who cites as influences such luminaries as Marcel Duchamp, Harry Houdini, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark, has given us a new reality that is really no different from our regular reality, just slightly askew, as if you’ve fallen down that rabbit hole and can’t quite get out.

LUNAR NEW YEAR 4714: THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY

lunar new year 4714

Sara D. Roosevelt Park and other locations
East Houston St. between Forsythe & Chrystie Sts.
February 8-28, free – $200
www.betterchinatown.com
www.explorechinatown.com

Gōng xǐ fā cái! New York City is ready to celebrate the Year of the Monkey this month with special events all over town. The seventeenth New Year Firecracker Ceremony and Cultural Festival will explode in and around Sara D. Roosevelt Park on February 8 at 11:00 am, with live music and dance, speeches by politicians, drum groups, lion, dragon, and unicorn dancers making their way through local businesses, and more than half a million rounds of firecrackers warding off evil spirits and welcoming in a prosperous new year. Also on February 8, China Institute will host “A Taste of Chinese New Year” (free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm) featuring Mandarin classes, a China Ink workshop, and more; on February 13 (free, 12 noon – 5:00), China Institute invites everyone back for a family celebration including lion dances, kung fu demonstrations, arts & crafts, and dumplings.

The New York Philharmonic gets into the party spirit with Long Yu conducting a multimedia Chinese New Year Concert at David Geffen Hall on February 9 ($35-$110, 7:30) with violinist Maxim Vengerov and harpist Nancy Allen performing Li Huanzhi’s “Spring Festival Overture,” Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s “The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto,” Kreisler’s “Tambourin Chinois,” and Tan Dun’s “Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women.” The Flushing Lunar New Year Parade takes place February 13 at 9:30. Dr. Hsing-Lih Chou has again curated a Lunar New Year Dance Sampler at Flushing Town Hall on February 14 (free, 12 noon). The seventeenth annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade and Festival will wind its way through Chinatown, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and Columbus Park on February 14 starting at 1:00, with cultural booths in the park and a parade with floats, antique cars, live performances, and much more from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and other nations. The annual family festival at the Queens Botanical Garden is set for February 20 ($2-$4, 1:00 – 3:00). The New York Chinese Cultural Center will present a Lunar New Year program with folk dances, paper cutting, calligraphy, and lion dances at the Bronx Museum of the Arts also on February 20 (free, 2:00 – 4:00).

The Museum of Chinese in America celebrates the holiday with its annual Lunar New Year Family Festival on February 20 ($10, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm) with live music and dance, demonstrations and workshops, storytelling, arts and crafts, and more. One of our favorite restaurants, Xi’an Famous Foods, will be hosting a Lunar New Year Festival concert at Terminal 5 on February 20 ($60-$200, 5:30) with Far East Movement, Kimberley Chen, Soft Lipa, and Kina Grannis, benefiting Apex for Youth. There will be a Hao Bang Ah Monkey Puppet Show by Chinese Theatre Works, calligraphy workshops, a zodiac-themed scavenger hunt, and arts & crafts at the Prospect Park Zoo and the Queens Zoo on February 27-28 ($6-$8). And finally, the Lantern Festival is set for February 28 (free, 11:30 am – 3:30 pm) in Sunset Park on Eighth Ave. between Fifty-Third & Fifty-Fifth Sts.

PICASSO SCULPTURE / FRANK STELLA: A RETROSPECTIVE

(© 2015 by Frank Stella / photo by twi-ny/mdr)

FRANK STELLA: A RETROSPECTIVE
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Through February 7, $18-$22
212-570-3600
whitney.org

This is the last weekend to see two major exhibitions, retrospectives of artists who bucked trends and did things their way, two seminal figures in the history of twentieth-century art, one of whom is still at it. “Frank Stella: A Retrospective” continues at the Whitney through February 7, while “Picasso Sculpture” ends the same day at MoMA. “In 1970, when Mr. Stella was thirty-four, the Modern celebrated his haloed progress with an eleven-year survey,” Roberta Smith pointed out in her October 29 article about the Stella show. “In 1987, when the sheen was fading, the museum devoted a second survey of the intervening seventeen years of work. He was beginning to seem like the Modern’s fledgling Picasso replacement.” So it is rather appropriate that the two shows are running concurrently. The Whitney closed its uptown location last October with a controversial Jeff Koons retrospective that had critics wetting their lips waiting to tear it apart. The Whitney has now followed its downtown inaugural “America Is Hard to See” show, which highlighted works from the museum’s collection, with a survey of another artist whom many critics have tired of. A Massachusetts native and longtime New Yorker, Stella has dedicated his six-decade career to abstract painting on multiple surfaces and using a wide range of colors, in an endless array of series. He was very involved in the Whitney retrospective, which is essentially chronological until it’s not. Approximately one hundred works are on view, from such series as “Black Paintings” (“Die Fahne hoch!”), “Irregular Polygons” (“Empress of India,” “Harran II”), “Exotic Birds” (“Eskimo Curlew”), and “Moby-Dick” (“Gobba, zoppa e collotorto”), as well as such one-offs as the massive forty-foot acrylic on canvas mural “Das Erdbeben in Chili [N#3].” Even as Stella’s work grew more sculptural and three-dimensional, with metal constructions that jut out from walls, he still considered them paintings. “Most people would call this a sculpture, but in many respects, this is still painting for Frank,” exhibition organizer and Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg says on the audio guide to “Raft of the Medusa (Part I).” “This is really about using three‑dimensional form for almost two‑dimensional purpose. He’s very interested in the surfaces, the light, and reflection, and the idea that these elements though then spring forward, and yet stay clinging to the raft of the grid.” Stella once famously said, “What you see is what you see.” If you look hard enough, you might even see the seventy-nine-year-old Stella himself, who has been known to drop by the exhibition to see how much people are enjoying it, even if the reviews have been decidedly mixed.

(© 2015 the Museum of Modern Art / photo by Pablo Enriquez)

PICASSO SCULPTURE
Museum of Modern Art
Floor 4, Painting and Sculpture II Galleries
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through February 7, $14-$25
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

You’re not going to see Pablo Picasso at MoMA’s stunning survey of his sculptures, which has deservedly received rapturous reviews. But you are going to experience some 141 works arranged chronologically in 11 galleries, beginning in 1902 and concluding in 1964, set up like a lovely forest you can wander through at your own pace, filled with marvelous creatures, many of which have never been in the United States before and were rarely, if ever, displayed publicly during the artist’s lifetime. “An emphasis on the sculptures’ absence has eclipsed a rich body of evidence underscoring the vitality of their presence,” organizers Ann Temkin and Anne Umland write in the exhibition catalog. “One might say that Picasso’s sculpture stands apart from the paintings and works on paper in the remarkable efficiency with which it accomplished its many reinventions and redefinitions. But in its ongoing dance between the private and the public, the intimate and the monumental, the experimental and the definitive, the sculpture reveals itself as a quintessential rather than exceptional aspect of Picasso the artist.” Each gallery contains masterful treasures, from 1909’s “Head of a Woman” to 1913’s “Still Life with Guitar,” from 1929-30’s “Woman in the Garden” to 1943’s “Man with Lamb,” from 1951-52’s “Crane” to 1950-54’s “Woman with a Baby Carriage.” One of the most charming displays is the six-piece “Bathers” series, a half dozen abstract wooden figures made in Cannes in 1956 and arranged amid white rocks as if on the beach in the French Riviera. Picasso is one of those geniuses whose work lives up to all the hype, and this exhibit is no exception. Get your timed tickets now and don’t miss it.

LUNAR NEW YEAR FESTIVAL: YEAR OF THE MONKEY

The Met will celebrate the Year of the Monkey with a full slate of programs on February 6

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Saturday, February 6, free with recommended museum admission ($12-$25), 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
www.metmuseum.org

It will soon be 4713 on the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Monkey, a positive yang fire year that celebrates the monkey’s clever wit and inventive, playful nature. On February 6, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will host its annual Lunar New Year festival, with special events going on all day long honoring both China and Tibet. There will be live performances by Sesame Street puppeteers, students from the Music from China Youth Orchestra using traditional instruments, and Lotus Music & Dance in addition to a parade led by the Chinese Center on Long Island Lion Troupe. Art workshops include paper cutting with Master Lu, Monkey King mask making with the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, iPad calligraphy with the China Institute, a hand-pulled noodle demonstration by Chef Zheng of Noodle Q, a martial arts demonstration by the New York Chinese Cultural Center, Chinese tea ceremonies with Ten Ren Tea & Ginseng Co., a participatory installation by artist Wu Jian’an, a reading by picture book author and illustrator Yangsook Choi, bilingual storytime, drawing stations, and more. There will also be an interactive digital fireworks display in the Great Hall by CHiKA and Calli Higgins. The museum is currently showing several exhibitions related to China and Tibet, including “Monkey Business: Celebrating the Year of the Monkey,” “The Arts of Nepal and Tibet: Recent Gifts,” “Chinese Textiles: Ten Centuries of Masterpieces from the Met Collection,” “Chinese Lacquer: Treasures from the Irving Collection, 12th-18th Century,” and “Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Metropolitan Collection.”