this week in art

AUTUMN MOON FESTIVAL AND MORE

A CELEBRATION OF ASIAN CULTURE
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden
1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island
Saturday, September 19, $8-$10, 12 noon – 4:00 pm
718-425-3504
snug-harbor.org

On September 19, Staten Island’s beautiful Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden will be hosting its sixteenth annual Autumn Moon Festival, an afternoon of special programs celebrating the Asian harvest. Taking place in the Chinese Scholar’s Garden, the festival will include an arts and crafts family workshop, a performance of Rabbit Days and Dumplings by Elena Moon Park and Friends, traditional music and dance, Asian-inspired food, martial arts and Tai Chi demonstrations, calligraphy lessons, and more. In addition, on Saturday and Sunday, Snug Harbor is holding a party for the grand opening of the Staten Island Museum, with games, live music, crafts, science, food, and more; admission for that is free. And finally, on Saturday at 2:00 and 8:00 and Sunday at 2:00, the Harbor Lights Theater Company will be presenting Rent in the Music Hall ($35-$45); the production continues through October 4.

POETRY UNDER “FATA MORGANA”

Spoken-word performances will take place under Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana” installation in Madison Square Park on September 17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Madison Square Park
23rd to 26th Sts. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Thursday, September 17, free, 6:00
Installation continues through winter 2015-16
www.madisonsquarepark.org

We still haven’t made up our mind about American artist Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana,” a five-hundred-foot-long sculpture winding through the walkways of Madison Square Park. Consisting of canopies of mirror-polished discs with small sections cut out of them resembling clouds or leaves, the work blocks the otherwise 6.2-acre open area’s access to the sky, creating a claustrophobic feeling despite very cool reflections above and intriguing shadowy forms below. “By hovering over the park in a horizontal band, ‘Fata Morgana’ becomes a ghostlike, sculptural, luminous mirage that both distorts the landscape and radiates golden light,” Fernández explains on the Mad. Sq. Art website. In conjunction with the site-specific installation, the park is hosting a number of special events, so maybe that will shed more light on the project. On Thursday, September 17, “Poetry under ‘Fata Morgana’” will feature spoken-word performances by Sandra María Esteves, Bonafide Rojas, Machete Movement, True, and Emanuel Xavier, who curated the program with Fernández as part of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Among the other free September events in Madison Square Park are Mad. Sq. Reads with Sophie McManus (September 17, 12:30), the Studio Series: Time & Luck Quartet and Kristin Diable (September 19, 3:00), Singapore: Inside Out (September 23-27), and Mad. Sq. Reads with Amanda Lee Koe and Jenny Zang (September 24, 12:30).

TREE OF CODES

Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. between 66th & 67th Sts.
September 14-21, $30-$90
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org

Codes are one-to-one correspondences, messages that have been transformed from one communication into another. Tree of Codes, originally presented earlier this summer at the Manchester International Festival, is a seventy-five-minute contemporary ballet that uses light, sound, color, mirrors, and movement in unique ways, transforming Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2010 book, Tree of Codes, into something entirely other. Foer’s book is a work of art that is both a literary narrative and sculptural object; every page of the paperback boasts a different die-cut as surprising word combinations continually reveal themselves. Foer’s three-dimensional story begins with Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles — which has previously been adapted by the Quay Brothers into a classically creepy stop-motion animation film — and Foer then cut out words to create a whole new tale. British choreographer Wayne McGregor (Infra, Chroma), London-born DJ and music producer Jamie xx (We’re New Here, In Colour), and Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (“The Collectivity Project” on the High Line, “NYC Waterfalls”) have turned Tree of Codes into a site-specific multidisciplinary performance piece, featuring members of the Paris Opera Ballet and McGregor’s company, that will take place in New York City’s most creative space, the Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory, from September 14 to 21. “At the armory, we are always encouraging artists to push the limits of their specific disciplines. Wayne McGregor, Olafur Eliasson, and Jaime xx are each pioneers in their respective fields, and their collective vision for Tree of Codes asks us to bend our preconceived notions of traditional ballet and also the world around us,” armory president and executive producer Rebecca Robertson said in a statement. The armory has previously hosted work by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Shen Wei Dance Arts, STREB Extreme Action, Massive Attack, Christian Boltanski, Ann Hamilton, Tom Sachs, Paul McCarthy, Ryoji Ikeda, and many others, who have taken great advantage of the fifty-five-thousand square-foot space. Tree of Codes is likely to do the same.

9/11 TABLE OF SILENCE

Special “Table of Silence Project” performance ritual of peace returns for fifth year to Josie Robertson Plaza (photo by Terri Gold)

Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center
65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, September 11, free, 8:15 am
www.tableofsilence.org

Every September 11, there are many memorial programs held all over the city, paying tribute to those who were lost on that tragic day while also honoring New York’s endless resiliency. One of the most beautiful is “The Table of Silence Project,” a public performance ritual for peace featuring one hundred dancers on Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center. “The ‘Table of Silence Project’ represents the common threads of humanity which unite all mankind into a single force with common goals and aspirations regardless of race, culture, or religion,” choreographer and artistic director Jacqulyn Buglisi said in a statement. “Through this event, we wish to achieve the dual purpose of celebrating and honoring peace and freedom for all people suffering oppression, through listening, a united moment of silence — a call for Peace in our world.” Beginning at 8:15 am, thirty-one minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center in 2001, the dancers, all dressed in white, will slowly begin gathering around the Revson Fountain to a rhythmic drumbeat, followed by silence and then a soft score. Buglisi Dance Theatre partnered with the September Concert and Dance/NYC for the meditative event, which lasts about a half hour and can also be livestreamed here. “The future of humanity depends on what we do in the present,” Buglisi added about the project, which she conceived for the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Buglisi was inspired by Italian artist Rossella Vasta’s ever-evolving series of one hundred ceramic plates that help form the Table of Silence; as Vasta explained on her website, “One hundred is one times 100 and this refers to the original Latin meaning of religion that is derived from ‘religere.’ The dishes become the offering to humanity and represent transcendental values beyond any religion. Silence becomes a sacred space with no religious discrimination.”

ALBERT OEHLEN: “‘HOME & GARDEN’ ANNEX”

Albert Oehlen’s “‘Home and Garden’ Annex” is on view at Gagosian’s Park & 75 space (photo by Rob McKeever)

Gagosian Gallery, Park & 75
821 Park Ave. at 75th St.
Through September 4, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.gagosian.com

German painter Albert Oehlen may be displaying his bravura technique and massive talent in the huge “Home and Garden” exhibition at the New Museum, but his best work in New York City right now is uptown in Gagosian’s glassed-in Park & 75 gallery. On the north wall is “Der rosa Salon” (“The Pink Parlor”), a spectacular painting from a man who continually redefines the genre. The large-scale piece, approximately 110 × 118 inches, was painted over a plastic billboard; in fact, some letters are still visible beneath the paint, primarily the word “NO” in the lower left-hand corner, either accidental or some kind of artistic admonition. Combining reality and surrealism, the painting is anchored by several chairs, one on the right, evoking both Francis Bacon and Franz West while resembling a palette, the others at the center, a pair of comfy tannish-brown chairs, one of which is being fondled by a blond woman in shorts, actually part of an advertisement that Oehlen cut out and pasted onto the plastic base. The empty chair in the middle is like an invitation to the viewer to enter the scene. Oehlen, who lives and works in Switzerland, then painted over the advertisement in such a way as to make it meld into the rest of the imagery, the outline of the cutout visible only if you look for it. A breakfront peeks out on the left, while a lighting fixture dangles from above; below, the floor seems to just drop out. There’s so much going on in the painting that the eye doesn’t know what to focus on, flitting about from woman to furniture, from the light pouring in through a window to the far corner where the walls meet, from the squiggly shadows cast by the legs of the front chair to the big letters “NO” opposite. It’s a dramatic painting in both narrative and execution as fiction and nonfiction clash in appealing ways. Also on view in the gallery are five small collage paintings in which Oehlen incorporates images of trees in addition to the multimedia installation “1000 dances (tree),” in which Oehlen took a living tree, added such elements as Styrofoam, a metal rod, and a poster tube, and placed it behind a floor-to-ceiling translucent sheet that he partially painted pinkish red. A spotlight shines on the back, making a silhouette of the tree visible from the front, which also reflects the activity going on outside on Park Ave. Meanwhile, a lo-fi rah-rah soundtrack plays; the spotlight is supposed to flash in tandem with the music, but a technological malfunction has put an end to that.

ONE-WAY TICKET: JACOB LAWRENCE’S MIGRATION SERIES AND OTHER WORKS

Jacob Lawrence, the Migration Series, 1940-41, Panel 10: “They were very poor,” casein tempera on hardboard (© 2015 the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society, New York)

Museum of Modern Art
Special Exhibitions Gallery, third floor
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through September 7, $25 (including audio program and film screenings)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Jacob Lawrence, who was born in 1917 in Atlantic City and moved with his family to Harlem when he was thirteen, depicted the twentieth-century African American experience in stunning, colorful panels painted in a style he called dynamic cubism. Half of his seminal 1941 series about the Great Migration is regularly on view at MoMA, but for this special exhibit, the midtown institution has teamed with the Phillips Collection, which owns the other half, to present the complete sixty-piece work for the first time in New York in twenty years. Lawrence was twenty-three when he created the Migration Series, tracing the movement of African Americans from the south to the north in search of a better life, beginning during the WWI era and continuing into the 1960s. Each panel is a work of art that stands on its own, but together they paint a fascinating portrait that unfolds like a documentary film. The works are arranged chronologically at eye level around the large gallery, with the caption for each right underneath the panel. Taken as a whole, it’s a dizzying array of dazzling color, but individually they tell quite a story as well.

Jacob Lawrence, the Migration Series, 1940-41, Panel 23: “In a few sections of the South the leaders of both groups met and attempted to make conditions better for the Negro so that he would remain in the South,” casein tempera on hardboard (© 2015 the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society, New York)

In panel 1, men, women, and children line up at the train station to leave for Chicago, New York, or St. Louis, yellows and blues peeking out among muted browns and greens. In panel 5, a train is barreling past, black smoke floating back, a bright light beaming ahead. In panel 10, a man and a woman are sitting at a table, staring down at their meager food; the caption succinctly states: “They were very poor.” In panel 10, a white judge looks down from on high at two black men huddled below; the caption explains: “Among the social conditions that existed which was partly the cause of the migration was the injustice done to the Negroes in the courts.” In panel 18 (“The migration gained in momentum”), the departure of the men, women, and children is almost biblical in nature, evoking the exodus. Throughout the sixty panels, Lawrence plays with perspective and geometric as well as abstract shapes and patterns, creating scenes that often swirl with movement and life. The Migration Series is a towering achievement, an emotionally powerful work that feels as relevant today as it did when it was first presented more than sixty years ago. The exhibit is supplemented with paintings and drawings by Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, and Charles White, archival footage of Marian Anderson, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday, photographs by Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, and Gordon Parks, writings by Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Wright, and other ephemera related to black life in America in the early to mid-twentieth century. And be sure to visit the excellent MoMA website that examines each panel of the Migration Series in detail.

YOKO ONO: ONE WOMAN SHOW, 1960-1971

Yoko Ono’s “To See the Sky” offers visitors the chance to commune one-on-one with the heavens (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
The International Council of the Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through September 7, $25 (including audio program and film screenings)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

In December 1971, Yoko Ono staged an unofficial one-woman show at MoMA, which she called the “Museum of Modern [F]art,” in which she supposedly released a glass jar full of flies into the sculpture garden, scattering art everywhere, even though a sign inside noted, “This Is Not Here.” Ono now has an honest-to-goodness solo show at MoMA, an involving and affecting retrospective of her conceptual work from 1960 through 1971, and although it’s titled “One Woman Show,” it’s about as participatory as these things can get. Visitors are invited to walk right on “Painting to Be Stepped On,” although many people still opt to carefully tiptoe around it; play a game of chess in the sculpture garden on “White Chess Set,” in which all of the pieces are white; slip under a black sheet and perform on a small stage for “Bag Piece”; make physical contact with others in “Touch Poem for a Group of People,” although the room was empty the several times I passed by; climb a rickety spiral staircase in “To See the Sky” and privately commune with the outside world via a skylight at the top; and choose to carry out any of the myriad instructions that comprise Ono’s storied Grapefruit book, though not necessarily right on the premises. However, you should not do what John Lennon did when he first met Ono in 1966 and take a bite out of the green apple that sits on a transparent pedestal at the opening of the exhibit. “Ono’s art has uncovered not only often concealed aspects of the act of engaging with an artwork (revealing, for instance, the central role the viewer plays in its creation) but also the ways in which cultural, social, and political life influence and affect each other,” explains MoMA curator-at-large Klaus Biesenbach in his catalog essay, “Absence and Presence in Yoko Ono’s Work,” continuing, “Looking back on her conceptual 1971 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, we see that she knew long ago that her groundbreaking practice warranted a solo exhibition there. Forty-four years later, that show is finally a reality, with the same radicality and presence it had when she first imagined it.”

Yoko Ono’s “Half-a-Room” slices domesticity in half (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The MoMA exhibition also includes such other Ono works as “Cut Piece,” a film by Albert and David Maysles of her sitting calmly as audience members cut off parts of her outfit; “A Box of Smile,” small boxes in a wall that provide pleasant surprises; “Film No. 4,” an onscreen procession of derrières; a room of paraphernalia and music she made with the Plastic Ono Band; “Fly,” which follows flies making their way across a woman’s naked body; footage of political demonstrations she and Lennon led, including “Bed-In”; and other drawings, sculptures, films, posters, invitations, and installations. There’s more in the exhibition catalog, which contains a number of essays and letters written by Ono in the section entitled “Yoko’s Voice”; in November 2014’s “Don’t Stop Me!” she writes, “Let me be free. Let me be me! Don’t make me old, with your thinking and words about how I should be. You don’t have to come to my shows. I am giving tremendous energy with my voice, because that is me. Get my energy or shut up.” She might have been referring specifically to her live musical performances, but the admonition relates to this early-career retrospective as well. Many people come to Ono and her work with a preconceived notion of who she is and what she does, often negative; “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971” reveals her to be a much misunderstood artist who actually has a lot to say about the state of humanity, nearly universally positive, still seeking to attain world peace. And what’s wrong with that? (The final week of the show will feature the Gallery Sessions programs “Yoko Ono: From Grapefruit to Green Apple” on August 31 at 1:30 and September 2-3 at 11:30, “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971” on September 5 at 1:30, and “Make Your Own Yoko Ono Piece” on September 6 at 11:30, and museumgoers can sit down and play on Ono’s “White Chess Set” in the sculpture garden on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 1:00 to 4:00.)