this week in art

SAMARA GOLDEN: THE FLAT SIDE OF THE KNIFE

Samara Golden’s “The Flat Side of the Knife” offers a breathtaking perspective on reality (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Through August 30, suggested admission $10 (free with paid MoMA ticket within fourteen days except during Warm Up), 12 noon – 6:00
718-784-2084
momaps1.org
the flat side of the knife slideshow

In such installations as “Mass Murder,” “The Fireplace,” “Bad Brains,” and “Rape of the Mirror,” Michigan-born, LA-based artist Samara Golden creates surreal multimedia interiors that combine a ghostlike quality with abstract memories; looking at them, you can almost see what’s occurred in their nonexistent past. That is certainly true about her latest project, “The Flat Side of the Knife,” which continues in MoMA PS1’s vertical, multistory Duplex Gallery through August 30. Visible from several viewing points at different levels, the work is an Escher-like depiction of an impossible room with staircases, beds, a rug, windows looking out at the ocean, musical instruments, wheelchairs, plants, books, and other items, all of which are reflected in mirrors that result in a dizzying yet breathtaking illusion of reality turned upside down and inside out. Golden calls it the sixth dimension — she has also referred to her installations as exorcisms — where the past, present, and future combine, evoking abandoned film sets where something clearly happened, but there’s no way to tell exactly what; that is left for viewers to figure out, searching inside their own consciousness for clues and answers. While at PS1, be sure to also check out “Halil Altindere” Wonderland,” “Wael Shawky: Cabaret Crusades,” “Math Bass: Off the Clock,” “Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys: Fine Arts,” “IM Heung-soon: Reincarnation,” and the Young Architects Program courtyard project “COSMO” by Andres Jaque and the Office for Political Innovation. And on Saturday, August 30, the next-to-last Warm Up dance party features Matias Aguayo, Kingdom, D∆WN, DJ Windows 98, Murlo, and FALSE WITNESS.

JUNG UK YANG: A MAN WITHOUT WORDS

“A Fatigue Always Comes with a Dream” is centerpiece of Jung Uk Yang exhibition in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Jung Uk Yang
What: “A Man Without Words”
Where: Doosan Gallery, 533 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: Through Thursday, August 27
Why: Korean artist Jung Uk Yang’s first solo show in the United States is an intriguing collection of four kinetic sculptures that incorporate movement with light, shadow, and/or sound in fun, mesmerizing ways. Referencing people’s basic, everyday lives, Yang constructs mechanical installations using wood, thread, and motors. On entering Doosan Gallery in Chelsea, visitors are met by “Be of One Same Mind,” an ovular piece that flutters in greeting. On the other side of the wall, “The Hardship Is Whispering Hope” sits on the floor, casting a large shadow, moving ever so slowly until ringing a bell. The intricately designed “Only the Turtle Does Not Know about Our Weekends” features a bevy of moving parts and abstract faces behind a wooden frame, as if a kind of living portrait of humanity. And the centerpiece of the exhibit, the eye-catching “A Fatigue Always Comes with a Dream,” bathes the back room in stunning shadows, a solitary lightbulb in the middle of moving parts including empty bottles held by thread, honoring South Korean apartment security guards who work overnight, confined to their little glass booths.

RON ENGLISH: ALL AMERICAN TEMPER TOT

Baby Hulk is about to throw one helluva tantrum on Houston St. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Houston Bowery Wall
Houston St. at Bowery
www.popaganda.com
all american temper tot slideshow

American consumerism run amok has got Hulk Baby angry! Street art legend and political activist Ron English has wheat-pasted an enormous American flag on the Houston Bowery Wall, the stars centered with skulls, the stripes consisting of fake supermarket deals (selling such products as “Corn Fed Cow Corpse,” “Rainbow Tinted Unicorn Flesh,” and “Aged Deceased Sheep”) and advertising signs (promoting such items as “Kiss Kids on Coke” and “Morrison Marijuana Cigarettes: Baby we couldn’t get much higher”). Other signs proclaim, “Evolution: It’s Not for Everyone,” “Jesus Returns 06-06-06: Look Religious,” and “The Poor: What Are They Good For?” depicting a boy in clown gear and makeup, wearing an army helmet and holding an assault rifle. English also takes shots at breakfast cereal (from his “Cereal Killers” series), Starbucks, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Marlboro, Wall Street, credit cards, oil companies, and U.S. currency — easy targets all, but well deserving of their place on this flag. He also hypes such freak-show characters as Poultry Rex, Multi-Brained Brodmann, Otto Topsy the Internal Alien, and Cathy Cowgirl. Standing in front of it all is English’s trademark Temper Tot, a giant green Hulk Baby with his eyes shut, his face scrunched, his fists tightening, preparing to throw a major tantrum, and you’re not going to want to be around when that happens. Other versions of Temper Tot can be seen in various places around the city, in both green and pink, but this fella on Houston is the one to watch out for. The Dallas-born, culture-jamming English pulls no punches with this large-scale mural, another potent example of his theory of POPaganda.

TATIANA TROUVÉ: DESIRE LINES

Tatiana Trouvé’s “Desire Lines” reimagines the pathways of Central Park into spools of rope (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Scholar’s Gate, Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Central Park entrance, 60th St. & Fifth Ave.
Through August 30, free
www.publicartfund.org
desire lines slideshow

Paris-based Italian artist Tatiana Trouvé gives 212 pathways in Central Park sculptural form in “Desire Lines.” For her first public exhibition in the United States, Trouvé has mapped out the length of these trails, turning each one into a wooden spool of colored rope stacked together on three metal storage racks at the Scholar’s Gate entrance to the park at Doris C. Freedman Plaza on Sixtieth St. and Fifth Ave. Ranging from about sixty feet to four miles, each length of rope has a name selected by Trouvé to represent the landscape of the park as well as political and artistic statements involving walking, making the time and space of the park tactile, something you can actually touch. Among the names of the spools are “[P063] From East 84th Street to the Reservoir’s south gate house: Belo Monte Protest,” referencing the 1989 marches in Brazil against the Belo Monte Dam; “[P032] From Warriors’ Gate to Artisans’ Gate via West Drive: Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom,” paying tribute to the 1957 civil rights demonstration at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “Give Us the Ballot” speech; “[P147] From Cedar Hill towards Miners’ Gate: I’m Walking,” a nod to Fats Domino; “[P025] A detour to the West Drive boat landing: Narcoturismo,” an homage to Francis Alÿs; “[P044] From Scholar’s Gate, around the Dairy and past Cop Cot: Hands Up Walk Out,” calling out specifically the shooting death of Michael Brown and other unarmed men by the police; and “[P062] From Strangers’ Gate to the Great Hill: May 10, 1968, Paris,” referring to the violent student protests in France.

Tatiana Trouvé’s “Desire Lines” honors artistic statements and political protests involving walking (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

There are also spools that represent Lou Reed, David Hammons, the Ronettes, Charles Baudelaire, Yoko Ono, the Pixies, Janet Cardiff, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Selma to Montgomery March, and the 1913 Woman Suffrage Parade. Two of the three racks consist of rope of different colors, from blues, grays, and purples to pinks, yellows, and greens (one stack features bright colors, the other more muted hues), while the third is limited to spools of black rope only. Besides being pretty to look at, “Desire Lines” encourages you to walk through the park, a rather healthy activity, following in the footsteps of others, while also reminding you that taking to the streets in marches can have an effect on the world. Central Park can be a daunting space, but Trouvé, whose previous work has incorporated such objects as mattresses, shoes, rocks, gym equipment, and stoves, makes it all the more accessible in this appealing, colorful, and poetic three-dimensional atlas.

CROSSING THE LINE 2015

Jack Ferver and Marc Swanson will present CHAMBRE as part of FIAFs annual Crossing the Line festival (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Jack Ferver and Marc Swanson will present the glittering CHAMBRE as part of FIAF’s annual Crossing the Line festival (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 10 – October 4, free – $35
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Tickets are now available for FIAF’s ninth annual late summer/early fall multidisciplinary arts festival, and you better act fast if you want to see some of this year’s most intriguing programs. For us, the highlight is Jack Ferver and Marc Swanson’s Chambre, an installation and performance piece at the New Museum inspired by Jean Genet’s The Maids and pop-culture elements, with extravagant costumes by Reid Bartelme and experimental sound and music by twi-ny fave Roarke Menzies. British artist Ant Hampton’s Autoteatro series continues with The Extra People, in which participants will go on an individual adventure through FIAF’s Florence Gould Theater. The U.S. premiere of Brazilian artist Gustavo Ciriaco and Austrian artist Andrea Sonnberger’s Here whilst we walk will take small groups, bound by a giant rubber band, on a silent trip through Red Hook. Elana Langer’s free What I Live By will pop up at three locations, examining brand identification and personal values. Iranian artist Ali Moini searches for freedom in the multimedia dance work Lives at New York Live Arts (NYLA). Miguel Gutierrez will present the New York City premiere of all three parts of his Age & Beauty series, Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/; Asian Beauty @ the Werq Meeting or The Choreographer & Her Muse or &:@&; and Dancer or You can make whatever the fuck you want but you’ll only tour solos or The Powerful People or We are strong/We are powerful/We are beautiful/We are divine or &:’////, at NYLA, featuring such collaborators as Mickey Mahar, Michelle Boulé, Jen Rosenblit, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Alex Rodabaugh. Italian artist Alessandro Sciarroni asks Folk-s, will you still love me tomorrow? in his unique interpretation of Bavarian folk dance at NYLA. French director Joris Lacoste investigates multiple languages and human spoken expression in Suite n°2 in Florence Gould Hall. Also on the bill are Shezad Dawood’s “It was a time that was a time” exhibition at Pioneer Works, a photography show by Mazaccio & Drowilal in the FIAF Gallery, Olivia Bransbourg’s ICONOfly magazine, and Adrian Heathfield and André Lepecki’s three-day symposium, “Afterlives: The Persistence of Performance,” at FIAF and MoMA.

PATRICK VAN CAECKENBERGH

Patrick Van Caeckenbergh creates a kind of alternate Garden of Eden in his first exhibition at Lehmann Maupin (photo courtesy Lehmann Maupin)

Lehmann Maupin
201 Chrystie St. between Stanton & Rivington Sts.
Through August 21, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-254-0054
www.lehmannmaupin.com

Flanders-based Belgian artist Patrick Van Caeckenbergh has transformed Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side space into a forest of wonder, using his memory and his imagination, combining dazzling drawings of trees with a curious sculptural installation. A compulsive, and by some accounts reclusive, collector, cataloger, and tinkerer, Van Caeckenbergh spent seven years making graphite drawings of trees inspired by those in his garden, as well as other parts of Belgium, each one a unique Tree of Life or Tree of Knowledge. The black-and-white framed works in “Drawings of Old Trees during the wintry days 2007-2014” at first appear to be photographs but upon closer inspection are revealed to be obsessively intricate pencil and paint depictions of trees with thick trunks and endless leafless branches, enhanced by such fairy-tale elements as windows, doors, bells, and faces. In the center of the gallery is “THE PICTURESQUE HISTORY OF EMPTINESS, Les Oubliettes – The Oblivions – De Vergeetputten,” mirrored metal shelves that hold nearly three hundred dust-covered glass bell jars that once contained statues of saints but became so much detritus with a downturn in religious belief in Flanders. The vast emptiness seems to go on ad infinitum in the mirrors at the top and bottom, almost as if the Garden of Eden is now devoid of Adam and Eve, or anyone at all. Van Caeckenbergh, a collagist and amateur genealogist who has extensively investigated the digestive system of both animals and humans and, in “The Grave” (1986), paid tribute to six of his major influences — Joseph Beuys, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Broodthaers, René Magritte, and Andy Warhol — includes a playful interactive bonus with “Het Muziekbos — The Musical Forest,” which he also calls “the nature guide to the Bialowieza primeval forest” in Poland, an antique table featuring a vaguely antique-looking hinged wooden box holding sixty-three small reproductions of his tree drawings on heavy card stock. People are invited to browse them, then curate their own mini-exhibition by choosing any two to place display stands on either side of the box.

OSGEMEOS: MIDNIGHT MOMENT AND MORE

Os Gêmeos reveal their working progress on Chrystie St. building (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

OSGEMEOS reveal their working progress on Chrystie St. building (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MIDNIGHT MOMENT
Times Square
Nightly at 11:57 through August 31, free
www.timessquarenyc.org
osgemeos slideshow

It’s always ultra-exciting when OSGEMEOS (aka Os Gêmeos) come to town, adding their glorious art to the streets of the city. We’ve been following Brazilian twins Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo since 2005, when we photographed their small piece on a Lower East Side awning, which was followed by their spectacular 2006 Dreamland Artist Club mural on Stillwell Ave. in Coney Island and their equally celebrated 2009 mural on Houston St., which came back for a return engagement this past fall. In their beautifully captivating, visually striking work, OSGEMEOS create a fanciful fairy-tale world marked by unique characters and adorable little details and flourishes.

Os Gêmeos get animated in Times Square (photo courtesy Times Square Arts

OSGEMEOS get animated in Times Square (photo courtesy Times Square Arts)

They were recently in the city to unveil their Times Square Midnight Moment animated video, “Parallel Connection,” in which this setting comes to life on electronic billboards, storefront windows, and even the ball drop. It runs every night in August from 11:57 pm to midnight, adding dazzling color to the Great White Way.

Os Gêmeos add some musical flair to Second Ave. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

OSGEMEOS add some musical flair to Second Ave. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

While in New York, the twins added some street pieces on the Lower East Side, near their home gallery, Lehmann Maupin. Right next door to the space at 201 Chrystie St., OSGEMEOS have fashioned two playful works, collaborating with French artist JR, whose “Inside Out” participatory project dominated Times Square a few years ago. On the right, a graffiti artist balances on the shoulders of his partner, standing on a metal awning, as the top figure sprays the OSGEMEOS tag on a redbrick wall. Meanwhile, at the upper left, a caricature of JR, in his trademark hat, is on the fire escape landing, brushing a close-up black-and-white photograph of an eye (by JR) onto the building’s facade, a wry comment on all of us looking at the artwork. And on the corner of Second Ave. and Second St., on the side of a building that houses the Hare Krishna temple, OSGEMEOS has painted a giant hip-hop character, carrying a huge boombox as he emerges from the concrete wall like a rainbow superhero. New York City always looks and feels a little better when the twins come around, and this visit is no exception.