this week in art

FUNLAND: PLEASURES & PERILS OF THE EROTIC FAIRGROUND

”Jump for Joy” is one of the highlights of immersive “Funland” exhibit at the Museum of Sex (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Sex
233 Fifth Ave. at 27th St.
Daily through spring 2015, $17.50
Portal of Love: Sunday, February 15, $25-$30, 10:00 pm – 4:00 am
212-689-6337
www.museum.museumofsex.com

When it comes right down to it, sex, in all its iterations, if done right, should be fun, if a little dangerous. And that’s the premise behind the Museum of Sex’s playful interactive exhibition “Funland: Pleasures & Perils of the Erotic Fairground.” Bompass & Parr, the jelly-loving London-based conceptual art duo of Sam Bompass and Harry Parr that has celebrated death in the architectural design competition Monumental Masonry, created a multisensory church organ promoting the wonders of whisky with the Flavour Conductor, and built the cake-inspired nine-hole Crazy Golf course on Selfridge’s roof, has now transformed a section of the Museum of Sex into a kinky carnival where visitors get to shed a bit of their inhibition and have a rousingly bawdy good time — while getting to release orgasmic endorphins in public. “Funland” comprises a handful of amorous attractions that add tantalizing twists to fairground favorites, all set in a luridly lit amorously red setting, with a carny, carnal soundscape by Dom James. Begin with “Foreplay Derby,” in which challengers roll balls into a hole in order to make their assigned gold phallus cross a finish line first; the winner just might get whipped by a seductively clad museum worker. “The Tunnel of Love” is a hall of mirrors that leads to a sculpture of a G-spot that is also a Theremin that plays music when you wave your hand over it.

“Grope Mountain” is a three-sided climbing wall where you have to grab on to casts of sexual body parts and orifices in order to successfully make it across. And in “Jump for Joy,” visitors remove their jackets and shoes and spend several minutes bouncing around a room of giant inflated breasts, like kids playing in a balloon room; be prepared to exit somewhat dizzy and winded. The exhibit also includes a vitrine that offers daringly shaped edible delights and the “Erotic Picture Palace,” which shows NSFW old movies and carnival footage, including The Rotascope. Professor Vanessa Toulmin of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield puts it all in cultural context in her essay “As Graceful as They Were Disgraceful: Eroticism and the Fairground,” in which she writes, “Despite the attempts by moral puritans to tame the baying crowds, the elements of untamed sexuality, the Baktinian world of the carnivalesque remained beneath the veneer of the modernistic fairground roundabouts and carousels. . . . However, it was entry into the sideshows that revealed to the visitor the full frontal erotic reality of the female nude. . . . The sideshows of the twentieth century were a continuous link to the bacchanalia of the medieval and preindustrial European fairs, offering sex, nudity, and the wonders of gay Paree for a penny or a dime.” The Museum of Sex offers its own whimsical twenty-first-century take on bacchanalia for $17.50 plus tax.

The museum also has a large yet intimate new café/den/bar appropriately called Play, where you can grab a drink or dinner while perusing a book from its extensive sexually charged library. For Valentine’s Day weekend, MoSex is hosting “Get Steamy” specials, with “The Full Treatment: 3 Aphrodisiac Shooters,” a trio of vodka-infused cocktails (Lychee Libidinal, Pomegranate Virility, and Citrous Oxide); bath and body packages; and extended hours, remaining open till midnight on Friday and Saturday. And on Sunday night from 8:00 till 4:00, “Portal of Love” will feature modern burlesque and genre-bending performances by ill-Esha, BRANX, Brightside, Of the Trees, PartyFoul 5000, Soohan, the Bill Wurtzel Trio, House of Screwball, Groucho Fractal, Magic Mike, Cat Wolf, Wild Torus, Kevin Karpt, Evelyn Von Gizycki, Lindsee Lonesome, and the Merry Pranksters, live painting by Joness Jones and Harrison Lance Crawford, and workshops led by Val Tignini (“Kundalini Rising”), David Young (“Guided Dual Flute Meditation”), Richard Anton Diaz (“Activating Sexual Energy”), and Jane Bernard (“Intuitive Thinking”). You can also check out the other exhibitions at the museum: “The Eve of Porn: Linda Lovelace” examines the controversy surrounding Deep Throat and the treatment of its star, while “The Sex Lives of Animals” is an engaging and educational exploration of animal sexual behavior.

THE MYTH MAKERS: AVIAN AVATARS

The Tourist, a Victoria crowned pigeon, hovers not far from Macy’s (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Garment District Plazas
Broadway between 41st & 36th Sts.
Through April 30 (all events free with advance RSVP)
“Chocolate and Roses” tour February 14 at 3:00
www.garmentdistrictnyc.com
www.themythmakers.blogspot.com
avian avatars slideshow

This rather cold and bleak winter hasn’t stopped a group of very large, determined birds from migrating to the Garment District and nesting right smack on Broadway. Married couple and artistic collaborators Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein have placed five monumental sculptures between Thirty-Sixth and Forty-First Streets, giant birds constructed from found materials both natural (maple saplings) and machine-made (various repurposed plastic objects). Since 2010, Dodson and Moerlein, as the Myth Makers, have been installing public projects inspired by nature and wildlife throughout the Northeast and other locations. They work primarily with new-growth saplings, culling them from forestry sites and then steaming and bending the wood, weaving them into beautiful arcs and outlines. For “Avian Avatars,” the first winter installation sponsored by the Garment District Alliance, the Myth Makers have incorporated a New York City sensibility into the works, which stand between eighteen and twenty-six feet high, each one accompanied by an inspirational quote by a famous figure. At the north end is the Scold, a crow whose feathers are made of yellow “caution” and “cuidado” tape, sending out a warning to all comers in two languages. According to Dodson and Moerlein’s mythology, the crow is “a raucous chatterbox [that] has an opinion on everything.” Feel free to step inside for a different kind of view while considering this pearl from Henry David Thoreau: “I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life….” One block south is an owl known as the Great Spirit, whose fur is made of white and brown plastic bags snapping in the breeze. Described as “a humble leader [that] embraces the strengths and weaknesses of humanity,” the Great Spirit gazes intensely over the city as it shares this thought from Mother Teresa: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can [each] do small things with great love.”

“Avian Avatars” are nesting along Broadway through April (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Next up is the falcon called the Taste Maker, boasting a dark black head (made from burned saplings) and a body covered in thin plastic tubing. The Myth Makers consider the falcon to be “an uncompromising harbinger of taste,” explaining that “the critic is not a populist,” and they relate the bird to something Ayn Rand once said: “The truth is not for all . . . but only for those who seek it.” The Realist is that favorite New York City flying icon, the red-tailed hawk, in this case showing off a glorious plumage composed of red plastic barricade fencing that is so familiar on construction sites. “Everyone has a killer instinct, a desire to fly, and an ambition to achieve their fifteen minutes of fame,” the Myth Makers proclaim, while Bruce Springsteen adds some words to live by: “When it comes to luck, you make your own.” The final bird is a proud Victoria crowned pigeon called the Tourist, its feathers formed by golf clubs with colorful handles, while purple plastic pieces sit atop its head, affirming its royalty. Its legend states, “Visitors drawn to this vibrant city shape culture with their impulsive consumer behavior,” while Malcolm Gladwell adds, “Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from.”

Towering bird sculptures are made with bent sapling branches and repurposed plastic (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

As with all of the Myth Makers’ work, “Avian Avatars” is temporary, although it will not go up in flames as so many of their other projects are designed to do. The five birds will continue roosting on Broadway through April, as the snow melts away and spring is on the horizon. Several of the pieces can be entered, so feel free to walk inside; don’t be surprised if you’re sharing space with real birds, as sparrows twitter and flit through the wooden shapes. A thoroughly congenial pair, Dodson and Morelein will be hosting a series of special events, all free with advance RSVP, in conjunction with the installation, which brings a playful life to the area. On February 14 at 3:00, they will be presenting a romantic Valentine’s Day “Chocolate and Roses” tour; be sure to ask them about how they met. After the tour, they will head over to Harlow at 109 East Fifty-Sixth St. to inaugurate their “Love Birds” indoor installation, complete with a reception and cocktail party. On March 7, they will give a tour for Armory Arts Week. On March 25, they will team up for a behind-the-scenes conversation at 3:00 and will then discuss public art projects at the Artists Talk on Art panel at the Jefferson Market Library at 6:00, followed by a Q&A. And on April 24, they will give their last tour as part of International Sculpture Day, shortly before “Avian Avatars” flies away for good.

WANG JIANWEI: SPIRAL RAMP LIBRARY

Who: Wang Jianwei
What: “Spiral Ramp Library,” live performance held in conjunction with the closing of the exhibition “Wang Jianwei: Time Temple”
Where: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St., 212-423-3587
When: Thursday, February 12, $12, 8:00, and Friday, February 13, $15, 8:00
Why: “I always want to position my works, the exhibitions, and the audience’s relationship to the exhibitions as part of a process. The process includes changes that take place during different periods of time. For example, the production of works as time, the exhibition cycle as time, and the audience’s viewing experience in different locations as time,” Beijing-based artist Wang Jianwei says in a video about his Guggenheim exhibition, “Time Temple.” The exhibition consists of a room of painting and sculpture on view through February 16; the fifty-five-minute film The Morning Time Disappeared, inspired by Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, screening daily at 1:00; and the live multimedia performance event “Spiral Ramp Library,” taking place February 12-13 in the museum’s rotunda, incorporating sound, video, dance, theater, and improvisation, gathering ideas generated by the exhibition’s opening event, in which twenty speakers discussed ten topics, including maps, Jorge Luis Borges, climate, Frank Lloyd Wright, the universe, and the Guggenheim itself, in a way reimagining the building as Borges’s Tower of Babel in which every person is a book. (The February 13 performance will be followed by a Q&A with Wang.)

JOHN WATERS: BEVERLY HILLS JOHN

John Waters, “Beverly Hills John,” C-print, 2012 (courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery)

Marianne Boesky Gallery
509 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 14, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-680-9889
www.marianneboeskygallery.com

King of Filth John Waters gives Hollywood celebrity culture, and himself, an extremely funny and clever facelift in his latest exhibit at Marianne Boesky in Chelsea. “Beverly Hills John” consists of photography, collage, sculpture, installation, and a new full-length film, his first as writer and director since 2004’s A Dirty Shame. (In the meantime, the Baltimore native has been performing his one-man show, This Filthy World, and writing such books as Role Models and Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America.) “Separate But Equal” is a black-and-white C-print of a black man drinking from a water fountain labeled “Gay Single,” which is connected to a sink labeled “Gay Married.” In “Library Science,” Waters offers adult takes on classic literature covers, turning, for example, Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang into Dion Dermot’s Clitty Clitty Bang Bang and Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre into Channy Wadd’s God’s Little Faker. Waters pays homage to innovative multimedia artist Mike Kelley, who committed suicide in 2012, with “R.I.P. Mike Kelley,” a miniature sculpture of a cozy living room with a fireplace, comfy chair, and cat urn. The Death character from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal hovers over a deplaning John F. Kennedy and Jackie O in “Grim Reaper.” In “Brainiac,” Waters reconstructs a tabloid magazine cover with such headlines as “Joan Didion Hits 250 Pounds!” and “Nude Photos of W. H. Auden Found!” Waters alternates pictures of a flustered Curly from the Three Stooges with shots of rectal exams in “Probe.” (In an odd coincidence, a man named John Waters served as assistant director on the 1933 film Broadway to Hollywood, in which Moe and Curly make cameos as clowns.) “Stolen Jean Genet” is a re-creation of the headstone of French writer and activist Jean Genet, which was actually stolen and is still missing. And in “Mom and Dad,” Waters repurposes stills from William Beaudine’s 1945 film Mom and Dad, which features a notorious sexual hygiene movie used as a terrifying teaching tool.

John Waters’s latest exhibit is highlighted by new film showing children reading script of cleaned-up version of PINK FLAMINGOS retitled KIDDIE FLAMINGOS

The centerpiece of the show is the seventy-four-minute Kiddie Flamingos, in which Waters films children doing a table reading of a somewhat, er, watered-down version of the script of Waters’s breakthrough 1972 trailer-park cult black comedy, Pink Flamingos, about Babs Johnson (Divine), her son, Crackers (Danny Mills), her mother, Edie (Edith Massey), their friend Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce), and their battle with the mean and nasty Marbles (David Lochary and Mink Stole). The children, in various stages of garish makeup, including one boy with a pencil-thin mustache playing the narrator (Waters), don’t always understand what they’re saying, but it’s a riot to watch them tell this hysterical tale of oddballs who have rather extreme eccentricities. Waters, of course, is not above making fun of himself and his own eccentricities as well. The title piece is a creepy self-portrait that depicts him as a victim of plastic surgery gone terribly wrong, in between photos of fellow knife casualties Justin Bieber and Lassie. Sitting empty in the gallery is “Bill’s Stroller,” emblazoned with the names of strip clubs and boasting a spiked leather harness meant for Waters’s fake baby, Bill. (He really does have an angry doll-child he calls Bill who he keeps at home.) And in “Self Portrait #5,” Waters casts himself as a dogcatcher, smiling devilishly at the viewer and holding a carrier with a cute little puppy inside. It’s a wonderfully sly image, emblematic of all of us who treasure Waters’s ongoing counterculture shenanigans, willing to be carried by him wherever he may go as he continues to fight the establishment in his unique, wickedly subversive ways.

TONY CRAGG: WALKS OF LIFE

Tony Cragg’s undulating “Points of View” is part of Madison Square Park installation “Walks of Life” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Tony Cragg
What: “Walks of Life”
Where: Madison Square Park, between Madison Ave. & Broadway and 23rd & 26th Sts., 212-520-7600
When: Daily through February 8
Why: For nearly twenty years, Turner Prize-winning artist Tony Cragg’s “Resonating Bodies” have flanked the entrance to Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park, a lively pair of large-scale musical instruments. Now the Liverpool-born artist, who lives and works in Wuppertal, Germany, has placed a trio of bronze sculptures, collectively titled “Walks of Life,” on the Madison Square Park lawns, twisting shapes that seem to shake with the location’s high energy. In the southwest corner, visitors are encouraged to walk inside “Caldera,” which stands on three tiptoes, and look up at the sky. On the central Oval Lawn, three eighteen-foot-high works form “Points of View,” rising up with dynamic, humanistic undulating forms; from various angles you can make out abstract facial profiles. And in the northwest corner, the green, dynamic “Mixed Feelings” teeters like a warped Statue of Liberty

V. S. GAITONDE: PAINTING AS PROCESS, PAINTING AS LIFE

Breathtaking exhibition welcomes visitors into the meditative world of Indian painter V. S. Gaitonde (photo by David Heald)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday – Wednesday through February 11, $18-$22 (pay-what-you-wish Saturday 5:45-7:45)
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

“I don’t work, I relax and wait, and then I apply some paint on the canvas. The most important aspect of painting is waiting, waiting, waiting, between one work and the next,” Indian painter V. S. Gaitonde said shortly after winning the 1989–90 Kalidas Samman prize in the plastic arts. That quote is also good advice as to how his magnificent canvases should be experienced. Nearly four dozen of the Indian artist’s paintings and works on paper are on view in “V. S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life,” continuing at the Guggenheim through February 11. This first-ever major museum career retrospective introduces audiences to the unique style of Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, called “Gai” by his peers, who was born in Maharashtra in 1924 and passed away in August 2001. Gaitonde, who made only a handful of paintings every year, was influenced by Paul Klee and Mark Rothko, Zen Buddhism and silence, Japanese and Chinese hanging scrolls and calligraphy. He referred to his work, which began with more figuration, as “non-objective” instead of “abstract,” so it is fitting that the survey is being held at the Guggenheim, which opened as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in 1939 on East Fifty-Fourth St. Little is known about Gaitonde’s life outside of painting, and his work is as mysterious as the man. Using multiple layers of paint, strips of wet newspaper, and a palette knife, Gaitonde created primarily untitled oil on canvas paintings, watercolors, and ink on paper drawings boasting unique combinations of color, form, and texture. The works have both a physical and metaphysical depth, daring the viewer to breathe it all in. The exhibition, curated by Sandhini Poddar, occurs at a time when Gaitonde’s work is now selling in the millions at auction; a 1979 painting recently went for $3.8 million, the most ever paid for a work by a modern Indian artist.

V. S. Gaitonde’s pure painting is about life and process (photo by David Heald)

In one fiery orange painting, a sun rises over an amalgamation of what could be body parts. In another, it looks as if Gaitonde has torn through an earth-toned canvas. In a third work, four arrows point at a central circle, coming together like a totem. Poddar, who had quite a task collecting the works, lays out the aptly titled exhibition beautifully, inviting visitors to take their time as they discover the many wonders of Gaitonde’s pure, impressive skill, revealing that his process was life, and life was his process. “A painting always exists within you, even before you actually start to paint,” he said. “You just have to make yourself the perfect machine to express what is already there.” What is already there is a love of pure painting that is now, at last, getting its due.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: LIVING LEGACY

Carrie Hawks will discuss her upcoming documentary, BLACK ENUF, at the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program for Black History Month

FIRST SATURDAY
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The theme of this year’s annual Brooklyn Museum First Saturday celebration of Black History Month is “Living Legacy,” another eclectic, wide-ranging collection of music, dance, film, art, discussion, and more. The free evening will feature live performances by Chel Lo and Asante Amin’s multimedia “Soundtrack ’63,” Water Seed, and Bilal; screenings of Byron Hurt’s 2013 documentary Soul Food Junkies and Carrie Hawks’s doc-in-progress Black Enuf, both followed by talkbacks with the directors; a quilt-making workshop; a talk with artists Devin Kenny and Sondra Perry with Black Contemporary Art blog founder Kim Drew; a poetry reading and community forum hosted by Mahogany L. Browne, Jonterri Gadson, and Amanda Johnston of Black Poets Speak Out; and J. Ivy discussing his new memoir, Dear Father: Breaking the Cycle of Pain. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Judith Scott — Bound and Unbound,” “Double Take: African Innovations,” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”