this week in art

WORKS & PROCESS AT 30

WORKS & PROCESS AT 30: ARTISTS AT WORK, ARTISTS IN PROCESS
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
Monday – Saturday through October 25, free
Thursday, September 25, “Three Choreographers Celebrate,” free with advance RSVP, 6:00
917-275-6975
www.nypl.org

WORKS & PROCESS
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Peter B. Lewis Theater
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
October 5 – December 15, $30-$35
212-423-3500
www.guggenheim.org

For three decades, the Guggenheim has been presenting illuminating performances and discussions in its groundbreaking program Works & Process, in which emerging and established dancers, musicians, composers, and choreographers share their creative inspiration with glimpses at upcoming productions. The New York Public Library is honoring the series with “Works & Process at 30: Artists at Work, Artists in Process,” a collection of photographs, costumes, and printed ephemera from past events featuring some of the greatest directors, choreographers, and performers of the last thirty years. On September 25, the library will host “Three Choreographers Celebrate” in the Bruno Walter Auditorium (free with advance RSVP), bringing together a trio of W&P veterans, Karole Armitage, Larry Keigwin, and Pam Tanowitz, to talk about the importance of the program with Dance Theatre of Harlem artistic director Virginia Johnson; the event will also include footage from the library’s archives of nearly five hundred W&P performances. Meanwhile, tickets are now on sale and going fast for the fall 2014 W&P season, which continues October 5 with “The Kennedy Center: Little Dancer with Susan Stroman” (with Stroman, Boyd Gaines, Rebecca Luker, Tiler Peck, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty) and also includes Brian Brooks Moving Company on October 19-20, “Harlem Stage: Makandal” on October 27 (with Carl Hancock Rux, Yosvany Terry, Edouard Duval-Carrié, and Lars Jan), “In Process with Pam Tanowitz and David Lang” on November 2, and “Jerome Robbins: Fancy Free to On the Town” on November 9-10 (with Robert LaFosse, John Rando, Joshua Bergasse, Phyllis Newman, and Jamie Bernstein, moderated by Amanda Vaill).

CHILE PEPPER FESTIVAL 2014

Prepare to dive into some pretty hot chocolate at Chile Pepper Festival (photo by Jason Gardner)

Brooklyn Botanic Garden
900 Washington Ave.
Saturday, September 27, $15-$20 (children under twelve free), 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-623-7200
www.bbg.org

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s twenty-second annual Chile Pepper Festival, a celebration of all things spicy and hot, takes place Saturday, September 27, promising “sizzling sounds,” “fiery delights,” and “7 hours of chocolate debauchery,” which certainly gets our attention. Beginning at 11:00 and continuing through 6:00, the festivities include live performances by Talavya, Tipsy Oxcart, Shiro & the Raw Dogs, Cumbiagra, Tee Chaoui Social Club, and Alidu; food from more than three dozen culinary artisans, from Brooklyn Delhi and the Jam Stand to La Newyorkina Mexican Ice & Sweets and Pelzer’s Pretzels, from Beyond the Spice and Queen Majesty Hot Sauce to Holy Schmitt’s Homemade Horseradish and TorchBearer Sauces; chile tours with BBG curator Maeve Turner; hot books for sale; chile pepper paintings by Jonathan Blum; and pepper plants for kids to pot and take home.

MEET THE AFRICA CENTER

Emeka Ogboh’s “Lagos State of Mind II” is part of Africa Center celebration on Saturday (photo by Steven John Irby aka stevesweatpants, © Emeka Ogboh)

The Africa Center: Africa’s Embassy to the World
Saturday, September 20, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
1280 Fifth Ave. between 109th & 110th Sts.
www.theafricacenter.org

The former Museum of African Art has gone through a dramatic transformation that will be revealed to the public on September 20 at a free festival celebrating the renamed Africa Center, also known as Africa’s Embassy to the World. As part of “its mission to become the world’s leading civic African institution . . . [the center] aims to transform the international understanding of Africa and promote direct engagement between African artists, business leaders, and civil society and their counterparts from the United States and beyond.” The museum will open permanently in late 2015, but on Saturday visitors can get a taste of what’s to come with the immersive sound-art installation “Lagos State of Mind II” by Emeka Ogboh involving a Danfo bus; the unveiling of Meschac Gaba’s hanging sculpture, “Citoyen du Monde,” in the atrium; live performances by the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang, Chop and Quench, Mamadou Dahoue & the Ancestral Messengers Dance Company, Nkumu Isaac Katalay, and DJs Rich Medina, Underdog, and Birane; screenings of The Power of Protest Music; arts and crafts workshops; traditional storytelling; grill tastings from chef Alexander Smalls of the Harlem brasserie the Cecil; and other cultural activities. The revelry will conclude with a private-event Festival-in-Exile concert that focuses on the musical connections between America and Africa, particularly Mali, with performances by Amanar, Amkoullel, Rocky Dawuni, Salif Keïta, and Samba Touré and Vieux Farka Touré.

MAD. SQ. EATS / MAD. SQ. MUSIC / MAD SQ. ART

People will be flocking to the Madison Square Park aread this month for food, art, music, and more (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Worth Square and Madison Square Park
Broadway & Fifth Ave. at 24th St.
Mad. Sq. Eats open daily through October 3, free, 11:00 am – 9:00 pm
Mad. Sq. Music takes place Saturdays at 3:00 through October 4
Mad. Sq. Art opens September 18
www.urbanspacenyc.com
www.madisonsquarepark.org

The fall edition of Mad. Sq. Eats is up and running in the pedestrian plaza known as Worth Square at the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Ave. at 24th St., where more than two dozen gourmet vendors are serving culinary delights through October 3. People flock to the area, just outside of Madison Square Park, to amass their own international multicourse tasting menu. Among the many tantalizing options are oysters from Brooklyn Oyster Party, chili salted shrimp from Hong Kong Street Cart, fish tacos from Calexico, a personal pizza from Roberta’s, bulgogi burgers from Asiadog, truffled mozzarella crepes and fries from Bar Suzette, gluten-free dishes from Two Tablespoons, charcuterie from Charlito’s Cocina, the pressed chicken sandwich and Phoenician fries from ililli, empanadas from La Sonrísa, the short rib brisket sandwich from Mayhem & Stout, mini rice balls from Arancini Bros., the lobster BLT from Red Hook Lobster Pound, Tostilocos from Mexicue, Frenchman Street Creole gumbo from the Gumbo Bros., and meatball sliders with Not Your Average Brown Sauce and Gorgonzola cheese from Mighty Balls, in addition to culinary fare and flair from Pig and Khao, the Cannibal, Turan, Breads Bakery, Lunch Box by Takumi, and Seoul Lee Korean BBQ. And then comes dessert, which features ice-cream-cookie sandwiches from Melt, corn-flake and compost cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar, truffles from Nunu Chocolates, truffle-cheddar pretzels from Sigmund’s, cannoli from Stuffed Artisan Cannolis, apple cider donuts from Doughnuttery, and the splendid macarons from Macaroun Parlor. To enhance your visit, plan on going during one of the free Saturday afternoon Mad. Sq. Music concerts in the park from 3:00 to 5:00; Suzy Bogguss and Miss Tess & the Talkbacks perform on September 13, Aoife O’Donovan and Cahalen Morrison & Eli West on September 20, and Julian Lage & Chris Eldridge and Front Country on September 27. (Dom Clemons and the Brain Cloud take the stage on October 4.) And on September 18, Mad. Sq. Art will unveil Tony Cragg’s three-sculpture installation “Walks of Life,” which will remain on view through February 8.

GOVERNORS ISLAND ART FAIR

You’ll have to think hard to answer Sean Boggs’s perplexing and engaging “Slow Phones” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Colonel’s Row, Governors Island
September 13-14, 20-21, 27-28, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-673-9074
www.4heads.org
www.govisland.com

The seventh annual Governors Island Art Fair is up and running, spread across one hundred rooms in decommissioned army barracks and former military residences along Colonel’s Row and outside on the grounds. Sponsored by 4heads, a nonprofit founded in 2008 by Nicole Laemmle, Jack Robinson, and Antony Zito to offer free space to artists to explore their vision, the fair features painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video, installation, and sound works. Each artist or independent gallery/collective is assigned his or her own room where they can create to their heart’s content.

Taezoo Park’s “Digital Being” repurposes technological waste to look at the future (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Our favorite home is 404B, where you are greeted on the ground floor by Sean Boggs’s “Slow Phones,” with “Ear Piece” and “Mouth Piece” on either side of the fireplace, offering an intriguing foray into deceleration, perception, and peripheral vision. Get right up close and try to figure out how the single bead in the former and the multiple beads in the latter move, as the two large-scale circles seem to be at a stand-still; of course, younger people might not even recognize them as parts of an old rotary phone. Also worthy of close examination is Boggs’s “Ten Digits,” a wall sculpture consisting of a bed of pins based on a color-blindness test, the pins representing the numbers zero to nine, organized by size, texture, density, hue, and distance. Walk through the kitchen and take the stairs to Taezoo Park’s “Digital Being,” what he enigmatically describes as “a series of the kinetic installations of technological garbage based on the hypothetical existence of an invisible and formless creature born within the circuits of electronic waste.” Influenced by Nam June Paik — Park worked on the “Becoming Robot” Paik exhibition that just opened at Asia Society — the enthusiastic young artist has repurposed old television and computer monitors and programmed them to show scrambled signals, alongside questions and statements about singularity and the future of technology: “Digitize conscious through scanners — Human Being faces this ethical question before death. What is your choice?”

Hao Ni’s “Night II” sets the mood for the curious third floor of 404B (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

There’s lots of cool strangeness going on farther upstairs on the third floor, including Hao Ni’s “Night II,” in which water drips down monofilament, lit by car headlights; Sangjun Yoo’s “Synchronicity (i),” a plastic sculpture hanging from the ceiling in a dark room; and Sabrina Barrios’s “How to Build a Pyramid — Part II: Understanding the Connections to Constellations,” a construction of strings and nails that glows under black light. There’s also a corner installation that looks like something pretty weird happened there. It all comes together under the creepy rafters to feel like a room being investigated by Scully and Mulder.

JAMES LEE BYARS: PERFORMANCES

Performance of James Lee Byars’s The Mile-Long Paper Walk (1965-2014) at The Museum of Modern Art, August 17, 2014. Performed by Katie Dorn; choreographic construction by Lucinda Childs. © 2014 Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by Julieta Cervantes

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, September 7, free with museum admission, 12 noon – 5:00
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

In conjunction with the closing of the MoMA PS1 retrospective “James Lee Byars: 1/2 an Autobiography” — which includes the glittering “World Flag,” the short film The Perfect Epitaph, and the pitch-black room “The Ghost of James Lee Byars,” among many other tantalizing and intriguing works — MoMA’s Midtown Manhattan location will be restaging five of Byars’s performances on September 7, honoring the long history the museum shared with the Detroit-born multidisciplinary artist who passed away in 1997 in Cairo at the age of sixty-five. “James Lee Byars: Performances” will take place between 12 noon and 5:00 pm in several locations. In the Agnes Gund Garden Lobby, Jimmy Robert will re-create “The Mile-Long Paper Walk,” with choreographic instruction by original performer Lucinda Childs. On the fourth-floor landing, “Four in a Dress” will put four people in a dress; “Are we one or four?” Byars asked when he was in it. Nearby, in the fourth-floor Werner and Elaine Dannheisser Lobby Gallery, “Dress for Two” brings together a pair of people facing each other, joined in an unusual way. All afternoon long, you can check out “Ten in a Hat,” involving performers wearing interconnected chapeaux. And in the sixth-floor gallery, you can see the very brief piece “The Perfect Kiss,” which Byars called “a prayer a poem and a play.”

JIM RENNERT: THINK BIG / PERSPECTIVE

Jim Rennert’s “Perspective” offers passersby a chance to reflect on their life and career (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Union Square Park
14th St. & Union Square East
17th St. & Broadway
Through October 31, free
www.nycgovparks.org/art
jim rennert slideshow

Sculptor Jim Rennert examines the fast-paced nature of corporate culture in his work, offering passersby the opportunity to take a step back and reconsider their goals and how to achieve them. A recent show at Project 3W57 featured small bronze sculptures of men in suits with such titles as “Decisions Decisions,” “Steady,” “Second Chance,” “A Reasonable Man,” and “Clean Slate.” That same businessman figure can now be found at opposite corners of Union Square Park, a pair of sculptures that Rennert, who was raised in Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, intends to bring to people a positive outlook on life. In the island off the southeast corner of the park is “Think Big,” a twelve-foot-tall man in a suit, his hands at his side, his mouthless face gazing up at the heavens, imagining the American dream that might still be within his reach. Meanwhile, in the pedestrian plaza just off the northwest end of the park, is “Perspective,” in which the businessman, only slightly larger than a Wall Street executive, is looking up at the sky, his hands clasped behind his back, considering what awaits him as people hurry past. Rennert, who uses the lost-wax casting method in creating his sculptures, sees the pieces as inspirational in nature while also being contemplative and reflective. “The work has evolved into developing a consistent character and creating an environment in which the interaction between the two brings in the viewer,” he explains in his artist statement. “This approach seems to allow the audience an opportunity to relate to the work in a very personal manner. While not everyone wears a suit, I feel the themes transcend to the everyman.” The sculptures, part of the New York City Department of Transportation’s Art Program, will continue peering up at the future through October 31.