this week in art

LAST CHANCE TICKET ALERT: NEW YORK COMIC CON

Crowds keep getting bigger and bigger every year for New York Comic Con (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

NEW YORK COMIC CON / NEW YORK SUPER WEEK
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
655 West 34th St. (11th Ave. between 34th & 39th Sts.)
Thursday, October 9, $35, 12 noon – 7:00
Con continues through October 12; New York Super Week runs October 3-12
888-605-6059
www.newyorkcomiccon.com
www.newyorksuperweek.com

New York Comic Con continues to get more and more popular every year, with bigger and bigger guests and longer and longer lines. Tickets for the ninth annual event, running October 9-12 at the Javits Center, are already sold out for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and the organizers haven’t even announced the full slate of activities for any of the days. So your only chance for getting in will be to go on Thursday, when there will be appearances by such spotlight guests as Giancarlo Esposito of Breaking Bad, Hollows series author Kim Harrison, and Kristian Nairn (Hodor) and Natalia Tena (Osha) of Game of Thrones and such featured guests as Jason David Frank of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Ben Templesmith, Bob McLeod, Dustin Nguyen, Jimmy Palmiotti, Peter David, Stuart Moore, and Terry Moore, and dozens of special guests as well. In conjunction with NYCC, New York Super Week runs October 3-12 at various locations throughout the city, consisting of related events, including a thirtieth anniversary screening of The Karate Kid at the 92nd St. Y with Ralph Macchio, William Zabka, and Martin Kove; metal monsters X Japan at Madison Square Garden; Neil Gaiman as the subject of host Ophira Eisenberg’s “Ask Me Another” live show at the Y; “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Sing-Along and Whedonverse Party” at Union Hall; “The First (and Probably Last) Annual New York Feline Film & Video Festival for Humans” at Galapagos Art Space; a “Dr. Who Trivia and Costume Contest” at the Way Station; “Cure You or Kill You: 19th Century Medical Science and Quackery” at the Museum of Morbid Anatomy; and “Rave of Thrones,” a DJ set by Nairn with special guests Zedd Stark and Trance Rayder at B. B. King’s.

THE GREEK MONSTERS

The Minotaur hangs out with Medusa and Scylla in “Greek Monsters” show at Onassis Cultural Center (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Onassis Cultural Center NY
Olympic Tower Atrium
641 Fifth Ave. between 51st & 52nd Sts.
Daily through August 24, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.onassisusa.org
www.beetroot.gr

Who let the monsters out? While the downstairs Onassis Cultural Center is undergoing renovation, the Olympic Tower Atrium in Midtown has been overrun with mythical creatures of all shapes and sizes. But there’s nothing scary about these adorably cute black, orange, and white symbolic figures that hail from Ancient Greek literature and evoke Athenian vase painting of the fourth to sixth centuries BCE. Created by the award-winning design firm Beetroot as a response to the European demonization of Greece because of its severe financial problems, the exhibition “The Greek Monsters” has been traveling for several years, including stops at the Alte Münze Berlin and the Benaki Museum in Athens. Consisting of big and small sculptures, bas-reliefs, and a stenciled mural, the show will remain on view in the atrium through Sunday, August 24. Polyphemus, the Cyclops who is the son of Poseidon and Thoosa, stands guard over the revolving doors of the south entrance, attended by three of his sheep, while man-eating Stymphalian birds, who battled Hercules, fly over the north doors. The giant Minotaur, one hand covering his right eye, the other on his left knee, seemingly hides in a corner (in front of Medusa and Scylla), not looking nearly as menacing as he probably did when he fought Theseus. Among the other “misunderstood monsters,” purposely humanized by Beetroot, are Cerberus, Pan, Chimera, and the Sirens. Poems and verse accompany many of the figures; the Lernaean Hydra is described with the couplet “Her breath reeked of fire and poison / But her middle head was immortal,” while the Cyclops declares, “I have one eye / Although it looks at everything / It captures only what I wish.” And as a whole, they proclaim in unison, “We are the monsters in your head / We are your monsters.” And we wouldn’t be the same without them.

21st PRECINCT ART EXHIBIT

The former 2st Precinct station house bids farewell with a five-floor graffiti show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

327 East 22nd St. between First & Second Aves.
August 23-24, free, 1:00 – 6:00
www.facebook.com
21st precinct art exhibit slideshow

Does graffiti enhance New York City real estate or is it a misappropriation of private property and our public visual space? The relationship between NYC walls and street art has always been fraught with controversy; the latest wrinkle seems to be to have developers give about-to-be-demolished edifices over to the artists for licensed, noncriminal, uninhibited expression. In December 2006, the Wooster Collective put together “Wooster on Spring,” a spectacular exhibit in which dozens of street artists went to town on 11 Spring St., a building that was going to be turned into luxury housing; some of the greatest graffiti artists in the world descended on SoHo to make sure that every nook and cranny was covered.

RAE’s bedroom installation is one of the highlights of graffiti exhibit (photo by twi-ny/ees)

Over the last few months, we’ve had to say goodbye to the Queens capital of legal graffiti, 5 Pointz, which has now been whitewashed and will be demolished (which was always its destiny) to make room for luxury rentals. The latest building to get an artistic send-off is 327 East Twenty-Second St., the former 21st Precinct station house (from 1863 to 1914) that Suzuki Capital is turning into boutique condos. But before the wrecking ball arrives, a group of street artists has decorated virtually every possible space, transforming it into a graffiti lover’s paradise. (It opened last weekend and will remain on view this Saturday and Sunday only.) Savior Elmundo, Pesu Art, and Outlaw Arts invited such friends as Bad Pedestrian, bunny M, Cash4, Curb Your Ego, Dizmology, Erasmo, GIZ, Matt Siren, Mr. Toll, Pixote, Queen Andrea, and Zoens to participate, giving each a specific area for them to show what they can do.

N. Carlos Jay’s “Vandal” honors building’s past while emphasizing relationship between cops and graffiti artists (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali square off against each other in the ring. Elle’s prone wax woman melts as candles burn down across her body. Vexta’s bird flies out of the box. Rambo pays tribute to Al Pacino as Scarface. You can talk photography with Jesper Haynes in his darkroom. RAE creates a Basquiat-influenced mesmerizing blue bedroom. Chris RWK warns us that Robots Will Kill, and Mr. Toll equates skulls with dripping fried eggs — your brain on drugs, perhaps? Hellbent amazes with a psychedelic rainbow explosion. Sheryo & the Yok brilliantly turn a room red. N. Carlos Jay honors the Gashouse District battle between cops and graffiti artists. Watch out for Adam Dare’s brokenhearted chained rabbit. And you might want to stay away from Nick Tengri’s bathroom filled with broken glass, as well as another one bathed in blood. And URNY (SKI & 2ESAE) reminds everyone that this was a police precinct by writing such statements as “Stop the police from murdering people” and “You have the right to remain silent. . . . Anything you say can & will be used against you!!!” Meanwhile, others claim that “Graffiti is now for the bourgeois” and that “Artists shouldn’t work for free.”

One of the themes of graffiti show is to “make art,” as depicted here by Savior Elmundo (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Legal graffiti is always a bit tricky — the “criminal” element is a large part of its draw — and many of the works, including those on paper, wood, and canvas, are for sale. But the debate over the commercialization of graffiti style has long been over among the cognoscenti, and the art market and the real estate market, two of the more exciting arenas of ego and money in NYC, have combined here to produce another awe-inspiring, evanescent show — as fleeting as fame and fortune ever are.

JEFF KOONS: SPLIT-ROCKER

Jeff Koons sculpture will keep on rockin’ through September 12 at Rockefeller Center (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Jeff Koons topiary sculpture will keep on rockin’ through September 12 at Rockefeller Center (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Rockefeller Plaza
49th to 50th Sts. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through September 12, free
www.publicartfund.org
www.rockefellercenter.com

Back in the summer of 2000, Jeff Koons’s massive “Puppy” looked out over the crowds at Rockefeller Center. Koons is back at the plaza this season with “Split-Rocker,” a Public Art Fund project that serves as a tasty amuse-bouche to his career-redefining retrospective at the Whitney. Standing thirty-seven-feet high and covered with fifty thousand flowering plants, “Split-Rocker” is a giant children’s rocking chair, a pony head on one side (based on his son’s toy) and a dinosaur (“Dino”) on the other. The 150-ton topiary sculpture, previous versions of which have been displayed in Avignon, Versailles, Riehen/Basel, and Potomac, Maryland, since 2000, is much brighter and more colorful on the pony half, but the work will change during its stay as some flowers die off and others come to life; among the varieties are begonias, geraniums, petunias, and fuchsias. The title is key, as the “split” is more than evident; Koons fashioned the piece so there is a clear differentiation between the two halves, which are slightly misaligned, allowing viewers to glimpse the mirrorlike metal separator. In addition, there is an inviting opening in the back — seemingly offering shelter, although you are not allowed inside — that reveals how the structure was built, with beams and an irrigation system. “I love the dialogue with nature in creating a piece that needs so much control — How many plants should be planted? How will these plants survive? — while at the same time giving up the control,” Koons said in a statement. “It’s in nature’s hands, even though you try to plan everything to make the plants survive. This sense of giving up control is very beautiful. The balance between control and giving up control reminds us of the polarity of existence.” The utterly delightful piece will remain on view through September 12, while the Whitney show, which includes a maquette of “Split-Rocker,” continues until October 19. Koons, who lives and works in New York City and York, Pennsylvania, where he was born and raised, will discuss the project in a Public Art Fund Talk at the New School on September 10; he will also deliver the prestigious 2014 Walter Annenberg Lecture at the Whitney on September 30.

ROCKAWAY!

Visitors are encouraged to move around rocks in Patti Smith installation in Rockaway Beach (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
Fort Tilden and Rockaway Beach
Thursday – Sunday through September 1, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
www.momaps1.org
rockaway! slideshow

Both MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach and multidisciplinary artist Patti Smith had close ties to the Rockaways prior to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, each having homes there that were affected by the disaster. As part of the continuing recovery effort, the two have teamed up with the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, the Rockaway Artists Alliance, and the National Park Service for the free public arts festival “Rockaway!” Held in conjunction with the reopening of Fort Tilden, a former U.S. Army Coast Artillery Post established nearly a century ago and a place that Smith visited often with Robert Mapplethorpe back in the 1970s, “Rockaway!” consists of several projects spread throughout the vast acreage. In the military chapel, which is undergoing restoration, Janet Cardiff has installed her delightful audio piece “The Forty Part Motet,” which has previously been shown at MoMA PS1’s home base in Long Island City and at the Cloisters, the first contemporary artwork ever presented at the Met’s medieval-themed outpost in Fort Tryon Park. “The Forty Part Motet” consists of forty speakers on stands arranged in a circle, each speaker playing the voice of one of the forty members of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir as they perform Thomas Tallis’s sixteenth-century choral composition “Spem in Alium Nunquam habui,” the English translation of which is “In no other is my hope,” a title that is particularly appropriate given the location. First walk around to hear each unique voice, then sit in the middle and let the glorious full music envelop you. “The Forty Part Motet” is on view through August 17; the rest of the show is up through September 1.

Patti Smith’s “Resilience of the Dreamer” creates a kind of fairy tale in middle of decimated building (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In another building, Smith and her daughter, Jesse, pay tribute to one of Patti’s heroes, Walt Whitman, with the short film The Good Gray Poet, in which Patti reads the New York-born writer’s “Country Days and Nights,” “Mannahatta,” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face! . . . On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose”) while wandering through the Camden cemetery where he is buried. The film also includes shots of other places related to Whitman’s life, and there are various historical items in a display case and a bookshelf where visitors are invited to read more by and about the Bard of Democracy.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is Smith’s “Resilience of the Dreamer,” a gilded four-poster canopy bed positioned in the middle of building T9, a former locomotive repair facility that has been filled with junk and detritus since Sandy. The piece, which calls to mind the destruction of so many homes along the beach, their facades ripped away during the storm, exposing people’s lives, has been decaying since its installation in June; the canopy is ripping, the sheets turning yellow, dirt collecting on the bed as the elements lay waste to it through the broken windows and battered roof. In a heavily graffitied side room, Smith has collected white stones and placed them in a large birdbath, where people are encouraged to pick one out and place it somewhere else — there are rocks in virtually every nook and cranny, from light switches and windowsills to holes in the wall and floor — or even take one home as a memory. In addition, in the sTudio 7 Gallery, Smith is displaying more than one hundred small-scale black-and-white photos primarily of possessions of friends, colleagues, and influences as well as gravesites. Among the images are Robert Graves’s hat, William Burroughs’s bandanna, Virginia Woolf’s cane, Mapplethorpe’s star mirror, and the Rimbaud family atlas, as well as beds belonging to Woolf, Victor Hugo, John Keats, Vanessa Bell, and Maynard Keynes and the tombs and headstones of Susan Sontag, Herman Hesse, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Jim Morrison. There is also a stage in the room where musical performances are held on Sunday nights; the next one will be the Jammin Jon Birthday Concert Bash on August 17 at 6:00, with fusion trio Dream Speed and experimental guitarist and Brooklyn native Jammin Jon Kiebon.

Granite cubes throughout Fort Tilden are part of Patti Smith tribute to Walt Whitman (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Scattered throughout Fort Tilden, which is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, are five granite cubes on which Smith has put Whitman quotes (“O madly the sea pushes upon the land, with love, with love”; “Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you”) in addition to a dozen small mud-and-straw nests from Adrián Villar Rojas’s “Brick Farm” series, which evoke both home and protection. There’s a map to help locate these objects; wear long pants and closed-toe shoes because several of the passageways are laden with poison ivy. And be sure to walk to the top of the battery for a spectacular view, then make your way down a winding path to the beach. “Rockaway!” is a not only an exciting artistic venture but a terrific exploration of the past, present, and future of the area, so decimated by Hurricane Sandy but even more determined to rebuild its way of life.

Janet Cardiff’s captivating sound installation continues through August 17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

(The exhibition is supplemented by a satellite show of works by more than seventy artists — from Marina Abramović and Ryan McNamara to Michael Stipe and Laurie Simmons, from Doug Aitken and Olaf Breuning to Olafur Eliasson and Ugo Rondinone — at Rockaway Beach Surf Club. There are several ways to get to Fort Tilden, all of which involve multiple modes of transportation. You can take the $3.50 Rockaway ferry from Pier 11 downtown to Beach 108th St., then get on the Q22 bus, or take the A train to Broad Channel, switch for the shuttle, then get the Q22 at 116th St. None of the options are quick and easy, but the ferry ride does go past Coney Island and the Statue of Liberty and under the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge. Yes, it’s a hassle, but it’s well worth it.)

FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS

Iconoclastic and opinionated artist Bahman Mohassess opens up about his life and career in FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS

FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS (Mitra Farahani, 2013)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema
1886 Broadway at 63rd St.
Opens Friday, August 8
212-757-2280
www.lincolnplazacinema.com
www.musicboxfilms.com

“I really don’t understand what this film you are making about me is all about. If it’s a film about a subject, I must know what role it is I am to play,” Iranian-born, Rome-based artist Bahman Mohassess tells director Mitra Farahani in the captivating, bittersweet documentary Fifi Howls from Happiness. “I don’t know the structure of your work. How does it start? What does it want to say? And where does it end?” he continues. A successful artist in his home country, Mohassess ultimately left Iran for Italy because of regime change and political unrest, which eventually involved government destruction of his work. He was so outraged that he destroyed even more of his own creations and eventually stopped showing his paintings, sculptures, and collages. Iranian artist and documentarian Farahani (Just a Woman, Zohre and Manouchehr) went in search of Mohassess, finding him living as a near-recluse in a hotel in Rome. The iconoclastic artist opens up to Farahani, talking about his parents and the end of his era while expressing his doubt about future generations. He also shares his views on the censorship and destruction of his art, political and social mores, inheritance, legacy, the general devastation going on around the world, and death. “I am only one John the Baptist, preaching alone in the desert,” he says. “It will make no difference. It never will.” In addition, he regularly tells Farahani what she should be doing with her film, directing the director, even though he points out, “I am not directing. I am only giving you my opinion.”

Bahman Mohassess becomes reinvigorated when a pair of collectors want to commission a large-scale painting from him

The narrative takes a delightful turn when Farahani arranges for a pair of Dubai-based brothers and collectors, Rokni and Ramin Haerizadeh, to meet Mohassess and commission a large-scale work from him. Mohassess suddenly has renewed vigor, spouting poetry and showing them Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. Farahani compares the events to the plot of Honoré de Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece, the two tales having remarkable similarities. Farahani also includes archival footage of Ahmad Faroughi’s 1967 documentary on Mohassess, The Eye That Hears, in which the artist, much younger then, states, “My work deals with one thing only, the condemnation of existence. . . . But at the same time I have compassion.” That just about sums up Mohassess, a beguiling mix of condemnation and compassion, a hugely talented artist who is seemingly devoid of any sentimentality, with a deep-throated, cackling laugh that is unlike any you’ve ever heard.

BLADE: KING OF GRAFFITI

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd St.
Friday, August 8, $10 ($40 with book), 6:30
212-534-1672
www.mcny.org
www.bladekingofgraf.com

During the 1970s, Bronx native Steven Ogburn began turning subway trains into his canvas. Taking the street name BLADE, he went on to tag more than five thousand cars between 1972 and 1984. The man also known as the King of Graffiti and the King of Trains is now coming to the Museum of the City of New York in conjunction with the exhibit “City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection.” On August 8, BLADE will sit down for an intimate conversation, accompanied by a slideshow, with Chris Pape, his cowriter on the new book Blade: King of Graffiti (Schiffer, June 2014, $39.99). “I was just developing my moral compass at the time,” BLADE writes near the beginning of the book, “and if there’s one thing I learned it’s that everyone drew the line in the sand somewhere.” BLADE will talk about the line and more as he examines his life and career; the discussion will be followed by a book signing. “City as Canvas” continues at MCNY through September 21.