this week in art

NEW YORK ART FAIR WEEK 2014

Be prepared for big crowds at the Armory Show

THE ARMORY SHOW
Piers 92 & 94, 12th Ave. at 55th St.
March 6-9, $20-$75
646-616-7434
www.thearmoryshow.com

On the heels of the New-York Historical Society exhibition “The Armory Show at 100” comes the real deal, the Armory Show, which anchors Armory Arts Week. The Armory Show, which is affiliated with the original in name only, will display modern art at Pier 92 and contemporary art at Pier 94, along with a focus on China, including Xu Zhen’s Armory Artist commission “Action of Consciousness” and a two-day China Symposium with such experts as Alexandra Munroe, Barbara Pollack, Huang Ri, Philip Tinari, and Zhao Yao. New to the fair is Armory Presents, consisting of installations from one or two up-and-coming artists from newer galleries. There will also be such panel discussions as “Venus Drawn Out: 20th Century Works by Great Women Artists” and “Art Scene: Hong Kong Now” as well as a screening of the documentary Art21 @ the Armory Show.

VOLTA NY
82 Mercer between Spring & Broome Sts.
March 6-9, $10-$15
www.ny.voltashow.com

VOLTA is the Armory’s sister fair, a boutique invitational comprising more than a hundred solo installations. The seventh edition takes place at 82Mercer in SoHo, with such artists as Kim Dorland, Zoë Charlton, Jürgen Wolf, Takahiro Yamamoto, Jin Joo Chae, Dan Coombs, Florian Heinke, and Meg Hitchcock. On Thursday and Saturday at 1:30, Wilmer Wilson IV will perform the living sculpture “From My Paper Bag Colored Heart”; on Thursday at 7:00 and Sunday at 1:30, Pamela Council will channel Bishop Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace as she wanders around the fair; on Saturday at 6:00, Kate Sutton will moderate the panel discussion “Performance Art in Popular Culture” with Pati Hertling, Ryan McNamara, Adam Whitney Nichols, and Carl Swanson; and Bad at Sports will host a series of “Bedside Chats” with artists in a John Lennon / Yoko Ono–inspired installation.

Work by Walter Robinson will be on view at the Spring/Break Art Show

SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW
Old School
233 Mott St. (enter at 32 Prince St.)
March 5-9, $5
www.springbreakartshow.com

The curator-driven Spring/Break Art Show focuses this year on “PUBLICPRIVATE,” investigating surveillance, self-portraiture, photo bombing, digital spectatorship, public defamation and confessions, and other variants of self-exposure. Among the exhibiting artists are Vanessa Albury, Andrew Chan, Peter Clough, Marlene Dumas, Carl Gunhouse, Lynn Hershman Leeson, An Hoang, Patrick Meagher, Paul Pfeiffer, Jacob Rhodes, Walter Robinson, Daniel Rozin, Shoplifter aka Hrafnhildur Arnardottir, Kendra Sullivan, and Michael Valinsky. Maureen Sullivan has curated “Private Drive-In” by Fall on Your Sword as well as “Screen Tests for Stalkerpooh,” an experimental workshop of video and live performance by Eve Sussman and Simon Lee that evokes both Andrei Tarkovsky and A. A. Milne; for #wishingpelt, visitors can whisper in Sean Fader’s ear and interact with him in other ways; Scott Avery (aka Amani Olu) gives uncomfortably personal polygraph tests for “Reasonable Doubt”; and Lia Chavez will present a durational performance involving meditation and social media, in addition to many other special projects.

Morgan Jesse Lappin’s “The Machine II” collage can be found in the Murder Lounge at Fountain

FOUNTAIN ART FAIR
69th Regiment Armory
Lexington Ave. at 26th St.
March 7-9, $10-$15
www.fountainartfair.com

More than one hundred galleries will be part of Fountain Art Fair, which takes place in the original home of the Armory Show, the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave. We always love the Murder Lounge, where such artists as Dave Tree, Victor Cox, and Sergio Coyote do things their own way. Other returning favorites include McCaig + Welles, Mighty Tanaka, and Grace Exhibition Space. On opening night, March 7, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner will deejay from 9:00 to midnight, with the Deep playing on Saturday night. Panel discussions will take place each afternoon at 12:30, with “The Challenges of Creating Art in Public Space” on Friday, “Women in Street Art” on Saturday, and “The New Muralism” on Sunday.

Andrew Feuerstein and Bret Quagliara designed the layout for the 2014 Independent art fair

INDEPENDENT 2014
48 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
March 6-9, $20
www.independentnewyork.com

The Independent, founded by Elizabeth Dee and Darren Flook and held in the old Dia space in Chelsea, used to have a truly independent feel, but it has taken a significant professional downturn this year, becoming more of a buyers fair, and in doing so, it has lost its edge. There are still all kinds of art spread across multiple floors, so you have to be careful where you walk, because pieces suddenly show up in every nook and cranny. But this formerly free fair is now twenty bucks to get in, yet there is still a line. Is it worth it? Some of the best works on display are from New York galleries, including Anton Kern and Murray Guy, so we found it had little that is new and exciting. In fact, the one-floor Clio rivaled any of the Independent floors. The fifth edition includes some five dozen international galleries in a layout designed in collaboration with Andrew Feuerstein and Bret Quagliara. The stairs can get extremely crowded, and the elevator too, so be ready to take your time, just breathing in those Dan Flavin lights.

CLIO ART FAIR: THE ANTI-FAIR FOR INDEPENDENT ARTISTS
508 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
March 6-8, free
www.clioartproject.com

The Clio Art Fair gives voice to artists who are not represented by a New York City gallery, letting them run free without worrying about art market constraints and rules. Among the participating artists are Ted Barr, Gustavo Blanco-Uribe, Adrian Coleman, John Coplans, Alessandro Del Pero, Rodolfo Edwards, Loren Ellis, Roxanne Faber Savage, Borinquen Gallo, Floor Grootenhuis, and such old-timers as Mel Rosenthal and Vito Acconci. There’s a charming freshness to this one-floor, first-time fair that the others lack, caring about the art and the artists ahead of the sale and actually enjoying itself, which rubs off on visitors.

Hiraki Sawa’s “Migration” will be shown at the Moving Image fair

MOVING IMAGE
Waterfront Tunnel
269 Eleventh Ave. between 27th & 28th Sts.
March 6-9, free
www.moving-image.info

Moving Image is a video art fan’s dream, with more than thirty-six artists presenting video pieces along the passageway in the Waterfront Tunnel in Chelsea. This year’s roster is highlighted by Mark Bradford (“The Practice”), Oded Hirsch (“50 Blue”), Nam June Paik (“Dog”), Alyson Shotz (“Fluid State”), and Hiraki Sawa (“Migration”) in addition to new works by Patty Chang (“Invocation for a Wandering Lake, Part 1”), Jesse Fleming (“Mirror Mirror”), Aaron Garber-Maikovska (untitled), Rollin Leonard (“Wave”), and Lisa Gwilliam & Ray Sweeten (DataSpaceTime) (“Debugging”). On Saturday at noon, Alice Gray Stiles will moderate the panel discussion “Moving Image Moving Forward: Expanding the White Box?” with Jonas Mekas, Leslie Thornton, Christiane Paul, Ed Halter, and Elle Burchill, followed at 2:00 by “Selling Video Art via Online Channels,” with Sebastian Cwilich, Aditya Julka, Chris Vroom, and Andrea Pollan, also moderated by Stiles. At 6:00, Moving Image is hosting Claudia Hart and Edmund Campion’s “The Alices (Walking): A Sculptural Opera and Fashion Show” at Eyebeam.

Art lovers can walk over to chashama to scope out Barry Rosenthal’s “Soles”

SCOPE
312 West 33rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
March 7-9, $15-$25
www.scope-art.com

SCOPE is back at the Skylight at Moynihan Station, delivering works from more than seventy galleries from around the world, including Galleria Ca’ d’Oro from Roma and Miami, Andenken from Amsterdam, Gallery G77 from Kyoto, Corridor Contemporary from Tel-Aviv, Barbarian Art Gallery from Zurich, La Lanta Fine Art from Bangkok, YY from Chicago, Villa del Arte Galleries from Barcelona, Hans Alf from Copenhagen, and 55Bellechasse from Paris. This year’s special programs include Sinéad O’Donnell’s “Headspace: White Cube” performances at Golden Thread, the BucketFeet #MadeToStandOut competition, and See.Me Year in Review winner Aerosyn-Lex Mestrovic’s “Atramentum.”

Zezzious Bjorn Identity will be show at the (Un)Fair

Zezziou’s “Bjorn Identity” will be on view at the (Un)Fair in Midtown West

THE (UN)FAIR
500 West 52nd St. at Tenth Ave.
March 5-9, free
www.theunfairartshow.com

The (Un)Fair seeks to emphasize fun and freedom, getting away from what it refers to as “fair frenzy” and instead “celebrating passion rather than fashion.” This year’s theme is “Exploring the Divide,” featuring such artists as Liz Adams-Jones, BaltzerGlass, Gill & Lagodich, Brian Gonzalez aka Taxiplasm, Robert C. Jackson, Will Kurtz, Marilyn Manson, David Pierce, Norman Rockwell, Brittany Schall, Tracey Snelling, and Zezziou.

Roxy Paine’s “Running from Neon Study” is part of Marianne Boesky display at the Art Show

ADAA: THE ART SHOW
Park Avenue Armory
Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 5-9, $25
www.artdealers.org

The Art Show enters its second quarter century with an all-star lineup of works from six dozen galleries, with solo presentations by such living and dead artists as Roxy Paine, Spencer Finch, Diane Arbus, James Castle, Jeff Wall, Sol LeWitt, Kehinde Wiley, Sara McEneaney, Philip Taafe, Sara VanDerBeek, James Turrell, Irving Penn, Dana Schutz, Laurie Simmons, Ann Hamilton, and Ad Reinhardt. Themed exhibits include Barbara Krakow Gallery’s “Intersections of the Unknown: Works by Artschwager, Calle, Serra and Others”; Aquavella Galleries’ “Masterworks: Allegory and Allusion in Modern Art, from Arp to Warhol”; Debra Force Fine Art’s “Modern Life in America: Works on Paper by Milton Avery, Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, and Others”; Barbara Mathes Gallery’s “The Automobile: Mixed Media Works by d’Arcangelo, Ruscha, Chamberlain, and Others”; Julie Saul Gallery’s “Just Looking”; and Adler & Conkright’s “Numbers + Letters: Works from the Modernist Era to Today.” On March 7 at 6:00, Adam Gopnik will give the Collectors’ Forum keynote lecture “What Makes the Humanities Human” in the Tiffany Room.

FIRST SATURDAYS: WOMEN’S STORIES

Alison Elizabeth Taylor, “Security House,” wood veneer and shellac, 2008-10 (Gift of the Contemporary Art Acquisition Committee; © Alison Elizabeth Taylor)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, March 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org

In 1982, the United States recognized the first official Women’s History Week, comprising seven days in March; five years later, the third month of the year became Women’s History Month, passed by a congressional vote of 100 to 9. The Brooklyn Museum will be celebrating Women’s History Month on March 1 in their free First Saturdays programs by examining women and art, music, publishing, poetry, and more. The evening will include an artist talk by Alison Elizabeth Taylor, an arts workshop demonstrating how Taylor uses wood in her pieces, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh discussing her anti–street harassment project “Stop Telling Women to Smile,” pop-up gallery talks in English and Spanish on specific works by women, the interactive performance “Sublime” by the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective, a martial arts workshop with ABADÁ-Capoeira, a talk by Toni Blackman about hip-hop and activism, live music by Zuzuka Poderosa, TECLA, and Venus X with live animation by Niky Roehreke, pop-up spoken-word poetry, a live performance combining music and spoken-word by Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman of Climbing PoeTree, and a book club talk by members of the Feminist Press. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey,” “Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry’s Letters to ‘The Ladder,’” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” and other exhibits.

JONNY BRIGGS: MONSTRARES

Jonny Briggs, “Filling the Void,” C-print, 2013 (photo courtesy Julie Meneret Contemporary Art)

BRIGGS & HAMILTON
Julie Meneret Contemporary Art
133 Orchard St.
Wednesday, February 26, free, 6:00
Briggs exhibition continues Wednesday – Sunday through March 30
212-477-5269
www.juliemeneret.com
www.jonnybriggs.com

British photographer Jonny Briggs will be making his U.S. debut this week with the solo show “Monstrares,” running February 26 through March 30 at Julie Meneret Contemporary Art, a new gallery that opened this past fall on Orchard St. on the Lower East Side. In his work, Briggs, the 2011 winner of the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4’s New Sensations Prize, explores his memories of childhood and family, brought to life in carefully staged installations using latex molds in photographs that are not digitally manipulated. “In search of lost parts of my childhood I try to think outside the reality I was socialised into and create new ones with my parents and self,” he explains in his artist statement. “I look back to my younger self and attempt to recapture childhood nature through my assuming adult eyes.” His work evokes that of Bernardí Roig, Ron Mueck, Will Ryman, and even a hint of Cindy Sherman, while the title is a sly combination of the Latin word for “show” or “display” and the English word “monster.” The opening-night party on February 26 will feature special guest Saskia Hamilton, who will read poems she wrote that were inspired by Briggs and his photography. Hamilton, who is the title subject of the Ben Folds and Nick Hornby song “Saskia Hamilton” (“I’ve only ever seen her name on the spine / But that’s enough I wanna make her mine”), has previously published such poetry books as Divide These and As for Dream; her latest, Corridor, is due in May from Graywolf Press.

THOMAS STRUTH

Thomas Struth’s 2013 chromogenic print “Mountain, Anaheim, California” gives a different perspective on Disneyland (photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)

Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Extended through February 28, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-977-7160
www.mariangoodman.com

The men and women who built the Walt Disney theme parks that the public has been flocking to for more than fifty years were known as imagineers. In his latest show at Marian Goodman, Düsseldorf-based German photographer Thomas Struth examines the intersection of human invention, engineering, and what he specifically calls “constructed imagination” by bringing together large-scale pictures he took while visiting Disneyland in California as well as several unique urban landscapes and other sites around the world that are invested in technological innovation. Each work stands on its own in a lush visual splendor, inviting the viewer into their beauty and mystery, even though some depict a fake world created for family vacations while others reveal cutting-edge technology that could change the future of humanity. In previous series, Struth has shown people looking at paintings or gathering in tourist spots, but there clearly are no men, women, or children to be seen in these 2009–13 photographs, even though the viewer is nonetheless compelled to search the chromogenic and inkjet prints for signs of life. Instead, Struth includes a robot in “Golems Playground, Georgia Tech, Georgia,” and there might or might not be a body under the blue sheet in “Figure, Charité, Berlin.”

Thomas Struth, “Measuring, Helmholitz-Zentrum, Berlin,” chromogenic print, 2012 (photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)

“The surprise of what we have collectively created becomes more evident when one takes a more general perspective,” Struth points out in the exhibition press release. “Showing real experimental physics, a twenty-first-century urban landscape, or a surgical robot in action reinforces the question: How should we judge what we see? More intimately, let us consider the vulnerability of the human body and soul under these circumstances. It’s all creation; it’s made. It’s not a given.” Once again, Struth has challenged us to reevaluate our expectations while also asking us to reexamine how we look at and experience both fantasy and reality, art and artifice.

BURGER JOINT 5! NEW YORK: THE CIRCUS

“Under the Big Top — Above the Clouds” looks at New York City as a real-life circus (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

UNDER THE BIG TOP — ABOVE THE CLOUDS
Burger Joint
33 West Eighth St. at McDougal St.
Opened Wednesday, February 19
Admission: free
212-432-1400
www.facebook.com/events
www.burgerjointny.com

Amid yet more animal rights controversies, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus comes to town today, kicking off an eight-day stand at the Barclays Center, followed by stops at the Nassau Coliseum, the Prudential Center in Newark, and the IZOD Center in East Rutherford. (That’s right, there will be no circus at the Garden this winter — and no elephants marching through the Midtown Tunnel — just the Knicks and the Rangers at the World’s Most Famous Arena.) In addition, in a sad side story, it seems that there is a clown shortage, as the next generation doesn’t seem interested in putting on the crazy makeup and floppy shoes. Another, far more important, controversy involves just who makes the best burger around (not to mention the continuing case against red meat in general).

Well, all that comes to a head, in a way, at Burger Joint 5, the fifth art show organized by New York-based painter and Philadelphia Flyers fan Ari Lankin and Cole B at the West Village outpost of the popular Le Parker Meridien burger restaurant. “Under the Big Top — Above the Clouds” consists of more than forty works by a dozen artists interpreting New York as a real-life circus all its own; the pieces are spread throughout the heavily wood-designed eatery, where a burger, fries, and beer will set you back about sixteen bucks. The art on display is relatively inexpensive as well, with works going from $40 and $50 to $2,500 but mostly in the $100 to $300 range. Some of the artists stick to the theme more than others — yes, you should know that there are indeed some paintings with clowns, courtesy of Cole B. Paul Zepeda uses the subway as a major inspiration in his small works on canvas, while Flye Lyfe riffs on the New York sports teams in a series of playful hats and hoodies (the New York Bangers, the Brooklyn Cassettes). Lankin’s “Circus” features six framed one- or two-dollar bills that spell out the title, appropriately placed on a gold brick wall. While the quality of the works differs wildly, two of the standouts are street artist Joseph Meloy (Vandal Expressionism), whose oil and spray paint “Figurative Apparatus” evokes a robotic juggler, and Michael Serafino, who explores scientific themes in such dazzling encaustics as “Lunar EVA 5” and “Abstract Winter” and goes even more abstract in the oil-on-panel “Pull Painting One.” Art and meat? We consider burgers, fries, and beer to be a major art form, so it’s not really much of a stretch for other types of art to be hanging in a place that serves one of New York City’s deservedly favorite burgers.

THE ARMORY SHOW AT 100: MODERN ART AND REVOLUTION

Marcel Duchamp, “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2),” oil on canvas, 1912 (Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection)

New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (77th St.)
Daily through February 23, $18 (pay-as-you-wish Friday 6:00 – 8:00)
212-873-3400
www.armory.nyhistory.org

It was a seminal moment in the way contemporary art was introduced to the American public. “New York will never be the same again,” Arthur B. Davies said, while Walt Kuhn proclaimed, “We will show New York something they never dreamed of.” On February 17, 2013, the Armory Show opened at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave. and Twenty-Sixth St.; organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, which was headed by Davies, the show brought the European avant-garde to the America public. The New-York Historical Society is celebrating the transformative event’s centennial with “The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution,” a wide-ranging exhibition that includes approximately one hundred works from the original presentation, by such innovative and influential European artists as Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, and Edvard Munch in addition to such American painters and sculptors as Childe Hassam, George Bellows, Stuart Davis, James McNeill Whistler, Albert Pinkham Ryder, John Sloan, and Charles R. Sheeler. “The Armory Show at 100” delves into the fascinating behind-the-scenes battles between Davies, Kuhn, J. Alden Weir, Walter Pach, Guy Pène du Bois, and the National Academy through quotes, postcards, and letters that detail the controversial selection process and purpose of the show while also placing it firmly within the context of the sociopolitical climate and evolving culture (including literature and film) of early-twentieth-century New York City as WWI loomed on the horizon.

Albert Pinkham Ryder, “Pastoral Study,” oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, 1897 (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

Many of the works on view, arranged thematically in clever ways, are simply sensational: Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2),” Matisse’s “Blue Nude,” “The Red Studio,” and “Goldfish and Sculpture,” van Gogh’s “Mountains at Saint-Rémy” and “La salle de danse à Arles,” Redon’s “Silence,” Bellows’s “Circus,” Ryder’s “Pastoral Study,” Eugène Delacroix’s “Christ on the Lake of Genesareth,” Degas’s “After the Bath,” Munch’s “Madonna,” Charles Henry White’s “The Condemned Tenement,” and Francis Picabia’s “The Procession, Seville.” The free audioguide adds additional insight to the lasting importance of “The Armory Show,” while the catalog features thirty-one essays, with contributions from curators Marilyn Kushner and Kimberly Orcutt along with Leon Botstein, Avis Berman, Barbara Haskell, Francis M. Naumann, Casey Nelson Blake, and others. “Criticism, both for and against modern art in the exhibition — now considered one of the most important art exhibitions ever mounted in the United States — was impassioned, and it seemed as if everyone from the most seasoned collector or established artist to the uninitiated viewer had an opinion,” Kushner writes in her piece, “A Century of the Armory Show: Modernism and Myth.” The thoughtful, well-organized show continues through February 23, with timed tickets available in advance, which is definitely the way to go to avoid the lines. As a bonus, the New-York Historical Society will be open on Monday, February 17. (Next month, the Armory Show comes back to town, running March 6-9 at Piers 92 and 94 as part of Armory Arts Week, but it’s nothing like its namesake.)

RIVER OF FUNDAMENT

Matthew Barney’s five-and-a-half-hour epic debuts at BAM this week (photo by Hugo Glendinning)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
February 12-16, $25-$50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

“Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before,” Norman Mailer writes at the beginning of his 1983 novel, Ancient Evenings. “Is this the fear that holds the universe? Is pain the fundament? All the rivers veins of pain? The oceans my mind awash? I have a thirst like the heat of earth on fire. Mountains writhe. I see waves of flame. Washes, flashes, flashes, waves of flame.” New York-based visual artist Matthew Barney and Berlin-based composer and musician Jonathan Bepler have transformed Mailer’s seven-hundred-page epic about death and rebirth in Egypt into the five-and-a-half-hour cinematic spectacle River of Fundament, which is making its debut February 12-16 at the BAM Harvey. In his five-part, seven-hour Cremaster Cycle, Barney explored the ascension and descension of the cremaster muscle, which determines sexual differentiation, with a cast that included Mailer as Harry Houdini and Barney as Gary Gilmore in a section inspired by Mailer’s book The Executioner’s Song while focusing on cars and petroleum jelly in others.

RIVER OF FUNDAMENT is built around episodes in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Detroit (photo by Ivano Grasso)

River of Fundament begins with Mailer’s wake at an intricate reconstruction of his Brooklyn Heights home, with Mailer’s son John Buffalo Mailer playing his father’s spirit. The second act follows the reincarnation of Mailer (Milford Graves) as he is born in the River of Feces and meets medium Hathfertiti (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The third act returns to Brooklyn, with Mailer’s next reincarnation played by a 2001 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor and Ellen Burstyn taking over as Hathfertiti. The primary cast also features Paul Giamatti, Cremaster star Aimee Mullins, Elaine Stritch, Lila Downs, Chief Dave Beautiful Bald Eagle, Joan La Barbara, and Madyn G. Coakley, with a multitude of cameos by Dick Cavett, Luc Sante, Larry Holmes, Salman Rushdie, Lawrence Weiner, Fran Lebowitz, Marti Domination, James Toback, David Amram, and dozens of others.

Cars once again are featured prominently in epic new Matthew Barney film (photo by Ivano Grasso)

The action, much of which consists of filmed performance art presentations that were held in public spaces, moves from New York City to Los Angeles to Detroit as Egyptian mythology and ritual play out in unusual ways. Barney, whose multidisciplinary Cremaster exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2002-3 was one of the best of the decade, has given New Yorkers a sneak peek at the making of River of Fundament via the ”DJED” show at the Gladstone Gallery in the fall of 2011 and the wide ranging ”Subliming Vessel” at the Morgan Library last summer. Not that they gave any real indication of what to expect, because with Barney, the only thing to expect is the unexpected. And even then, don’t expect to understand what is unfurling before you.