this week in art

REBIRTH: RECENT WORK BY MARIKO MORI

Mariko Mori, “Transcircle 1.1,” stone, Corian, LED, real-time control system, 2004 (courtesy of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo / photo by Richard Goodbody)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 12, $12 (free Friday from 6:00 to 9:00)
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

For her first museum show in more than a decade, Tokyo-born artist Mariko Mori explores the interconnectedness between humanity and the cosmos, the body and the universe, and the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Continuing through January 12 at Japan Society, “Rebirth” comprises sculpture, video, photography, and installation that celebrates peace and love while delving into a past, present, and future that comes together through primal consciousness. “Why are souls born in this world, and why do we depart to another world? Why have we chosen to leave that world to be born in this world and exist in the here and now?” Mori asked in a 2007 interview with Lida Takayo that the author incorporates into the exhibition catalog essay “Mariko Mori’s ‘Rebirth’: Ancient, Futuristic Visions.” “There can be only one answer. We are here so that we can experience love. I was born here so that my love can bring peace to the world,” Mori concludes. The artist, who lives and works in Tokyo, London, and New York, takes visitors on a journey from the Middle Jōmon period of several thousand centuries BCE to the birth of a star, beginning with the glowing Lucite “Ring,” which hangs over the lobby pond, and “Birds I,” nearly hidden in the bamboo garden above. The pairing of “Primal Memory” with “Mask,” followed by “Flatstone” and “Transcircle 1.1,” meld such ancient traditions as the stone circle with modern technology; for example, the Stonehenge-like “Transcircle 1.1” consists of nine tall monoliths arranged in a circle, glowing in changing LED color schemes based on the orbit of the eight planets and Pluto around the sun. Meanwhile, the ceramic rocks in “Flatstone” are centered by an acrylic version of the Middle Jōmon vase on view nearby.

White Hole, 2008–10. Acrylic and LED lights; 136 1/8 × 103 1/2 inches. Courtesy of SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo and Sean Kelly, New York. Installation photograph by Richard Goodbody.

Mariko Mori, “White Hole,” acrylic and LED lights, 2008-10 (courtesy SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo, and Sean Kelly, New York / photo by Richard Goodbody)

In the almost blindingly white Bamboo Room, consciousness is further raised in “Miracle,” comprising eight brightly colored Cibachrome prints on the back wall and a round platform over which a small crystal ball dangles on a chain above the smooth epoxy orb “Tama I” and salt. Walking slowly around the platform offers visitors a changing reality. The exhibition, which also includes the “Journey to Seven Light Bay, Primal Rhythm” video of the first of Mori’s six planned outdoor site-specific environmental sculptural projects, the drawing series “Higher Being” and “White Hole,” and the “Ālaya” digital video (as well as bonus black-and-white archaeological photographs on the lower level), concludes with the consciousness-expanding immersive multimedia installation “White Hole.” In a dark room at the end of a short, winding corridor, a convex circle awaits, looking like a large futuristic eye centered on a low, angled ceiling. Soon a light projection emerges, growing and spiraling as it echoes a star being absorbed into a black hole and being freed from gravity through a white hole. “If the dramas of death and rebirth, as well as new birth, unfold across many parallel dimensions, there exists an eternal time and space that has no beginning and no end,” Mori has said about the piece. “I hope this work serves as a simulacrum of death and rebirth, prompting us to rethink the multidimensional universe that defies our imagination.” To get the full experience, visitors should first lie down on the provided mat, staring into the middle of the hole, but then get up and approach the light, following its dizzying journey. In fact, much of “Rebirth” is rewarded by spending time with the objects, meditating on them while considering the interdependence of humanity and the universe.

CHRIS BURDEN: EXTREME MEASURES

Chris Burden’s “1 Ton Crane Truck” dangles heavy object in lobby gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 12, $10-$16 (pay-what-you-wish Thursdays 7:00 – 9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

The New Museum has given itself over to performance and installation artist Chris Burden for “Extreme Measures,” his first major U.S. museum retrospective in more than a quarter century, comprising works across five floors, on the building’s facade, and even on the inaccessible roof. The Boston-born, L.A.-based Burden, who received his BA from Pomona College in visual arts, physics, and architecture and whose father was an engineer, incorporates all of those disciplines and more in the show, which continues through January 12. Burden takes things to extremes with installations that were challenging just to get into the museum, including “1 Ton Crane Truck,” a fully restored 1964 Ford F350 that resides in the lobby gallery, dangling a handmade one-ton cast-iron weight; “Twin Quasi Legal Skyscrapers,” a pair of four-ton structures that required a special addition to the roof in order to hold them; “Ghost Ship,” a two-ton, thirty-foot handcrafted sixareen sailboat suspended on the front of the building, its unmanned four-hundred-mile trip documented in the lobby; “Porsche with Meteorite,” a bright yellow two-and-a-half-ton restored 1974 Porsche 914 balanced against a nearly four-hundred-pound rock fragment from space; and “The Big Wheel,” a three-ton cast-iron flywheel that is powered by a 1968 Benelli 250cc motorcycle. (“The Big Wheel” is activated Wednesday – Sunday at 11:30 and 2:30 and 7:30 on Thursday.)

Chris Burden, “Porsche with Meteorite,” restored 1974 Porsche with 390-pound meteorite, steel frame, 5,025 pounds, 2013 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The massive, carefully constructed pieces display Burden’s unique approach particularly to transportation, employing technological and found objects involved with small- and large-scale movement, something that becomes even clearer on the third floor, which features the stainless-steel “Triple 21 Foot Truss Bridge,” the concrete “Three Arch Dry Stock Bridge, ¼ Scale,” the reverse-arched “Mexican Bridge,” and “Tyne Bridge Kit,” a multidrawer chest that reveals some of Burden’s working process, along with “Pair of Namur Mortars,” two beautifully detailed full-size three-ton cannons with cannonballs, the type of weapon that could be used to blow up bridges in olden times. (The smaller bridges also recall the six-story structure “What My Dad Gave Me” that Burden raised in Rockefeller Center in 2008.) Burden investigates the theme of war, power, and authority on the second floor with “L.A.P.D. Uniforms,” fully outfitted, oversized replicas created in response to the Rodney King beating; “Beehive Bunker,” a conical bunker constructed of cement still in its store-bought bags; “All the Submarines of the United States of America,” consisting of 625 miniature cardboard submarines hanging from the ceiling, representing all of the subs launched by the navy between 1897 and 1987, accompanied by a board that identifies each one; and “A Tale of Two Cities,” a spectacularly elaborate battle scene between two warring city-states, built with sand, live plants, more than five thousand children’s toys, and bullets, best viewed with binoculars.

Chris Burden, detail, “A Tale of Two Cities,” two miniature cities with approx. five thousand toys, sand, plants, boulders, approx. 53,000 lbs., 1981 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Each work is accompanied by new or old text from Burden, shedding light on the piece in various ways; for example, for “Rant,” the artist explains, “An extreme close-up of my face is projected onto a wall, several times larger than life-size. Assuming the persona of a ranting xenophobic preacher, I deliver a short, intense monologue in French.” Also on view are eleven of Burden’s seminal performance-art videos (among them “Shoot,” “Bed Piece,” “Deadman,” and “Fire Roll”); three short films documenting his “Beam Drops,” in which he drops dozens of I-beams vertically into wet cement; and “Tower of Power,” which calls into question the whole nature of the value of art, both as commodity and visual pleasure, by allowing one person at a time to view a pyramid of one hundred gold bars surrounded by matchstick men, guarded by an armed NYPD detective. There’s something fundamentally satisfying about “Extreme Measures,” both on its surface and lurking just beneath it, resulting in a vastly pleasurable, thoroughly unusual museum experience.

FOUR GIANT RED SNAILS

A quartet of snails have made their way to Columbus Circle through the snow and traffic (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Columbus Circle
Convergence of Broadway, Eighth Ave., and Central Park West at 59th St.
Through January 6, free
www.pinksnails.com
four giant red snails slideshow

Making your way through midtown Manhattan might be impossibly slow these days, with all of the tourists and holiday shoppers clogging the streets, but if you think you’re having trouble getting anywhere, there are four giant red snails in Columbus Circle that haven’t moved an inch in weeks. The eight-foot mollusks have actually made it from Central Park to Gaetano Russo’s statue of Cristóbal Colón, but they seem to be stuck there, bringing striking color to an otherwise very white and gray area. Made of recycled plastic from landfills, the snails are part of an international REgeneration Art Project created by Italy’s Cracking Art Group and presented by the Villa Firenze Foundation and Galleria Ca d’Oro’s Gloria Porcella. The Cracking Art Group — Renzo Nucara, Marco Veronese, Charles Rizzetti, Alex Angi, Kicco, and William Sweetlove — is dedicated to “changing the history of art through a strong social and environmental commitment to a united revolutionary, innovative use of plastic materials that evoke a strict relationship between the natural and the artificial,” so what better time to see these Dolittle-like creatures than during the holiday season in New York City?

THE NEW RIJKSMUSEUM

The renovation of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam turns into one crazy story in two-part documentary (photo courtesy of Pieter van Huystee/Column Film)

The renovation of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam turns into one crazy story in two-part documentary (photo courtesy Pieter van Huystee/Column Film)

THE NEW RIJKSMUSEUM (Oeke Hoogendijk, 2008/2013)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
December 18 – January 1
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

In 2003, Amsterdam’s crown jewel, the Rijksmuseum, was closed to begin a major renovation. Little did everyone know at the time that the project would be delayed for years and go hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. Dutch director Oeke Hoogendijk captures all the surprisingly gripping fun and intrigue in the two-part, four-hour documentary The New Rijksmuseum. Hoogendijk brings her camera into every architectural meeting, monetary debate, and contractor dilemma, gaining remarkable access as no one shies away from sharing their personal and professional feelings on everything from the heated battle with community cycling activists over public use of the building’s entrance as a bike passage to such exacting details as paint color, smoothness of the walls, the art-historical value of certain works, and staying true to Pierre Cuypers’s 1885 building. The first documentary follows museum director Ronald de Leeuw as the process gets under way and continually gets mired in such issues as bidding contests that end up having only one participating company and the city’s dislike for a modern study center addition. In the second film, Wim Pijbes takes over as museum director in 2008, and his problems quickly mount as well as construction work eventually starts and deadlines approach. “I spend more time on cyclists than Rembrandt,” he acknowledges. “It’s my fate.” The interplay among such architects as Antonio Cruz, Antonio Ortiz, and Jean-Michel Wilmotte, a succession of project managers, curators of individual museum galleries, and the director is simply fascinating as they all give their very frank opinions on the renovation of the home of such treasures as Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” and Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid.” There’s also a whole lot of hysterical eye rolling. Hoogendijk’s two films are part mystery, part thriller, part absurdist comedy, but at the heart of it all is a deep love of art and the understanding of its cultural importance. “You gain all this knowledge only to forget it all again, but the essence remains with you,” says Asian Pavilion curator Menno Fitski. “You don’t have to remember everything you see in a museum. The experience is what makes you feel like a better human being.” The New Rijksmuseum will change the way you experience museums, especially the next time you walk through MoMA, the Met, the Louvre, or any other major cultural institution, and perhaps most of all, it will make you want to go to Amsterdam and see the new Rijksmuseum itself. The two parts are being shown at Film Forum through January 1; although you can see them separately for the price of one admission, it’s a lot more exciting watching them back to back, immersing yourself in this crazy, complicated love story.

ISAAC JULIEN: TEN THOUSAND WAVES / PLAYTIME

Isaac Julien’s striking TEN THOUSAND WAVES floats across MoMA’s atrium (photo by Jonathan Muzikar)

TEN THOUSAND WAVES
Museum of Modern Art, the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through February 17
Museum admission: $25 ($12 can be applied to the purchase of a film ticket within thirty days)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.isaacjulien.com

Comfy Ottomans are arranged throughout MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, but visitors aren’t meant to grab a seat and settle in while watching Isaac Julien’s dazzling nine-screen immersive installation, Ten Thousand Waves. To get the full effect, wander around the space, and even check out the upper levels for a view from above. That would fit with some of Julien’s central themes, involving motion, migration, and technological change. The London-born Julien has previously installed the piece on Cuckatoo Island, for the Sydney Biennale; at the Kunsthalle Helsinki; and in Shanghai during the Shanghai Expo, but it is being shown at MoMA in a unique configuration, with the nine screens hanging from the atrium ceiling at different angles and heights, making it feel like a more arduous journey. The inspiration for Ten Thousand Waves came from the 2004 Morecambe Bay tragedy, when nearly two dozen migrant Chinese cockle pickers from Fujian Province drowned in a terrible accident. Julien retells that story with actual footage of the recovery attempt while incorporating elements of the folk legend “The Tale of Yishan Island,” about sixteenth-century fishermen facing disaster on the sea. He also re-creates scenes from Wu Yonggang’s 1934 silent film, The Goddess, with Zhao Tao (wife and muse of Sixth Generation director Jia Zhangke) playing a desperate prostitute (as well as Goddess actress Ruan Ling-yu, who came to a fateful end herself) making her way through the colorful streets of old and new Shanghai (and the Shanghai Film Studios). Overseeing it all is Mazu (Chinese superstar Maggie Cheung), the Goddess of the Sea, who floats through the air in a flowing white costume. The multiple abstract narratives, visual style, sets, and soundtrack (by Jah Wobble and the Chinese Dub Orchestra and composer Maria de Alvear) combine with Gong Fagen’s calligraphy and Wang Ping’s specially commissioned poem, “Small Boats” (other collaborators include multimedia artist Yang Fudong and cinematographer Zhao Xiaoshi), to examine the interplay of commerce and capital in both ancient and modern-day China. Like much of Julien’s oeuvre (Fantôme Afrique, True North), the fifty-minute Ten Thousand Waves is a visually stunning meditative work that offers up no easy answers while warranting multiple visits. In conjunction with the exhibit, MoMA has published a deluxe intellectual biography of Julien, Riot, which features illuminating text by Paul Gilroy, bell hooks, Mark Nash, Laura Mulvey, Christine Van Assche, Julien, and others, including several chapters on Ten Thousand Waves and Playtime, which can currently be seen at Metro Pictures.

Julien’s PLAYTIME follows a series of characters dealing with the financial crisis in very different ways (photo courtesy Metro Pictures)

PLAYTIME
Metro Pictures
519 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through December 18, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-206-7100
www.metropicturesgallery.com

In Chelsea, Julien’s latest installation at Metro Pictures, Playtime, continues through December 18, exploring some of the same concepts as Ten Thousand Waves, albeit much more directly, as seen through the Collector, the Houseworker, the Artist, the Auctioneer, and the Reporter, each of whom is based on real people. The centerpiece of Playtime is a three-chapter film, projected onto a long, horizontal screen, that looks at the financial crisis in three cities. In London, a vibrant young man (James Franco) speaks adoringly about collecting art and leads viewers to an auction being led by Simon de Pury. In Dubai, where there appears to have never been a financial crisis, a Filipina woman (Mercedes Cabral) cleans a wealthy man’s multimillion-dollar apartment, gazing out at one of the wealthiest cities on the planet while wondering if she will make enough money to have her life back and reunite with the rest of her family. And in Reykjavik, where the financial crisis began in 2008, a photographer (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) looks over a vast, barren landscape. The exhibit also includes Kapital, a two-channel video in which Julien and social theorist David Harvey, author of such books as Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development and The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, discuss class, Marxist philosophy, social structure, and more with a specially invited group of men and women at London’s Hayward Gallery. And in another video, de Pury sits down for a craftily staged interview with a journalist (Cheung), claiming that the financial crisis actually ended up being a boon to the art market. Although some of the points Julien is making here are rather obvious and far from new, the work still fascinates with its visual acuity and infectious pacing. Perhaps Julien titled it Playtime in tribute to Jacques Tati and his Monsieur Hulot onscreen alter-ego, a charming, dapper man who seems to be living in a different era than everyone else, with few of their cares and worries.

Clips from Isaac Juliens PLAYTIME will screen throughout Times Square this month (photo by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts)

A three-minute clip from Isaac Julien’s PLAYTIME will screen throughout Times Square this month (photo by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts)

MIDNIGHT MOMENT: ISAAC JULIEN
Times Square
Nightly at 11:57 through December 30
www.timessquarenyc.org

In conjunction with the shows at MoMA and Metro Pictures, Times Square Arts and the Times Square Advertising Coalition is presenting a three-minute clip from Julien’s Playtime every night at 11:57 on seventeen electronic billboards in Times Square through December 30 as part of the ongoing “Midnight Moment” project, which has previously shown work by such artists as Ryan McGinley, Robert Wilson, Tracey Emin, Jack Goldstein, and Björk and Andrew Thomas Huang. It’s rather fitting, of course, that Playtime, which deals so much with art, commerce, and capitalism, can be seen in the heart of one of the planet’s most commercial locations. And it’s difficult to pass up the opportunity to see James Franco hovering over the Crossroads of the World. Julien will be back at MoMA on February 10 for the Modern Mondays presentation “An Evening with Isaac Julien,” sharing film clips and talking about his career.

CHRISTMAS TREE AND NEAPOLITAN BAROQUE CRÈCHE 2013-14

The Three Kings proceed to the Magi in annual Met Christmas tree display (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Medieval Art Sculpture Hall, first floor
Through January 6, recommended admission $25
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org
christmas tree and neapolitan baroque crèche slideshow 2013

Once again the Met’s annual Christmas tree has risen in front of a 1763 Choir Screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, and it will remain on view through the Epiphany on January 6. The twenty-foot-tall spruce is surrounded by twenty-two eighteenth-century cherubs, fifty-five angels, sixty-nine miniature Neapolitan handmade men, women, and children, and fifty animals, from the collection of Loretta Hines Howard. The terracotta polychromed figures, some created by such well-respected sculptors as Giuseppe Sammartino, Salvatore di Franco, Giuseppe Gori, and Angelo Viva, act out the Nativity (or crèche) and the Procession of the Magi as daily business goes on. The tree was originally designed by Howard and is now overseen by her daughter, Linn, along with Linn’s artist daughter, Andrea Selby Rossi, who add new touches to the settings every year; the display also has music to further the holiday spirit. The Met first displayed the figures in 1957, adding the tree, which was also donated by Howard, in 1964. Be sure to walk all around the area to see all the little scenes that are going on throughout the bustling town. And the Met now allows non-flash photography of the tree, so you can take pictures as well. A lighting ceremony is held every day, at 4:30 Sunday through Thursday and at 4:30, 5:30, and 6:30 on Friday and Saturday, and an Audio Guide is available too ($7). The Met’s celebration of Christmas also continues with such holiday-themed events as “The Crossing: A Christmas Concert” on December 22 and the Salomé Chamber Orchestra playing seasonal music on December 20, both in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. Meanwhile, the Cloisters will host “The Waverly Consort: The Christmas Story” on December 15, “ETHEL and Friends” December 20-21 and 27-28, and “Lionheart Laude: Joy and Mystery in Medieval Italy” December 22.

HOUSEWARMING: NOTIONS OF HOME FROM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

Drew Hamilton’s “Street-Corner Project” is part of inaugural “Housewarming” show at BRIC House in Brooklyn (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Drew Hamilton’s miniature “Street-Corner Project” is part of inaugural “Housewarming” show at BRIC House in Brooklyn (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

BRIC Arts | Media House
647 Fulton St.
Through December 15, free, 10:00 am – 8:00 pm
718-683-5600
www.bricartsmedia.org

There’s an artistic revolution going on in downtown Brooklyn on the other side of the LIRR station from where the Barclays Center now resides. BAM has added the Fisher to the Howard Gilman Opera House and Harvey Theater, right near the Mark Morris Dance Center, and down the street is Theatre for a New Audience’s dazzling new Polonsky Shakespeare Center, which is currently presenting its first production, Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another new entry in this growing community is the gorgeously revamped BRIC House, a multidisciplinary arts center that opened in its old digs at the corner of Rockwell and Fulton Sts. in October. Sunday is the last day to see its inaugural art exhibition, the appropriately titled “Housewarming: Notions of Home from the Center of the Universe.” Curated by BRIC director of contemporary art Elizabeth Ferrer, the display features works by twelve Brooklyn-based artists, including eight pieces specifically commissioned for this show, in the downstairs three-thousand-square-foot gallery. Keisha Scarville’s photographs from her “I am here” series offer dark, quiet contemplation of objects that recall home. Garry Nichols’s café mural and weather vanes evoke his Tasmanian birthplace. Abraham McNally’s small-scale wall sculptures contain fragments of a physically broken home. Margaret Reid Boyer’s “Household Objects” photos consists of domestic interiors in which something is often not quite right. Vargas-Suarez Universal’s “Star Chamber” can be seen on the building’s facade. Drew Hamilton re-creates the scene he used to see from his second-floor window at Graham Ave. and Merserole St. in Bushwick in the miniature replica “Street-Corner Project.” There are also works by Njideka Akunyili, Sonya Blesofsky, Esperanza Mayobre, Katarina Jerinic and Chad Stayrook, and Nathan Wasserbauer. It all makes for a tender welcome home to BRIC, which in the next few weeks is also hosting free dance classes with Ronald K. Brown / Evidence and Samita Sinha’s work-in-progress, Cipher, with David Levine, Christian Hawkey, and Joe Diebes’s “Wow” scheduled for January.