this week in art

SARAH SZE IN CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER EGAN: TRIPLE POINT

192 Books
112 Tenth Ave. at Twenty-First St.
Tuesday, November 12, free, 7:00
212-255-4022
www.192books.com
www.sarahsze.com

Boston-born, New York-based visual artist Sarah Sze creates fragile, intricately constructed architectural environments using such materials as string, bottle caps, colored tape, Styrofoam cups, paper, and other items that combine elements of painting and sculpture. Sze, whose “Infinite Line” show ran at Asia Society in 2011-12, is currently representing America at the U.S. Pavilion at the fifty-fifth Venice Biennale with the massive installation “Triple Point,” about which she said in a statement, “Central to the exhibition is the notion of the ‘compass’ and how we locate ourselves in a perpetually disorienting world.” In May 2012, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Keep) began posting her New Yorker short story “Black Box” on Twitter in paragraphs of no more than 140 characters, weaving together a written narrative that echoes the ones that Sze builds with objects. On November 12 at 7:00, Sze and Egan will be at 192 Books in Chelsea, celebrating the release of the new book Triple Point (Gregory R. Miller / Bronx Museum of the Arts, October 2013, $45), which examines the installation in detail, featuring an introduction by Biennale co-commissioners Holly Block and Carey Lovelace, an essay by curator Johanna Burton, a conversation between Sze and Egan, and the complete text of Egan’s “Black Box.”

FIRST SATURDAYS: JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 2, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The career of French fashion designer John Paul Gaultier will be celebrated at the Brooklyn Museum’s November edition of its free First Saturdays program. In conjunction with the opening of the multimedia exhibition “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” there will be a curator talk by Lisa Small, an arts workshop demonstrating how to make Gaultier-inspired fashion plates, fashion-related pop-up gallery talks, a lecture on fashion, ethics, and the law by Susan Scafidi, a special performance by Company XIV and Dances of Vice with Miss Ekat and DJ Johanna Constantine, a discussion with photographer Richard Corman about his book Madonna NYC 83, and screenings of Loic Prigent’s 2009 documentary The Day Before, which follows Gaultier as he prepares for a fashion show, and Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, for which Gaultier designed the costumes. The night will also include live music by Au Revoir Simone, Watermelon, and Tamar-kali. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “Valerie Hegarty: Alternative Histories,” “Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the ‘War’ and ‘Death’ Portfolios,” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey,” and other exhibits.

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: SECOND-HAND READING

William Kentridge’s latest show at Marian Goodman is another multimedia wonder (photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)

Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through October 26, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-977-7160
www.mariangoodman.com

In his latest exhibit at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Midtown, “Second-hand Reading,” South African multidisciplinary artist William Kentridge examines the concepts of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction in unique, creative, and, as always, playful ways as they relate to both the artist himself and the viewer. As he noted in “Drawing Lesson One: In Praise of Shadows,” the first of six hour-long Charles Eliot Norton Lectures he gave in the spring of 2012 during his one-year residency at Harvard, we are “made aware of our part in the construction of the image, our part in the construction of the illusion, but most importantly our part in the construction of ourselves. It is in the gap between the object and its representation that this energy emerges, the gap we fill in.” Over the course of the talks, which can be viewed here, Kentridge also discusses mistranslation, practical epistemology, meaning, shadows, words, seeing, the movement between images and ideas, anti-entropy, and life in the studio, where he makes all of his work.

William Kentridge, “The Shrapnel in the Woods,” Indian ink on CRAGGS UNIVERSAL TECHNOLOGICAL DICTIONARY (1826), 2013 (photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)

William Kentridge, “The Shrapnel in the Woods,” India ink on CRAGGS UNIVERSAL TECHNOLOGICAL DICTIONARY (1826), 2013 (photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)

As complex as his talks can get, Kentridge also instills his trademark sense of humor and explores his very personal inclusion of the hand — and full body — of the artist, two elements that are central to the new show, which continues through October 26. “Second-hand Reading” is filled with energy, and its myriad rewards are indeed affected by how much constructing visitors do in their mind. The North Gallery is dominated by kinetic machines, including repurposed megaphones, sewing machines, a bicycle wheel, and a drum kit hanging from the ceiling, all of which must be operated by a gallery employee, who will do so for the asking. Surrounding the machines is a series of large-scale India ink drawings on pages from Craggs Universal Technology Dictionary, featuring trees on which Kentridge has added such phrases as “Tear & Repair,” “The Nicely Built City Never Resists Destruction,” and “The Death of Trees.” The trees not only represent life in South Africa but the source of the paper on which they are drawn; in today’s society, of course, less and less writing is being done on paper.

In the North Viewing Room, the triptych flip-book “NO, IT IS” consists of three extremely entertaining continuous and simultaneous flipbook videos (Workshop Receipts, The Anatomy of Melancholy, and Practical Enquiries) of black-and-white images and different-colored geometric shapes on pages from an old technical encyclopedia. As the pages turn, Kentridge walks across them, takes a seat, and dances with a woman; at the beginning and end, Kentridge’s hand can be seen opening and closing the book. The drawings used for the films hang on the walls of the small space.

William Kentridge, “NO, IT IS,” triptych of three flipbook films, HD video, 2012 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the Conference Room, linocuts of trees are printed on sheets taken from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and the Encyclopedia Britannica, while silkscreens on pages from the 1746 Septem Linguarum Calepinus, the 1757 AD Pandectas Duobus Tomis Dilftributus, and other books declare in bold red, “A Safe Space for Stupidity,” “The Full Stop Swallows the Sentence,” and “Against Argument (But Not This One),” phrases Kentridge wrote down while preparing the Harvard lectures.

William Kentridge’s “Rebus” sculptures are best experienced from multiple angles (photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)

In the South Gallery in the back, two rows of “Rebus” sculptures consist of black bronze works that are like puzzles, changing when viewed from different angles. A lithograph of nine black-and-white typewriters reminds us of how words were at one time put onto the page. “Let Us Enter the Chapter” and “All the Trees in the Library” comprise small drawings on pages of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary with such words at the top as “Abuse,” “Advocate,” “Wrath,” “Void,” “Symptom,” “Graveyard,” and “Indecipherable.” The show culminates with the poetic seven-minute flipbook film “Second-hand Reading,” which is composed of the many disparate elements in the South Gallery as a concerned Kentridge makes his way across pages from Cassell’s Cyclopædia of Mechanics on which he has added such phrases as “Whichever page you open, there you are” and a cheerleader with a cross on her outfit waves flags as if sending a message, all set to a beautiful score by Neo Muyanga. The exhibit as a whole places Kentridge’s art very firmly in a different kind of age of mechanical reproduction while laying bare his thought process. He is “taking sense and deconstructing it, taking nonsense and seeing if sense can be constructed from it,” as he recently explained, and asking the viewer to participate in the ultimate creation of meaning. The title of the show itself evokes a multitude of meanings, as “second-hand” could refer to Kentridge’s reuse of found objects, the portrayal of his own actual hand, his breathing life into pages from old texts that people can now read in a new light, and the endless passage of time, which hovers over everything. But even more important, it’s all a helluva lot of fun.

(Kentridge fans can still see his visually stunning production of The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera on October 26 and in theaters October 26 and 30, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art just opened their latest Kentridge acquisition, “The Refusal of Time,” which runs through May 11. To read our 2011 twi-ny talk with Mr. Kentridge, please go here.)

VICTORIA COHEN: HOTEL CHELSEA

Third Streaming
10 Greene St., second floor
Monday – Friday through October 25, free
646-370-3877
www.thirdstreaming.com
www.victoriacohen.com

In the summer of 2011, when New York native Victoria Cohen heard that the Hotel Chelsea was being sold and would be undergoing extensive renovations, she “felt many emotions,” she writes in her debut photo book, the beautiful, deluxe, oversize Hotel Chelsea (Pointed Leaf Press, August 2013, $95). “First and foremost, as an artist, I was angry and sad that an institution such as the Chelsea would have this fate. . . . It just didn’t seem possible — at least to me — that a place with such an extraordinary history, and where so many of the greatest literary minds, visual artists, musicians, and eccentrics of the twentieth century have called home for over a hundred years, could be torn apart.” So Cohen set out to capture the heart and soul of the hotel that had helped give birth to seminal works by Jack Kerouac, Arthur C. Clarke, Leonard Cohen, William S. Burroughs, Larry Rivers, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and so many others. For three weeks, Cohen shot what she calls “portraits” of the hotel’s guest rooms, rooftop, and hallways, although no humans are ever seen.

Victoria Cohen, “Room 1024, Chair,” C-print, 2011 (© 2011 by Victoria Cohen)

Instead, it is as if ghosts and spirits inhabit Cohen’s pictures, taken with a handheld camera using only natural light. More than two dozen are on view at Third Streaming in SoHo through October 25, wonderfully arranged by curator Michael Steinberg and Cohen. A mop and bucket, seemingly timeless, stand by themselves in a corner. An old piano looks like it might not have been played in years. Brick walls in disrepair on the roof hint at some bad times gone by. But the real mysteries of the Hotel Chelsea, which was recently sold to luxury hotel developer King & Grove, can be found in Cohen’s marvelously composed shots of the guest rooms, each one unique and different, from the dark couch in “Room 632” to the two bright-red chairs in “Eighth Floor South,” from the card table in “Fifth Floor South” to the mini-fridge and coffee paraphernalia against green wallpaper in “Room 203.” One series of photos zeroes in on made beds, while another focuses on rooms with two windows, adding a compelling geometric element to the works. One of the most striking images is “Room 1024,” the camera placed just in front of the entrance to a sparkling living room with chairs that seem to be inviting the viewer to take a seat. In each of these photos, Cohen also invites the viewer to create their own narrative about the past, present, and future, and it’s almost impossible not to.

PATRICK-EARL BARNES: SHOTGUN HOUSE

Patrick-Earl Barnes’s “Shotgun House” continues at the Heath Gallery in Harlem through October 19 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Heath Gallery
24 West 120th St.
Thursday – Saturday through October 19
646-872-0419
www.patrick-earl.com
www.heathgallery.squarespace.com

A few years ago, we met self-taught deep-folk artist Patrick-Earl Barnes on a SoHo street, selling his compelling artwork. Barnes concentrates on two primary series: “Family Ties,” paintings and fabric collages inspired by his late father, and “Shotgun House,” acrylic paintings on canvas or wood of the historical architectural dwelling. The latter is the subject of his current show at the Heath Gallery in Harlem, which continues through October 19. In the front room, fourteen works of different sizes line the walls, primarily paintings of multiple rows of tiny shotgun houses with names based on their color scheme: “Pink Agboile,” “Powder Blue Agboile,” “Kool Aid Red Agboile,” “Black Denim Agboile.” Two of the works feature a male figure in the foreground. Barnes, who was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, and is now based in Brooklyn, gives the repeated images a sociocultural power that goes well beyond their apparent simplicity; shotgun houses are small, inexpensive residences that began in West Africa and spread throughout the American South following the Civil War. Among the stories behind their curious name, and the one Barnes favors, is that if you opened the front and back doors, you could fire a shotgun right through the house, the pellets not hitting anything as they entered one end and exited the other. “I’ve used my open air art gallery in SoHo to educate everyday people about a cultural and aesthetic experience that remains misinformed and underrepresented,” Barnes said about an earlier show at Heath, but that statement relates to “Shotgun House” as well. Be sure to check out the back room, which is displaying gallery owner Thomas “Hat Man” Heath’s beautiful, complex paintings of men, women, and children of the African Diaspora.

CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915

Juliette Binoche stars as sculptor and mental patient Camille Claudel in heartbreaking film

CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915 (Bruno Dumont, 2013)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 16-29
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.kinolorber.com

Juliette Binoche gives a gut-wrenching performance as the traumatized title character in Bruno Dumont’s heartbreaking Camille Claudel 1915. The film takes place over the course of several days in 1915, as the sculptor and former mistress of Auguste Rodin awaits a visit from her younger brother, poet, devout Christian, and diplomat Paul Claudel. Camille has been moved to an asylum in Montdevergues, where she prepares her own meals for fear of being poisoned on orders from Rodin, who she believes is still trying to ruin her life and career twenty years after their personal and professional relationships ended. Run by nuns, the asylum is home primarily to deeply disturbed women incapable of taking care of themselves and barely able to speak coherent sentences. Claudel, a loner who was committed by her family shortly after the death of her father, desperately wants to be released and get her life back, but everything seems to be poised against her. Binoche, her pale face appearing to have been chiseled like one of Claudel’s sculptures, plays Camille with a subtle yet stern beauty, giving several long, impassioned speeches that writer-director Dumont (Twentynine Palms, L’humanité) and cinematographer Guillaume Deffontaines shoot in single takes, the camera remaining still, Camille framed like a painting. Throughout the film, Camille is seen amid mostly blacks, grays, browns, and whites, a monochromatic color scheme that echoes her work. The film has a cinéma vérité feel, as much of the sparse dialogue is improvised, many of the nuns are nurses at the asylum, and several of the patients are actually committed there, lending a neo-Realist quality to the austere setting. The film, which is “freely adapted from” Paul’s writings and letters, Camille’s letters, and medical records, is not a biopic; instead, it’s a fascinating study of a talented artist and the mental anguish that ultimately overwhelmed her.

WALLS AND BRIDGES — THE ANIMAL VISION: IN CONNECTION WITH THE DRAWING CENTER EXHIBIT “ALEXIS ROCKMAN: DRAWINGS FROM ‘LIFE OF PI’”

Alexis Rockman will discuss his fantastical creations he made, such as the above watercolor, for Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI in special Walls and Bridges program

The Drawing Center
35 Wooster St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Thursday, October 17, free, 6:30
www.wallsandbridges.net
www.drawingcenter.org

When making his 2012 hit film Life of Pi, director Ang Lee turned to artist Alexis Rockman to create aquatic species for the central part of the narrative, which takes place on the open sea. Rockman’s watercolor drawings are now on view at the Drawing Center, which is the site for the special October 17 program “The Animal Vision,” part of the third annual Franco-American Walls and Bridges festival. New York native Rockman will discuss his hallucinatory work with Belgian philosopher and ethologist Vinciane Despret; the event will be hosted by Rice University English professor Cary Wolfe (Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory). Rockman’s “Drawings from Life of Pi” continues at the Drawing Center through November 3; in addition, Rockman’s “Rubicon,” consisting of such new paintings as the large-scale “Bronx Zoo” and “Gowanus,” which depict a heavily detailed, surreal animal world, are on view through November 2 at Sperone Westwater. The ten-day Walls and Bridges festival also includes the multimedia presentation “Unrest” October 18 at the Whitney, featuring the live performance “Meurtrière” by Philippe Grandrieux, a screening of Grandrieux’s film White Epilepsy, and a discussion with Grandrieux, Avital Ronell, and Lynne Tillman; “City Shapes,” in which French geographer Michel Lussault and American photographer Matthew Pillsbury discuss the changing urban environment, October 19 at the Aperture Gallery; and the Oh! Oui… company’s music and theater production Stille Nacht October 20 at the Invisible Dog Art Center.