this week in art

EXPO 1: NEW YORK

“ProBio” looks at the future with “dark optimism” at MoMA PS 1 (photo by Matthew Septimus)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Thursday – Monday through September 2, suggested admission $10 (free with paid MoMA ticket within fourteen days), 12 noon – 6:00
718-784-2084
www.momaps1.org

The presentation of MoMA PS1’s summer exhibition, “Expo 1: New York,” smartly echoes how climate change, technology, and evolution have impacted the progression and devastation of the natural world in the twenty-first century. The show began in May with a series of modules in various locations, with some of those individual parts, including “Rain Room” at MoMA, Olafur Eliasson’s Icelandic glacier installation “Your waste of time” at PS1, Adrián Villar Rojas’s “La inocencia de los animales (The innocence of animals)” PS 1 lecture hall, and the VW Dome on Rockaway Beach, now having gone extinct, disappearing like the melting ice caps. But the show, which promotes Triple Canopy’s concept of a “dark optimism” for the future of humanity and the planet, still has several worthwhile displays at its primary hub at PS 1, examining its mission statement that “we live in a time that is marked by both the seeming end of the world and its beginning, being on the brink of apocalypse but also at the onset of unprecedented technological transformation.” Curators Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist reach back fifteen years for Meg Webster’s “Pool,” which PS 1 founder Alanna Heiss originally commissioned in 1998, a swampy water environment that could not exist without the coming together of natural materials and man-made electronic elements. Downstairs in the basement, the Cinema is offering up recent film, video games, and online content from the YouTube generation; the upcoming schedule includes the video games “Journey” and “Proteus,” Sterling Ruby’s Transient Trilogy, Althea Thauberger’s Northern, and Khavn de la Cruz’s Kalakala and Mondomanila or: How I Fixed My Hair After a Rather Long Journey, with the director on hand to discuss his work (and provide live piano accompaniment for the former). Organized by Josh Kline, “ProBio” takes a futuristic look at the intersection of technology and the human body, with intriguing cutting-edge works by such artists as Alisa Baremboym, Antoine Catala, Carissa Rodriguez, and Georgia Sagri; watch out for those Roomba-like robots scouring the floor. One offsite project still remains, Marie Lorenz’s “The Tide and Current Taxi,” which visitors can hail in New York harbor. As always at MoMA PS 1, the many rooms hold little surprises, so be sure to explore so you can also catch pieces by Charles Ray, Matthew Barney, Zoe Leonard, Steve McQueen, Mark Dion, Chris Burden, Pierre Huyghe, Agnes Denes, Ugo Rondinone, and others. And for the final week of “Expo 1,” a77’s communal courtyard installation “Colony” is taken over by Glenn O’Brien, who will be hosting “TV Party Goes to Camp.”

ROBERT IRWIN — SCRIM VEIL — BLACK RECTANGLE — NATURAL LIGHT, WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK (1977)

Robert Irwin’s site-specific “Scrim veil” invites visitors into its many charms and mysteries (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through September 1, $16-$20 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
robert irwin photo set

As the Whitney prepares for its move to the Meatpacking District in 2015, it has been combing through its holdings, mounting exhibitions (“Sinister Pop,” “Signs & Symbols,” “Real/Surreal”) that offer new ways to experience works, both familiar and not, from its collection. One significant piece is being brought back for the first and last time, as it was designed specifically for the fourth floor of Marcel Breuer’s building and cannot be shown anywhere else. In 1977, California-based artist Robert Irwin installed “Scrim veil — Black rectangle — Natural light, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,” a deceptively simple project made of cloth, metal, black paint, and wood. At one end of the rectangular room is Breuer’s trapezoidal window, streaming in oddly shaped light. A translucent scrim runs the length of the room, hanging from the ceiling, with five and a half feet from the floor to its black metal base, allowing people to easily walk under it. In addition, a black line has been painted along the wall at the same five-and-a-half-foot height, parallel to the base of the scrim. Upon exiting the elevators, visitors are instantly transported into the compelling space, which takes a bit of time to adjust to. “Scrim veil” is something that can’t just be seen but needs to be experienced; it seems to shift with changes in the outside light and as other people make their way around it. The black metal base of the scrim and the black painted line on the walls meld together then break apart, appearing to create morphing physical elements.

Robert Irwin, “Scrim veil — Black rectangle — Natural light, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,” cloth, metal, and wood, 1977 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the original exhibition catalog — “Scrim veil” was part of a larger show — Irwin, who is now eighty-four and still making challenging, fascinating new work, contributed the complex essay “Notes Toward a Model,” in which he explored the nature of form, context, content, perception, abstraction, conception, experience, and response. “There is probably no such thing as a pure naïve perception of the world,” he writes in the heavily illustrated discussion. “As noted earlier, we do not begin at the beginning in such matters but already somewhere in the middle. For example: Conceive in your mind the idea of a straight line (which has only a limited actuality in nature). In extended time consider our ‘straight line’ as the basis for the compounded abstraction known as Euclidean geometry. Again in extended time, consider a world developed and structured in line with our concept — i.e., grid to city; frame and plane to painting — point-to-point as a way of procedure through life. Now, place yourself in the middle of this milieu as the actual (physical) frame of your experiential reference, your reality, and ask yourself, ‘What can I know?’” (The full catalog can be read here.) Indeed, as one travels around the room, losing track of time and space, “Scrim veil” provides personal questions and answers that explore just what it is we might know about our individual and shared environment, both physically and psychologically. Interestingly, although Irwin was against the taking of photographs during the piece’s initial 1977 run, the Whitney is allowing pictures this time around, but don’t get too caught up in trying to snap a good photo and instead just allow yourself to be enveloped in this unique and involving experience, one that will never happen again.

ARTWORK OF THE DAY: “DWARF AND RHINOCEROS (WITH LARGE BLACK SHAPE)” BY JOHN BALDESSARI

John Baldessari, “Dwarf and Rhinoceros (with Large Black Shape),” detail, archival inkjet prints mounted on Lexan with inset aluminum frame, latex paint, archival inkjet print mounted on plexiglass, 1989/2013 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“I’ve got to say, I don’t like being labeled a California artist, or a Los Angeles artist, or a Conceptual artist,” John Baldessari told us last year in a wide-ranging twi-ny talk. “I just like it to be artist.” The artist is back at Marian Goodman with a solo show that reinstalls a trio of works first seen in 1987-89, three rooms that feature Baldessari’s unique way of combining painting, photography, and sculpture; words, image, and meaning; the real world and its cinematic equivalent; and humanity and the animal kingdom. “Dwarf and Rhinoceros (with Large Black Shape)” (“Ni por Esas/ Not Even So: John Baldessari,” Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 1989) focuses on a black-and-white photo of a little man, seemingly squeezed into a rectangular frame, looking up and pointing at a rhino in the wild. “Two Stories (Yellow and Blue) and Commentary (with Giraffe)” (“Magiciens de la Terre,” Centre Georges Pompidou and Grande Halle La Villette, Paris, 1989) includes a giraffe emerging from a corner, facing a cross of pop-culture images. And “The Difference Between Fête and Fate” (“John Baldessari,” Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli, Italy, 1987) consists of striking photographs of people and animals, including polar bears, an owl, and a burning man. The eponymously titled exhibition continues in Midtown through August 23.

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN: THE HEDGE

John Chamberlain, “The Hedge,” painted and chromium-plated steel, sixteen elements, 1997 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Lever House Art Collection
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through August 31, free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
the hedge photo set

Indiana-born sculptor John Chamberlain has seemingly been omnipresent since his death in December 2011 at the age of eighty-four. Sadly, the longtime Shelter Island resident passed away shortly before his wonderful career retrospective, “Choices,” last year at the Guggenheim, which showed off the surprising breadth of his work, which went well beyond car chrome and steel assemblages. Then the Gagosian put together a small outdoor sculpture installation on Seagram Plaza in Midtown last summer and fall, allowing such recent biomorphic aluminum pieces as “FROSTYDICKFANTASY,” “MERMAIDSMISCHIEF,” and “ROBUSTFAGOTTO” to glitter in the sun. Now Lever House is presenting one of Chamberlain’s largest sculptures, 1997’s “The Hedge,” which consists of a forty-six-foot-long row of sixteen evenly spaced forty-four-inch-high squares composed of painted chromium-plated steel from automobiles. A kind of three-dimensional Abstract Expressionist canvas come to life, “The Hedge” cuts through the mostly black-and-gray glassed-in Lever House lobby, where it can be seen residing next to a row of live green plantings. Each piece has a square hole in the middle, allowing visitors to look through them all, directly out onto Park Ave., where more colors pass by with the traffic, adding sly commentary on America’s consumerist car culture. Using such tools as a sledgehammer, a compactor, an acetylene torch, a band saw, and a steel cutter on automobile parts, Chamberlain is able to evoke the natural world with “The Hedge,” which features an array of bright, bold colors in a unique kind of metallic topiary. Each piece is a work of art in its own right, but together they invite viewers into a multifaceted, multidimensional space that seems to morph as seen from different angles.

PUNK: CHAOS TO COUTURE

The Met’s “Punk” show is in its last days; may it rest in peace (photo © the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Costume Institute
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Through August 14, $25 adults, children under twelve free
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

In 2011, the Met made big news with its overwhelmingly popular and widely praised cutting-edge spring Costume Institute exhibition, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” which, particularly in its last days, had tremendously long lines as people flocked to see the vast oeuvre of the late British designer, who committed suicide in February 2010 at the age of forty. One of the themes of the show came from a McQueen quote: “You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.” The Met was probably hoping for a similar response to this spring’s Costume Institute exhibit, “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” breaking all kinds of rules, but instead this display arrived DOA (no offense to the legendary Canadian band that just broke up). Divided into such themes as “New York and London,” “Graffiti and Agitprop,” “Clothes for Heroes,” and “Destroy” and featuring questionably punk music and videos, the show actually focuses on how the punk aesthetic was coopted by Madison Ave. and the fashion industry; most of the clothing on view is from high-end designers that costs a pretty penny, made in the twenty-first century, long after the punk invasion of the 1970s. Joan Jett might be a punk goddess, but seeing an image of her wearing Karl Lagerfeld for Vogue in March 2011 makes us want to reevaluate her bad reputation. And the re-creation of the CBGB bathroom — well, let’s just say we can’t imagine that the Ramones and Hilly Kristal would be too happy about that. Anyway, “Punk: Chaos to Couture” runs through Wednesday, August 14, but there is absolutely no reason for you to run over to the Met to catch it before it goes away, hopefully never to be seen or heard from again.

SUMMER STREETS: VOICE TUNNEL BY RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s “Voice Tunnel” welcomes pedestrians into the Park Ave. Tunnel for the first time ever (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SUMMER STREETS
Park Ave. Tunnel, 33rd – 40th Sts.
Saturday, August 10 & 17, free, 7:00 am – 1:00 pm
www.nyc.gov
voice tunnel slideshow

In such multimedia projects as “Open Air,” “Semioptics for Spinoza,” “First Surface,” and “Voice Array,” Mexican-born Canadian electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has used light, sound, movement, and touch to create interactive, immersive installations that require public participation. In 2008, his “Pulse Park” measured the heart rate of individuals in Madison Square Park and turned those biometric rhythms into beams of light that radiated across the oval lawn. Lozano-Hemmer’s latest New York piece, “Voice Tunnel,” is the highlight of this year’s “Summer Streets” festival, in which the city closes down Park Ave. to vehicular traffic for three successive Saturdays (August 3, 10, and 17) from 7:00 am to 1:00 pm, instead encouraging people to walk, jog, run, bike, blade, and stroll down the famous thoroughfare and make their way to five rest stops filled with special free activities.

Visitors add their voice to affect light and sound in interactive tunnel installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

For “Voice Tunnel,” part of Lozano-Hemmer’s “Relational Architecture” series, the artist has installed three hundred theatrical spotlights that line both sides of the tunnel, projecting arcs of light that race across the ceiling, then go dark. The speed and frequency of the chasing lights are directly impacted by people’s voices; near the center of the tunnel, visitors can say anything they want into a microphone box, lasting between one and five seconds, with volume mattering. The word or phrase can then be heard echoing among the one hundred and fifty loudspeakers in the tunnel, mixing with the sounds of the previous eighty-nine participants. (Try to seek out the exact speaker that is emitting your recording.) Up to five hundred people are allowed in the tunnel at a time, and that is a first; the tunnel, which runs from Thirty-Third to Fortieth St., has been closed to pedestrians since it was built in 1834. Try not to get too caught up in taking pictures and video and instead let the light and sound envelop you, since without your involvement, nothing would happen. It’s also fascinating to realize that Lozano-Hemmer, who refers to his oeuvre as “antimonuments for alien agency,” is primarily using old-fashioned, more analog-type materials for “Voice Tunnel,” although everything is processed through a central computer station. “Depending on what is happening that day, you might see a very wide variety of different reactions, and that’s what I’m excited about,” Lozano-Hemmer says about the project. “I’m excited that this platform is out of my control.” “Voice Tunnel” is an enticing, engaging, and just plain fun display; don’t miss it.

GRAVITY AND GRACE: MONUMENTAL WORKS BY EL ANATSUI

El Anatsui’s hanging works welcome visitors to fascinating show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

El Anatsui’s hanging works welcome visitors to fascinating retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Museum
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing and Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, fifth floor
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Wednesday – Sunday through August 18, suggested donation $12
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Over the last decade, Ghana-born, Nigerian-based abstract artist El Anatsui has been gaining international fame for his unique sculpture-paintings that hang from ceilings and walls and climb across floors. The works, which often resemble maps, are composed of aluminum liquor bottle caps of a multitude of colors, woven together with copper wire by a team of assistants into patterns that Anatsui then puts together to form larger pieces that evoke African history, mass consumption, environmentalism, and the intimate physical connection between people all over the world. This continuing series welcomes visitors to the outstanding Brooklyn Museum exhibition “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,” which also looks back at the artist’s past while revealing his fascinating process.

El Anatsui’s “Waste Paper Bags” look back at African history while also evoking modern-day environmentalism (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Much of Anatsui’s oeuvre changes every time it’s shown at a new location, hung a little differently, without the same type of lighting, allowing them to be experienced anew; they also benefit from being viewed from a distance and then close up, offering varying perspectives. The show is expertly laid out, from the mazelike hallway entrance to the side-by-side “Red Block” and “Black Block” to the inclusion of several videos that show Anatsui at work in his studio and walking around, seeking out found objects and ideas for future projects. “I don’t believe in artworks being things that are fixed,” the artist and longtime teacher has said. “You know, the artist is not a dictator.” Indeed, painted wood reliefs such as “Motley Crowd” and “Amewo (People)” from the 1980s and ’90s are meant to be altered, with curators encouraged to rearrange the blocks of wood as they see fit. It’s all part of Anatsui’s “nomadic aesthetic” and dedication to the “nonfixed form,” representing multiple materials in varying shapes and sizes while also celebrating personal freedom. His titles also capture an international flavor, with such names as “Drifting Continents,” “Earth’s Skin,” and “Amemo (Mask of Humankind).” And make sure to get up close to “Ozone Layer,” which has the added bonus of air being blown in through the wall, creating sound and movement.

“Red Block” and “Black Block” hover behind “Peak” in beautifully curated show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Red Block” and “Black Block” hover behind “Peak” in beautifully curated exhibition (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The exhibition, Anatsui’s first solo show in a New York museum, also features charcoal and graphite drawings, acrylic works on paper, and “Waste Paper Bags,” a collection of large-scale sculptures made of discarded aluminum printing plates that relate to Nigerian culture as well as go-bags that Ghanaian refugees packed when escaping their country in a hurry. It’s a terrific show that has been extended two weeks through August 18; there is also still time to see his “Broken Bridge II” outdoor wall piece on the High Line, which runs through September. Admission to the Brooklyn Museum is free on August 4 for the monthly First Saturdays program, the theme of which is Caribbean, with live performances by Casplash, Los Hacheros, and Zing Experience, curator talks, screenings of the omnibus film Ring Di Alarm and Storm Saulter’s Better Mus’ Come, an artist talk with Miguel Luciano, dance workshops, a discussion with author Nelly Rosario about her debut novel, Song of the Water Saints, and pop-up gallery talks focusing on specific works by Anatsui.