this week in art

HEARD•NY: NICK CAVE

Nick Cave’s “Heard•NY” transforms Vanderbilt Hall into a performance petting zoo (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Grand Central Terminal, Vanderbilt Hall
89 East 42nd St. between Lexington and Vanderbilt
Daily crossings at 11:00 and 2:00, tours at 3:30 through March 31
www.creativetime.org
heard•ny rehearsal slideshow
heard•ny performance slideshow

Artist Nick Cave has transformed Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall into a unique and wonderful petting zoo like none other. The Missouri-based Cave, who makes colorful, life-size Soundsuits out of found and recycled materials, has created a menagerie of exotic horses for “Heard•NY,” which continues as part of GCT’s centennial celebration through March 31. On each roped-in side of Vanderbilt Hall, Cave has placed fifteen horses on saw horses. Each day at 11:00 and 2:00, the saw horses are removed and student dancers from the Ailey School march into the area and get inside the horse suits, two dancers per animal. They then parade around the periphery of the rectangle, allowing onlookers to take photographs and to pet them, before commencing a dance choreographed by Cave and William Gill, set to music played by a harpist and a percussionist. The horses stomp their hooves, proudly lift their heads, kick out, and form trios, then meet at the center, where the dancer in the back of the animal separates from the front, forming a collection of multicolored cheerleaders, evoking psychedelic Cousin Itts, who spin around, fall to the ground, and then get back inside their respective horses and eventually return the Soundsuits to their saw horse, although they no longer look like costumes but living and breathing horses taking a break until the next performance. It’s a great deal of fun, a playful riff not only on the perpetually busy and crowded Grand Central Terminal — where so many people are always in a rush, never stopping to enjoy the wonders around them — but also the concept of zoos themselves, where animals are put on display for the enjoyment of humans. Show up about a half hour before showtime to get a good spot, because it fills up quickly and often reaches capacity; one of the four sides of each corral is reserved for children so kids don’t have to compete with adults for a better view. Each performance, which is free, takes about twenty to twenty-five minutes and is an absolute charmer not to be missed.

WK 360 CLOSING EVENT + ARTIST TALK + GIVEAWAY

WK 360: A MID-CAREER SURVEY DOCUMENTING 25 YEARS
Jonathan LeVine Gallery
557 West 23rd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Saturday, March 30, free, 4:00-6:00
212-243-3822
www.jonathanlevinegallery.com
www.wkinteract.com

French-born, New York-based street artist WK Interact has been creating perpetual-motion-intensive black-and-white site-specific works for a quarter of a century, interacting with urban environments around the world. His swirling, sprawling manipulated photocopy projects, like his 2011 “Project Brave” tribute in Brooklyn to the heroes of 9/11 on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, can be found on walls and buildings as well as in art galleries. His latest show, “WK 360: A Mid-career Survey Documenting 25 Years,” comes to a close at Jonathan LeVine’s pop-up gallery on West 23rd St. in Chelsea on Saturday, and it’s going out in a big way. Starting at 4:00, all guests will receive a free copy of the exhibition catalog. At 5:00, WK will give an artist talk, and he will also sign copies of his monograph and a 30×40-inch map (both available for purchase) of the locations of his artwork in Lower Manhattan over the years.

NICK CAVE: HEARD•NY

Artist Nick Cave watches a rehearsal of “Heard•NY” (sans horse costumes) in Vanderbilt Hall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Grand Central Terminal, Vanderbilt Hall
89 East 42nd St.between Lexington and Vanderbilt
March 25-31, free
Daily crossings at 11:00 and 2:00, daily tours at 3:30
www.creativetime.org
heard•ny rehearsal slideshow

Grand Central Terminal is famous for its cattle-like crowds — hence the overused cliché “It’s like Grand Central Station in here!” — but it’s about to take in a whole new kind of herd this week. Starting on Monday, March 25, and continuing through Sunday March 31, Nick Cave’s “Heard•NY” will add to all the hustle and bustle. The Missouri-born multidisciplinary artist, whose dual exhibits “Ever-After” at Jack Shainman and “For Now” at Mary Boone ran in Chelsea in the fall of 2011, is installing thirty of his life-size horse Soundsuits in Vanderbilt Hall, where they will be on view all week. But every day at 11:00 am and 2:00 pm, student dancers from the Ailey School will get inside the colorful suits and perform what are being called “Crossings,” making their through the world’s most famous train terminal in intricate movements developed by Cave and Chicago-based choreographer William Gill, with live music by harpists Shelley Burgon and Mary Lattimore and percussionists Robert Levin and Junior Wedderburn. (There will also be daily guided tours of the installation at 3:30.) The performances harken back to the days when horse-drawn carts were prevalent in the city, prior to the coming of the railways and automobiles. A collaboration between Creative Time and MTA Arts for Transit as part of Grand Central Terminal’s ongoing centennial celebration, “Heard•NY” continues Cave’s exploration of human and animal ritual behavior and social and cultural identity, using found and recycled materials to create sculpture, video, and combinations of the two. The artist will discuss his latest work in relation to masquerade, performance, and dreaming in public at a special presentation, “A Conversation with Nick Cave,” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall on March 29 at 6:00 (free with museum admission), with Cave, Creative Time curator Nato Thompson, and Met curator Alisa LaGamma. “A herd of horses has been unleashed in Grand Central Terminal,” Thompson poetically explains in a statement. “Grazing in Vanderbilt Hall, they move at a pace perhaps too slow for the needs of a commuter, seeming to ask us to slow down. To take a second. To look. . . . In the frantic pace of our contemporary age, in the monumental machine that is Grand Central Terminal, we are temporarily placed outside ourselves by crossing paths with Cave’s creations. We can observe these horses in the same way that we look upon our fellow travelers in the Main Concourse, sensing the texture of time and the dizzying visual seduction that is the pleasure and bewilderment of our contemporary moment.” People are always rushing through train stations, which primarily serve as weigh stations at the beginning, middle, or end of a journey, but “Heard•NY” should make everyone stop for a few minutes, take a deep breath, and enjoy the surrounding fun, taking advantage of where they are rather than hurrying to get where they are going. (Coincidentally, madman Australian musician Nick Cave is also in New York City this week, playing the Beacon Theatre March 28-30 with his longtime band, the Bad Seeds.)

OKTOPHONIE

KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN & RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 20-27, $40
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Since opening its doors as an arts venue in September 2007, the Park Avenue Armory has staged some of the city’s best, and most unusual, productions, including memorable performances and installations by Ernesto Neto, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Ann Hamilton, Ryoji Ikeda, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Tom Sachs, STREB, Peter Greenaway, and Christian Boltanski, often involving immersive, interactive environments. Its latest presentation is yet another unique, involving piece, Oktophonie, a reimagined audiovisual version of the eponymous composition by German electronic maestro Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007), a sixty-nine-minute layer from Act II of Dienstag aus Licht, the Tuesday portion of Stockhausen’s twenty-nine-hour opera cycle Licht: The Seven Days of the Week. The section follows the conflict between the archangel Michael and Lucifer, with yelling and bravery, tasting and devotion; the central color is red and the planetary object is Mars. The music will be led by Dutch musician Kathinka Pasveer, who contributed voice and flute to a 1992 recording of the work and has collaborated directly with the composer. The outer-space set is designed by internationally renowned artist and Hugo Boss Prize winner Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose work often involves interaction between creator and audience, perhaps most famously with him serving food to visitors. At the armory, ticket holders are encouraged to wear white and will be sitting on cushions against a lunar surface, surrounded by a cube of speakers. “The simultaneous movements — in eight layers — of the electronic music of ‘Invasion — Explosion’ with ‘Farewell’ demonstrate how — through ‘Oktophonie’ — a new dimension of musical space composition has opened,” Stockhausen once explained. Yes, there should be quite an intersection of music and space at the armory, where Oktophonie runs March 20–27, with tickets going fast. There will be an Artist Talk on March 23 at 6:00 in the Veterans Room ($15), with Pasveer and musician Suzanne Stephens, moderated by new armory artistic director Alex Poots.

SUPER SÁBADO! ARTEXPLORERS!

Betsabee Romero, “Ayate con Perro (Ayate fabric with dog),” chromogenic print, 2005 (photo courtesy el Museo del Barrio)

FREE THIRD SATURDAYS
El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
Saturday, March 16, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-831-7272
www.elmuseo.org

El Museo del Barrio’s monthly free celebration of art, music, storytelling, food, and more takes visitors on a voyage of discovery on March 16 with “arteXplorers!,” a full day of special programs and activities dealing with exploration. The schedule includes the workshop “Manos a la Obra!,” in which kids hunt for animal images and then make their own superreal safari art; singer and storyteller Flor Bromley creating such tales as “Araña Mariposa,” based on Beatriz Concha’s Ochopatas y un cuento, and “Kitty,” based on Kevin Henkes’s Kitten’s First Full Moon; a Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert by Very Be Careful; and el Bazaar, with spring-cleaning discounts in el Café. In addition, galleries are open, featuring the temporary exhibit “Superreal: Alternative Realities in Photography and Video,” an examination of what is real, with video and photography by more than seventy artists, and “Presencia,” consisting of work from the permanent collection that deals with presence and absence.

LILLIPUT

Tomoaki Suzuki’s “Carson” is one of six miniature installations that make up “Lilliput” on the High Line (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The High Line
Gansevoort St. to West Thirtieth St.
Through April 1, free (“Lying Figure” through March 14)
212-381-9349
www.thehighline.org
lilliput slideshow

The High Line has been big news since the first section of the renovated railway opened as a beautiful park in June 2009, and it has been getting bigger ever since, with section 2 having been unveiled in June 2011 and section 3 coming soon. But right now the High Line is also going small, with the art exhibition “Lilliput.” The park, which itself is a kind of urban fantasy world, has taken a page out of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and commissioned six artists from around the world to create miniature works that have been scattered between Gansevoort and West Thirtieth St. Starting at the south end, Italian-born, LA-based artist Alessandro Pessoli’s “Old Singer with Blossoms” is a Giacometti-esque figure with a tiny head wearing a long, knitted cap, serving as a scarecrow among the trees and plants. At West Fourteenth St., Japanese sculptor Tomoaki Suzuki has created “Carson,” a two-foot-tall punk rocker with white hair, dressed in all black, including a New York Dolls T-shirt, standing on the rocks in between the tracks. Just south of Twenty-Third St., New Zealand-born, UK-based Francis Upritchard’s “The Seduction” consists of a pair of small bronze monkeys coming together at the end of the wooden platform overlooking a grassy section. At Twenty-Third St., New York-based Allyson Vieira’s “Construction (Rampart)” is made up of a pyramid of bronze cups piled in a corner, collecting rainwater and debris as the seasons change and the weather affects it. At Twenty-Seventh St., Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti has gone prehistoric with a family of abstract dinosaurs hidden among the sumac and magnolias: “Dino Abacate, Dino Tropical, Dino Pot, and Dino.” And at Thirtieth St., Berlin-based, Austrian-born Oliver Laric has installed the two-faced “Sun Tzu Janus,” evoking war and peace, East and West, beginning and end. As a bonus, the High Line has added its very own Gulliver in the form of UK-born, LA-based Thomas Houseago’s giant, reclining “Lying Figure.” As a whole, “Lilliput” challenges the idea that public sculpture has to be of monumental scale; here, even Houseago’s fifteen-foot-long bronze is not standing tall but stretched out on the ground, nearly hidden by grasses and plants. So part of the fun is finding the works in the first place. “Lying Figure” will remain on view through March 14, while the six miniatures will be up through April 1. The High Line is also currently featuring El Anatsui’s “Broken Bridge II,” Virginia Overton’s “Untitled” piece in the stacked parking lot at Twentieth St., and Spencer Finch’s “The River That Flows Both Ways.”

ARMORY ARTS WEEK 2013

Brooklyn artist Janet Biggs will screen her latest work, A STEP ON THE SUN, at the closing night of the Armory Show, followed by a panel discussion (photo © Janet Biggs)

Armory Arts Week had been getting out of control, with upwards of a dozen different fairs taking place around the city during one crazy weekend. But now the fairs are essentially cut in half, with some scheduled for this week and the rest in May. The centerpiece is the Armory Show at Piers 92 & 94 (March 7-10, $30, run of show $60, dual Volta NY pass $40), which this year will celebrate the centennial of its namesake, the game-changing 1913 Armory Show that introduced modern art to New York. The 2013 edition is broken into two parts, with modern art at Pier 92 and contemporary art at Pier 94, along with a preview party March 6 at MoMA featuring a live performance by Solange Knowles. The Armory Show is once again partnering with Volta NY (March 7-10, $15, dual Armory Show pass $40), which moves to 82Mercer, where it will present more than one hundred solo projects from around the world, including Amy Bennett, Mark Jenkins, Chiho Akama, Patick Lo Guidice, and Regina Scully. The Fountain Art Fair (March 8-10, $10/day, $15 weekend pass) is back at the 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington and 25th St., with more than seventy-five exhibitors, including such standard-bearers as the Mighty Tanaka, McCaig + Welles, and the ever-popular Murder Lounge. There will also be a site-specific street art installation curated by Alex Emmart and Robots Will Kill and live performances by Lucas Walters, Musa and Spank Rock, Kamp!, and NSR, and DJ sets by Chances with Wolves and Nina Sky. Meanwhile, Moving Image New York (March 7-10, free) remains in its home in the Waterfront Tunnel at Eleventh Ave. and Twenty-Seventh St., where it will have monitors hanging from the ceiling and other cinematic installations showing videos by Janet Biggs, Cheryl Pope, Tommy Turner, Zhao Zhao, Kota Ezawa, Eva and Franco Mattes, and others.

The special events planned for Armory Arts Week begin on March 5 with Uptown & Museum Mile Day, featuring Harlem Armory Day at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine and a Harlem Biennale “Music in the Air” walking tour led by John T. Reddick. On March 7, Bronx Day & SoHo Night is highlighted by a live spoken-word performance at the Nuyorican Poets Café, an after-hours viewing of Walter De Maria’s “The New York Earth Room” and “The Broken Kilometer,” a presentation of Saya Woolfalk’s “Chimera” at Third Streaming, and Tsipi Ben-Haim and Jessica Diamond’s “Tributes to ‘Kusama: Art Infinity-Net’” at CITYarts, with many SoHo galleries open late. Attention moves to Long Island City on March 8 with performances, workshops, and tours at No Longer Empty’s “How Much Do I Owe You?” in the Clock Tower Building and Andras Borocz live at the “So Real” group show at Radiator Gallery. Chelsea Day and Brooklyn Night on March 9 includes brunch with Tamara K.E. at Johannes Vogt Gallery, a Cut Paste and Sew dialogue with Mia Brownell, Camomile Hixon, Duron Jackson, Jingjing Linn, and Woolfak, ICP curator Christopher Phillips in conversation with Israeli artist Ilit Azoulay at Andrea Meislin, “The World’s First Tumblr Art Symposium” at 319 Scholes Gallery, a silent auction at the Rabbithole, and an installation and performance by Jonathan Schipper at the Boiler. Events conclude Sunday night in the Lower East Side / Downtown with “The Dealer’s Perspective” beginning at Allegra LaViola Gallery, the LES Gallery Stroll, and several art brunches. There will also be special films presented each night at the Armory Show, with some followed by a panel discussion, beginning March 6 at 5:00 with Matthew Day Jackson’s In Search of . . . Zombies, March 7 at 5:00 with Pavel Büchler’s High Noon compilation, March 8 at 3:00 with The Show That Shook the World: Marcel Duchamp and the 1913 Armory Show, March 9 at 5:00 with Liz Magic Laser’s The Armory Show Focus Group, and March 10 at 5:00 with Janet Biggs’s Fade to White and A Step on the Sun.

Al Hamm’s “Untitled . . . Crates” fill the entryway to Scope

Al Hamm’s “Untitled . . . Crates” will fill the entryway to Scope

Over at the Park Avenue Armory, ADAA The Art Show (March 6-10, $25) is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with more than seventy galleries participating, with such solo exhibitions as Wim Delvoye at Sperone Westwater, Mona Hatoum at Alexander and Bonin, Fred Tomaselli at James Cohan, Thomas Schütte at Peter Freeman, Robert Motherwell at Lillian Heidenberg, Robert Mapplethorpe at Sean Kelly, Sean Scully at Galerie Lelong, Louise Lawler at Metro Pictures, Eadweard Muybridge at Laurence Miller, Jean Arp at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Kiki Smith at Pace, Damien Hirst at Van de Weghe, and Milton Avery at David Zwirner. The Collectors’ Forum consists of a pair of panel discussions entitled “Picturing the Frame: The Art World in the Next Decade,” with Jock Reynolds on Friday at 6:00 and Michael Findlay on Saturday morning at 11:00. The second annual Spring/Break Art Show (March 6-10, $5 suggested donation) will take place in classrooms at the Old School at 233 Mott St., with presentations from such artists and collectives as Jeremy Blake, Jennifer Chan, Grayson Cox, Fall on Your Sword, Ted Gahl, Beka Goedde, Matthew Hassell, Bel Linquist, Rachel Ostrow, and Printed Matter, curated by Marco Antonini, Ted Barrow, Elizabeth Clark, Simon Lee, Patrick Meagher, Aurora Pellizzi, Cecelia Stucker, Maureen Sullivan, Eve Sussman, and others, highlighted by Sussman and Lee’s curation of Car Wash Incident. The New City Art Fair (March 7-10, free) will set up in hpgrp Gallery at 529 West Twentieth St., consisting of works from eleven galleries from Japan in addition to an artists’ studio visit, the opening of a sake barrel, Japanese art food, and more. Also in Chelsea, more than fifty galleries will take part in the Independent (March 7-10, free) at 548 West Twenty-Second St., where the stairway gets crowded as art lovers make their up several floors of creatively and chaotically arranged installations that are generally more cutting edge than what can be found at the other shows. Be sure to get up to the roof, which has been specially designed by Christian Wassmann. But the fair with the best space might just be Scope (March 7-10, $15), which moves into Skylight at Moynihan Station in the 33rd St. post office, where connoisseurs will find shows by more than one hundred international galleries, along with such projects as Ron English’s “Culture Jam Supermarket,” Al Hamm’s “Untitled . . . Crates” entrance, Andrea Stanislav’s “The Vanishing Points,” David Rohn’s performance piece “Contact Walt Whitman,” and Sophie Hirsch’s recycled “Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli.”