this week in art

DAVE COLE

Dave Cole, “The Music Box,” Caterpillar CS-533 Vibratory Roller-Compactor with cherry wood, spring steel, and United States National Anthem (arranged for steamroller), 2012 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

DODGEgallery
15 Rivington St. between Bowery & Chrystie St.
Wednesday – Sunday through October 28, free
212-228-5122
www.dodge-gallery.com
www.davecoledavecole.com
dave cole slideshow

For New Hampshire–based artist Dave Cole, the carefully chosen materials he uses and the act of creation itself are as important as the final result. For past shows, in a studio that is more like an industrial workshop, he has made a large-scale teddy bear out of fiberglass, Native American breastplates out of military cartridges, a snowsuit using a Gulf War bulletproof vest, and an elegant gown composed of U.S. currency. Although he prefers not to make grand statements about his work, he does acknowledge that his pieces explore the dichotomy that is America, a land of hope and dreams as well as violence and war. “With my family’s background — four generations of people who left Europe fleeing religious persecution — it’d be ridiculous if I didn’t celebrate America,” Cole said several years ago. “On the other hand, it’d be unconscionable and deliberately ignorant of me to not call bullshit on America’s abuses.” For his second solo exhibition at DODGEgallery, Cole expands on that theme with an installation that explores the past, present, and future of a country still in search of its identity, beginning with the latest in his flag series, “American Flag (Lead),” an official-size U.S. flag hand sewn out of a lead sheet with stainless-steel cables and then run over by a pickup truck, representing an America that has been trampled on but can’t be destroyed. For “Song-Books of the War,” inspired by a WWI-era poem by Siegfried Sassoon (“In fifty years, when peace outshines / Remembrance of battle lines, / Adventurous lads will sigh and cast / Proud looks upon the plundered past.”), Cole has taken an old-fashioned wood-and-wicker wheelchair, which was once used by a member of his family, and placed on it approximately twenty thousand buffalo nickels that weigh the same as Cole, the artist feeling the weight of his personal and professional responsibilities. Known for his knitting of small and large objects, including a huge acrylic flag knitted with John Deere excavators in the Mass MoCA parking lot, Cole here includes “Singer,” a sewing machine that is hooked up to the internet, Googling itself and spewing out the search results in binary code onto a strip of bright yellow teletype paper. The brand name and sound are key here, evoking Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”; Cole has been strongly influenced by some of America’s greatest poets, including Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and T. S. Eliot.

Dave Cole, “American Flag (Lead),” lead sheet and stainless-steel cable, hand sewn, 2012 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In 2008, Cole fashioned a series of baby bottles out of cast Babbitt metal to military specifications. In the new show, he includes “Three Generations,” a trio of baby rattles in the form of hand grenades from WWII, the Vietnam War, and the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, made out of hand-turned hardwood and sterling silver. “Belt Plate (after Antietam)” is a boxing-size championship belt made from melted bullets and recycled lead type featuring the letters “US” on it, memorializing the bloodiest day in American history, when twenty-three thousand soldiers died in the 1862 Civil War battle. “The Star-Spangled Banner” might be played at the beginning of sports events and when U.S. Olympic athletes win gold medals, but Cole’s exhibition ends with a rather unique interpretation of the song, which was written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key after he witnessed the Battle of Fort McHenry. The centerpiece of the show (and accompanied by a maquette), “The Music Box” is a massive steamroller that barely fits into the downstairs space at Dodge. Commissioned by the Cleveland Institute of Art, it is a reconstructed thirteen-ton Caterpillar CS-533 Vibratory Roller-Compactor that Cole disassembled, then reassembled in exacting detail using more lightweight materials (as revealed by a video that plays next to it), adding a steel comb and tuning teeth to the drum so it plays a haunting rendition of the National Anthem as it turns. The song itself is famously difficult to sing, and this version, performed by an instrument of destruction and construction, makes that even more apparent, yet at the same time it is a symbol of America’s success and pride and innate ability to survive. A true craftsman, Cole has once again infused his work with multilayered nuances, both overt and covert, not afraid to face some hard truths about the country that he loves.

JONAH FREEMAN AND JUSTIN LOWE: STRAY LIGHT GREY

Marlborough installation consists of a series of rooms filled with mystery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Marlborough Chelsea
545 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 27, free
212-463-8634
www.marlboroughgallery.com
stray light grey slideshow

In such installations as 2008’s “Hello Meth Lab in the Sun,” 2009’s “Black Acid Co-Op,” and 2010’s “Bright White Underground,” bicoastal artists Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe have transformed gallery spaces into labyrinthine series of rooms where some very strange things seem to have occurred. For their latest project, “Stray Light Grey,” continuing at Marlborough Chelsea through October 27, they are inviting visitors to explore the never-completed Pale Hotel, a mysterious (fictional) environment built around an intriguing alternate-universe counterculture movement. Visitors make their way through a maze of abandoned rooms, including a former OTB parlor, a (mad?) dentist’s office, a bizarre cake shop, a dingy bathroom, a store selling odd items, and a fancy library, each room’s history linked to the San San International, a convention that began in 1855 focusing on plants and animals but later got involved in the world of genetic engineering. “It is now truly without theme or cohesion, a fair ostensibly about everything and nothing at all,” explains the Stray Light Grey newspaper, which is available for free at the gallery. The installation is also related to the hallucinatory drug Marasa, developed in 1956 by Octagon Ethnobotanical Laboratories; the anarchist group known as the Artichoke Underground, proponents of the Octopus, a drug-computer synthesis that melds man and machine; Arthurocide, the plant-mineral hybrid that led to genetically modified organisms; and the Shade, an urban-gang consortium battling against the lasting influence of the Friedrich-Barris dynasty. Of course, you don’t need to know all of that to get a kick out of the journey, which, one could argue, is “ostensibly about everything and nothing at all.”

EGON SCHIELE’S WOMEN

Galerie St. Etienne
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, October 23, free, 6:00 – 8:00
Exhibition runs October 23 – December 28 (Tuesday-Saturday), free
212-245-6734
www.gseart.com
www.randomhouse.de

Over the last several years, there has been a heightened interest in the always-popular and well-regarded Austrian artist Egon Schiele. In 2010, John Kelly gave the final performance of his award-winning theater piece Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte, which dealt with Schiele’s female muses, and one of the highlights of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival was Andrew Shea’s Portrait of Wally, a gripping documentary about the ownership of Schiele’s portrait of mistress Walburga “Wally” Neuzil. Now Schiele expert Jane Kallir, the codirector of Midtown’s Galerie St. Etienne, which boasts one of the largest collections of works by the artist, has written Egon Schiele’s Women, (Prestel, October 25, 2012, $80), a gorgeous examination of the women in Schiele’s life and on his canvases, placing his work in context of the history of Austrian art and evolving views on women’s freedom and sexuality. Kallir, who appears in Portrait of Wally, looks at Schiele’s relationship with his mother, his sister, various models, and his wife and sister-in-law. The book boasts more than 250 images, including dozens and dozens of splendid reproductions of paintings and drawings by Schiele (not limited to female subjects but also including glorious self-portraits and male figures) as well as works by Oskar Kokoschka, Gustave Klimt, Alfred Kubin, and Edvard Munch, archival photographs, a timeline, a bibliography, and an extensive index. In conjunction with the publication of the book, Galerie St. Etienne is opening the companion exhibit “Egon Schiele’s Women,” consisting of more than four dozen works by Schiele. “While Schiele, in his personal life, was hardly a feminist, in his art he freed women from the controlling male narrative that had heretofore shaped the interpretive discourse,” the exhibition essay explains. “His nudes, in particular, not only challenged the taboos of his time, but presaged the more fluid, open-ended approach to gender and sexuality that prevails today.” Kallir will be at the opening-night celebration of the exhibit, giving a gallery talk and signing copies of the book at 7:00. In addition, she will be at the American Jewish Historical Society on October 22 at 6:30 ($15), participating in the “Culture Brokers: Jews as Art Dealers and Collectors” panel discussion with Emily Bilski and Charles Dellheim.

LAST CHANCE: THE FEVERISH LIBRARY

“The Feverish Library” features a different kind of book collection (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Friedrich Petzel Gallery
537 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 20, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-680-9467
www.petzel.com

How can you go wrong with an exhibition whose main image is a still of Burgess Meredith as book lover Henry Bemis holding up his glasses at the end of the classic Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last”? Well, there actually isn’t time enough, as today is your last chance to see a celebration of a potentially dying breed, the printed book. Taking its name from a quote by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Feverish Library,” organized in cooperation with Matthew Higgs at Friedrich Petzel in Chelsea, features works by more than three dozen artists that incorporate books and the concept of reading. Gavin Brown creates a grid of paperbacks on the floor. Cindy Sherman photographs herself in front of a bookshelf. Richard Artschwager’s “Book” is a huge open wooden tome that can’t be read. Erica Baum’s “Author” shows a cross-section of printed pages. Liam Gillick’s “Prototype Construction of One Manuscript” is a wrapped pile of four reams of red paper. The all-star collection of artists also includes works by John Baldessari, Martin Creed, Hans-Peter Feldman, Taba Auerbach, Carol Bove, Martin Kippenberger, Richard Prince, Wade Guyton, Rachel Whiteread, Sean Landers, Wolfgang Tillmans, David Hammons, and others. In addition, in a nod to Joseph Kosuth, at the front is a collection of the favorite books of Petzel artists; Dana Schutz picks Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Nicola Tyson goes with Laurie Weeks’s Zippermouth, Troy Brauntuch selects Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Sarah Morris prefers Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things, and John Stezakar chooses Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.

DOOMSDAY FILM FESTIVAL & SYMPOSIUM

Hajime Sato’s GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL sees dark days ahead

92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
October 19-21, $12
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
www.doomsdayfilmfest.com

Despite the endless proclamations by a Facebook friend of ours that the world was going to end on September 21, 2012, it seems that we’re still here. But that doesn’t mean the end won’t eventually come, though hopefully not as predicted by the works that make up the annual Doomsday Film Festival & Symposium, running at 92YTribeca October 19-21. The three-day gathering promises to “explore our collective fascination with the apocalypse in film, art, and culture,” beginning with a group art show curated by Jenny He that looks at the end of days, with works by Rachel Abrams, Caitlin Bates, Holly Kempf, Allicette Torres, and others. The festival opens Friday night at 7:30 with Aaron D. Guadamuz’s short Yuichi: The Beginning of the End and Hajime Sato’s 1968 low-budget extraterrestrial mélange Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, followed by a panel discussion focusing on Japan and the apocalypse with Grady Hendrix, Travis Crawford, and Linda Hoaglund, moderated by Marc Walkow. (In addition, as part of 92YTribeca’s Friday Night Dinner series, Rabbi-in-Residence Dan Ain and historian Stéphane Gerson will discuss “Nostradamus and Prophecies of Doom” at 7:00, with wine, cocktails, and a meal prepared by chef Russell Moss.) At 10:00, John Boorman’s psychotic 1974 fantasy, Zardoz, starring a naked Sean Connery, will be preceded by trivia from copresenter Arrow in the Head. On Saturday at 6:00, James Cameron’s revolutionary The Terminator will be screened, followed by a panel examining artificial intelligence with Steven Levy, Dennis Shasha, Manoj Narang, and Molly Sauter, moderated by Malcolm Harris. At 9:00 the festival celebrates the tenth anniversary of Danny Boyle’s awesome 28 Days Later, with discounted tickets if you come dressed as a zombie. Sunday kicks off at 1:30 with Walon Green and Ed Spiegel’s Oscar-winning documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle, introduced by star Lawrence Pressman and followed by a panel discussion entitled “Prophecies of Science” as well as a live insect-handling demonstration by Margaret Stevens. At 4:00, ten shorts of fifteen minutes or less will precede Peter Watkins’s forty-eight minute BBC film The War Game, about a nuclear attack on Britain. At 5:30, Kim Rosenfield, Aaron Winslow, Trisha Low, Lanny Jordan, and Andy Sterling will read “Apocalyptic Poetry” in the art gallery. The Doomsday fest meets its own end Sunday night at 6:00 with Deborah Stratman’s These Blazeing Starrs! [Comets] leading into Geoff Murphy’s 1985 postapocalyptic tale The Quiet Earth, for those few survivors left out there.

THOMAS HIRSCHHORN: CONCORDIA, CONCORDIA

Thomas Hirschhorn installation keeps visitors on the outside of capsized ship (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Gladstone Gallery
530 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 20
www.gladstonegallery.com
concordia, concordia slideshow

On January 13 of this year, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia hit a reef, ran aground, and capsized, resulting in the death of thirty-two passengers. Although the captain, Francesco Schettino, was blamed for the disaster and has been labeled a coward for abandoning ship — at one point he referred to the crash as a “banal accident” — his crew ended up being named Seafarers of the Year for their heroism in helping to save more than 4,000 passengers. Swiss-born, Paris-based artist Thomas Hirschhorn has re-created the inside of the ship in the large-scale installation “Concordia, Concordia,” which continues at the Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea through Saturday. Hirschhorn has painstakingly reconstructed the inside of the vast ocean liner, leaning over on its side, filling the space with upturned chairs, life preservers, dishes, tables, a neon beer sign, a flat-screen monitor, and other elements, but the work is oddly cold and dispassionate, a kind of overly controlled chaos. In many of his past pieces, visitors were able to walk in for a more intimate and up-close experience (“Cavemanman” “Superficial Engagement”), but here one must stand outside of it, looking in as if it were a wreck by the side of the highway. “I want to do a Big work to show that the saying ‘Too Big to Fail’ no longer makes any sense,” Hirschhorn explains in his official statement about the project. “On the contrary, when something is Too Big, it must Fail — this is what I want to give Form to.” In conjunction with “Concordia, Concordia” and his upcoming Gramschi Monument, the DIA Art Foundation on West 22nd St. is showing Hirschhorn’s “Timeline: Work in Public Space” through November 3.

MARINA ABRAMOVIC IN CONVERSATION WITH MARCO ANELLI

Marco Anelli photographed every person who sat opposite Marina Abramović during her marathon staring sessions at MoMA (© Marco Anelli)

The Strand Book Store
Third Floor Rare Book Room
828 Broadway at 12th St.
Tuesday, October 16, 7:00 (must buy copy of book or $10 Strand gift card)
212-473-1452
www.strandbooks.com
www.marcoanelli.com

In the spring of 2010, Yugoslavian-born performance artist Marina Abramović sat in a chair in MoMA’s atrium for seventy-eight days, staring deeply into the eyes of individual visitors as part of the retrospective “The Artist Is Present.” It was a powerful sight to see, filled with energy and emotion. Earlier this year, Matthew Akers documented the immensely popular event in a film also titled The Artist Is Present, going behind the scenes of Abramović’s creative process. Now Italian photojournalist Marco Anelli, who specializes in photographing long-term projects, has published Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramović (September 2012, Damiani, $40), which captures every single person who sat across from Abramović and includes the amount of time they did so. (People were allowed to sit for as long as they wanted, from several minutes to many hours.) The book also features pieces by Abramović and curators Klaus Biesenbach and Chrissie Iles. On Tuesday, October 16, Abramović and Anelli, who pulled off quite a feat of duration himself, will discuss the project in a special presentation at the Strand. You must purchase a copy of the book or a $10 Strand gift card in order to attend what should be a fascinating discussion.