this week in art

POST PLASTICA

POST PLASTICA is a multimedia collaboration between PS 122 and El Museo del Barrio

El Teatro, El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
May 31 – June 3, $20, 7:30
212-352-3101
www.ps122.org

PS 122 and El Museo del Barrio have joined forces to present the multimedia performance Post Plastica, a virtual fantasy that imagines the future of art as well as the world itself. Created by sisters Ela Troyano and Alina Troyano, who is also known as Carmelita Tropicana, Post Plastica stars Tropicana as a woman who gets a Botox injection that puts her in a coma, sending her off on an adventure that includes a woman-bear scientist played by Becca Blackwell (Untitled Feminist Show) and the title character, played by Erin Markey (Green Eyes). A mix of video and live performance, Post Plastica features production design by Aliza Shvarts, costumes by Yail Romagoza, lighting by Chris Hudacs, and projections by Uzi Parnes. Each evening will be preceded by a special event at El Museo beginning at 6:00, including an exhibit of stereoscopic imagery by Richard Pell on May 31, the lecture/demonstration “Meet the Celebrity” with Fufurufu and Nao Bustamente on June 1, an “Urban Beekeeping” discussion with Guillermo Fernandez and Jennifer Monson on June 2, and the “Normal Is Good” interview between Shvars and Romagoza on June 3.

DAN COLEN: CRACKS IN THE CLOUDS

Dan Colen’s motorcycles glitter and shine in front of the Seagram Building in Midtown (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Seagram Building
375 Park Ave. between 52nd & 53rd Sts.
www.gagosian.com
cracks in the clouds slideshow

We were among the many who thought that art bad-boy Dan Colen’s inaugural solo show at the Gagosian, fall 2010’s “Poetry,” stank. But don’t lump us in with all the haters. It literally stank, with several canvases containing chewed bubblegum, sending a sticky aroma into the air. The mixed-media display also included a wooden skateboard ramp, a brick wall supported by a beam, and a baker’s dozen of Harley-Davidsons that had been kicked over, as if the artist were looking for a fight outside a bar. The thirtysomething New Jersey native has now re-created that motorcycle piece, “Cracks in the Clouds,” in front of the Seagram Building on Park Ave., where fellow bad boy Urs Fischer’s “Untitled (Lamp/Bear)” lit up the night last year while fetching nearly seven million at a Christie’s auction. Colen got the idea for “Cracks in the Clouds” after seeing a lineup of bikes outside the Hells Angels headquarters in the East Village. He meticulously went about finding the exact makes and models, incorporated every little detail he could, brought the bikes first to Gagosian and now to the Seagram Building’s plaza, and kicked them over so they fell like fancy, glittering dominoes. Situated between two fountains, “Cracks in the Clouds” recalls the Guggenheim’s controversial 1998 exhibit, “The Art of the Motorcycle,” which drew criticism for installing brand-name bikes in the hallowed institution dedicated to contemporary art. A trained painter, Colen is no stranger to controversy and criticism for his market-savvy use of found objects and ready-mades. But in taking his art outside, away from the high-profile Chelsea galleries, he is gaining a very different audience, one that doesn’t know or care about his art-world celebrity image and reputation and instead just likes looking at a bunch of shiny motorcycles while grabbing a smoke or picking up a sandwich before having to return to the daily grind. [ed. note: Although the display was supposed to stay up through September 30, it suddenly disappeared in early June….]

SHEILA BERNARD: HAPPY FEET

Port Authority Bus Terminal
South Terminal
Daily through May 31, free
www.sheilabernard.smugmug.com

Every year, we look forward to local photographer Sheila Bernard’s new show, often held in unusual locations and featuring very different kinds of work. In past years she has displayed her “Urban Times” series, focusing on the reflections of buildings in other buildings; “Windows & Doors,” comprising pictures of the title subjects framed like works of art themselves; and “Graphsicals in Italy,” shots of Venice digitally enhanced with bursts of color. Her latest exhibit, “Happy Feet,” consists of nine photographs of clown feet on a boardwalk, displayed in the narrow glassed-in gallery in the Port Authority’s South Terminal. Even if you’re one of the many who are terrified of clowns, “Happy Feet” provides a playful counterpart to the types of shoes worn by men and women making their way through Port Authority every day, either going home or heading for work, often in a hurry trying to catch the next bus or train. A rainbow of bright yellows, reds, blues, greens, purples, and pinks explode like a candy starburst, also providing a stark contrast to George Segal’s nearby sculpture of a trio of all-white plastered people. Tourists and New Yorkers are always rushing through Port Authority; Bernard’s photographs once again offer the opportunity to take a little break and add some fun to the journey.

MIQUEL BARCELÓ: GRAN ELEFANDRET

Don’t forget to see Miquel Barceló’s “Gran Elefandret” before it leaves Union Square on May 20 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Union Square Triangle
Median, Park Ave. at 15th St.
Through May 29
www.marlboroughgallery.com
gran elefandret slideshow

Union Square Park can be a bit of a crazy circus at times, filled with musicians, street performers, activists, tourists, poets, vendors, and, well, its fare share of downright crazy people. Mallorca-born artist Miquel Barceló pays tribute to the park’s unpredictability with the playful bronze statue “Gran Elefandret.” The monumental sculpture features an enormous elephant balancing on its trunk, rising up more than twenty-five feet on the Union Square Triangle between the park and the nearby Daryl Roth Theatre, where a circus of a different kind, Fuerza Bruta, has been attracting visitors for several years now. The elephant’s ears droop toward the ground as its legs spread apart toward the heavens; be sure to walk all the way around it to get its full wrinkly grandeur as the background changes from tall buildings to green trees to clear blue sky. Although the 2008 work was not created for this specific location, it wonderfully captures the hectic but fun aspect of the historic Union Square neighborhood, especially with cars, taxis, and buses zooming by. Part of the Union Square Art in the Park program, “Gran Elefandret” will keep up its improbable balancing act through May 29.

DANCEAFRICA: ONE AFRICA/MANY RHYTHMS

The inimitable Baba Chuck Davis will once again lead the BAM DanceAfrica celebration on Memorial Day Weekend (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 25-28, free – $50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

For some people, it isn’t summer in New York City until the beaches and pools open, or half-day Fridays begin, or the free outdoor music series kick off all over town. For us, summer doesn’t get under way until BAM’s annual DanceAfrica returns, four days of dance, film, music, fashion, food, and one of the best street fairs of the year. The thirty-fifth annual cultural celebration starts in the Howard Gilman Opera House on May 25 with performances by the Adanfo Ensemble, Farafina Kan: The Sound of Africa, United African Dance Troupe, and the BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble. On Saturday, Adanfo and Restoration will be joined by the Forces of Nature Dance Theatre and the Oyu Oro Afro-Cuban Dance Company, on Sunday by Illstyle Peace Productions and Creative Outlet, and on Monday by Hamalali Wayunagu Garifuna and Asase Yaa. The inimitable Baba Chuck Davis will participate in an Iconic Artist Talk on May 27 at 6:00 with Kariamu Welsh in the Hillman Attic Studio. The Mason-Jam-Ja Band will play BAMcafé Live on Friday night at 10:00, while the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra Salute to Don Cornelius & Soul Train takes place on Saturday night, followed by a late-night dance party with DJ Idlemind. BAMcinématek will be screening such films as Fabio Caramaschi’s One Way, a Tuareg Journey, Zelalem Woldemariam Ezare’s Lezare (For Today), Abdelkrim Bahloul’s A Trip to Algiers, Akin Omotoso’s Man on Ground, Lionel Rogosin’s Come Back, Africa, Andy Amadi Okoroafor’s Relentless, Daniel Daniel Cattier’s 50 Years of Independence of Congo, Claus Wischmann & Martin Baer’s Kinshasa Symphony, and Michel Ocelot’s Tales of the Night, with Omotoso, Cattier, and Okoroafor on hand for Q&As. Through June 3, BAM will be hosting the exhibition “Waiting for the Queen,” highlighting works on paper by U.S.-based Nigerian artists Njideka Akunyili and Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, curated by Dexter Wimberly. And on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, the DanceAfrica 2012 Bazaar will transform Ashland Pl. into a global marketplace rich with African and Caribbean cultural heritage, including great food, clothes, art, jewelry, books, music, and so much more. “Ago!” “Amée!!”

ERNESTO NETO: SLOW IIS GOOD

Ernesto Neto, “The Sun Lits Life, Let the Son,” polypropylene and polyester rope, plastic balls, plants, terra cotta, black pepper, turmeric, cumin, and cloves, 2012 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through May 25, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com
slow iis good slideshow

Brazilian mixed-media artist Ernesto Neto, who filled the Park Ave. Armory three years ago with the giant exoskeleton “Anthropodino,” has created another organic treat for the senses, “Slow iis good, with my back to the world!” On view at Tanya Bonakdar through Saturday, “Slow iis good” consists of two floors of colorful crocheted polypropylene and polyester cord works highlighted by several pieces that invite visitors inside, engaging their senses of sight, smell, touch, and hearing. On the first floor, the sonic “SoundWay” (be sure to shake the sides) leads to “The Island Bird,” which resembles the lower half of an enormous body, with the extended feet serving as an entrance to a playful central area that dangles from the ceiling. With your shoes off, you can follow the unsteady path as you walk over plastic black balls and relax in a cushioned rest stop. While inside, you not only merge with the piece, becoming part of it, but you can look out and see other smaller works, such as “Grub” and “Sorry, I Don’t Know Exactly Where to Go,” hanging on the walls and residing on the floor, offering a different perspective from the usual gallery experience. Upstairs you are greeted by the cozy “Labor,” where you can sit down and examine one of the spinning machines used to do the heavily detailed and time-consuming crocheting. Next, in a small gallery off to the side, you can take a load off in “Blue Hammock” or “Green Hammock,” which are as comfortable as they appear. The last room holds another surprise, “The Sun Lits Life, Let the Son,” a bridgelike structure with rocks and more plastic balls, surrounded by hanging plants and spices, the scents of black pepper, turmeric, cumin, cloves, and greenery combining with the feeling of antigravity to lift you into another dimension. As the title says, “Slow iis good”; take your time making your way through the works, which are certainly fun but also disorienting, as you have to be careful to maintain your balance in the two larger pieces, but it’s well worth it.

LORRAINE O’GRADY: NEW WORLDS

Lorraine O’Grady discusses her latest exhibit at Alexander Gray Associates (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Alexander Gray Associates
508 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., #215
Tuesday – Saturday through May 25, free
212-399-2636
www.alexandergray.com
lorraineogrady.com

For more than thirty years, Lorraine O’Grady has been exploring the African diaspora and the African American art world itself through such multidisciplinary exhibitions, series, and performances as “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire,” “Miscegenated Family Album,” and “Flowers of Evil and Good.” In her seminal 1990s text “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity,” the Boston-born, Manhattan-based visual artist wrote, “What happened to the girl who was abducted from her village, then shipped here in chains? What happened to her descendants? . . . Perhaps they have internalized and are cooperating with the West’s construction of not-white women as not-to-be-seen.” The African American body is central to her latest exhibition, “New Worlds,” on view at Alexander Gray Associates through May 25. The centerpiece of the show is the nineteen-minute video Landscape (Western Hemisphere), which consists of extreme close-ups of O’Grady’s hair, accompanied by a soundtrack that includes rustling wind and animal noises. The abstract images are mesmerizing, impossible to identify on their own, a combination of beauty, mystery, and fear. Landscape (Western Hemisphere) is joined by a pair of revisited photomontages from O’Grady’s 1991 “BodyGround” series. In “The Fir-Palm,” a hybrid Caribbean palm / New England fir rises out of the body of a naked black woman, representative of O’Grady herself, whose parents were West Indian. O’Grady gets overtly political in the diptych “Body/Ground (The Clearing: or Cortez and La Malinche. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me),” which depicts, on the left, a white man and a black woman making love as they float above the Clearing at O’Grady’s alma mater, Wellesley, with two children playiing beneath them, while on the right a clothed man with a skeleton head sexually touches a naked black woman feigning death. It’s a powerful image about slavery, colonialism, interracial relationships, and one of O’Grady’s core concerns, hybridity. “In The Strange Taxi: From Africa to Jamaica to Boston in 200 Years, where the subject was hybridism itself, my literal ancestresses, who to some may have looked white, sprouted from a European mansion rolling on wheels down the African woman’s back,” O’Grady wrote in “Olympia’s Maid.” “Although they may have been controversial, I liked the questions those beautifully dressed, proudly erect, ca. World War I women raised, not least of which was how the products of rape could be so self-confident, so poised.” Those issues and more are explored in this fascinating show.