this week in art

YANG FUDONG

Yang Fudong’s seven-channel THE FIFTH NIGHT continues at Marian Goodman through Saturday

Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through April 28, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-977-7160
www.mariangoodman.com

In the spring of 2009, Chinese artist Yang Fudong presented the five-hour, five-part Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest at Asia Society in addition to the six-screen Tate Liverpool commission East of Que Village at Midtown’s Marian Goodman Gallery. The Shanghai-based Yang is back at Marian Goodman with three new works that further his unique investigation of the process of visual storytelling. In the North Gallery, The Fifth Night unfolds like a Chinese scroll painting, with seven monitors lined up one after another on a parallel line in an otherwise dark room. Set in a 1930s-like Shanghai square, the film, made with seven cameras shooting at once, offers different angles of the same general scene. Characters wander around dreamlike, climb up a spiral staircase that goes nowhere, and pass by blacksmiths at work in the middle of the night. Yang has created a mysterious atmosphere where gangster cars and rickshaws pass through multiple screens in the background as lonely men and women move slowly through the surreal goings-on. Shot in black-and-white and using natural sound, The Fifth Night upends traditional narrative, toying with time, space, and reality while examining the very process of filmmaking itself. In the South Gallery, the nearly twenty-minute Ye Jiang (The Nightman Cometh) focuses on an ancient, scarred warrior considering his fate in a snow-covered landscape where an overturned cart hints at something gone terribly wrong. Dressed in an old-fashioned uniform, he evokes both fairy tale and history, contemplating his future as the place, a kind of spiritual way station, is visited by ghostly people and animals. Set to a minimalist elegiac score by Jin Wang, The Nightman Cometh is a beautifully realized, meditative film with gorgeous painterly imagery, which should come as no surprise, as Yang studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Hangzhou. Also on view is “International Hotel,” a small series of black-and-white photographs taken at the Art Deco swimming pool at the International Hotel in Shanghai that evoke post-WWII propaganda campaigns.

IT’S THE POLITICAL ECONOMY, STUPID

Institute for Wishful Thinking, “Post-Fordist Variations,” detail, mixed media, 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Austrian Cultural Forum
11 East 52nd St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Daily through April 22, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-319-5300
www.acfny.org

During his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton famously declared, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Austrian-American curators Oliver Ressler and Gregory Sholette have taken that statement and added a slight twist for “It’s the Political Economy, Stupid,” a group show running through Sunday at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Midtown. Through sculpture, installation, drawing, video, and photography, the artists fight back against the growing economic crisis encircling the globe as governments do nothing to prevent it ― or in fact make it worse. In the lobby, Dread Scott continually calls out, “Money to Burn,” in a video depicting him in the Financial District burning actual money while asking passersby to help. The Institute for Wishful Thinking goes back to 1975 in their multimedia display focusing on the iconic Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” supplementing it with cards that make such proclamations as “Paulson to City: Banks First” and “Blankfein to City: No Worries.” Linda Bilda’s “Labor and Capital” sculpture projects the two performing a ghostly dance on a wall, while flo6x8’s “Body Versus Capital” documents Spanish flashmobs dancing inside banks. Julie Christensen’s slide show, “How Communities Are Reusing the Big Box,” reveals how big box stores that have gone out of business are being repurposed by local neighborhoods. Zanny Begg and Ressler’s “The Bull Laid Bear” video does an excellent job of explaining the economic crisis, using cartoon bears as talking heads. Ira Rosenberger’s “Espiral ― A Dance of Death in 8 Scenes” harkens back to Kurt Jooss’s 1932 ballet, “The Green Table,” as a woman in black-and-white face paint moves ominously behind quotes detailing the history of Austrian finance. And Bilda’s large wall mural, “The Future and End of the Golden World,” features male and female prolls, rightist perverts, unprincipled media, bureaucrats, political activists, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Warren Buffet, Henry Paulson, NGOs, and others, with politicians being tempted by lobbyists at the center. “It’s the Political Economy, Stupid” offers an intriguing, varied look at how artists are dealing with the financial crisis, employing a creative blend of humor and anger to make their salient points.

ANNUALS, BIENNIALS, TRIENNIALS

Lesley Dill’s “Woman in Dress with Star” and Glenn Ligon’s untitled oil painting are cleverly juxtaposed at 2012 Annual (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE ANNUAL: 2012
National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 29, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

In an artistic convergence that occurs only once every six years, the National Academy’s annual, the Whitney’s biennial, and the New Museum’s triennial are all on view at the same time. And in a perhaps unexpected convergence, all three reveal that less is more with shows that avoid jam-packing galleries with brand-name artists and instead concentrate on fewer works with a focus on installation. At the National Academy, a mix of cross-generational academicians and invited non-academicians makes for an effective examination of contemporary American art, albeit through a more traditional lens than at the biennial and the triennial, using juxtaposition as a means to an end. Figurative paintings by Burton Silverman, Daniel Bennett Schwartz, Gillian Pederson-Krag, and Philip Pearlstein are seen alongside abstract works by Dorothea Rockburne, Richard Mayhew, David Driskell, and Eric Aho. Sculptures by Barbara Chase-Riboud, Jeffrey Schiff, and Arlene Shechet line the center of a hallway of paintings. Lesley Dill’s “Woman in Dress with Star” stands in front of Glenn Ligon’s untitled oil painting, each incorporating text. The annual also includes a trio of video installations: Joan Jonas’s “Lines in the Sand,” Kate Gilmore’s “Break of Day,” and Carrie Mae Weems’s three-channel “Afro-Chic,” which keeps the funk pumping on the second floor. The 2012 Annual is the best the National Academy has put on in several years.

Gisèle Vienne with Dennis Cooper, Stephen O’Malley, and Peter Rehberg, “Last Spring: A Prequel,” mixed-media installation, 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2012
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Fifth Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 27, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm (pay what you wish Fridays 6:00 -9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

“Art discourse serves to maintain links among artistic subfields and to create a continuum between practices that may be completely incommensurable in terms of their economic conditions and social as well as artistic values,” Andrea Fraser writes in “There’s no place like home,” an essay that serves as her contribution to the 2012 Whitney Biennial. “This may make art discourse one of the most consequential—and problematic—institutions in the art world today, along with mega-museums that aim to be all things to all people and survey exhibitions (like the Whitney Biennial) that offer up incomparable practices for comparison.” As it turns out, curators Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders have not turned the biennial into all things for all people, instead putting together a manageable collection of contemporary American art that leans heavily toward performance and installation, showing off the space of the Marcel Breuer building instead of cluttering every nook and cranny with anything and everything. Visitors can walk through Oscar Tuazon’s “For Hire,” Georgia Sagri’s “Working the No Work,” and Wu Tsang’s “Green Room” and watch the New York City Players get ready for Richard Maxwell’s new site-specific play in an open dressing room. Gisèle Vienne’s “Last Spring: A Prequel” features a young animatronic teen standing in a corner, mumbling text by Dennis Cooper. More traditional art forms like painting and photography tend to get lost in these kinds of shows, but the disciplines are well represented by Nicole Eisenman’s uneasy figures, Andrew Masullo’s eye-catching small canvases filled with bright colors and geometric patterns, and Latoya Ruby Frazier’s photographic examination of her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. If you’re thirsting for some music, there’s Lutz Bacher’s “Pipe Organ,” Lucy Raven’s “What Manchester Does Today, the Rest of the World Does Tomorrow” player piano, and Werner Herzog’s “Hearsay of the Soul,” a four-channel video installation that brings together Hercules Segers’s etchings with music by Ernst Reijseger. And then there’s Robert Gober’s exploration of the career of Forrest Bess, which has to be seen to be believed. For a closer look at the myriad live performances, talks, and workshops, visit here.

Triennial visitors can take a seat on Slavs and Tatars’ “PrayWay” while contemplating Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE UNGOVERNABLES: 2012 NEW MUSEUM TRIENNIAL
New Museum
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 22, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm (free Thursdays 7:00 -9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

Three years ago, the New Museum’s inaugural triennial featured international artists who were all younger than Jesus was at his death at age thirty-three. The 2012 edition, “The Ungovernables,” comprises sculpture, painting, video, and installation that challenge the status quo often in subtle ways, commenting on world economics, corporatization, and politics through creative methods. In Amalia Pica’s “Eavesdropping,” a group of drinking glasses stick out from a wall, referencing both the surveillance and the digital age. Danh Vo’s “We the People” consists of sheets of pounded copper that are actually re-creations of the skin of the Statue of Liberty, a different way to look at freedom. Pratchaya Phinthong’s “What I learned I no longer know; the little I still know, I guessed” is a square collection of Zimbabwean paper money whose specific value continually decreases. Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado’s O Século (The Century) shows debris being thrown from a building, resulting in a visual and aural cacophony of chaos. The Propeller Group’s multichannel “TVC Communism” details the creation of a modern advertising campaign selling communism. Slavs and Tatars’ “PrayWay” is a folded prayer carpet on which visitors are invited to sit and get lost in contemplation that need not be religious. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings examine race and gender. Hassan Khan’s short video, Jewel, depicts two men dancing using signifiers set to a propulsive Cairene song. José Antonio Vega Macotela’s “Time Exchange” details a four-year collaboration with Mexican prisoners in which tasks are exchanged instead of money. Pilvi Takala’s riotous “The Trainee” follows the Finnish-born artist’s intervention as she pretends to be working in a Deloitte office. And Gabriel Sierra’s interventions involve placing such objects as a ladder and a level, which he refers to as devils, directly into the walls of the museum. As with the National Academy’s Annual and the Whitney Biennial, “The Ungovernables” avoids clutter and overt political statements, steering clear of the obvious and instead offering a varied and intriguing look at the contemporary art world

DAVID LYNCH

David Lynch, “Boy Lights Fire,” mixed media on cardboard, 2011

DAVID LYNCH
Tilton Gallery
8 East 76th St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through April 21, free
212-737-2221
www.jacktiltongallery.com
davidlynch.com

In such films as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Blue Velvet and the television series Twin Peaks, Montana-born writer-director David Lynch created off-kilter worlds that reveal the dark underbelly of contemporary society, an alternate reality that is both oddball and frightening. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his artwork explores similar territory. Lynch, who has also made such albums as BlueBob, Polish Night Music, and last year’s solo debut, Crazy Clown Time, is currently in the midst of his first gallery show in New York since 1989, an eponymously titled display that continues through Saturday at the Tilton Gallery on the Upper East Side. Lynch’s offbeat combination of humor and danger is evident throughout the two-floor exhibit, which ranges from dreamlike, surreal black-and-white “Distorted Nude” photographs of body parts to haunting yet playful small watercolors to large-scale mixed-media paintings that include snippets of text and figures and brownish clumps that evoke such artists as Dieter Roth and the Brothers Quay in addition to Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, and Henri Matisse. In the triptych “Boy Lights Fire,” a child with impossibly long arms is playing with matches over the head of a “neighbor girl he likes a lot.” In “Bob’s Second Dream,” a tiny creature sticks out from the cardboard base with the note “his head was shaped different,” a woman’s face is split in half by the words “I don’t love you,” and nearby it is declared that “everything is fuckin broke.” Jolly old St. Nick floats off in the distance in “No Santa Claus.” And in “Boy’s Night Out,” a father is grasping a plug while his son, holding a battery, announces, “daddy’s home,” setting the stage for one very strange connection. The show also includes the forty-two-second Mystery of the Seeing Hand and Sphere, a surreal short film that encompasses Lynch’s bizarre worldview.

CATALPA FESTIVAL EARLY-BIRD WEEKEND PASSES

The Black Keys will headline inaugural Catalpa Festival this summer on Randall’s Island

Randall’s Island
Saturday, July 28, and Sunday, July 29
Early bird weekend passes available through Sunday, April 15, $99.99
www.catalpanyc.com

Hoping to pick up where such former summer music festivals as the Fleadh and All Points West left off, the inaugural Catalpa Festival will take place July 28-29 on Randall’s Island. The two-day, twenty-hour, green-friendly party will feature a mix of old and new bands, site-specific art installations, gastronomic booths, the Church of Sham Marriages, and other elements to create what they expect to be a unique atmosphere and different kind of experience. So far the announced performers include the Black Keys, Snoop Dogg, TV on the Radio, City and Colour, Umphrey’s McGee, the Big Pink, AraabMuzik, Felix Da Housecat, and Fort Atlantic. Discounted early-bird weekend passes are available through Sunday for $99.99, after which they will go up to $139.99 and then $179.99, so grab them now if you’re planning on going.

POETRY NIGHT IN THE GARDEN

E. V. Day and Kembra Pfahler have transformed the Hole gallery on Bowery into Monet’s Giverny (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

GIVERNY: BY E. V. DAY AND KEMBRA PFAHLER
The Hole
312 Bowery
Friday, April 13, free, 8:00
Exhibition continues through April 24
212-466-1100
theholenyc.com
giverny slideshow

From 1883 until his death in 1926 at the age of ninety, master Impressionist Claude Monet lived and painted in Giverny, a garden paradise in France filled with colorful flowers, trees, plants, lily pads, a Japanese bridge, walking paths, ponds, and other primarily natural elements that populated many of his most famous works. In 2010, installation artist E. V. Day was awarded the prestigious Versailles/Giverny Foundation Munn Residency, allowing her to live in Giverny as a means to inspire her the way Monet himself was inspired by his surroundings. The native New Yorker invited her friend Kembra Pfahler, lead singer of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, to join her for part of the stay, during which Day photographed a naked, purple, fright-wigged Pfahler, made up like a shocking version of LeRoy Neiman’s Femlin character. Day and Pfahler’s thrilling collaboration is now on view at the Hole through April 24, where they have re-created a section of the garden, complete with live flowers, wallpaper of trees, fake grass, a stone path, and the Japanese bridge arching over a large pond. As you walk through the indoor Bowery garden, you’ll come upon many of the photos Day took of Pfahler, who inhabits the scenes as if a living, breathing creature emerging from nature. “Giverny” is a gorgeous installation, offering visitors the opportunity to walk through Monet’s mind and palette. On Friday, April 13, the Hole will host a free evening of poetry, featuring Stefan Bondell, Lizzi Bougatsos, John Holland, Bob Holman, Stuart S. Lupton, Lisa Pomares, Michael Quattlebaum Jr., Jessica White, Arden Wohl, and Pfahler reading from the bridge.

j-CATION 2012: SAKURA

Riot grrl group the Suzan are part of second annual j-CATION celebration at Japan Society on April 14

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, April 14, $10, 11:00 am – 11:00 pm
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s “Sakura — Spring Renews, Beauty Blooms” series comes to a close on Saturday with the second annual j-CATION, a twelve-hour program of special events celebrating the season and more. The New York Suwa Taiko Association gets things going at 11:00 am with a Taiko Kick-Off, followed by traditional Kamishibai storytelling at 11:20, 12 noon, 12:40 and Simply Stunning Shodo calligraphy classes taught by Masako Inkyo starting every forty-five minutes from 11:30 to 5:30. At 1:00 you can participate in the Japanese adult game show You’re on Standby!, which challenges the mind and the body and will earn one audience member free round-trip airfare to Japan. Adrienne Wong will give cherry blossom block printing demonstrations from 3:00 to 5:00, the same time that Sakura Cinema presents Tomu Uchida’s 1960 classic Killing in Yoshiwara (Heroes of the Red-Light District). There will also be Japanese for Beginners classes at 3:15, 4:00, 4:45, and 5:30. All day long you can hang out in the Hana-mi Lounge, which will be serving Japanese snacks and drinks and will host afternoon karaoke; pick up some wagashi in the foyer; learn origami and add paper cherry blossoms to a wall installation; read brand-new sakura-related haiku from around the world; play hanafuda, wanage, and kendama in the game room; check out the exhibition “Deco Japan: Shaping Art & Culture, 1920-1945” (and win a prize for being among the first three hundred people to complete the “Decoration Exploration”); and visit “Memory: Things We Should Never Forget,” a photography display about the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan. The festivities conclude with the Yozakura Nights concert at 8:00 with the bilingual Alex York and riot-grrl garage punks the Suzan, followed by a dance party with DJ Aki.