this week in art

TONY CRAGG

Look closely to see faces emerge in some of Tony Cragg’s swirling sculptures at Marian Goodman (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday – Saturday through March 17, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-977-7160
www.mariangoodman.com
www.tony-cragg.com

British sculptor Tony Cragg, whose “Resonating Bodies” have guarded the entrance to Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park in Battery Park City for fifteen years, has filled the Marian Goodman Gallery on West 57th St. with a collection of small and large works that explore form, surface texture, abstraction, and even a hint of representation for his latest solo show, which has been extended through March 17. Cragg, who was born in Liverpool but lives and works in Wuppertal, Germany, uses bronze, Cor-Ten steel, wood, stone, and cast iron in the pieces, which have a swirling vitality; in fact, several appear to be figures in motion, while others are like shiny aliens with faces emerging when seen from various angles. The glittering stainless-steel “Hollow Head” rises from a base like the top of the Chrysler Building, while the wood “Chip” teeters like a game of Jenga about to come to an end. The green bronze “Versus” rises at the end of a long hallway like the Manhattanhenge sun, while “Group” is like a Painted Desert Mount Rushmore. “WT (White Stone Henrauyx 85)” evokes classical marble statuary, while “Lost in Thought” is a giant deep in contemplation, his enormous feet firmly planted on the ground. Many of the works beg to be touched, their sharp edges, smooth surfaces, and impossible angulation alluring, but hands off. But do be sure to walk around them to get the full experience, seeing them appear to change right before your eyes. The show is supplemented with three large-scale pieces on view down the street in the Sculpture Garden at 590 Madison Ave., where they fit in well surrounded by trees and people having lunch in the glass-enclosed atrium.

KEHINDE WILEY IN CONVERSATION WITH LOLA OGUNNAIKE

THE WORLD STAGE: ISRAEL
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Thursday, March 15, $15, 6:30
Exhibition continues through July 29
212-423-3337
www.thejewishmuseum.org
www.kehindewiley.com

Born in Los Angeles and based in New York City, painter Kehinde Wiley has been traveling the global diaspora for his “World Stage” series, taking portraits of men of color in Brazil, China, Nigeria, India and Sri Lanka, and Lagos and Dakar. The Jewish Museum has just opened “The World Stage: Israel,” fourteen large-scale works that feature young men standing in front of elaborate backgrounds, staring directly at the viewer. The decorative background patterns, based on Jewish ceremonial art, include plants and animals that also twist and climb in the foreground, entwining the subject. Each work is shown in a black hand-carved frame topped by a pair of Judean lions surrounding tablets containing either the Ten Commandments (for Jewish men, several of Ethiopian descent) or the Rodney King plea “Can we all get along?” (for Arab men) in Hebrew. Some of the men take distinctly homoerotic poses, confronting the viewer with their gaze; all stand in familiar “heroic” poses representative of European portraiture. The paintings are accompanied by Torah ark curtains, bed covers, Ketubahs (elaborately designed wedding certificates), and papercuts selected by Wiley from the museum’s permanent collection that work in dialogue with Wiley’s backgrounds, placing them in artistic and historical context. The exhibition also includes a short film in which Wiley discusses his process and meets with some of his subjects. “I think there is a strong correlation between being on the margins of society as a person of color in America,” Wiley says in the film, “and that which we see in the streets of Israel.” Portrait subject Solomon Mashash adds, “It’s very hard to live your daily life as a black person here in Israel. When somebody tells you you’re not worth something, if you believe him, your mind believes him. If you change your mind, he cannot do anything to you.” Wiley’s paintings seek to reassert the identity of diverse cultures, empowering individuals to present themselves with pride. You can hear more from Wiley when he takes part in a conversation with culture reporter Lola Ogunnaike at the Jewish Museum on March 15 at 6:30.

GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING

Gerhard Richter reveals his creative process in fascinating new documentary (photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING (Corinna Belz, 2011)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
March 14-27
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.gerhard-richter-painting.de

There’s nothing abstract about the title of Corinna Belz’s documentary on German artist Gerhard Richter, no missing words or punctuation marks. Gerhard Richter Painting is primarily just that: Ninety-seven minutes of Gerhard Richter painting as he prepares for several exhibitions, including a 2009 show at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York City. In 2007, Belz got a rare chance to capture Richter on camera, making a short film focusing on the stained-glass window he designed for the Cologne Cathedral. Two years later, the shy, reserved German artist, who prefers to have his art speak for itself, invited Belz into his studio, giving her remarkable access inside his creative process, which revealingly relies so much on chance and accident. Belz films Richter as he works on two large-scale canvases on which he first slathers yellow paint, adds other colors, then takes a large squeegee and drags it across the surface, changing everything. It’s fascinating to watch Richter study the pieces, never quite knowing when they are done, unsure of whether they are any good. It’s also painful to see him take what looks like an extraordinary painting and then run the squeegee over it yet again, destroying what he had in order to see if he can make it still better. “They do what they want,” he says of the paintings. “I planned something totally different.” About halfway through the film, a deeply concerned Richter starts regretting his decision to allow the camera into his studio. “It won’t work,” he says. “At the moment it seems hopeless. I don’t think I can do this, painting under observation. That’s the worst thing there is.” But continue he does, for Belz’s and our benefit. Belz (Life After Microsoft) even gets Richter to talk a little about his family while looking at some old photos, offering intriguing tidbits about his early life and his escape to Düsseldorf just before the Berlin Wall went up. Belz also includes clips from 1966 and 1976 interviews with Richter, and she attends a meeting he has with Goodman about his upcoming show, lending yet more insight into the rather eclectic artist. “To talk about painting is not only difficult but perhaps pointless, too,” Richter, who turned eighty last month, says in the 1966 clip. However, watching Gerhard Richter Painting is far from pointless; Belz has made a compelling documentary about one of the great, most elusive artists of our time. “Man, this is fun,” Richter says at one point, and indeed it is; watching the masterful artist at work is, well, a whole lot more fun than watching paint dry. Gerhard Richter Painting opens on March 14 at Film Forum, with Yale School of Art dean Robert Storr introducing the 8:00 screening.

HAPPENINGS: NEW YORK, 1958-1963

Milly Glimcher revisits the Happenings movement at Pace Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Pace Gallery
534 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through Saturday, March 17
www.thepacegallery.com

For twenty-five years, the idea of putting on an exhibition detailing the Happenings movement that exploded in New York City during the late 1950s and early 1960s had been percolating inside Milly Glimcher, waiting for the right moment to emerge. That time has come, as the art historian and cofounder of the Pace Gallery (with her husband, Arne) has at last unveiled a surprisingly welcoming show that explores a very specific corner of the development of performance art in downtown Manhattan, complete with all the requisite characters and chaos. Arranged somewhat chronologically by artist, “Happenings: New York, 1958-1963” details extremely low-budget creative gatherings staged by such seminal figures as Red Grooms, Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Carolee Schneeman, and Robert Whitman, with original artwork, photographs, programs, scripts, film clips, advertisements, and other ephemera collected by Glimcher as she met with all of the surviving artists. Many of the photos were taken by Robert McElroy, who died of Alzheimer’s disease shortly after the exhibition opened. Other participants in the events, which took place at such locations as Judson Church, the Reuben Gallery, and the Delancey Street Museum, included Lucas Samaras, Trisha Brown, Tom Wesselman, Yvonne Rainer, and Robert Rauschenberg. Glimcher has done a splendid job curating the exhibition, allowing visitors to delve in as deep as they want as they wander through sections dedicated to Grooms’s “A Play Called Fire,” Dine’s “Car Crash,” Kaprow’s “18 Happenings,” Oldenburg’s “Snapshots from the City,” Schneeman’s “Quarry Transposed,” and others. It would have been easy for “Happenings” to have turned into a “You had to be there” experience, but instead it offers more than just a taste of what it was all like.

PRESIDENT’S FORUM WITH SARAH SZE AND SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE

Sarah Sze’s “Random Walk Drawings” are universes unto themselves at Asia Society (photo courtesy Asia Society)

EXPLORING THE CREATIVE PROCESS — A CONVERSATION
Asia Society
725 Park Ave. at 70th St.
Wednesday, March 14, $20, 6:30
Exhibition continues through March 25
212-288-6400
www.asiasociety.org

For more than fifteen years, New York-based visual artist Sarah Sze has been creating fragile, mysterious environments that are their own little worlds. Using found objects and everyday materials, Sze employs her architectural background to build fascinating structures that combine a Rube Goldberg playfulness with what she calls an “anti-monumental” aesthetic, inspired by Japanese gardens and butoh dance. Her show at Asia Society, “Infinite Line,” delves into her creative process through drawing, sculpture, and installation, spread across two galleries. In the smaller room, such drawings and collages as “Guggenheim as a Ruin,” “Funny Feeling,” “Night,” and “Day” are like architectural plans for fantastical cities while recalling traditional Japanese scroll painting. Visitors have to be careful where they walk in the larger gallery — a security guard will make sure you don’t get too close — which is filled with delicate, expansive pieces made of string, stones, laser-engraved paper, Styrofoam cups, a blinking digital clock, bottle caps, colored tape, and other items that examine the intersection of drawing and sculpture through physical space and perspective. The eight “Random Walk Drawings,” which contain such subtitles as “Compass,” “Window,” “Air,” “Water,” and “Eye Chart,” dangle from the ceiling, spread across the floor, emerge from the wall, and even make their way onto the outside balcony overlooking Park Ave. The Boston-born Sze, who has also treated New Yorkers to such outdoor works as “The Triple Point of Water” in the Whitney’s Sculpture Court in 2003, “Corner Plot” at the Scholars’ Gate entrance to Central Park in 2006, and the current “Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat)” bird feeder on the High Line, will be at Asia Society on March 14 for a discussion with her husband, Indian-born author Siddhartha Mukherjee, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, moderated by Asia Society president Vishakha N. Desai. The galleries will remain open until 9:00 that night to allow ticket holders to see the show. If you can’t make it to the event, you can watch the live webcast here.

ARTISTS IN DIALOGUE WITH JOAN JONAS AND KATE GILMORE

Kate Gilmore’s “Break of Day” hangs over the mantelpiece at “The Annual: 2012” at the National Academy (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday, March 14, $12, 6:30
Exhibition continues through April 29
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

“The Annual: 2012” at the National Academy, which usually focuses on American painting and sculpture, includes several excellent videos in this year’s exhibition, and two of the featured artists will be on hand March 14 to talk about their work. Longtime avant-garde video and performance artist Joan Jonas, who has had recent major shows at the Queens Museum of Art, MoMA, and Yvon Lambert, has been on the cutting edge for five decades. The Annual is displaying her video installation “Lines in the Sand,” a reimagining of the story of Helen of Troy inspired by H.D.’s “Tribute to Freud” and “Helen in Egypt” and transported to Las Vegas. Kate Gilmore, who was born when Jonas’s career was already in full force (in 1975), is represented at the Annual by “Break of Day,” a video in which she climbs up a white cube into which she drops pots of pink paint.

Joan Jonas’s “Lines in the Sand” installation reimagines the story of Helen of Troy (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The two artists will be at the National Academy on Wednesday at 6:30 for an “Artists in Dialogue” session with moderator Marshall Price, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art. Future Annual programs include “On and On and On: Arlene Shechet and Faye Hirsch in Conversation” on March 28 and “Curator’s Insights” on April 11.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: JACCO OLIVIER

Dutch artist Jacco Olivier has made his New York City public art debut by installing six short videos on monitors located throughout Madison Square Park. The display is best seen in the evening, when the colorful animations shine brightly, bringing life to the dark park (and making them easier to find, as they blend more into their surroundings during the day). Consisting of three new works and three older ones, the show highlights Olivier’s playful stop-animation style, in which he creates a painting that he photographs as he continually changes it, resulting in child-friendly narratives of a bug trying to turn over off its back, a deer resting in the woods, and a rabbit hopping through the grass. Stumble, Hide, Rabbit Hole, Bird, Deer, and Home will remain on view through March 12, but you can also catch Olivier’s Revolution at City Center as part of the New Museum’s new video series there.