this week in art

DAY WITH(OUT) ART / WORLD AIDS DAY: UNTITLED

Special documentary about AIDS will screen all over the city on World AIDS Day

Multiple venues
Thursday, December 1
Admission: free
www.thebody.com
www.creativetime.org/daywithoutart
www.worldaidsday.org

For the twenty-third annual World AIDS Day, which provides “an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, to show their support for people living with HIV, and to commemorate people who have died,” artists and filmmakers Jim Hodges, Carlos Marques da Cruz, and Encke King have joined together to make the hour-long Untitled, a montage that documents the history of AIDS activism, inspired by the life and career of influential artist Félix González-Torres, who died of AIDS in 1996. The film will be screened for free at museums and other arts venues all over the country as part of Day With(out) Art / World AIDS Day. The film will be shown at a number of venues in New York City, including the IFC Center, where Creative Time will host a panel discussion at 7:45 (advance RSVP required) with Malik Gaines, Shanti Avirgan, and Che Gossett, moderated by Nato Thompson. You can also catch the film at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea, the Whitney, La Galleria at La MaMa, the Museum of Arts & Design, Housing Works, the New Museum, the School of Visual Arts, the Gladstone Gallery (in conjunction with Hodges’s current exhibit), the Brooklyn Museum, Exit Art (with guest speakers Zachary Barnett and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis), the Grey Art Gallery, and at Participant Inc. on the Lower East Side, where Justin Vivian Bond, whose exhibition “The Fall of the House of Whimsy” is on view there through December 18, will perform a song accompanying the screening. In addition, Visual AIDS has put together an extensive resource guide about the film, including “Suggestions for Engagement,” an HIV/AIDS timeline and alphabetical vocabulary, important links, and other information “in an effort to honor the sense of endlessness that Untitled suggests [and] for provoking both public and private conversation.”

CARSTEN HÖLLER: EXPERIENCE

The line for the slide can wrap completely around the carousel at New Museum’s Carsten Höller retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 15, $12-$16 (free Thursdays 7:00 – 9:00 pm)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
experience slideshow

Just because Carsten Höller’s first-ever New York City retrospective, “Experience,” includes the optional “Upside-Down Goggles,” an optical device that flips everything you see, doesn’t mean the German artist is trying to turn the art world upside down. A former scientist who was born in Brussels and lives and works in Stockholm, Höller has transformed the New Museum into a laboratory / amusement park, complete with merry-go-round, slide, aviary, and wave pool, each with a sly twist. Examining doubt and duality, disorientation and displacement, confusion and confrontation, and, perhaps most critically, perception and participation, Höller has created a mind-bending interactive, experimental journey that requires viewer involvement in order to be successful. If you’re just interested in looking at weird things, then this show might not be quite what you expect. “Höller has provided stimulus to erotic encounters and to hallucinatory or intoxicating experiments,” Lynne Cooke writes in “Amanita Blue,” her essay in the exhibition catalog. “Bliss, ecstasy, and transport are equally subject to his curiosity and appreciation, and, ultimately, come to seem less altruistic than necessary.” Gary Carrion-Murayari puts it even more succinctly in his catalog contribution, “Entertainment”: “Carsten Höller creates works that can provide joy or terror in equal measure,” while in “Panic” Massimiliano Gioni explains, “Carsten Höller’s work brings on attacks of the heebie-jeebies and moments of panic.” But don’t worry; there’s really no need to be frightened of Höller. “Experience” turns out to be a helluva lot of fun.

Slide zooms past “Psycho Tank” at interactive exhibit at New Museum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The survey begins just past the lobby with “Giant Triple Mushrooms,” a series of colorful large-scale fungi that reference both Alice in Wonderland as well as psychedelic shrooms, especially since some of them have already had bites taken out of them, hinting toward an oncoming acid trip. You’ll want to continue your journey on the fourth floor, where you might have to wait as long as an hour and a half to go through “Untitled (Slide),” a stainless-steel pneumatic tube that will send you twisting down to the second floor. While waiting on line, take an excruciatingly slow spin on “Mirror Carousel,” a horseless merry-go-round with swings as seats, Höller toying with your expectations since swings usually rise up high and carousels generally move significantly faster. You can also pick up one of the three phones on the wall and make a long-distance call, which will be reused as an answering-machine message as part of “What Is Love, Art, Money?,” and listen to the live birds flitting around in cages dangling from above in “Singing Canaries Mobile.” Stop off in the Shaft Project Space on the stairs between the third and fourth floors for a cup of water and a gelatin capsule from “Pill Clock” as you make your way to “Giant Psycho Tank,” a calming, meditative sensory deprivation tank in which you float on a few inches of heavily salted water and let the slight current carry you away. If you didn’t bring a bathing suit, you’ll have to go in naked, and if you’re extremely shy, you should know that your privacy is not completely guaranteed, despite the presence of a security guard monitoring the proceedings. When we sat down on the bench in the back of the pool, we could clearly see two guys outside staring in at us, and later, while we were floating so beautifully, the woman on line after us started talking to us from the doorway, not seeming to mind that we were in nothing but our birthday suit. “Psycho Tank” was originally meant for more people at one time, but the Board of Health said no; in other countries, as many as six can join in together, so just shed your American Puritan inhibitions and let it all hang out. Also be on the lookout for the two-monitor video “One Minute of Doubt,” the funhouse-mirror-like “Infrared Room,” videos in each elevator, “Aquarium” (in which you lie down and place your head inside a viewing tank), and other works that make “Experience” as entertaining and involving an experience as you want it to be.

PROJECT 101′: A VIDEO INSTALLATION BY AMBruno

The LAB Gallery Presents: Project 101 by AMBruno from TheLABGallery

With the holiday season (too) fast approaching, time seems to just be whirling right by, offering no respite for the weary. But you might never have realized just how slow 101 seconds really are until you watch Kurt Johannessen’s video “Snail,” which depicts a snail moving ever so slowly across a white background for 101 seconds. “Snail” is one of 101 works, each 101 seconds long, that comprise “Project 101′: A Video Installation by AMBruno,” on view at the Roger Smith Hotel LAB Gallery through November 25. Running night and day, more than a dozen monitors and one large screen keep the works, longer than clips but less than shorts, made by forty-two multidisciplinary artists from the London-based collective AMBruno, continuously playing in the storefront gallery space at the corner of 47th St. & Lexington Ave. So if you’re one of the approximately twenty-five thousand people who pass by the Roger Smith every day, take a break and check out a bunch of these experimental silent videos, a project that was initiated by Sophie Loss and put together by Loss, John McDowall, Joanna Hill, Judy Goldhill, Claire Deniau, and Steve Perfect, all of whom have works in the show.

CANSTRUCTION

Gruzen Samton • IBI Group’s “QR-CAN: Link to Fight Hunger” won Best Use of Labels at 2011 Canstruction competition (photo by Canstruction/Kevin Wick)

World Financial Center Winter Garden
200 Vesey St.
Sunday, November 20, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, and Monday, November 21, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
212-945-0505
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com
www.sdanyc.org/canstruction

Sponsored by the Society for Design Administration, the annual Canstruction competition believes that “one can make a difference.” For the nineteenth year, design firms have constructed sculptures made out of cans and boxes of food, using no tape, glue, staples, etc., resulting in entertaining, often awe-inspiring installations that are best seen through a camera lens to get the full effect. Among this year’s winners are Gensler / WSP Flack + Kurtz’s “Loaded Dice” pair of die (Juror’s Favorite), Skanska USA’s “Suspending Hunger” suspension bridge (Structural Ingenuity), Dattner Architects’ “Root Against Hunger” tree (Best Meal), and Gruzen Samton • IBI Group’s “QR-CAN: Link to Fight Hunger” QR code (Best Use of Labels). Also be on the lookout for Ferguson & Shamamian Architects’ “Rise Against Hunger” hot-air balloon, Kohn Pederson Fox’s “Alexander McCan” high-heeled shoe, Thornton Tomasetti’s “High-Tops for Hunger” Chuck Taylor sneaker, Robert Silman Associates’ “TICANic” sinking ship, and Langan Engineering / John Fotiadis Architect’s “Time to End Hunger” clock. When the competition at the World Financial Center ends on November 21, all of the food from the twenty-five entries will be given to charity. Although admission is free, it is suggested that everyone bring a can or two (or three or four) to contribute as well (for City Harvest), adding to the more than fifteen million pounds of food Canstruction has raised around the world since 1992.

RICHARD SERRA: JUNCTION / CYCLE

Gagosian Gallery
555 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 26 (closed Thanksgiving Day), 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-741-1111
www.gagosian.com
junction/cycle slideshow

In the summer of 2007, MoMA hosted the terrific retrospective “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years,” an exciting look back at the career of highly influential and often controversial conceptual artist Richard Serra. The exhibition included a number of Serra’s huge, freestanding sets of weatherproof steel plates, both inside and outside. Serra, who recently had a gorgeous show of his drawings at the Met, is back at the Gagosian in Chelsea with two new works, “Cycle” (2010) and “Junction” (2011), that fill the large space, creating numerous passageways that visitors can follow, the twisting concave and convex “walls” reaching more than thirteen feet high. The pieces loop in and out, narrow at some turns before opening into wider centers, almost like steel mazes. The technical aspects are mind-boggling, so be sure to take your time and let the many wonders envelop you. “Junction” and “Cycle” are unique enough that they don’t feel repetitive or simply more of the same from this always intriguing artist. Serra also has a show of small drawings, “Bight & Ballast,” at Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl through December 22.

SUPER SABADO: CUÉNTAME! CELEBRATING ORAL HISTORY

Emeline Michel will perform a special concert as part of El Museo del Barrio’s free Super Sabado on November 19

FREE THIRD SATURDAYS
El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
Saturday, November 19, free, 11:00 am – 9:00 pm
212-831-7272
www.elmuseo.org

November 19 is the third Saturday of the month, which means that admission to El Museo del Barrio is free all day. It also means there will be a slate of special activities, this month focusing on oral history, beginning at 11:00 with the hands-on program “Artexplorers & Artmaking,” which continues through 3:00. From 12 noon till 3:00, you can share your favorite dicho (expression) as part of “Say Quesooooo!” At noon and 2:00 in El Café, you can sing along with Bilingual Birdies and playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes (In the Heights, Water by the Spoonful). At 4:00, Haitian singer-songwriter Emeline Michel will perform an hour-long show in El Teatro in conjunction with the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert Series. From 4:00 to 6:00, poet Caridad de la Luz “La Bruja” will lead a spoken-word workshop for teens. And at 7:00, “Speak Up!” features María Morales hosting spoken-word performances by Anthony Morales, Nancy-Arroyo Ruffin, Jennifer “Skye” Cabrera, and Maegan Ortiz. In addition, there will be tours of the museum’s two current exhibits, “Voces y Visiones: Signs, Systems & the City” and “El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 2011.” And be sure to come hungry, because there’s always something interesting cooking in El Café.

MIKA ROTTENBERG AND JON KESSLER: SEVEN

Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler have collaborated on unique “Seven” installation in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Nicole Klagsbrun Project
534 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday – Saturday through November 19, free, 2:00 – 8:00
www.nicoleklagsbrun.com
www.11.performa-arts.org
seven slideshow

In an inspired pairing, Performa 11 has brought together visual artists Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler for the delightful “Seven.” In such video-based works as “Mary’s Cherries,” “Cheese,” and “Squeeze,” Rottenberg, who was born in Argentina, raised in Israel, and is based in New York City, plays with time and space in short, complex films that are screened in specially designed architectural, sculptural surroundings, commenting on such themes as fetish, mass production, capitalism, rituals, and postcolonialism. For nearly thirty years, Yonkers-born artist and Columbia professor Jon Kessler has ingeniously utilized motors, lights, mirrors, and cameras in such kinetic sculptures as “Desert of the Real,” “Kessler’s Circus,” “Random Acts of Senseless Violence,” and “The Palace at 4 A.M.” “Seven” takes place in a laboratory where a technician is collecting the sweat off a rotating group of seven men and women who perspire in a glassed-in booth powered by a person on an exercise bicycle. Meanwhile, several monitors depict a small African desert community that is interacting with the technician; for example, when a man in Africa places a tube into a machine there, it pops out in the New York lab (and vice versa). Each person is identified by a different color of the rainbow, proceeding in order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, which also represent the seven primary chakras. Don’t just grab a seat and stay put for the “show” (which reminds us of the experiments conducted in the Hatch on the television series Lost, just without the inherent danger); instead, be sure to walk around and check out every aspect of this unique chakra juicer. If you’re lucky, the technician might even let you turn the dentist drill on and off, like we did. Performed by Empress Asia, Marshall Factora, Esteban Jefferson, Jason Liles, Chris McGinn, Cecil Parker, Sunita Sharma, Juan Valanzuela, and Alex Wynne, “Seven” runs every thirty-seven minutes between 2:00 and 7:18 through Saturday at Nicole Klagbrun Project in Chelsea; admission is free and first come, first served, and it is advised that you stay for the full duration, which includes a rather silly but fun grand finale.