this week in art

THE KITCHEN BLOCK PARTY

A Free Neighborhood Street Fair
West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Saturday, September 17, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
212-255-5793
www.thekitchen.org

For forty years, the Kitchen has been presenting cutting-edge multidisciplinary art, theater, and dance. The nonprofit organization will kick off its fall season today with a block party on West 19th St. featuring family-friendly artist-led booths and activities, including face painting, mask making, temporary tattoos, cookie decorating, and more. Among the artists participating in the annual event are Michael Paul Britto + Elia Alba, Miles Bumbray, Nathan Carter, Francisca Chaidez-Gutierrez, Michael DeLucia, Torkwase Dyson, Jonathan Ehrenberg + Bryan Zanisnik, Escape Artist + Saintchic, Brent Green + Donna K, Simone Leigh + Chitra Ganesh, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya + Timothy Hull. There will be live music and dance performances by DJ Laylo and Eli Efi, Pegasus Warning, Olabunmi and the Hamana Djembe Orchestra, and others, while food will be provided by Asiadog, Chelsea Thai, Choncho’s Tacos, Coconut Rob, and Je & Jo. You can also venture inside the venerable institution to see the exhibitions “Joe Winter: The Stars Below” and “Jennie C. Jones: Absorb/Diffuse” and pick up tickets to such upcoming events as Wally Cardona, Jennifer Lacey, and Jonathan Bepler’s Tool Is Loot, Faustin Linyekula/Studios Kabako’s more more more… future, and Anna Sperber’s FOREVERANDADAY.

COLLECTING MATISSE AND MODERN MASTERS: THE CONE SISTERS OF BALTIMORE

Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Thursday – Tuesday through September 25, $12 (free Saturdays 11:00 am – 5:45 pm)
212-423-3337
www.thejewishmuseum.org

Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone were highly unusual, both as women and as art collectors. Born in the Victorian era and active in early-twentieth-century European society, they were never concerned with what was popular or a good investment. Instead, the two Baltimore sisters bought art that they wanted to live with — and that created quite a stir, because others in the art world did not understand their eclectic, avant-garde, far-ranging tastes. Through September 25, the Jewish Museum is displaying the charming exhibit “Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore,” featuring fifty paintings, sculptures, and drawings by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Theodore Robinson, and, primarily, Henri Matisse, among others, as well as jewelry, embroidery, textiles, and other objects from Asia and Africa that the sisters collected. An extensive collection of letters, diaries, postcards, photographs, and other archival documents grounds the exhibit and lends insight into the sisters’ fascinating lives; they counted among their friends Matisse (who would send them photos of works in progress to titillate them), Leo and Gertrude Stein, and other seminal figures of the time. The exhibit includes an enlightening BBC film about the sisters, narrated by Michael Palin, as well as a photo series of their Marlborough Apartments that depicts how they lived with their art. The daughters of German-Jewish immigrants who amassed a fortune in the textile industry, Claribel (1864-1929) became a medical doctor, while Etta (1870-1949) served as the large family’s caretaker. Models of Victorian refinement, neither of the sisters married. After Claribel died suddenly, Etta continued to maintain her apartment as if she were still alive. Upon Etta’s death, the entire collection was bequeathed to the Baltimore Museum of Art. Walking through this engaging exhibit is like taking a stroll through the lives of these wholly original women.

CARLITO CARVALHOSA: SUM OF DAYS

Carlito Carvalhosa’s “Sum of Days” is a palimpsestual participatory treat for the eyes and ears (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday, $22.50 ($12 can be applied to the purchase of a film ticket within thirty days)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
sum of days slideshow

For his “Sum of Days,” Brazilian artist Carlito Carvalhosa has created a palimpsestual participatory passageway in MoMA’s Marron Atrium that is more than initially meets the eyes — and ears. Sheets of white translucent fabric hang down from the high ceiling, forming a mazelike twisting walkway lined with a series of dangling speakers and microphones at different heights, recording current ambient sound while playing back the sounds of the installation’s previous days, melding everything together into a symphonic cacophony of the piece’s past and present, with the older sounds fading away in the background. Just as it’s hard to differentiate among the various noises and make out actual words, people’s vision is also impacted by the long sheets, which turn other visitors into shadowy figures walking by like ghosts. Many people go through the installation very quickly, but you should take your time, letting the sights and sounds envelop you for an energizing, ethereal experience. Once a week through November 10, a special sixty-to-ninety-minute musical performance will take place within the exhibition, but while MoMA has announced the lineup — Lisa Bielawa, David Crowell, Jon Gibson, Philip Glass, Carla Kihlstedt, Michael Riesman, Mick Rossi, and Andrew Sterman — the concerts will be announced on the actual day of the event via MoMA’s Twitter feed (@MuseumModernArt), although we can tell you that the first one is scheduled for September 15.

THE INFLUENTIALS

Kate Gilmore, “Between a Hard Place,” video still, 2008 (courtesy of the artist)

SVA WOMEN ALUMNI INVITE ARTISTS WHO HAVE SHAPED THEIR WORK
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday, September 13, free, 7:00
Exhibition continues at the Visual Arts Gallery (601 West 26th St.) through September 21
212-592-2145
www.schoolofvisualarts.edu

For the School of Visual Arts exhibit “The Influentials,” cocurators Amy Smith-Stewart and Carrie Lincourt invited nineteen female SVA alums to participate — while also asking each to invite a guest contributor of their own, a person who has made an impact in their lives and/or careers. Among the exciting duos (with the SVA alum listed first and their guest second) supplying multimedia works are Kate Gilmore and Marilyn Minter, Lisa Kirk and David Hammons, Suzanne McClelland and Judy Pfaff, Mika Rottenberg and Minter, Yuko Shimizu and Thomas Woodruff, Marianne Vitale and Bela Tarr, and Phoebe Washburn and her grandmother, Phebe. The show runs through September 21 at the Visual Arts Gallery in Chelsea, but there will be a special panel discussion on September 13 at 7:00 at the nearby SVA Theatre, where Art in America editor in chief Lindsay Pollock will lead a public talk about art and mentoring with a stellar lineup that includes McClelland, Minter, Pfaff, and Rottenberg.

XU BING: WHERE DOES THE DUST ITSELF COLLECT? ARTIST TALK

Xu Bing will discuss his 9/11-related installation on Tuesday night at the Museum of Chinese in America (photo by Jeff Morgan)

Exhibition: Spinning Wheel Building, 5 West 22nd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves., Tuesday – Sunday, September 8 – October 9, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
Artist Talk: Tuesday, September 13, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., free with RSVP, 6:30
www.insite.lmcc.net
www.mocanyc.org

Chinese-born artist Xu Bing, who is based in Beijing and Brooklyn, incorporates words and history into site-specific installations that examine language and politics in unique ways. In his current work at the Morgan Library, “The Living Word 3,” the characters depicting the Chinese word for “bird” lift off the ground and fly to the ceiling as they morph into birds themselves. In 2004, Xu installed “Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?” in Wales, consisting of dust that represented debris from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, accompanied by a Zen poem, examining the tragedy itself as well as its aftereffects on a shocked world. Xu has now reinstalled the poignant work in the lobby gallery of the Spinning Wheel Building in the Flatiron District in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, in conjunction with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s month-long “InSite: Art + Commemoration” series, which continues through October 11 with exhibitions, live performances, poetry readings, and other events that look at how artists have dealt with 9/11. On September 13, Xu will be at the Museum of Chinese in America to give a special artist talk with professor Lydia Liu about the project’s first installation in the United States; admission is free with advance RSVP.

ELENA DEL RIVERO: [SWI:T] HOME: A CHANT

Elena del Rivero, “(Swi:t) Home: A CHANT,” 2001-2006 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through October 2 (Thursdays free 7:00 – 9:00)
Artist Talk: Thursday, September 15, $8, 7:00
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
[swi:t] home: a chant slideshow

On September 11, 2001, Valencia-born New York City artist Elena del Rivero was in her native country of Spain. When she eventually returned to her home on Cedar St., right by where the World Trade Center used to stand, she found her apartment/studio filled with debris, the windows having collapsed and all sorts of papers sucked in from the outside world. She set to work cataloging and cleaning the notes, forms, memos, letters, and other documents, deleting the names and addresses to protect the vital information of men and women who very well might have perished on that fateful day. She then stitched them onto long sheets of white cotton-mesh fabric to create the moving memorial “[Swi:t] Home: A CHANT,” which is currently installed in the back lobby gallery of the New Museum of Contemporary Art through October 2. The remnants of these anonymous people’s lives seem to once again float in the air as they rise over a center rod, only to tumble down to earth again on the other side. “[Swi:t] Home: A CHANT” includes some 3,136 documents, mostly white but some yellow, green, red, and other colors, spread out across more than five hundred feet, cluttered together on the ground and rising into the air, at its full height forming a kind of memorial tower. Del Rivero’s brown stitching can be seen throughout, as if a pathway detailing the journey taken by the unseen people behind the endless stream of paper. Del Rivero will be at the New Museum on September 15 to discuss the project with Andrea Blum in a special artist talk at 7:00 ($8). The entire museum is open for free on September 11, but the lobby gallery is always open for visitors without requiring paid admission.

WK INTERACT: PROJECT BRAVE

WK Interact’s block-long “Project Brave” mural pays tribute to the heroes of 9/11 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

149 Kent Ave. between North Fourth & Fifth Sts.
Through October 11
www.wkinteract.com
project brave slideshow

French-born New York City street artist WK Interact creates site-specific pieces around the world, employing his instantly recognizable striking black-and-white scenes immersed in fast-paced motion. In honor of the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, WK has installed “Project Brave,” a massive 328-foot-long mural along Kent Ave. in Williamsburg, paying tribute to the heroes of that fateful day. Focusing on New York’s Bravest, the firefighter, WK has included swirling portraits of NYPD firemen in action, their faces often blurred, depicted in the midst of daring rescues. He includes references to specific equipment as well as his familiar bar codes, implying such heroism is all in a day’s work for these heroes. (One bar code says, “rescue proof of FIRST RESPONDER 9/11.”) There are also images of splattered blood, birds flying to freedom, and even a stamp honoring the Statue of Liberty’s centennial, placed next to a skull. The mural, which was made with the support of the Yonkers Fire Department, is a vibrant, stirring, inspirational celebration of how New York came together ten years ago in the face of unspeakable tragedy.