this week in art

SUE DE BEER: HAUNT ROOM

Sue de Beer’s “Haunt Room” offers psychological thrills and chills on the High Line (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The High Line, 14th Street Passage
Daily through Sunday, December 4, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
www.thehighline.org
www.suedebeer.com
haunt room slideshow

In such recent site-specific works as “Black Sun” and “The Ghosts” and such gallery shows as “Depiction of a Star Obscured by Another Figure,” Sue de Beer creates multimedia sculptural installations that delve deep into the human psyche using dreamlike imagery. Last week de Beer unveiled her latest work, which seeks to give visitors nightmares instead. Two years in the making from its original concept, “Haunt Room” is an infrasound-based fourteen-sided chamber that warns all ye who enter that it might cause “changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing rate. Infrasound exposure may also temporarily induce feelings of drowsiness, extreme sorrow, pressure in the ears, loss of concentration, and disorientation.” Appropriately enough, the New York-based de Beer was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, and there are likely to be plenty of witches showing up on Halloween to partake of the chills “Haunt Room” offers. The structure stands behind the wall on the High Line’s Fourteenth St. Passage, with a round center room with smoke-colored Plexiglas walls bathed in soft, glowing light and emitting creepy creaks and rumbling noises in addition to inaudible low-frequency sounds meant to induce physical and emotional feelings associated with haunted spaces. If you go in with a group of friends who are chatting away about their trip to Uniqlo or how plastered they got the night before, “Haunt Room” is likely to be a disappointment; however, if you get the chance to experience it with a few like-minded souls who remain quiet, close their eyes, and allow the installation to take over — we recommend imagining yourself trapped in a low-budget horror flick, with no way out — “Haunt Room” will set you off balance, making you feel dizzy and out of sorts.

TALK TO ME: DESIGN AND THE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PEOPLE AND OBJECTS

Yann Le Coroller, “Talking Carl,” 3DSmax, Vray, and Xcode software, 2010 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through November 7, $25
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

On October 14, Apple released the iPhone 4S, the latest iteration of the handheld device that reached a whole new synthesis of design, technology, and communication with Siri, which responds to voice commands with a voice of its own. Although not part of MoMA’s interactive “Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects,” the iPhone is a prime example of how the relationship between man and machine has changed over the decades. “The bond between people and things has always been filled with powerful and unspoken sentiments going well beyond functional expectations and including attachment, love possessiveness, jealousy, pride, curiosity, anger, even friendship and partnership,” writes senior curator Paola Antonelli in the exhibition catalog, which also contains essays by Jamer Hunt, Alexandra Midal, Khol Vinh, and Kevin Slavin. Indeed, there is surprising warmth to the exhibit, which invites visitors to explore not only the many items’ visual splendor but their interactivity as well. People are greeted at the entrance by Yann Le Coroller’s “Talking Carl,” a cute and silly Etch-a-Sketch-like animated being that responds to sound and touch, a fun opening to a wide-ranging wonderland of high- and low-tech displays that examine both form and function.

“MetroCard Vending Machine,” vending machine: steel and other materials; interface: Director, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Visual Basic software, 1999 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Divided into six sections — “Objects,” “I’m Talking to You,” “Life,” “City,” “Worlds,” and “Double Entendre” — “Talk to Me” features sociological projects that help the blind, the homeless, and the maimed, geographic grids that impact business and transportation, and three-dimensional charts and graphs that detail private and public information. There are also plenty of innovative works that are just plain fun. In “The Wilderness Downtown,” people plug in the name of their street or hometown, which soon becomes a visual part of Arcade Fire’s music video for the song “We Used to Wait.” Straphangers can buy a real MetroCard from a vending machine that has been slightly reconfigured for the show. Dishes and silverware morph with a heated argument excerpted from the Oscar-winning film American Beauty in Geoffey Mann’s “Cross-fire.” Chris Woebken and Natalie Jeremijenko use voice-recognition software for “Bat Billboard,” which broadcasts messages from bats who live behind it. A close look at Maarten Bass’s “Analog Digital Clock” reveals that it is not quite what it seems, combining people and time in a unique way. Marcos Weskamp’s “Newsmap” arranges news stories by how much coverage they receive in the media. Sissel Tolaas’s “Berlin, City Smell Research” uses the olfactory sense to create a different kind of map of Germany’s capital. Andy and Carolyn London give life to manhole covers, pay phones, and other objects to relay interviews with tourists in “The Lost Tribes of New York City.” And “N Building facade” turns the outside of a Tokyo building into an immense QR code that offers all types of information about the structure. In fact, every item in “Talk to Me” has its own QR code, so adventurous museumgoers can delve deeper into the works and interact with them further. “Talk to Me” is an engaging exhibition that takes an entertaining look at the shape of things to come. The show is now in its final week, with several special events still scheduled: Rob Walker will moderate the discussion “The Language of Objects,” with Kenneth Goldsmith, Ben Greenman Leanne Sharpton, and Cintra Wilson, on November 2 at 6:00 ($10), and gallery conversations will take place with Jennifer Gray on November 3 at 6:00, Marianne Egler on November 5 at 11:30 am, and Diana Bush on November 6 at 1:30, all free with museum admission.

OLAF BREUNING: THE ART FREAKS

In “The Art Freaks,” Olaf Breuning combines painting, photography, and art history in entertaining ways (photo courtesy Olaf Breuning / Metro Pictures)

Metro Pictures
519 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 29, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-206-7100
www.metropicturesgallery.com

For his latest show at Metro Pictures, New York-based Swiss artist Olaf Breuning has taken large-scale photographs (74 3/8 x 34 1/8 inches) of nearly two dozen models who have been painted in the style of some of the most famous and important artists of the twentieth century. In “The Art Freaks,” Breuning re-creates iconic works on the naked bodies of men and women, honoring such seminal figures as Edvard Munch, Yves Tanguy, Joseph Cornell, Frida Kahlo, Piet Mondrian, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, Andy Warhol, On Kawara, Jackson Pollock, and others. As always with Breuning’s work, his playful sense of humor shines through as he gives a unique art history lesson; we strongly suggest you first walk through the upstairs gallery space trying to identify the referenced artists yourself before confirming it by checking the photos’ titles.

RESIDUE: AN INSTALLATION BY EIKO & KOMA

Eiko & Koma take a look back at their life and career in “Residue” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Vincent Astor Gallery
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, 111 Amsterdam Ave. between 64th & 65th Sts.
Through Saturday, October 29, free, 12 noon – 6:00 or 8:00
www.eikoandkoma.org/residue
www.nypl.org

It’s been quite a year for Japanese dance couple Eiko & Koma here in their home base of New York City. Celebrating their fortieth anniversary together, Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake performed the postapocalyptic dance installation Naked at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in the spring, went for a dip in the Paul Milstein Pool on Lincoln Center’s Hearst Plaza for the mesmerizing Water this summer, and held numerous local talks and workshops. And, as part of their three-year Retrospective Project, they’re taking a look back at their career in the unique gallery installation “Residue,” on view at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts through October 29. Designer Eric Bissell has transformed the Vincent Astor Gallery into a dark, hypnotic space featuring paraphernalia from throughout Eiko & Koma’s career, including costumes, sets, a series of white rectangular wells screening videos at the bottom, and a central structure similar to the Naked wall where visitors can walk in, sit down, and watch Naked on a monitor on the floor. “Residue” highlights such works as Hunger, River, White Dance, Thirst, Grain, Wind, Tree, and Offering, organic pieces in which Eiko and Koma are often naked, performing in the outdoors or on stark sets. “It is very clear nothing lasts,” Koma says in the exhibition brochure. “So this installation too is not an attempt to last or save what we have done,” Eiko responds. “We just look at the ‘dust’ and enjoy that we can look at it for now.” Visitors will be able to look at and enjoy the dust of Eiko and Koma’s continuing adventurous career through the end of the week, and as an added treat the duo will be at the gallery on Saturday from 4:00 to 6:00 to meet and greet everyone who stops by.

LYLE ASHTON HARRIS: SELF/PORTRAIT

Lyle Ashton Harris, “Untitled (Face/Back #155 Lyle),” Polaroid photograph, 2000 (courtesy the artist and CRG Gallery)

The Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th St. between Lenox Ave. (Malcolm X Blvd.) & Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. (Seventh Ave.)
Final day: October 23, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
212-864-4500
www.studiomuseum.org

From 1998 to 2008, Bronx-born photographer Lyle Ashton Harris took “Chocolate Polaroids” of his friends, families, and neighbors, taking one picture of their face and another of the back of their head. Nearly two dozen of these fascinating pairings have been collected for the revealing show “Lyle Ashton Harris: Self/Portrait,” which ends today at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The large-format, sepia-toned 20×24-inch works, shot in a SoHo studio, include such familiar figures as Al Sharpton, Tony Kushner, Anna Deavere Smith, and Cindy Sherman along with such less-familiar faces as artist and writer Senam Okudzeto, museum curators Thelma Golden and Robert Storr, visual artist Shirin Neshat, and an exotic dancer named Dorian who has a frightening scar down the back of his head, in addition to Harris himself, with each pair accompanied by brief text. Staring straight into the camera, the subjects feel like they’re communicating something silent but serious to the viewer, saying as much from the front as from the back. Also closing today, when the museum is free from 12 noon to 6:00, are “Spiral: Perspectives on an African-American Art Collective,” with wonderful works from the 1960s group by Norman Lewis, Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, Emma Amos, and others; “Harlem Postcards Summer 2011,” with postcards by Senetchut Floyd, Phillip Pisciotta, Tribble & Mancenido, and Genesis Valencia; and “Evidence of Accumulation,” a multimedia exhibition of pieces by artists in residence Simone Leigh, Kamau Amu Patton, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya, highlighted by Leigh’s six-minute video Breakdown, made with Liz Magic Laser and Alicia Mall Horan.

AÏDA RUILOVA: GONER

A woman is terrorized by an unseen presence in Aïda Ruilova’s psychological horror short

Salon 94 Bowery
243 Bowery between Stanton & Rivington Sts.
Goner through Saturday
Prop House through Sunday
212-979-0001
www.salon94.com
www.aidaruilova.com/goner.htm

Today is the last day to see West Virginia-born Aïda Ruilova’s claustrophobic horror short Goner, which follows a young woman in a white night shirt (Sonja Kinski) as she is terrified by an unseen predator. Quick cuts, a handheld camera, and blood splatters propel this tense psychological thriller, which is projected onto the far wall in the downstairs space at Salon 94 Bowery. We’re not sure why the gallery chose to end this exhibition, which also includes miniature stills from Goner and several of Ruilova’s other films, just a week before Halloween, but it’s still a good way to get your scare on as you prepare for the annual pagan celebration. However, Ruilova’s Prop House, which comments on the props used in horror films, can be seen tomorrow, projected onto the gallery’s outside wall.

DOOMSDAY FILM FESTIVAL: DR. STRANGELOVE

Peter Sellers has some grand plans for the end of the world as Dr. Strangelove in classic Kubrick cold war comedy

92YTribeca
200 Hudson St.
Sunday, October 23, $12, 2:00
Festival runs October 21-23
212-601-1000
www.doomsdayfilmfest.com

Screening at 92YTribeca as part of the third annual Doomsday Film Festival — which promises “Deserted streets! Blood-red skies! Total social breakdown!” — Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove is one of the grandest satires ever made, the blackest of black comedies. With the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over the United States and the Soviet Union, General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has a meltdown, becoming obsessed with protecting the country’s “precious bodily fluids” and threatening to launch the bombs. While President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) tries to make nice with the Soviets, General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) gets caught up in all the military excitement, Colonel Bat Guano (Keenan Wynn) defends the Coca-Cola company, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers) can’t get anyone to listen to him, and Major T. J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) prepares for the ride of his life. Based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert and written by George, Kubrick, and Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is hysterically funny and wickedly prescient, an absolute hoot from start to finish, featuring razor-sharp dialogue, inspired slapstick, and just enough truth to scare the hell out of you. (Be sure to watch for Peter Bull not being able to stop laughing as Sellers goes crazy in a wheelchair at the end.) The screening will be followed by a “Doomsday on the Brain” panel discussion with Joseph Le Doux, Dr. Mark Siegel, Lee Quinby, Keith Uhlich, and Mark Asch, moderated by Paul W. Morris from, of course, BOMB magazine. The Doomsday Film Festival also includes Steve De Jarnatt’s 1988 WWIII flick Miracle Mile, followed by a Q&A with star Anthony Edwards and the director; Don McKellar’s 1999 Y2K nightmare Last Night; Joseph Sargent’s classic Colossus: The Forbin Project, followed by “The Singularity Is Nigh,” a panel discussion with Maggie Jackson, Joshua Rothkopf, Jason Zinoman, Chris Bregler, and Roger Schank, moderated by Michael Byrne; Tobe Hooper’s 1985 exploitation fave Lifeforce, preceded by complimentary sexy alien zombie makeup; a collection of short films; and schlockmeister Larry Cohen’s 1976 cop drama God Told Me To, followed by a Skype Q&A with Cohen. If the end of the world is coming, this is a fine way to say goodbye.