this week in art

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.

PERFORMA 11: I’LL RAISE YOU ONE . . .

Strip poker is the name of the very public game at Art in General (photo by Zefrey Throwell)

Art in General Project Space
79 Walker St.
Through November 19, free, 10:30 am – 6:00 pm
212-219-0473
www.artingeneral.org
www.performa-arts.org

Over the last several years, New York City–based performance artist Zefrey Throwell has staged numerous events that comment on current cultural trends while involving nudity and/or graphic sexual situations. In such guerrilla productions as “The Ecstasy of St. Patrick,” “Flitzing Away the Day,” and “Ocularpation: Wall Street,” Throwell lays bare the ills of society, focusing on religion, fashion, and the economy, respectively. For his latest project, commissioned for Performa 11, Throwell is presenting “I’ll Raise You One…,” a seven-day strip poker game being held in Art in General’s storefront space on Walker St. every day from 12 noon to 6:00 pm. Yes, a group of seven men and women will be betting and bluffing to avoid ending up in the buff while being watched by people out on the street, turning capitalism into the titillating voyeuristic sport it really is, one in which most of the citizenry lose their shirts while only a handful thrive. Performa 11 continues through November 21, featuring such special performances as Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler’s “Seven,” Dennis Oppenheim’s Compression Fern screening and action, Laurent Montaron’s “The Invisible Message,” Guy Maddin’s “Tales from the Gimli Hospital: Reframed,” and Robert Ashley’s “That Morning Thing.”

THE ART OF THE DATE: A GALLERY WALK ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE

Lower East Side Visitor Center
54 Orchard St. between Grand & Hester Sts.
Wednesday, November 16, free with RSVP, 6:00 – 9:00
www.newyorkdating.eventbrite.com
www.lowereastsideny.com

In the 1972 comedy Play It Again, Sam, Allan (Woody Allen) is in a museum trying to pick up a woman (Diana Davila). “What are you doing Saturday night?” he asks her. “Committing suicide,” she replies, to which Allan responds, “What about Friday night?” On Wednesday, November 16, it might not be so dire as a group of singles mingle for an evening of free art, conversation, music, and drinks and snacks. “The Art of the Date: A Gallery Walk on the Lower East Side” will take participants (free with advance RSVP) from the Lower East Side Visitors Center on Orchard St. to four nearby galleries: Lesley Heller Workspace, which currently has a solo show by Tom Kotik and a group show called “Headcase”; Lost Weekend NYC, which is displaying 1980s photographs by celebrity snapper Patrick McMullan; Dino Eli Gallery, which is showing “Artists on the Prowl: The Hunter, the Wanderer, the Trash Collector & the Street Master”: and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, which is featuring “Transformation and Perception: Paintings by Jill Weber.” In addition to the art, there will be free food from Bruschetteria, PopChips, and Lucky Penny Bake Shop, free drinks courtesy of Beck’s, and music by DJ Michael Little.