this week in art

RYAN TRECARTIN: ANY EVER

Ryan Trecartin’s “Any Ever” consists of unique viewing environments in which to watch his rather unique films (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Thursday – Monday through September 5, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
Suggested admission: $10 (free for MoMA ticket holders within thirty days of ticket)
718-784-2084
www.ps1.org
summer open house sneak peek

Texas native Ryan Trecartin has come along at just the right time, the go-to artist for the YouTube / reality TV generation. The thirty-year-old multimedia artist makes color-drenched, amateurish films featuring himself and his friends in wacky outfits, speaking in high-pitched voices as they comment on various sociopolitical themes in crazy ways. For “Any Ever,” his exhibition at PS1 that continues through September 3, Trecartin has created individual viewing environments for seven of his films created between 2007 and 2010 in Miami, made in collaboration with Lizzie Fitch. Divided into two sections, Trill-ogy Comp, consisting of K-CoreaINC.K (section a), Sibling Topics (section a), and P.opular S.ky (section ish), and Re’Search Wait’S, comprising Ready, The Re’Search, Roamie View: History Enhancement, and Temp Stop, the exuberant films are set amid a partying world that celebrates gender identity and individuality while attacking global corporate culture, transumerism, and market research. The works are projected in sculptural viewing areas that often incorporate elements of the films, including airline seats, a white conference table, bleachers, comfortable raised couches, and other playful milieus. With “Any Ever,” Trecartin has created a loud, frenetic, in-your-face world that is one heckuva fun party, even if it gets repetitive when taken in all at once.

Don’t let the calm, relaxing entrance area fool you; Ryan Trecartin’s “Any Ever” multimedia installation is about to get a lot crazier (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

On August 31, MoMA PS1 will host a PopRally closing party for the exhibit, with MC Akeem_Ouch, live performances by AraabMUZIK, Glass Popcorn, and #HDBOYZ, guided tours of the show led by Veronica Gelbaum (who plays “Ready” in Re’Search Wait’S), appearances by Spicee Cajun, Raul de Nieves as Lindsay Lohan, DJs Telfar, Physical Therapy, and Fatima Al Qadiri, and other very strange guests. You can also catch “Any Ever” — as well as “Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception” (through September 12) and “Summer School presents Gus Van Sant and James Franco: My Own Private River” (through August 29) — at the final Warm Ups of the season, with Tanlines, NguzuNguzu, Teengirl Fantasy, Sun Araw, and Physical Therapy on August 27 (which has just been canceled, as PS1 will be closed on Saturday and Sunday because of Hurricane Irene) and Horse Meat Disco, Midnight Magic, Justin Miller, and BICEP on September 3, taking place in Interboro Partners’ “Holding Pattern” courtyard installation.

AN EVENING WITH PRESTON SINGLETARY

National Museum of the American Indian
George Gustave Heye Center, One Bowling Green
Thursday, August 25, free, 6:00
212-514-3700
www.nmai.si.edu
www.prestonsingletary.com

Tlingit artist Preston Singletary will be at the National Museum of the American Indian on August 25 at 6:00 to talk about his stunning exhibit, “Echoes, Fire, and Shadows.” Running through September 5, the midcareer retrospective consists of more than fifty glass sculptures and a wall mural that trace the artist’s twenty years of making ornamental, ceremonial, and unusual glass-blown and painted objects. “I sometimes hope that people will view my work on other levels not associated with ‘ethnic art,’” Singletary explains. “At the same time, it is this inspiration that gives my work its power. I see my work as an extension of tradition and a declaration that Native cultures are alive and developing new technologies and new ways of communicating the ancient codes and symbols of this land.” Also on view at the museum are “Small Spirits: Dolls from the National Museum of the American Indian” and “Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian.”

FÜNF RÄUME

Esther Stocker’s black foam core interrupts a white space in unusual and unexpected ways(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Austrian Cultural Forum
11 East 52nd St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Daily through September 5, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-319-5300
www.acfny.org
fünf räume slideshow

For “Fünf Räume,” or “Five Rooms,” the Austrian Cultural Forum invited a group of emerging Austrian artists to create site-specific installations in five gallery spaces, transforming four floors of the unusual Midtown glass tower, which was designed by Raimund Abraham. Curated by David Harper and Andreas Stadler, the works evoke politics, spirituality, and everyday life while questioning the nature of space. On the first floor, Italian-born Esther Stocker has attached black masking tape and foam core to the ceiling, which will continue to droop through the duration of the exhibition, closing in on visitors. Clemens Hollerer has placed broken slats of wood, painted in red, white, and blue, along the stairway wall, an ineffective barrier that was unable to serve its purpose, the colors evoking America (and perhaps the freedom given the artists to create whatever they wanted for the exhibition). Zenita Komad and Michael Kienzler have collaborated on “The Empty Mirror,” a chess-inspired collection of sixteen mirrored chairs that bounce light, words, and numbers onto the walls in a dizzying display of self-reflection. Komad and Kienzler, along with Sabine Kienzler, also made the untitled video at the entrance, showing a typewriter tapping out the New Testament quotation “At the beginning was the word” in both English and German. For “Adaption,” in the lower level, Valentin Ruhry created nonworking replicas of electrical outlets, light switches, and a temperature gauge, finding art in the most mundane of places while also examining functionality. Across from that, Ruhry greets viewers with an MDF panel that announces, “Hello World.” In the back of that room, Vancouver-born Daniel Domig’s “The Eyes Are Not Here, There Are No Eyes Here” combines painting and sculpture in a wooden construction that challenges the way paintings are usually displayed, revealing both sides of them within an interlocking series of wooden beams that makes them less accessible. And on the top floor, Italian-born Stocker has redesigned an all-white space in three dimensions, filling it with geometric shapes, made of black foam core, hanging from the ceiling, sticking out of the walls, and rising from the floor. Visitors can walk through this disconcerting room, a sort of artistic maze that comments on the fragility of life and art. “Fünf Räume” is an engaging yet confrontational exhibit that needs to be traversed very carefully. There will be curator-led gallery talks of the exhibit, which ends September 5, on August 24, 26, and 31 at 5:00.

EVA ROTHSCHILD: EMPIRE

Eva Rothschild’s “Empire” spiders over Central Park entrance (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Scholars’ Gate, Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Central Park entrance, 60th St. & Fifth Ave.
Through August 28
646-862-0933
www.publicartfund.org
empire slideshow

For her first U.S. public commission, Dublin-born artist Eva Rothschild has constructed the site-specific “Empire,” ruling over the Scholars’ Gate entrance to Central Park at 60th St. & Fifth Ave. Evoking both Franz West’s 2009 “The Ego and the Id” at the same location and Louise Bourgeois’s “Spiders,” which dominated Rockefeller Center ten years ago, “Empire” twists and turns like the nearby tree branches in the park. Although it looks fragile, it is made of four-inch-diameter steel, planting itself in the ground at ten spots, forming an unusual archway inviting visitors into the park. Rothschild, who lives and works in London, has painted the winding structure in three colors, a band of black followed by either red or green, echoing the green trees, the dark branches, the windows of the surrounding buildings, and even the traffic lights. “The Plaza is a threshold,” Rothschild says of the piece, which reaches nearly twenty feet high, “and the work aims not to congest the space but to heighten awareness of the shift that takes place when one steps out of the street and into the park. It should become another gateway between two different worlds of urban experience.” This is the last week to walk under and around and touch the welcoming sculpture, which will be up through August 28.

57th STREET ART CRAWL

Leo Villareal, “Cylinder,” white LEDs, mirror-finished stainless steel, custom software, electrical hardware, 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Phillips de Pury & other locations
450 Park Ave. at 57th St.
Thursday, August 18, $25, crawl 5:30 – 8:00, cocktail reception 8:00 – 10:00
www.artlog.com

Phillips de Pury, the Humble Arts Foundation, and Artlog have teamed up with six local galleries for this summer’s 57th St. Art Crawl, being held on August 18. Ticket holders first check in to the auction house’s new space on Park Ave. and 57th St., then can head over to Gering & López, where gallery associate director Julie Bills will give a talk at 6:00 on Leo Villareal’s glittering “Cylinder,” a dazzling installation composed of more than twenty thousand white LED nodes, more than 160 vertical rods, and a mirror at the top. At 6:30, art writer Kristen Lorello will discuss the group exhibition “Damnatio Memoriae (or) Creating Memory” at Greenberg van Doren, consisting of works by goldiechiari, Sissi, Cesare Pietroiusti, and Giacinto Occhionero. At 7:00 at Marian Goodman, Dara Birnbaum will discuss her current exhibit, “Arabesque,” a multichannel installation that features YouTube videos of people playing “Arabesque Opus 18,” composed by Robert Schumann for his wife, Clara, and “Romanze 1, Opus 11,” composed by Clara for Robert, along with clips from Clarence Brown’s 1947 biopic Song of Love, in which Katharine Hepburn plays Clara and Paul Henreid portrays Robert. In addition, several other galleries will remain open late, including David Findlay Jr. Fine Art (which is showing the group exhibition “Summerset”), Frederico Seve (“Gego: Prints & Drawings 1963 -1991”), and Pace/MacGill (“Wanna See My Portfolio?”). The evening concludes with a cocktail party back at Phillips de Pury, where crawlers will receive a copy of the Humble Arts Foundation’s The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Vol. 2.

THE HUGO BOSS PRIZE 2010: HANS-PETER FELDMANN

Hans-Peter Feldmann has decorated the Guggenheim’s Tower Gallery with one hundred thousand one-dollar bills, the exact value of the Hugo Boss Prize (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday – Wednesday through November 2, $18 includes audioguide (pay what you wish Saturdays 5:45-7:45)
212-423-3500
www.guggenheim.org

What would you do if someone came up to you and gave you a cool hundred grand? German visual artist Hans-Peter Feldmann was faced with just that troubling dilemma when he was awarded a $100,000 honorarium as the latest winner of the Guggenheim’s biennial Hugo Boss Prize. The seventy-year-old conceptualist, known for works that involve collecting found objects and photographs and sequencing them in unique and unusual installations, converted the six-figure check into one hundred thousand one-dollar bills that had been in circulation, then had his assistants pin them in overlapping rows across every inch of wall space as well as the two poles in the Guggenheim’s Tower Gallery. The exhibition, on view through November 2, can be taken on many levels, from a commentary on the intrinsic commercial value of art to the Warholian conceit of the physical act of creation, which in this case is the U.S. Treasury and Feldmann’s assistants. To complicate things even further, museumgoers are generally not allowed to touch art, and that is the case here; however, since each of the bills has been in circulation, it is quite possible that some visitors have at one time or another actually “owned” one or more of the bills and contributed to their evolution from crisp and firm to raggedy and well worn. In addition, the financial display is a playful tease to a public suffering from one of the nation’s worst economic crises since its founding, with the visage of the Father of Our Country, George Washington, repeated around the gallery, reminding visitors of the responsibility of its political leaders. But no matter what Feldmann’s specific intentions are, his Hugo Boss Prize installation is a breathtaking wonderland of excess — as well as a splendid complement to the Guggenheim’s main current exhibition, Lee Ufan’s deeply philosophical and very personal “Marking Infinity.”

XAVIER CHA: BODY DRAMA

Jennie Epland performs Xavier Cha’s “Body Drama” at the Whitney (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through October 9
Admission: $12-$18 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays from 6:00 to 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
www.xaviercha.com

Xavier Cha blurs the line between performer and audience, live and recorded action, and public and private space, calling into question what is being witnessed in her multimedia installation “Body Drama.” Every hour on the hour beginning at 12 noon on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday and 3:00 on Friday, one of eleven actors straps on a specially made body-mounted camera that extends in front of them, focused on their face. For twenty minutes, the performer wanders around the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Gallery, acting as if they are seeing something terrible. The all-white space is empty save for a diagonal wall cutting across one side, dividing the location in an uneven, off-balance way. The actor can writhe on the floor, twist slowly along the walls, get trapped in the corners, all the while looking terrified. During the performance, visitors are allowed to move within the gallery, watching but not actually interacting. It’s a disconcerting experience, looking at a person frightened by something that you can’t see even though you are in the same general area. It also breaks down the usual barrier between the performer onstage and the audience in their seats, making the viewer’s emotional and physical involvement that much more palpable. After the actor leaves the gallery, a carefully edited video of a previous performance is screened on the diagonal wall, but in this case only the face is visible, offering a completely different perspective on the fear that overtakes the performers and confounds the viewer, becoming even more visceral. In some ways, it even makes the viewer feel responsible, as if maybe they could have saved the terrified performer, but after having done nothing is forced to watch the results of their inaction. Born in Los Angeles in 1980 and based in New York City, Cha has challenged the expectations of the viewer amid unusual spaces in such previous works as “Topiary Tags,” “Looking Glass,” “Two-Way Mirror,” and “Portal”; in “Body Drama,” she once again confronts the audience, forcing them to question both what they are seeing and what they are feeling, resulting in a complex, captivating experience. (Also at the Whitney right now is the splendid “Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World,” the innovative “Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools,” and the fascinating “More Than That: Films by Kevin Jerome Everson.”)