this week in art

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.”)

FLOAT: FIELD OF DREAMS

Socrates Sculpture Park
Vernon Blvd. & Broadway, Long Island City
Sunday, August 7, free, 1:00 – 5:00
Continues August 12, 13, 14, 21, 28
718-956-1819
www.socratessculpturepark.org

Socrates Sculpture Park’s summer biennial, “Float: Field of Dreams,” begins today with a series of site-specific performances in the beautiful Long Island City space. Curated by Cleopatra’s, the six-day series features works by such artists as Martin Soto Climent, Jules Gimbrone, MGM Grand, Stephen Lichty, Erica Magrey, Rachel Mason, Baker Overstreet, Georgia Sagri, Chris Verene: The Self-Esteem Salon with Jessica Grable, J. Patrick Walsh III, and Geo Wyeth. Among Sunday’s special events are “Jar Jar Stinky & Patchez present ZINE BRUNCH!” at 1:00, in which visitors can trade newly made magazines with the artists; at 3:00, Wyeth and Gimbrone, with Karel Van Beekom and Reenat Pinchas, will perform Every Thing On Stage, which combines storytelling, Wyeth’s “Arguments and Meditations for Saxophone and Voice,” lip reading, and Joan of Arc; at 4:00, Overstreet, in his stage persona “June,” will perform a tribute to the moon with a junkyard band; and at 5:00, Walsh III will drive an aluminum backpack deep underground, evoking the park’s former life as a landfill. “Float” continues through the end of the month, with further performances scheduled for August 12, 13, 14, 21, and 28. Today is also the last day to see the spring show, “Vista”; also on view are “Broadway Billboard: COCO144, COKUN” and “Open Space: El Museo’s Bienial — The (S) Files.”

FIRST SATURDAYS: CARIBBEAN COUNTDOWN

The Cool and Deadly will play at Brooklyn Museum First Saturday program on August 6

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, August 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum is getting its annual Caribbean celebration under way early this year with a full slate of activities as part of its free August First Saturdays program. Things get going at 5:00 with Tribal Legacy leading a funky reggae get-down. At 6:00, visitors have their choice of curator Rich Aste giving a talk on the new acquisition “Free Women of Color With Their Children and Servants in a Landscape” and a screening of Frances-Anne Solomon’s 1995 Trinidad drama What My Mother Told Me. At 6:30, Trinidad native Hazelle Goodman will perform her one-woman show, Don’t Get Me Started, and the Hands-on Art workshop will offer participants the chance to decorate fabrics with Afro-Caribbean designs. At 7:00, NYU associate professor of anthropology Aisha Khan will discuss South Asian and Islamic cultural influences on the museum’s holdings. At 8:00, DJ Spice will get the monthly dance party going, with the Cool and Deadly and DJ Jillionaire highlighting the Afro-Punk Festival at 8:30. As always, the galleries are open until 11:00, giving everyone the chance to see such exhibitions as “Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior,” “reOrder: An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio,” “Lorna Simpson: Gathered,” “Skylar Fein: Black Lincoln for Dooky Chase,” “Split Second: Indian Paintings,” “Four Bathers by Degas and Bonnard,” and “Sam Taylor-Wood: Ghosts.”

STORM KING ART CENTER FAMILY DAY

Storm King Family Day will feature special activities for adults and children

Storm King Art Center
Old Pleasant Hill Road, Mountainville
Saturday, August 6, $8-$12, 10:00 am – 8:00 pm
www.stormking.org

As part of its continuing fiftieth anniversary celebration, Storm King Art Center will be hosting Family Day on Saturday, August 6. The beautiful indoor-outdoor museum, which features gorgeous sculptures placed throughout its five hundred acres, has scheduled a series of workshops, including one led by New York City sculptor Chakaia Booker; live classical music with a teaching element for kids; and other family-friendly entertainment and activities, all free with regular admission. Picnicking is allowed, and there will also be a special cookout available from the Storm King Café. If you don’t have a car, you can get to the Hudson Valley institution by Coach USA bus from Port Authority. At any given time you can find some 100 works of art from the collection situated all around the grounds, selected from approximately 150 of the most talented artists of the last hundred years, including Magdalena Abakanowicz, George Rickey, Carl Andre, Barbara Hepworth, Mia Westerlund Roosen, Lucas Samaras, Lynda Benglis, Donald Judd, Mel Kendrick, David Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Grace Knowlton, Fritz Koenig, Daniel Buren, Yayoi Kusama, Alexander Calder, Sol Lewitt, Maya Lin, Roy Lichtenstein, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Mark di Suvero, Jean Dubuffet, Henry Moore, Nam June Paik, Beverly Pepper, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Grosvenor, and Adolph Gottlieb. In addition, Storm King is currently showing “5+5: New Perspectives,” combining five artists from the permanent collection with five artists new to Storm King, and “The View from Here: Storm King at Fifty,” which looks at the center’s history. A day at Storm King is always a treat even without a special event, so Family Day should make it that much better.

SERGEI TCHEREPNIN: GIVING REIN

Audiovisual artist Sergei Tcherepnin will transform Murray Guy gallery with special performance on August 5

Murray Guy
453 West 17th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Friday, August 5, free, 7:00
212-463-7372
www.murrayguy.com

Inspired by French sociologist Bruno Latour’s 2005 tome Reassembling the Social, Murray Guy’s current exhibition, “A form is simply something which allows something else to be transported from one site to another,” examines uncertainty, association, displacement, and the boundaries of human perception, with contributions from Leonor Antunes, Gregg Bordowitz, Joachim Koester, Ulrike Müller, Hannah Rickards, John Smith, Sergei Tcherepnin, and Emily Wardill. The show closes on Friday, August 5, at 7:00 with a special free performance by Brooklyn-based audiovisual artist Tcherepnin, one of Issue Project Room’s 2012 artists-in-residence. Tcherepnin will play an eighteen-channel musical composition through flexible speakers made of such materials as paper, cardboard, aluminum, and copper that will transform throughout the space during the performance, offering each individual a unique sonic and visual experience.