this week in art

AI WEIWEI: CIRCLE OF ANIMALS / ZODIAC HEADS

Ai Weiwei’s intricate “Zodiac Heads” are on view in the Pulitzer Fountain through July 15 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Pulitzer Fountain
Grand Army Plaza at Central Park
Fifth Ave. at West 58th St.
Through July 15, free
www.zodiacheads.com
online slideshow

On April 3, artist Ai Weiwei was arrested by the Chinese government, with little information about his whereabouts. An international Free Ai Weiwei campaign began, and on June 22 he was finally released on bail, having been charged with tax evasion, but that is far from the end of the story. “Despite the relief that Ai Weiwei is back with his family,” German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said, “it remains a fact that his freedom is subject to oppressive restrictions.” As German politicians meet with Chinese officials to discuss human rights concerns, Ai Weiwei will remain in Beijing, where he has been ordered to stay for a period of one year. You can honor the onetime New Yorker, who lived here from 1981 to 1993, by visiting his first public installation in a major U.S. city, “Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads,” which is on view in the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza through July 15. Based on a dozen sculptures designed by Giuseppe Castiglione as part of a water-clock fountain for the Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yanming Yuan) for the Qing dynasty in the mid-eighteenth century — and was looted and burned by British and French troops at the conclusion of the Second Opium War in 1860 — the large-scale work features twelve bronze animal heads, each relating to a sign of the zodiac. The intricately detailed heads range from the rat, the ox, and the tiger to the rabbit, the snake, and the horse, from the ram, the rooster, and the monkey to the dog, the boar, and the most fanciful, the dragon.

Ai Weiwei is not seeking to make any grand statements with the fun display, which incorporates history, war, memory, folklore, and astrology. “I think it’s something that everyone can have some understanding of, including children and people who are not in the art world. I think it’s important to show your work to the public. That’s what I really care about,” Ai Weiwei explains in the exhibition catalog, which includes a photo of each head and a description of that zodiac sign, along with an essay by Susan Delson and excerpts of interviews with the artist about the project. “Anybody can make a set of zodiac figures,” he continues. “We never change the subject, we always change the interpretation. . . . I am always concerned with how we make judgments. And in questioning others’ judgment, and also questioning my judgment. And always saying art is not the end but the beginning. Art is not the end. The product is never the end but should be the beginning. Otherwise art has no life.” Thus, just as with Ai Weiwei’s personal freedom, “Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads” should not be seen as the end of the story.

DONALD JUDD

Installation view, “Donald Judd,” David Zwirner, New York, 2011 (Judd Art © Judd Foundation. Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photos by Tim Nighswander / IMAGING4ART)

David Zwirner
525/533 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Saturday, June 25, free
212-727-2070
www.davidzwirner.com
www.juddfoundation.org

In 1989, Donald Judd presented a major installation at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden of a dozen large-scale open-box floor works that featured color, a rarity for Judd in pieces that size. David Zwirner has gathered together nine of the works and spread them throughout his connected galleries at 525 and 533 West Nineteenth St., along with several of the minimalist artist’s pencil and ballpoint sketches of the original layout. Each of the nine untitled Menziken boxes are an identical 39.375 x 78.75 x 78.75, composed of anodized aluminum, with different-colored Plexiglas panels inside. The black, blue, and amber sheets, not all placed in the same locations within each box, react with the brightness from the ceiling skylights to project changing reflections against the inner sides of the rectangle boxes, as if they’re alive. Thus, Judd has reshaped the space inside and outside, within each individual box as well as of the gallery space itself, in a quiet yet dynamic presentation. The show concludes June 25 with a pair of special screenings held at 519 West Nineteenth St., where, from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm, Zwirner will show Michael Blackwood’s 2010 documentary The Artist’s Studio: Donald Judd, consisting of footage of Judd (1928-94) from his homes in SoHo in 1972 and in Marfa, Texas, in 1975. That will be followed at 1:00, 3:00, and 5:00 by the 2010 film Marfa Voices, in which director Rainer Judd, the artist’s daughter, speaks with people who knew her father in Marfa. An advance RSVP to mackie@davidzwirner.com or 212-727-2070 ext122 is required for Marfa Voices, which will be introduced by the filmmaker and followed by a Q&A; a reception will follow the 5:00 screening.

BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL 2011

RACING TOWARDS RED HOOK is one of the highlights of the Bicycle Film Festival

Spencer Brownstone, 3 Wooster St. at Canal St.
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave. at Second St.
June 23-26
Tickets: $10 per film, Sunday pass $20 (all four programs), festival pass $40 (all programs)
www.bicyclefilmfestival.com

While New Yorkers continue their ever-present debate over the viability of bicycles and bike lanes in Manhattan, the Bicycle Film Festival rolled into town last night with a kickoff party at Santos Party House, and the festivities continue tonight with the opening of the Joyride Art Show at Spencer Brownstone, featuring bike-related imagery from such artists as Albert Maysles, Cheryl Dunn, Edwin De La Rosa, Jake Klotz, Leo Fitzpatrick, Mimi Gross, Mint and Serf, and Ryan Humphrey, followed by an after-party at Lit Lounge with Frances Rose, Unsolved Mysteries, Imaginary Friends, and DJs Dirtyfinger, Ramblinworker, and Joshua Wildman & Fancy. Screenings get under way Friday night at Anthology Film Archives, three days of film and video that involve bicycles, from Rob Luehrs’s one-minute commercial, Crazy About You, to Richard Press’s highly praised Bill Cunningham New York, from Lori Samsel’s stop-motion animated Snack Track, made with Japanese rice crackers, to Ben Lenzner’s The Backwards Rider, from Jessica Scott & Hyde Harper’s Racing Towards Red Hook, about a brakes-free race, to Spike Jonze’s Mark on Allen, in which skateboarder Mark Gonzales tries a series of tricks on Allen St. Friday night’s Program 2 will include a live performance by Richard Barone, with background video by Jonas Mekas. And on Saturday, the BFF Street Party will feature special activities and vendors, a BMX Jam, and more.

APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL: PRIMITIVE

Apichatpong Weerasethakul installation at New Museum is an enlightening experience

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through July 3, $12 (Thursdays free 7:00 – 9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
www.animateprojects.org

Light and memory are the driving forces behind Thai visual artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s exhilarating “Primitive” installation, on view at the New Museum through July 3. Over his nearly decade-long career, Weerasethakul has made beautiful, slow-paced, bittersweet films that combine dreamlike imagery with nature and deep personal introspection. In such works as Blissfully Yours (2002), Tropical Malady (2004), Syndromes and a Century (2006), and his latest, the subtly elegant Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), Weerasethakul creates involving, atmospheric tales that often include elements of magical realism while blurring the lines between past, present, and future. “Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Primitive” takes a similar course through a collection of nine interrelated short films set in the rural farming village of Nabua, the site of political and social upheaval and military intervention during the 1960s and ’70s. The hypnotic works, some screened in their own room, others shown en masse in a central area, meld fact and fiction, fantasy and reality. In Making of the Spaceship, members of the community build a time-travel clubhouse; in A Dedicated Machine, the resulting spaceship continuously rises in the distant horizon.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul explores reincarnation and transformation in multimedia installation

In I’m Still Breathing, teens run down a street and jump on a moving truck as a power-pop song by Modern Dog blasts away; in Phantoms of Nabua, a group of kids play around at night with a fireball, kicking it around until it reveals a projector behind a cloth screen. In An Evening Shoot, teens with a rifle pretend to shoot a friend walking through a grassy rice field, while in Nabua Song, a man pays tribute to Nabua’s military heroes. In the two-channel Primitive, a man relates a La Jetée–like story involving a legendary widow ghost, bathed in deep blacks and blurry reds. The slow, calm pace of the films are all interrupted by the crashing images and sounds of Nabua, as bolts of lightning rattle down from the sky, lighting up the village. According to Weerasethakul, “‘Primitive’ is about reincarnation and transformation. It’s a celebration of destructive force in nature and in us that burns in order to be reborn and mutate.” Take your time as you make your way around “Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Primitive,” an inventive, enlightening installation that offers myriad rewards, sometimes in the minutest of details, from one of the world’s most creative and innovative filmmakers. (Also on view at the New Museum is “Gustav Metzger: Historic Photographs,” David Medalla’s “Cloud Canyon no. 14,” and “Museum as Hub: The Incongruous Image Marcel Broodthaers and Liliana Porter.”)

RICHARD DUPONT

Richard Dupont offers visitors a look inside his creative process at Carolina Nitsch Project Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Carolina Nitsch Project Room
534 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through Saturday, June 25, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-645-2030
www.carolinanitsch.com
exhibition slideshow

Over the last several years, native New York artist Richard Dupont has displayed polyurethane versions of himself, which he calls “anti-self-portraits,” that challenge conventional perspective, changing as the viewer walks around them. If you were wondering what was inside his head to come up with such awe-inspiring statuary, which has been shown at Lever House, the FLAG Art Foundation, and Carolina Nitsch, among other venues, you can find out through Saturday in his second solo exhibition at the Carolina Nitsch Project Gallery in Chelsea. Once again experimenting with form, process, and material, Dupont has created a series of transparent resin heads filled with the detritus of his life, from found objects and garbage to items from his studio and empty beer cans, from photos and aluminum foil to candy wrappers and cords. Evoking thought and memory through seemingly random chaos, the colorful self-portrait busts are like individual time capsules; you’ll wonder what kind of stuff is in your own head as you wander around these unique sculptural representations of the human mind.

SUMMER OPEN HOUSE

PS1 will celebrate summer with an open house today (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Sunday, June 19, suggested admission $10 (free for LIC residents and MoMA admission ticket holders), 12 noon – 5:00 pm
718-784-2084
www.ps1.org
summer open house sneak peek

MoMA PS1 opens its summer season with an open house today, featuring art, music, drinks, and more. They will officially unveil the new courtyard installation, a fun and fancy-free design by Interboro Partners & WHATAMI by start called “Holding Pattern” that includes Ping-Pong, foosball, kiddie pools, a sandbox, oak and plum trees, white ribbons, and a cool mirror area, nearly all of which will be donated to the local community at the end of the summer. Today is also the opening of “Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever,” a series of wild rooms displaying Trecartin’s unique films that take an unusual look at contemporary culture. Among the other exhibitions on view is Laurel Nakadate’s “Only the Lonely,” in which the New York-based photographer and filmmaker comments on femininity, loneliness, sexuality, and desire, centering on human contact that is disappearing in this age of social media; her “365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears,” comprising large-scale photographs she took of herself crying every day for a year, is simply overwhelming. If you’ve never seen Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 highly spiritual freak-out, The Holy Mountain, PS1 is screening it daily at 12 noon, 2:00, and 4:00 through June 30, accompanied by the cult filmmaker’s wacky annotated screenplay. PS1 pays tribute to early female video pioneers in “Modern Women: Single Channel,” comprising seminal work by such cutting-edge artists as Lynda Benglis, Dara Birnbaum, VALIE EXPORT, Joan Jonas, Pipilotti Rist, and Carolee Schneeman, many of whom frequently turned the cameras on themselves well before there was any such thing as American Idol, Survivor, or The Amazing Race. It’ll be hard not to think of the Gimp from Pulp Fiction as you make your way around “Nancy Grossman: Heads,” comprising Grossman’s black-leather-wrapped bondage-like life-size head sculptures from the late 1960s and early 1970s. And the second half of the dual MoMA/PS1 exhibition “Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception” is highlighted by the magnificent film Guards and a collection of camera guns in the café that you are allowed to pick up. Music will be provided by DJ Total Freedom, and artist Clifford Owens will give a special musical performance held all around PS1.

NORTHSIDE FESTIVAL: DAY FOUR

Shark? made a big splash at last year’s Northside Festival and are back for more on Sunday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Northside Festival
Multiple venues in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
June 16-19
www.northsidefestival.com

The Northside Festival is back June 16-19 following an outstanding launch last year. The festival features four days of indie music at venues all over Greenpoint and Williamsburg, in addition to film screenings and open art studios. There are hundreds of bands, so don’t get too frustrated if one of the shows you wanted to see is already sold out; festival badges are gone as well, but there’s still lots to choose from. We’ll be featuring highlights and recommendations every day of the festival; here are today’s as the festival comes to a close:

East River Ferry, East 34th St. and the East River to North Eighth St. in North Williamsburg, approximately every twenty minutes from 9:00 am to 8:30 pm, free through June 24

DIY Film Festival: Mumford Farms: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Soybeans (Anna Mumford) and Echotone (Nathan Christ), followed by Q&As with the directors, UnionDocs, 322 Union Ave., $9, 8:00

PopGun presents Doris Cellar (8:00), Cookies (8:45), Blair (9:30), Air Waves (10:15), Asobi Seksu (11:00), Glasslands Gallery, 289 Kent Ave., $15

NYCTaper & Pop Tarts Suck Toasted present the Loom (9:00), Shark? (10:00), Household (10:45), Neighbors (11:30), and Young Adults (12:45), Public Assembly back room, 70 North Sixth St., $10

Northside Open Studios: India Street Art Festival, with Strand, Snowmine, Appomattox, Conversations with Enemies, and Photon Dynamo & the Shiny Pieces, India St. between West St. & the East River, free, 12 noon – 5:00