this week in art

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE 2011

The walls of the CRG Gallery in Chelsea will be filled with affordable postcard art this weekend to benefit Visual AIDS

A BENEFIT FOR VISUAL AIDS
CRG Gallery
548 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
January 7 preview party: $85 (includes one raffle ticket), 6:00 – 8:00
January 8-9, suggested admission $5
www.thebody.com

The annual Postcards from the Edge benefit for Visual AIDS, the nonprofit organization that uses the arts to continue to fight the disease, is like finding one more present under the tree after the holidays have seemingly come and gone. Now in its thirteenth year, Postcards from the Edge features original postcard-size works of art from more than fifteen hundred established and emerging artists, each one available for only eighty-five dollars. However, you initially will have no idea whether you’ve acquired a one-of-a-kind piece from a famous international art star or an up-and-coming newbie, since attendees can only see the front of the postcard, not the back (until you buy it), where it is signed by the artist. It’s really the purest way to purchase art, selecting something you like instead of just looking for a famous name who might be worth much more than you paid. But the famous names are plenty: Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Wil Barnet, Ross Bleckner, Lesley Dill, Alfredo Jaar, Jeff Koons, Christian Marclay, Marilyn Minter, Yoko Ono, Tom Otterness, Mickalene Thomas, Bill Viola, John Waters, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, and so many more. Of course, at a mere eighty-five bucks, you can’t go wrong no matter whose work you pick out. And as a bonus, if you buy four on Saturday (10:00 am- 6:00 pm), you get a fifth free, while on Sunday (12 noon – 4:00), with the choices dwindling down, you get a third free with the purchase of two. On Friday night there is a two-hour preview cocktail party at which you get an advance look at what’s on the wall but cannot actually buy anything yet; each attendee gets a raffle ticket to see who will select the first postcard, and the top ten bidders at the silent auction of small pieces by Larissa Bates, Nicole Eisenman, Harmony Hammond, David Humphrey, and Marc Swanson will get the next ten spots. In addition, you’ll get to mingle with other collectors, gallerists, many of the artists, and such celebrity guests as Alan Cumming, Trisha Brown, Tony Feher, John Kelly, Burt Barr, Slava Mogutin, Brian Kenny, and Richard Renaldi.

CULTUREMART ’11

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya's FLOATING POINT WAVES is part of HERE's annual Culturemart festival

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
January 7-23, $15
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Culturemart, the annual festival of workshop productions by HERE’s resident artists, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with another slate of diverse experimental shows incorporating theater, dance, film, music, and audience interaction. Things get under way January 7-8 with Laura Peterson’s GROUND, the second part of her Wooden trilogy, in which a dance quartet performs within living grass and trees. Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, artistic directors of the New York Butoh Festival, will present the immersive, multimedia FLOATING POINT WAVES. Betty Shamieh makes the murdered Arab from Albert Camus’s THE STRANGER the main character in the mysterious THE STRANGEST. A community of artists — as well as the audience — are all part of the interactive LUSH VALLEY, which seeks to reclaim the American dream. THE VENUS RIFF riffs on the Venus Hottentot. Democracy takes center stage in Aaron Landsman’s participatory CITY COUNCIL MEETING. Deborah Stein and Suli Holum investigate a woman who is her own twin in CHIMERA. Kamala Sankaram’s chamber opera MIRANDA mixes reality television with hip-hop and Hindustani classical music. And Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith uses puppetry to look at the sacred in EPYLLION, among other shows running through January 23, with all tickets a mere $15.

JOHN BALDESSARI: PURE BEAUTY

John Baldessari, “The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building / Person on Ledge of Tall Building / Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building,” digital prints with acrylic on Sintra, 2003 (Ringier Collection, Switzerland / © John Baldessari)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, second floor
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 9 (open Monday, September 6)
Recommended admission: $20 adults, children under twelve free
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

California-based artist and teacher John Baldessari helped put the capital “C” in Conceptual art. For more than half a century, the seventy-nine-year-old Baldessari has been creating a fascinating mélange of visual and text-based imagery, a vaunting vocabulary all his own incorporating paintings, found objects, photographs, videos, and an anarchistic philosophy into collages and installations that examine popular culture, sociopolitical ideology, and the making and perception of art itself. “Pure Beauty,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 9, is an engaging retrospective of more than one hundred works from throughout Baldessari’s continually evolving career. “Cremation Project” houses the ashes from early paintings that he purposely destroyed in a mortuary. In the short film “I Am Making Art,” Baldessari repeats the title over and over as he rearranges himself in different positions, while in “I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art” he writes the title statement again and again, and the exhibition supports both declarations. He appropriates images from the news and Hollywood and adds unique touches in such pieces as “Violent Space Series: Two Stares Making a Point but Blocked by a Plane (for Malevich),” “Heel,” and “The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building / Person on Ledge of Tall Building / Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building.” In such works as “Kiss/Panic,” “Man and Woman with Bridge,” and “Pelicans Staring at Woman with Nose Bleeding,” Baldessari juxtaposes images from different sources, resulting in brand-new noirish narratives filled with Hitchcockian delight. He often adds color elements to black-and-white photographs and collages, as in “The Overlap Series: Jogger (with Cosmic Event),” while color becomes the primary subject in such works as “Six Colorful Inside Jobs” and “Prima Facie (Fifth State): Warm Brownie / American Cheese / Carrot Stick / Black Bean Soup / Perky Peach / Leek.” Even when Baldessari comes off as simply cheesy or silly, as in a series of framed pictures intentionally hung unevenly, it’s still fun to look at. “Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time,” Baldessari once said. There are a lot worse ways to kill some time by immersing yourself in this beguiling survey at the Met.

STOP, REPAIR, PREPARE: VARIATIONS ON “ODE TO JOY” FOR A PREPARED PIANO

Evan Shinners is one of six pianists who are performing Allora & Calzadilla’s moving “Stop, Repair, Prepare” in the MoMA atrium through January 10 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

PERFORMANCE 9: ALLORA & CALZADILLA
Museum of Modern Art
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor
Hourly starting at 10:30 or 11:30 am
Through January 10 (closed Tuesdays; Fridays free from 4:00 to 8:00)
Admission: $20 (includes same-day film screening)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
performance 9 slideshow

Philadelphia native Jennifer Allora and Havana-born Guillermo Calzadilla have been collaborating since 1993 on multidisciplinary conceptual installations that question the very nature of art and authorship. For their latest piece, “Stop, Repair, Prepare,” the ninth in MoMA’s ongoing Performance Exhibition Series, which has previously featured such artists as Yvonne Rainer, Roman Ondák, Fischerspooner, Joan Jonas, and William Kentridge, Allora & Calzadilla have built a rather unique piano that will reside in the second-floor Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium through January 10. The piano has a hole in its center (with two octaves removed), where one of six pianists, every hour on the half hour, will enter from below and then play the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s 1824 Ninth Symphony by leaning out over the keyboard, which they approach backward. In addition, the piano is on wheels, so the performer will also push the instrument around the atrium while playing the familiar piece, bearing the heavy weight of a work that comes with quite a history: The Fourth Movement, better known as “Ode to Joy” and based on a 1785 German poem written by Friedrich Schiller, has served as the national anthem for the European Union and Rhodesia, has been featured in such films as CLOCKWORK ORANGE and DIE HARD, was conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, was appropriated by the Nazis in concentration camps during WWII, and has been a longtime staple of New Year’s day concerts. In fact, on New Year’s Day, three of the six pianists — Jun Sun, Amir Khosrowpour, and Evan Shinners — performed the piece (the other three are Midori Yamamura, Mia Elezovic, and Terezija Cukrov), each following a different arrangement chosen especially for them. Juilliard graduate Shinners, who is the host of the online radio show “This Is E.S.,” a published poet, cofounder of the artists collective known as the New Cull, and leader of the band the Suits!, played a kind of classical punk version, banging at the keyboard while the audience surrounded him, taking photos and following him around the space. Afterward he gushed to twi-ny about how excited he is to be part of the project and how he feeds off the adrenaline rush of the crowd. Calzadilla, who with Allora will represent the United States at the fifty-fourth annual Venice Biennale later this year, has called “Stop, Repair, Prepare” a “moving experience,” and indeed it is, on several levels. Don’t get too caught up in trying to capture the performance with your camera; just get lost in the uniqueness of the event and try not to get hit by the piano as it heads right at you.

NEW YEAR’S DAY FREE AT THE COOPER-HEWITT

Admission to the Cooper-Hewitt will be free on New Year’s Day (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
2 East 91st St. at Fifth Ave.
Saturday, January 1, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-849-8400
www.cooperhewitt.org

As we said back around Labor Day weekend, the last time the Cooper-Hewitt offered free admission, we’ve never quite understood why the National Design Museum isn’t free all the time, like the National Museum of the American Indian downtown and all the Smithsonian museums in DC. But we don’t have to worry about that on New Year’s Day, when the institution once again will open its doors for free. (Admission is usually $15.) Currently the Cooper-Hewitt is finishing up its fourth National Design Triennial, “Why Design Now?” which continues through January 9. The exhibit focuses on such themes as energy, mobility, community, health, communication, and simplicity, looking at social housing, charging stations, cargo carriers, LED replacements, tableware, threshers, and the ripple effect. Also on view is “Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection.”

SCOTT BURTON

A daring burst of color enlivens Scott Burton exhibit at Meulensteen (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Meulensteen
511 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Friday through January 8, free
212-691-4342
www.meulensteen.com
scott burton slideshow

Chances are that you not only have seen work by Scott Burton without realizing it, but you might have actually sat in it as well. Born in Alabarma in 1938, Burton, who died of AIDS in New York City in 1989, is most well known for his public art projects, which primarily consist of functional urban plazas with chairs, benches, and even trash receptacles. His installations can be found at the the Sheepshead Bay Fishing Piers, the World Financial Center Plaza in Battery Park City, and inside the old AXA Equitable Center (“Atrium Furnishment”) and outside the old PaineWebber (now UBS) Building across the street. Inspired by Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi and Dutch furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld, Burton studied with Leon Berkowitz and at Hans Hofmann’s painting school, all of which play a role in his minimalist creations, several of which are currently on view at the Meulensteen gallery in Chelsea (formerly Max Protetch). Curated by Nina Felshin, Burton’s project coordinator and archivist from 1985 to 1989, the exhibit’s centerpiece is “Three-Quarter Cube Benches,” four red-granite chairs arranged in a circle, looking as if they are in the midst of their own conversation, no people needed. The white, regal “Marble Armchair” is like a throne worthy of a statue of Abraham Lincoln, while the rolled-steel “Two Curve Chair” appears much more fragile. (Don’t try sitting on any of the objects, by the way.) “Five-Part Storage Cubes” recalls Donald Judd, who also made functional art-furniture; adding a burst of color to the front showroom, each of the interconnected red, yellow, blue, green and orange pieces opens up, but don’t do it yourself, as it’s strictly hands off, which is one of the reasons why the exhibit is so intriguing. Visitors might want to take a seat in the lacquered pine “Lawn Chair (Adirondack Chair),” open a box, maybe even have tea on Burton’s red-granite “Cafe Table” but, of course, can’t, blurring the line between form and function, art and furniture.

EASY STREET — NYE

Dixon Place
161 A Chrystie St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Friday, December 31, $20, 9:00
212-219-0736
www.dixonplace.org

There’s plenty of good reason why this intimate New Year’s Eve party is for twenty-one and older only. Organized by cabaret kaiser Earl Dax and visual artist Liz Liguori, Easy Street at Dixon Place will feature avant-garde performance artist Penny Arcade and John (HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH) Cameron (SHORTBUS) Mitchell in addition to Glenn Marla, Carol Lipnik, Enid Ellen, Billy Pelt, and Will Larche. DJs Tusk, K!O, and Gant Johnson will keep things thumping, along with contributions from costume designer Machine (Pussy-on-My-Shoulder) Dazzle and designer Diego Montoya. Dixon Place is calling it “low-key . . . with the requisite glitz and glam,” so be ready for anything. Tickets are only twenty bucks, so it’s also one of the most affordable gatherings in town.