this week in art

DanceAfrica 2022: HOMEGROWN

Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater will perform at BAM’s annual DanceAfrica festival

Who: Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, Farafina Kan, Harambe Dance Company, LaRocque Bey School of Dance, BAM/Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble, DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, more
What: DanceAfrica Festival 2022
Where: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.
When: May 21 – June 2, many events free, Gilman dances $12.50 – $85, film screenings $16
Why: The coming of summer means the arrival of one of the best festivals of every year, BAM’s DanceAfrica. The forty-fifth annual event features the theme “Homegrown,” with five companies making return visits to BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House: Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, Farafina Kan, Harambe Dance Company, and LaRocque Bey School of Dance, along with the BAM/Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble and DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, highlighting movement and music from Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and the Caribbean, accompanied by Arkestra Africa. Curated by artistic director Abdel R. Salaam, the festival also includes the Tribute to the Ancestors, Community Day, a Memorial Room, the DanceAfrica Bazaar with more than 150 vendors, dance workshops and master classes in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Mark Morris Dance Center, the Water Your Roots Youth Dance Expo & Talent Show, the Council of Elders Roundtable “Legacy & Preservation,” Christopher Myers’s stained-glass work Be Lost Well (Stay in the House All Day), and a late night dance party with DJ YB.

FilmAfrica runs May 27 to June 2, consisting of more than two dozen films, from Moussa Touré’s 1997 TGV (followed by a Q&A with Touré and Amy Andrieux), Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s 1996 When the Stars Meet the Sea, and Amleset Muchie’s 2019 Min Alesh! to Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s 2008 Sex, Okra, and Salted Butter, Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda’s 2006 Juju Factory, and Dumisani Phakathi’s Don’t F*** with Me, I Have 51 Brothers and Sisters.

THE GREAT DUMBO DROP

THE GREAT DUMBO DROP
DUMBO, Brooklyn
Saturday, May 21, free, 3:00 – 8:00
dumbo.is

DUMBO Drop 2022 is set for May 21, a block party with live music, food and drink, art, prizes, the testing of the wind, and elephants falling from the sky. Among this year’s performers and activities are a sing-along with the New York City Kids Club, tap-dancing by Camila Aldet, Glam Expressway, cheerleading, a fashion show, dancing to a brass band, DJ Kyndal Marie, jugglers, an FDNY photo zone, Melissa Joy Manning, Fogo Azul NYC, wine tastings, boxing demonstrations, face painting, archery, biking, and more. Such galleries as A.I.R. Gallery and Undercurrent Gallery will be hosting exhibitions and walkthroughs, along with an art wall curated by CAM and Jaimie Walker (who designed the 2022 souvenir elephant parachute), Talking Portraits with Doménica García, and raffles benefiting DUMBO’s Title I public schools, the Dock Street Middle School and PS307 Elementary School.

Among the participating eateries are Seamore’s, Superfine, Westville, Butler, Randolph Bar, Bread and Spread, Em Vietnamese Bistro, and Time Out Market. Be sure to get there by 5:00 when the elephants float through the air around Washington St., followed at 7:45 by the Disco Drop. You can get raffle tickets from $20 to $3,000 here, making you eligible for such prizes as a shopping spree, an ice-cream party, jewelry, a hotel staycation, and a rooftop party.

CITY LYRIC OPERA: THE GARDEN OF ALICE

Who: City Lyric Opera
What: American premiere of Elizabeth Raum’s The Garden of Alice
Where: Blue Building, 222 East Forty-Sixth St.
When: May 17-21, $35
Why: During the pandemic, City Lyric Opera staged a hybrid, interactive version of The Threepenny Opera that people could watch and participate in from the comfort of their homes. Now CLO returns to in-person events with the US premiere of Canadian composer Elizabeth Raum’s The Garden of Alice, an immersive, interactive, multisensory show that takes Alice, and the audience, down a digital rabbit hole of social media and into a hybrid Wonderland of live performances and kaleidoscopic landscapes. Despite the connection to Lewis Carroll’s beloved tale, this production is not meant for kids. Alice will be played by soprano Laura Soto-Bayomi, with bass-baritone Nate Mattingly as the White Rabbit, mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra as the Duchess and the Queen, soprano Gileann Tan as the Doormouse, and tenor Ryan Lustgarten, baritone Steve Valenzuela, bass Robert Feng, tenor Ramon Gabriel Tenefrancia, and mezzo-soprano Mary Rice in multiple roles.

“We wanted to pick an opera that is cheerful and colorful yet edgy and thought provoking,” CLO cofounder and executive director Megan Gillis said in a statement. “The Garden of Alice merges both the adult and child worlds in a mesmerizing, strange, and beautiful way. Alice finds herself alone, bored, and afraid — a frightening place we all recently visited collectively.” Raum has rescored the 1983 opera for a small chamber orchestra, featuring piano, violin, cello, clarinet, bassoon, and percussion. The presentation consists of an installation of prerecorded material and projections and the ninety-minute opera. “Similar to Alice, we are all entranced by the illusion of an idyllic place, only to discover it’s all fake and convoluted,” Gillis added. “Like Alice’s rabbit hole, we have all begun the journey into the metaverse with so much of today’s digital interactions.” The opera is directed by Attilio Rigotti, with music direction by Danielle Jagelski, video by Orsolya Szánthó, sets and costumes by Gaya Chatterjee, lighting by Jessica Wall, and sound by Evan Tyor.

ALFREDO JAAR EXHIBITION WALKTHROUGH: THE TEMPTATION TO EXIST

Alfredo Jaar, What Need Is There to Weep Over Parts of Life? The Whole of It Calls for Tears, neon, 2018 (photo courtesy Galerie Lelong)

Who: Alfredo Jaar, Carlos Basualdo
What: Exhibition walkthrough of “The Temptation to Exist”
Where: Galerie Lelong & Co., 528 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: Saturday, May 14, free with advance RSVP, 4:00
Why: Alfredo Jaar is one of the most provocative and innovative artists working today. Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1956 and based in New York City since 1982, the artist, architect, and filmmaker uses multimedia works to immerse viewers in the images and sounds of sociopolitical strife across the globe, exposing the lies associated with war, government control, rampant capitalism, and other issues. At the Whitney Biennial, people wait on line to experience his 06.01.2020 18.39, a video installation comprising footage from a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020, incorporating a bonus element that makes visitors feel like the helicopters are coming for them. His 2011 installation Three Women made a trio of female activists the focus of the media; it has since been expanded to thirty-three women. Neon projects declare, “I Can’t Go On / I’ll Go On,” “Be Afraid of the Enormity of Possibility,” and “This Is Not America.” Other potent projects include The Skoghall Konsthall, Culture = Capital, Shadows, and Lament of the Images.

His 2018 installation, What Need Is There to Weep Over Parts of Life? The Whole of It Calls for Tears, a quote from the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca, makes its New York debut on May 13 at Galerie Lelong as part of the exhibition “The Temptation to Exist.” The name of the show is inspired by Emil Cioran’s 1956 book of the same name; the Romanian philosopher wrote, “The universe is one big failure, and not even poetry can succeed in correcting it.” Dedicated to Italian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, who passed away in April at the age of eighty-seven, “The Temptation to Exist” features lightboxes, ink prints, and such neon phrases as “Gesamtkunstwerk” and “Other People Think.”

For the exhibit, Jaar has also curated works from more than sixty-five artists seeking change in the world, creating what he calls “a space of resistance, a space of hope.” Among those included are Dawoud Bey, Luis Camnitzer, Lygia Clark, Valie Export, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Félix González-Torres, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Emily Jacir, Joan Jonas, On Kawara, Glenn Ligon, Piero Manzoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat, Yoko Ono, Adam Pendleton, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Carolee Schneemann, Nancy Spero, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Lawrence Weiner, and Francesca Woodman.

There will be an opening reception on May 13 at 6:00; on May 14 at 4:00, Jaar will hold a public walkthrough of the exhibition, joined by Philadelphia Museum of Art senior curator Carlos Basualdo. Admission is free with advance registration. Don’t miss this rare chance to witness art history in the making.

CAPTURING HOLBEIN: THE ARTIST IN CONTEXT

Hans Holbein the Younger, A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?), oil on panel, ca. 1526–28 (National Gallery, London)

CAPTURING HOLBEIN: THE ARTIST IN CONTEXT
The Morgan Library & Museum, Gilder Lehrman Hall
225 Madison Ave. at Thirty-Sixth St.
Friday, May 6, $30, 2:00 – 6:30
“Capturing Holbein: The Artist in Context” continues through May 15
www.themorgan.org

“Welcome to the house / to the Haus of Holbein / Ja, ooh ja, das ist gut / Ooh ja, ja / The Haus of Holbein,” the characters sing in the hit Broadway musical Six, about the six wives of Henry VIII, the king for whom Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) was the court painter.

Hans Lützelburger, after designs by Hans Holbein the Younger, Death and the Judge, woodcuts, ca. 1526 (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1919)

Right now the Haus of Holbein is the Morgan Library, which is hosting the revelatory exhibition “Holbein: Capturing Character” through May 15. The German-Swiss Holbein was best known for his exquisitely detailed portraiture, including his remarkable 1527 depiction of Sir Thomas More, on loan here from the Frick. These portraits — A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?), A Member of the Wedigh Family, the miniatures Portrait of a Court Official of Henry VIII and Simon George, Roundel Portrait of the Printer Johann Froben of Basel, a painting of his early supporter Erasmus, which features the phrase “I yield to none” — go deep inside his subjects, becoming not mere representations in oil but a look into their souls. In her catalog essay “The Pictorial Eloquence of Hans Holbein the Younger,” J. Paul Getty Museum curator Anne T. Woollett writes that the exhibit “considers how the artist engaged with the philosophical debate about the superiority of the written word over the painted image to convey an individual’s interior qualities. Holbein’s masterful manipulation of the viewing experience emerges through close examination of his drawings, paintings, and related works of art such as portrait medals and symbolic jewels.”

But amid all this glorious work, it is Holbein’s 1524–25 print series, “Images of Death,” that is most memorable. A collaboration with blockcutter Hans Lützelburger and based on the medieval danse macabre, “Images of Death” is a startling narrative that follows the skeletal Death as he confronts royals and peasants alike, holding aloft an hourglass, engaging in battle, playing instruments, and leading people to their ultimate, inescapable fate, which comes to everyone regardless of their wealth or power.

On May 6 from 2:00 to 6:30, the Morgan is hosting the afternoon symposium “Capturing Holbein: The Artist in Context” in the museum’s Gilder Lehrman Hall; the program consists of six presentations in addition to the keynote lecture, “Becoming Holbein: Art and Portraiture,” by Jochen Sander of the Städel Museum: “Flexibility and Rapport: Holbein’s Working Method” by Woollett, “Inherent Ingenuity: Holbein’s Portrait of Georg Gisze (1532)” by Alexander Marr of Cambridge University, “Drawing in Time: Portrait Studies by Holbein and His Contemporaries” by the Morgan’s Austėja Mackelaitė, “The Contexts for Character in Holbein’s Narrative Prints” by Jeanne Nuechterlein of York University, “Metalwork Design Drawings from the Circle of Hans Holbein the Younger” by Olenka Horbatsch of the British Museum, and “‘Foolish Curiosity’: Holbein’s Earliest English Afterlives” by Adam Eaker of the Met.

Even if you can’t make the symposium — perhaps the Morgan will record it and make it available later online — be sure to see the exhibit, co-organized with the Getty, before it leaves town. As Morgan director Colin B. Bailey says in the above video, “[Holbein] was the greatest artist of the sixteenth century working in England but really one of the greatest artists of the European Renaissance. His works are rare, they’re fragile, they’re precious, they’re rarely lent, and that’s why this exhibition is such an opportunity.”

CHASING ANDY WARHOL

Audience members chase Andy Warhol through the East Village in immersive production (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

CHASING ANDY WARHOL
Astor Plaza, Broadway at East Eighth St.
Thursday, Friday, and Sunday through June 12, $80
online slide show
www.chasingandywarhol.com
www.batedbreaththeatre.org

The world has spent more than half a century chasing Andy Warhol. Our obsession with Drella, as he was known to his close friends — a combination of Dracula and Cinderella — developed quickly from his carefully constructed public image, his genre-busting films and Pop art, his (and our) fascination with celebrity, and the beautiful and unusual people he surrounded himself with, beginning with his emergence as an art superstar and fashion icon in the 1960s and continuing well past his death in 1987 at the age of fifty-eight.

In the last few years alone, works by or about Warhol, born Andrew Warhola Jr. in Pittsburgh, have been part of such exhibitions and films as “Andy Warhol: Photo Factory” at Fotografiska, the Todd Haynes documentary The Velvet Underground, “Andy Warhol: Revelation” at the Brooklyn Museum, “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure,”“Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks at the Guggenheim,” and “Alice Neel: People Come First” at the Met in addition to the brand-new Netflix series The Andy Warhol Diaries.

Now comes Chasing Andy Warhol, a guerrilla-theater-like immersive presentation by the Manhattan-based Bated Breath company in which an audience of no more than sixteen at a time follows Andy Warhol through the streets of the East Village, not far from many of his old haunts. The show begins in Astor Plaza, where you are given an old red plastic View Master to look at some photo collages to get you in the mood. Then an excited young “tour guide” (Jmonet Hill, Annika Rudolph, or Fé Torres; I saw Rudolph, who was delightfully energetic), carrying a small suitcase and a boombox (through which she blasts the soundtrack) and identifying herself as the world’s biggest Andy fan, is surprised by a pair of Warhols in blue dresses and heels — one of whom pops a small balloon that has the word “art” on it. They run off, and she sets out to find him.

As she leads us down Lafayette and Bowery to Great Jones and Bleecker, there are wigged Warhols in blue, black, and white everywhere (Kat Berton, Grayson Bradshaw, Alysa Finnegan, Teal French-Levine, Youran Lee, Marisa Melito, Luca Villa), but she is after the “real” one in red (Jake Malavsky, Brandon P. Raines, or Kyle Starling). The multiple Andys evoke Warhol’s silkscreen style of printing multiple images of Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse, flowers, Elvis Presley, and other subjects in different colors.

Along the way, as the tour guide shares snippets about Warhol’s life and art, we encounter a puppet of child Andy (operated by Taylor McKenzie or Kayla Prestel) watching Ginger Rogers (Finnegan) posing in an empty white frame; Warhol and the puppet looking into a mirror that describes one of his medical disorders, Saint Vitus’ dance, which affected his movement; Andy engaging in a flirtatious dance with a hot basketball player (Mitchell Ashe) involving a wheeled fashion rack; a movie star (Katherine Winter) posing for paparazzi in front of a Chase bank (Chase — get it?); a dance in an alcove of stone chess tables; and fated meetups with Valerie Solanas (Alessandra Ruiz, who also plays Warhol’s mother, Julia) — just wait till you see what she uses for a gun — and Edie Sedgwick (Antonia Santangelo) in a glittering short dress.

Andy is never without his camera, and the audience is encouraged to take photos and video, but don’t get too caught up in documenting it or you’ll miss lots of cute small touches and clever references. A significant part of the fun is also watching people on the street passing by, wondering what’s going on. Of course, they immediately know it’s Warhol — has there ever been a more recognizable figure in New York City? — and many of them stop and take pictures, big smiles on their faces. But as one of the lucky sixteen audience members, wearing a clearly visible yellow Andy sticker, you can’t help but feel special, like you’re part of Warhol’s inner Factory circle. And the cast, which performs the seventy-five-minute show in forty-five-minute overlapping intervals, deserves extra kudos for strutting their stuff on the sidewalks of New York, particularly during these fraught times, where anything can happen at any time.

Chasing Andy Warhol is created and directed by Bated Breath artistic director Mara Lieberman, with fanciful choreography by Rachel Leigh Dolan, jubilant costumes by Christopher F. Metzger, sets by Christian Fleming, Meg McGuigan, and Jerry Schiffer, lighting by Joyce Liao, and sound and projections by Mark Van Hare. I have to admit that I was disappointed in two of the company’s recent indoor productions, Unmaking Toulouse-Lautrec and Beneath the Gavel, but now I’m kicking myself for having missed its immersive, outdoor, on-the-move Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec, which they staged during the pandemic.

Chasing Andy Warhol concludes in an empty bar, where Warhol’s legacy as the original social media superstar is briefly explored. Could there ever have been a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok without Warhol’s obsession with public image and infectious celebration of celebrity and oneself? And, in turn, our obsession with Warhol, who managed his public persona like no one else?

“I am a deeply superficial person,” Warhol said. He also pointed out, “It’s not what you are that counts; it’s what they think you are.” In Chasing Andy Warhol, Lieberman and her talented team delve into the complex enigmatic character in unique, spirited ways, without avoiding his blemishes, as they pursue the mystery that was, and ever will be, Andy Warhol.

THE YES MEN CLOSING RECEPTION / CATALOG LAUNCH

Gilda, Dow’s Golden Skeleton, is part of Yes Men retrospective at carriage trade (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: The Yes Men
What: Exhibition closing reception and catalog launch
Where: carriage trade, 277 Grand St.
When: Friday, April 29, free, 6:00
Why: For a quarter-century, the Yes Men — Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos (or Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) — have been confronting corporate greed and environmental neglect through “identity-correcting” hijinks in which they portray fake entrepreneurs and spokespeople at actual press conferences, conventions, and television news programs. They build realistic sham websites and use forged IDs to gain entrance to locations they have no business being at as they take on George W. Bush, Dow Chemical, the World Trade Organization, ExxonMobil, the New York Times and the New York Post, HUD in New Orleans, the US Chamber of Commerce, Shell Oil, VW, and, most recently, the United Nations COP26 summit. They pull off the pranks with ingenuity, bold daring, and a wild sense of humor, as evidenced by their hysterical “SurvivaBall,” which is on view at carriage trade’s small but terrific Yes Men retrospective.

The show, which has been extended several times because of popular demand, features Dow’s Golden Skeleton, named Gilda, a gold skeleton wearing a beauty contest sash that declares her an “acceptable risk”; a wall of fake Chevron street ads, riffing on the company’s “We Agree” campaign, making such claims as “I can see sludge & dead birds from my window” with a photo of Sarah Palin, “I’m living like there’s no tomorrow because there isn’t one” with a photo of Don Draper from Mad Men, “We lie and we don’t care — we love money — fuck the world!” with a photo of Jim Carrey from Liar Liar, and “To prove us likes you us will smash your planet” with a picture of Bizarro Superman; a vitrine of ExxonMobil Vivoleum phallus candles made from the skin of the “late” climate change victim Reggie Watts; and copies of a fake New York Times edition that proclaims, “Iraq War Ends,” “Maximum Wage Law Succeeds,” and “Ex-Secretary Apologizes for W.M.D. Scare,” which you can take home and read to your heart’s delight. There is also a case of newspaper and magazine articles and legal cease and desist orders sent to the Yes Men, a collection of fake IDs they’ve used, a pictorial history of the Golden Phallus stunt, and a room where twenty of their short and full-length films are on continuous rotation, from 1996’s Bringing IT to YOU! to 2021’s “Total Disaster” excerpt from The Fixers.

On April 29 at 6:00, carriage trade will be hosting the closing reception of the exhibition, along with the launch of the seventy-two-page catalog ($25; $20 at the reception). There’s no telling who might be there and in what capacity, so be ready for anything. (For more on the show, check out Montez Press Radio’s interview with Jacques Servin and carriage trade’s Peter Scott here.)