this week in art

GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE: ART AND MOURNING — SPECIAL EVENTS

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (policeman), acrylic on PVC panel with plexiglass frame, 2015 (Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Mimi Haas in honor of Marie-Josée Kravis. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)

GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE: ART AND MOURNING
New Museum
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Special online events free with RSVP
Exhibition runs through June 6, $12-$18
www.newmuseum.org

The New Museum exhibition “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America” is an extraordinary collection of nearly one hundred works by thirty-seven artists taking on racism and violence in Black communities. The show was conceived by Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor prior to the coronavirus crisis and the BLM protests and scheduled to open around the time of the presidential election, but it was delayed because of the pandemic lockdown and Enwezor’s death in March 2019 at the age of fifty-five. Completed by Naomi Beckwith, Massimiliano Gioni, Glenn Ligon, and Mark Nash, the exhibit includes new and older painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation by such artists as Terry Adkins, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Garrett Bradley, Theaster Gates, Arthur Jafa, Rashid Johnson, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Lorna Simpson, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Nari Ward, and Carrie Mae Weems exploring how we deal with loss.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the New Museum is hosting weekly live online conversations and virtual tours, featuring an all-star lineup of participating artists. All programs are free with advance RSVP; click on each title for more information.

Tuesday, March 2, 5:00
Melvin Edwards in Conversation with Massimiliano Gioni

Wednesday, March 3, 4:00
Virtual Tour: “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America”

Friday, March 12, 7:00
LaToya Ruby Frazier in Conversation with Margot Norton

Thursday, March 18, 4:00
Kerry James Marshall in Conversation with Massimiliano Gioni

Tuesday March 23, 4:00
Dawoud Bey in Conversation with Gary Carrion-Murayari

Thursday, April 1, 7:00
Adam Pendleton in Conversation with Andrew An Westover

Thursday, April 8, 7:00
Hank Willis Thomas in Conversation with Margot Norton

Rashid Johnson, Antoine’s Organ, black steel, grow lights, plants, wood, shea butter, books, monitors, rugs, piano, 2016 (photo by Dario Lasagni)

Thursday, April 15, 7:00
Rashid Johnson in Conversation with Massimiliano Gioni

Thursday, April 29, 2:00
Jennie C. Jones in Conversation with Gary Carrion-Murayari

Monday, May 3, 2:00
Tiona Nekkia McClodden in Conversation with Margot Norton

Thursday May 13, 7:00
Okwui Okpokwasili in Conversation with Massimiliano Gioni

Thursday May 20, 4:00
Howardena Pindell in Conversation with Margot Norton

Tuesday, June 1, 4:00
Sable Elyse Smith in Conversation with Margot Norton

Thursday, June 3, 7:00
Tyshawn Sorey in Conversation with Gary Carrion-Murayari

GALERIE LELONG — DIALOGUES: MAKING VISIBLE THE INVISIBLE

Who: Alfredo Jaar, Koyo Kouoh
What: Livestreamed conversation
Where: Galerie Lelong & Co. online
When: Thursday, February 25, free with RSVP, 1:00
Why: Chilean-born, New York-based artist, architect, photographer, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar specializes in sociopolitical interventions and installations, such as The Skoghall Konsthall, Culture = Capital, Shadows, and Lament of the Images. On February 25 at 1:00, he will discuss his sixteen-year work The Rwanda Project 1994-2010 with Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa executive director and chief curator Koyo Kouoh, kicking off the new series “Galerie Lelong: Dialogues.” The talk, “Making Visible the Invisible,” will focus on his investigations and photojournalistic field research done in Rwanda over six years, resulting in twenty-five works he calls “exercises in representation.” The Zeitz Museum, located in Cape Town, South Africa, is currently home to “Alfredo Jaar: The Rwanda Project,” on view through May 23, consisting of photographs, mounds of slides, black file cabinets, and a neon sculpture that declares, “So much to do today / kill memory / kill pain / turn heart into a stone / and yet / prepare to live again,” documenting the Rwandan genocide that occurred while the world watched and did nothing. “Galerie Lelong: Dialogues” will continue with conversations with Mildred Thompson, whose “Throughlines, Assemblages, and Works on Paper from the 1960s to the 1990s” runs at the gallery through March 27, and Tariku Shiferaw, who will have his first show with the gallery in the spring.

LIGHTHOUSE PROJECT: WITH GREAT POWER COMES NO ACCOUNTABILITY BY JILLY BALLISTIC

Jilly Ballistic’s With Great Power Comes No Accountability kicks off Playwrights Horizons’ Lighthouse Project (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Playwrights Horizons
416 West Forty-Second St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Through February 28, free
www.playwrightshorizons.org

Theaters around the country are facing severe financial hardships as a result of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, but the enormous dollar bill in the window facade of the shuttered Playwrights Horizons building on West Forty-Second St. is only partly about money; it’s primarily about the cost of death, specifically the ultimate price paid by hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died from Covid-19. The piece is titled With Great Power Comes No Accountability, and it is by Jilly Ballistic, who has been decorating the subway and subway platforms for decades. The title of this aboveground work was previously used by Ballistic on an L train platform on January 31, 2020, before the full nature of the health crisis was known. The giant note of legal tender is signed by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Ballistic initially wrote on it, “IMAGINE 352,464 of these. Now imagine they’re bodies,” in a word bubble being spoken by President George Washington. Ballistic has returned to the bill several times, using a Sharpie to cross out that number and write in 399,053, then crossing that out and adding 427,626. The coronavirus crisis is costing America in multiple ways, each and every day.

“It’s difficult to conceptualize such large numbers, especially when those numbers are linked to something so tragic as these deaths. There’s a danger, though, if we don’t fully grasp the atrocity: we allow those in power to get away with murder. What better way for a politician to understand our pain than using money as a metaphor?” Ballistic says in her artist statement. She sees the piece as “a reflection on corruption, failure, value, and death in America.” The work is the inaugural installation in Playwrights Horizons’ Lighthouse Project, which is curated by artist, activist, and writer Avram Finkelstein, a founder of the Silence=Death Project, and two-time Tony-winning set and costume designer and activist David Zinn (The Flick, Circle Mirror Transformation). With Great Power Comes No Accountability will remain on view through February 28, to be followed by commissions from Ken Gonzales-Day, Dread Scott, and others.

Jilly Ballistic’s With Great Power Comes No Accountability looks at the cost of the coronavirus pandemic (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“This year, this theater is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary under remarkably strange circumstances: a global pandemic, a historical reckoning, and a constitutional crisis,” artistic director Adam Greenfield explained. “In this moment, we want to rediscover the ways our building can be used, to expand the range of artists and disciplines we present, to create a culture of inquiry that pervades the entire building, inside and out, so that genuine artistic innovation can be met with genuine openness.” Zinn added, “I know a lot of things are happening quietly inside of theaters to meet both this racial and economic moment, but I also feel like theaters have a moral responsibility to communicate to the world outside the building. What we’re making is a vehicle for communication — for this need for our buildings to speak for this moment. Jilly’s piece in particular addresses this moment with weight and a sense of political irony that is heartbreaking, and it’s responsive to current events in a very immediate way.”

The Lighthouse Project will also include online conversations, workshops, concerts, and other events addressing this dire moment in time. You can watch the first two talks, “Public Art / Public Space” with Greenfield, Ballistic, Finklestein, and Joy Episalla and “Theater and Society” with Natasha Sinha, Michael R. Jackson, Heather Raffo, Michael John Garcés, and Mimi Lien, here. Up next is “Profiled” on March 3 at 7:00 with Sinha, Lileana Blain-Cruz, Clint Ramos, and Gonzales-Day talking about Gonzales-Day’s Playwrights installation, which will consist of two large-scale digitally edited photographs, part of his long-term series that looks at portraiture through historical memory, race, museum display, moral character, beauty, and the body.

LET FREEDOM RING VOL. 2

Jasmine Wahi’s On Visibility was part of first iteration of BAM’s “Let Freedom Ring” project (photo © Terrence Jennings 2020)

LET FREEDOM RING VOL. 2
BAM sign screen
Flatbush Ave. at Lafayette Ave.
February 12-15, free
www.bam.org/let-freedom-ring

Last month, as part of its thirty-fifth annual Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., BAM hosted “Let Freedom Ring,” a weeklong public art display on its sign screen at the corner of Flatbush and Lafayette Aves., featuring visual meditations on what freedom means by Derrick Adams, Alvin Armstrong, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Lizania Cruz, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Hank Willis Thomas, and Jasmine Wahi. Armstrong’s We Don’t Die We Multiply depicted two silhouetted bare-chested men bumping bodies. Adams offered MLK’s Tropic Interlude. Thomas asked, “Who Taught You to Love_?” Wahi’s On Visibility posits, “Do you see me for who I am or what you think I am” over an image of two large eyes. And Barrayn expllored beauty in Self-Portrait (Extension of a Woman) and Water Spirit (March on Washington 2020). The second iteration of “Let Freedom Ring” takes place February 12-15, with electronic billboard contributions from Jordan Casteel, Kevin Claiborne, Amy Sherald, Deborah Roberts, Cruz, Barrayn, and Wahi.

In a statement, BAM curator-at-large Larry Ossei-Mensah said, “After the first project’s success, I felt it necessary to continue the conversation and reflect on freedom as the nation observes Presidents Day and celebrates Black History Month. Working on ‘Let Freedom Ring’ has been a cathartic experience growing from a desire to ponder and imagine what freedom could look like in 2021 and beyond. It’s imperative that we share this thought-provoking work with the public and not relegate it to just a gallery exhibition. These are fundamental questions and concerns we all share as Americans, as human beings.” Commenting on the participants, he noted, “Naturally, as a curator, I look to artists who create work that inspires hope, proposes deep philosophical questions, and reminds us of our humanity for guidance on what is possible. I’m honored that these seven artists accepted my invitation and responded in a variety of ways. I was thrilled to see each artists’ perspective on freedom — from self-reflection, joy, and a reintroduction to Dr. King’s fight for economic justice with the Freedom Budget document.” BAM is one of the institutions I am missing the most during this pandemic lockdown, but this is a little taste of the kind of work it has been doing for decades.

M. C. ESCHER: JOURNEY TO INFINITY

Documentary gazes into the complex world of M. C. Escher

M. C. ESCHER: JOURNEY TO INFINITY (Robin Lutz, 2019)
New Plaza Cinema
Opens virtually February 5
kinomarquee.com
newplazacinema.org

Maurits Cornelis Escher, better known as M. C. Escher, is one of the most popular graphic artists of the twentieth century, even though he considered himself a mathematician, not an artist. His fantastical works, often of impossible architectural configurations, are imbedded with a scientific surrealism that has made them favorites on T-shirts, posters, placemats, puzzles, album covers, ads, and tattooed body parts. In 2019, the traveling show “Escher: The Exhibition & Experience” came to Industry City in Brooklyn; the Italian-sponsored presentation included lots of Instagram-friendly installations that invited visitors to put themselves inside some of Escher’s most famous pieces. But who was the Dutch artist?

At the beginning of Robin Lutz’s documentary, M. C. Escher: Journey to Infinity, there’s a shot of fingers typing out the following: “I’m afraid there is only one person in the world who could make a good film about my prints; me.” And so it is; the movie is structured around Escher’s own words, compiled from his notes, journals, lectures, calendars, and letters, elegantly narrated by British actor Stephen Fry. The only talking heads who share their thoughts are two of Escher’s children, George and Jan Escher, and one of Escher’s daughters-in-law, along with, curiously enough, superfan Graham Nash. “I cannot understand why the out-of-control youths of today appreciate my works so much,” Escher says of late-1960s psychedelic re-creations of his butterflies and geometric space objects. Of course, it’s easy to tell what drew, and continues to draw, so many to his artistry.

Supplemented by archival photographs and film footage, Lutz traces Escher’s life and career from his love of drawing as a child and his studies at the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Artists to his falling in love with Jetta Umiker, a romance he explains in rather unique language. His description of a picture of a seemingly endless winding road of trees is particularly revealing, accompanied by the sounds of an echoing church organ, played at St. Bartholomew’s in Haarlem, where Escher honed his craft. The camera focuses on a pair of feet treading the same paths that Escher took, as if he himself is leading us on this journey, focusing on rocks, flowers, birds, leaves, chameleons, and other elements that became his subject matter.

At the age of forty, he writes about his evolving process, involving systematism, recognizability, and the importance of background: “I have things of my own that had to come out, that I could express something others don’t have. . . For me, this is the richest of times.” The film grows richer as well as Escher shares insight behind the creation of some of his most famous works while also discussing isolation, human contact, and the horrors of Fascism and WWII. In addition, Lutz, who also served as producer and cinematographer, has plenty of fun with animation, bringing works to life, from a skull floating through the clouds to moving chess pieces to figures going up and down impossible staircases.

Breathlessly edited by Moek de Groot, M. C. Escher: Journey to Infinity is a pure joy because Lutz lets Escher, who passed away in 1972 at the age of seventy-three, run the show, his words poetic and passionate, the images captivating and mind-bending, infused with an infectious, futuristic energy that transcends the now. It’s an exciting trip deep into one man’s relationship with a complex world that he captured in extraordinary artworks that are likely to dazzle and confound viewers for a long time to come.

PHASES AND THE IN-BETWEENS

Phases and the In-Betweens features animation, text, and video incorporating the phases of the moon into caregiving during the pandemic

PHASES AND THE IN-BETWEENS
The Shed
Through February 11, free
theshed.org

Phases and the In-Betweens is a collaborative intervention on the website of the Shed, the Hudson Yards performance center that opened in 2019 and hosts music, theater, dance, art, and other programs and exhibitions. The ongoing multimedia piece changes with the phases of the moons; it began with the new moon on January 13 and was updated for the first quarter January 20; next up is the last quarter on February 4, followed by the new moon on February 11, which will signal the end of the project. Phases and the In-Betweens is created by Brothers Sick, consisting of artist, educator, and curator Ezra and photographer Noah Benus; interdisciplinary media artist Yo-Yo Lin; and poet, curator, and critic DJ Queer Shoulders (danilo machado). Incorporating animation, text, and video, the work examines issues of caregiving, disability, and lockdown as they relate to the “phases of reopening” and the inevitable return to whatever “normal” might be on the other side of the Covid-19 crisis. “For this project, at its core, we really wanted to think about what care looks like in private and public and how that relationship of care is enacted during a global pandemic,” Brothers Sick said in a statement. “From there, we reference different elements of care in isolation and public, layering and blurring the intimacy of illness and public life during precious and precarious outings. We layer and blur hierarchies of material, media, and experience. For the format, we really wanted to explore these ever-present ideas of care and sickness through a broadened presentation of digital art sharing and making, across sick, disabled, Crip time, pandemic time, celestial space and time, and across ourselves in our care networks with our collaborators.”

They accomplish that with bold imagery, words that jump out at you, and detailed medical information. They narrate, “squirm fingers / nitrile disposable sanitary / a map of new york city has joined / the right side of frame / colors change from shades of green to blue / metrics and mappings / testing and cases / patches of pink and purple and orange / we move faster to the left passing more fans, / a worker and a uniformed soldier, who waves / sterling silver ringed finger / scroll touch screen questionnaire / how much pain / how severe.” Phases and the In-Betweens is part of the Shed’s “Up Close” digital series, which has previously presented House or Home: 690 Wishes with the HawtPlates and Charlotte Brathwaite, Revelation of Proverbs by Reggie ‘Regg Roc’ Gray and the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, Go Off! Joy in Defiance with DJ April Hunt, Rashaad Newsome, Legendary Monster Mon_Teese, and Precious, Solo B by Mariana Valencia, and other programs.

SWOON: THE HOUSE OUR FAMILIES BUILT

Swoon’s team rehearses live performance as part of PBS mobile sculpture (photo courtesy Swoon Studio)

THE HOUSE OUR FAMILIES BUILT
Four parks in New York City
Saturday & Sunday, January 30 – February 21, free
www.pbs.org
swoonstudio.org

Swoon first started making a name for herself with her wheatpaste portraits on the sides of buildings in New York City about twenty years ago, spreading to other cities in America as well as across the globe, depicting the heart and soul of unique indigenous characters expressing or in need of love. She soon turned to sculptural installations and interventions that addressed trauma, tragedy, and addiction, often incorporating her trademark cutaway figures and highlighting the sacred feminine. Among her projects were “Submerged Motherlands” at the Brooklyn Museum, an intimate, compelling, and welcoming exploration of life, death, and rebirth; “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea,” involving a fleet of seven handmade boats that sailed from Troy to Long Island City; “Portrait of Silvia Elena,” a mournful, important exhibit that exposed the femicide that is occurring in Juarez, Guatemala, and elsewhere around the world; and “The Miss Rockaway Armada,” an immersive experience in communal living.

Swoon’s “The House Our Families Built” will stop by four parks in New York City over the next four weekends (photo courtesy Swoon Studio)

The latest work by the Brooklyn-based artist, born Caledonia Curry in Connecticut and raised in Florida, is “The House Our Families Built,” a fourteen-foot truck that will travel to four locations in New York City over the next four weekends, stopping to give fifteen-minute performances developed by Jeff Stark and Irene Lazaridis with Swoon, consisting of collected stories of personal and ancestral legacy. The mobile sculpture, part of PBS’s American Portrait initiative, which also features Carlos Ramirez and Rick Lowe, will pull into Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 on January 30-31, Prospect Park on February 6-7, Flushing Meadows Corona Park on February 13-14, and the North Plaza of Union Square on February 21. The live performances begin Sunday and will take place every thirty minutes from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm, with recorded audio of the program playing in between. Swoon has an extraordinary talent at sharing powerful narratives amid eye-catching imagery, so do whatever you can to catch “The House Our Families Built,” which should be a memorable happening.