Peter Saul, Ronald Reagan in Grenada, acrylic on canvas, 1984 (Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. Photo: Jeffrey Nintzel)
Who:Judith Bernstein, Kim Jones, Gary Carrion-Murayari What: New Museum Conversations Where:New Museum Zoom When: Wednesday September 30, free with advance RSVP, 8:00 Why: There doesn’t seem to be a lot to laugh about these days, what with the Covid-19 crisis, protests over police brutality, an economy in freefall, the battle over the next Supreme Court justice, and the upcoming contentious presidential election. But artists Judith Bernstein and Kim Jones are going to try to make us smile even given our current state of chaos when they sit down for the New Museum Conversation “Humor and Politics in Art” on Zoom with curator Gary Carrion-Murayari. The provocative seventy-seven-year-old Newark-born, NYC-based Bernstein has been fighting the status quo in her work for more than fifty years, while seventy-six-year-old California-born, NYC-based performance artist Jones has been stoking controversy in his oeuvre since the mid-1970s. The talk will focus on eighty-six-year-old California-born artist Peter Saul’s “Crime and Punishment,” which is on view at the New Museum through January 3. You can see Saul’s February 27 pre-shutdown talk with New Museum director Massimiliano Gioni here.
Who:Cai Guo-Qiang What: Livestreamed daytime pyrotechnics Where:Hennessy online When: Friday, September 25, free, 9:00 am (EDT) Why: In 2008, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang had a fabulous midcareer retrospective at the Guggenheim that had the sanguine title “I Want to Believe.” I wrote back then of the exhibit, “Cai has filled Frank Lloyd Wright’s twisting space with powerful, politically charged installations that literally and figuratively explode throughout the museum. His highly conceptual art, mixed-media constructions that are born out of destruction (playing off Mao’s famous statement “Progress is born in chaos. And originality comes from destruction.”), explodes from the very floor of the Guggenheim all the way up to the rafters.” On September 25 at 9:00 am (EDT), Cai will be at the Charente River in Cognac, France, joining forces with Hennessy to present a livestreamed three-part multicolor pyrotechnic display to share the ideals of persistence, optimism, and resilience with people around the world during these challenging times. In respect to the environment, he will be using nontoxic, reduced-smoke, CE-certified products, launching the explosions from oak barrels.
“This will be the first time that I direct and narrate my daytime art event to be livestreamed to a global audience,” Cai said in a statement. “I hope the audience will draw inspiration from the aerial art display in order to reconcile with nature and to find the power to heal.” In December, Cai gave the final session speech at the Nobel Week Dialogue in Gothenburg, Sweden; you can read his presentation, “To Explore a ‘Natural’ Attitude in the Midst of Uncertainty and Risks,” here. The free fireworks event is part of Hennessy X.O’s 150th anniversary World Odyssey program, which also includes Ridley Scott’s Seven Worlds for Seven Notes short ads; since this is all sponsored by an alcohol brand, Hennessy advises: “Not intended to be seen by persons under the legal alcohol drinking age or in countries with restrictions on advertising on alcoholic beverages. Please drink responsibly.”
The Rubin Museum’s annual block party goes virtual this year
Who: Tsherin Sherpa, Sneha Shrestha, Tenzin Phuntsog, Yakpo Collective, Uttam Grandhi, YindaYin Coaching, Day Schildkret, Kate Johnson, Brooklyn Raga Massive, Ajna Dance, Samira Sadeque and the Bangladesh Academy of Fine Arts, more What: Virtual block party Where:Rubin Museum online When: Sunday, September 20, free, noon (available through Setpember 27) Why: The Rubin Museum chose quite a year to explore the concept of impermanence as the country goes through the Covid-19 crisis, massive wildfires, protests over police brutality, and the loss of too many cultural and political icons. The Rubin, which specializes in the art and culture of the Himalayan regions, is open, but its annual block party is being held online, taking place September 20 beginning at noon, with all events free. The symbol for the 2020 festival is the lotus, which represents purity, fortune, prosperity, rebirth, and spiritual enlightenment, things we can all use these days. The afternoon will feature studio visits with Tsherin Sherpa, Sneha Srethsa, Tenzin Phuntzog, Yakpo Collective, and Uttam Grandhi; mindfulness practices with Kate Johnson, Reimagine, Day Schildkret, and New York Yoga + Life magazine; art-making with YindaYin Coaching; interactive classes with Brooklyn Raga Massive and Ajna Dance; activism and advocacy with India Home; and performances by Sonam Kids and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. You can also visit the beautiful institution with timed tickets; the current exhibitions include “Masterworks of Himalayan Art,” “The Lotus Effect: A Participatory Installation for Times of Transformation,” “Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power,” “Measure Your Existence,” “Charged with Buddha’s Blessings: Relics from an Ancient Stupa,” and “Gateway to Himalayan Art.”
Ledelle Moe’s “When” consists of giant hollow heads across the floor and tiny ones on back walls (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
MASS MoCA
1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
Wednesday – Monday, $8-$20 timed tickets in advance, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm www.massmoca.org
With New York City museums opening up again, we decided to prepare by heading up to the Berkshires to visit MASS MoCA and the Clark Institute, both of which began welcoming visitors post-pandemic lockdown the second week of July. We used the trip as sort of a test case, examining how they were doing things to gauge our approach to arts institutions here in the five boroughs. In our opinion, they are doing everything right, so rent a car and get up there as soon as you can.
At MASS MoCA, a repurposed industrial complex in North Adams with more than one hundred thousand square feet of gallery space indoors and outdoors that opened in 1999, one must order timed tickets in advance; we showed up twenty minutes early but were told nicely that we would have to wait. We spent some of that time looking at Gamaliel Rodríguez’s sixty-foot-long mural La travesía (“Le voyage”), which equates the architecture at MASS MoCA with that of his native Puerto Rico and other locations, in an eye-catching purple tint, which you can see for free by the store and the café (where you can get freshly made lemonade and a killer BLT).
Jarvis Rockwell’s Us is a parade of fun figurines (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Ticketholders line up outside to enter the museum; the now ever-present dots keep everyone at a distance of six feet. Once inside, communing with the art feels completely safe, as the number of visitors is kept small and most of the galleries are vast and wide open. At times we were the only ones in a space (save for a museum employee or two), and at other moments, even if there were a dozen people in the same gallery, we were all extremely far away from one another. (In addition, everyone was aware of social distancing, so there was never any crowding, as we all were respectful of the situation, and everybody wore a mask, over their mouth and nose.)
It’s nearly impossible to experience any of the art without thinking about the Covid-19 crisis, even if it was made long before that. The centerpiece exhibit, on view through January 3, is Ledelle Moe’s “When,” which consists of fragile-looking colossal heads and bodies that are actually made of weathered concrete, many lying on their sides, with hollow insides you can peer into. The installation is particularly meaningful given the current movement of taking down monuments and statues; on the far wall and upstairs are hundreds of tiny heads that are like the twitterverse commenting on the sight or another group of the displaced, relegated to the background.
Blane De St. Croix’s “How to Move a Landscape” (through September 2021) is a breathtaking collection of environmental works that don’t bode well for the future of the planet. Moving Landscapes is a miniature train in which each car carries a different kind of landscape, circling through two holes in the wall. Broken Landscapes is a miniature re-creation of the US-Mexico border where fencing has been put up; the piece is based on De St. Croix’s travels to fifteen border crossings. You can walk under Hollow Ground, a giant hunk of foam permafrost with holes in it; get up close and personal with Collapsing Pillar, a vulnerable tower that could seemingly fall at any moment; and get on your knees to look up and down at Alchemist Triptych, a trio of gold, silver, and copper tornadoes that decrease in diameter as they approach the floor, where you can look into a void going deep into the earth.
For “Amity/Enmity,” Massachusetts artist Ben Ripley repurposes images from the Field Museum’s 1933 exhibit “Races of Mankind,” which comprised more than a hundred anthropological sculptures by Malvina Hoffman, inspired by white nationalist Sir Arthur Keith, a leader in the scientific racism movement who announced the “amity-enmity complex,” which deals with human tribalism, racial segregation, and evolution. Ripley transposes images of himself over photographs and 3D scans of Hoffman’s sculptures, redefining them. He asks, “This historical example of the forceful authority of museums and the seductive power of beauty leading to visual arguments whose consequences we are only now starting to understand suggest an urgent examination of the responsibility of the visual arts on a larger scale. Are our museums leading to a fruitful exchange of diverse ideas? Is our visual art reductive and divisive or humanizing and complex? What are the future consequences of a pursuit of ideological purity? How can art be used to heal and persuade rather than create an exclusive echo chamber? Who do artists and museums serve?” Those are pertinent questions as arts institutions return amid a health crisis and protests about systemic racism.
ERRE re-creates border scenarios in his powerful multimedia installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
ERRE (Marcos Ramírez) also takes on the border dispute in “Them and Us” (“Ellos y Nosotros”) (through summer 2021), setting up a sample San Ysidro Port of Entry. ERRE, who splits his time between his native Tijuana and San Diego, offers visitors the choice of entering through two corridors, one marked “Us,” the other “Them.” The gallery contains such works as Toy-an Horse, the burned remains of his 1997 two-headed Trojan horse; colorful Eye Charts featuring quotes from Thomas Jefferson, US senator Dennis Chavez, Sitting Bull, and others; the video The Body of Crime (The Black Suburban), which reveals blatant corruption in law enforcement; Sing-Sing, an abstract iron cage with a bed inside; Orange Country, four orange prison jumpsuits hanging on a wall, representing a father, mother, and two kids, right next to The Cell, a jaillike solitary confinement structure; and Of Fence (which can be read as “offense,” a word with multiple meanings), a deteriorating, rusted corrugated-metal fence that separates the exhibit while referencing other types of physical and psychological separation.
Ad Minoliti’s “Fantasías Modulares” is a candy-colored wonderland (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Ad Minoliti’s “Fantasías Modulares” is a fantastical trip back to childhood, with adorably cute characters that feel like they have emerged from a candy-colored cartoon world where there’s no difference between humans, animals, and machines, no gender, race, class, or political gaps. Incorporating painting, sculpture, drawing, and installation, the artist, based in Buenos Aires and Berlin, creates an idyllic place to take a playful break away from an ever-more-challenging real world.
You need to reserve timed tickets (at no extra charge) for James Turrell’s “Into the Light,” a look at his Roden Crater project, several light sculptures, and the pre-socially-distanced Perfectly Clear (Ganzfeld), in which a half dozen people experience a heavenly, mesmerizing color-changing environment, and Hind Sight, a two-person-at-a-time journey into complete darkness.
Among the other must-see exhibits are Sol LeWitt’s “Wall Drawing Retrospective,” a small but tantalizing Louise Bourgeois sculpture show, several rooms of Jenny Holzer’s multimedia truisms, Sarah Oppenheimer’s S-334473 (ask the museum worker to operate them for you), Jarvis Rockwell’s Us parade of character toys and figurines, Barbara Ernst Prey’s “Building 6 Portrait: Interior” ultrarealistic paintings, Franz West’s outdoor Les Pommes d’Adam sculptures, and Joe Wardwell’s Hello America: 40 Hits from the 50 States, which was inspired by J. G. Ballard’s 1981 novel and uses quotes from Negativland’s 1991 song “I Still Haven’t Found Snuggles.” Unfortunately, long-term installations by Stephen Vitiello, Michael Oatman, Gunnar Schonbeck, and Anselm Kiefer are currently closed. Be prepared to spend a full day at MASS MoCA, as there is art everywhere, and you’ll feel safe every step of the way. In addition, the institution is hosting live outdoor concerts in the central courtyard, where the audience hangs out in large individual rectangles drawn on the ground; upcoming shows feature Marco Benevento on September 12 and June Millington on September 19.
Giuseppe Penone’s Le foglie delle radici (“The Leaves of the Roots”) greets visitors to the Clark (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
CLARK ART INSTITUTE
225 South St., Williamstown, MA
Tuesday – Sunday, $20 timed tickets in advance, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm www.clarkart.edu
Since 1955, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute has been displaying the couple’s extensive, impressive collection, along with special exhibitions. It reopened in July and is doing a terrific job with its Covid-19 regulations; timed tickets are required, and every gallery has a limit of how many visitors are allowed in at any one time, from two to see Edgar Degas’s exquisite Little Dancer Aged Fourteen to eight in the museum shop to a maximum of twenty-five in the largest space; I’m not sure there were twenty-five people total in the museum when I was there. The permanent collection is an absolute joy, with paintings and sculptures by Winslow Homer, Frederic Remington, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Mary Cassatt, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jean-François Millet, Frederick William MacMonnies, Claude Lorrain, Édouard Manet, Giovanni Boldini, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Francisco de Goya, John Constable, and Berthe Morisot. Don’t miss Paul Gauguin’s strikingly yellow Young Christian Girl, George Inness’s glorious Sunrise in the Woods, John Singer Sargent’s unusual Fumée D’ambre Gris (Smoke of Ambergris), Claude Monet’s inviting The Cliffs at Étretat, Auguste Rodin’s frightening Man with Serpent, and J. M. W. Turner’s Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water, which appropriately resides on a wall all by itself.
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Model D Pianoforte and Stools is a highlight of the Clark collection (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Through December 13, you can catch “Lines from Life: French Drawings from the Diamond Collection,” containing more than forty chalk, crayon, graphite, charcoal, ink, and graphite works by Paul Cézanne, Eugène Delacroix, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Théodore Géricault, Odilon Redon, Degas, Millet, Morisot, Pissarro, and others, a gift from Herbert and Carol Diamond, longtime friends of the Clark.
Lin May Saeed, Thaealab, cast bronze, lacquer, hazelnuts, 2017 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Mexico City-based artist Pia Camil’s “Velo Revelo,” comprising three large-scale fabric sculptures, will be on view through January 3. But you’ll have to hurry if you want to see Lin May Saeed’s touching “Arrival of the Animals,” which continues at the Clark’s Lunder Center at Stone Hill through October 25, a brief walk or quick drive from the main building. The German artist explores the relationship between animals and humans in her work, which ranges from drawings and paintings to sculptures using such materials as steel and lacquer or polystyrene foam, plaster, wood, and cardboard. As you wander around the space, you’ll come upon a pangolin, a lion school, seven sleepers hiding in a cave to escape religious persecution, a panther, and, outside, a bronze thaealab, which is Arabic for fox. Saeed has also chosen works from the Clark to complement and inform her installation, including pieces by Niccolò Boldrini, Albrecht Dürer, Delacroix, and Géricault.
J. M. W. Turner, Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water, oil on canvas, 1840 (photo courtesy the Clark Institute)
As a major bonus, especially during this time of Covid-19, the Clark offers lots to see outside across its 140-acre campus. You can hike through a forest, linger by Schow Pond, walk across a grassy plain, sit under cross-bred trees, and climb up a hill while also enjoying art. When you first arrive, you’re greeted by Giuseppe Penone’s Le foglie delle radici (“The Leaves of the Roots”), a thirty-foot-high upside-down bronze tree with a living sapling growing out of the top, which can now be interpreted as a metaphor for the state of the country at this tense moment. The Clark’s first outdoor exhibition, “Ground/work,” has been delayed because of the pandemic, but Analia Saban’s Teaching a Cow How to Draw is already up, in which Saban has repurposed the long wooden split-rail fence that separates the museum from the outdoor grounds by adding “drawings in space” to the boundary, art lessons (including the Rule of Thirds and the Golden Ratio) meant not only for us but for the cows that live in the hills.
Thomas Schütte’s Crystal offers a respite and beautiful views of the grounds (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
You’ll also find William Crovello’s red granite Katana sculpture on the grass; four of Jenny Holzer’s white granite benches from “The Living Series” situated by the large pond (you can sit on them, but first read their ever-more-relevant messages, such as “It can be startling to see someone’s breath, let alone the breathing of a crowd you usually don’t believe that people extend that far”); and Thomas Schütte’s Crystal, an open, asymmetrical structure made of wood and zinc-coated copper near the top of Stone Hill where you can take a break and savor lovely views of the grounds, with no one around you, as if you have the world to yourself.
The Clark sets out very clear rules during Covid-19 crisis (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The Met, MoMa, the Morgan, the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Whitney are now open in New York, with the Guggenheim, El Museo del Barrio, the New-York Historical Society, the Cloisters, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the New Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Rubin, MoMA PS1, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, and others scheduled to do so in the coming weeks. One can only hope that their approach to reopening compares favorably to those of MASS MoCA and the Clark, which are doing everything right. Just remember to wear your mask, observe social distancing, wash your hands, and respect your fellow art lover.
Beatriz Cortez’s Glacial Erratic glitters in front of Lena Henke’s R.M.M. (Power Broker Purple) and R.M.M. (Organ, Organ, Organ Red) (at left) in Rockefeller Center Plaza (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who: Ghada Amer, Beatriz Cortez, Andy Goldsworthy, Lena Henke, Camille Henrot, Thaddeus Mosley What: Site-specific Frieze sculptures Where:Rockefeller Center Plaza When: Daily through October 2, free (free Brooklyn Rail artist talk with Andy Goldsworthy September 7 at 1:00) Why: Last year the Frieze art fair inaugurated “Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center,” a group of site-specific works that complemented the art fair that has been held annually on Randall’s Island since 2012. With this year’s fair canceled because of the pandemic and relegated to online viewing only, the 2020 sophomore edition of “Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center” is a much-needed respite, especially for those who are not yet ready to go inside museums and galleries. The installation is again curated by Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum director Brett Littman — Noguchi’s Art Deco piece News has welcomed visitors to 50 Rockefeller Center Plaza since 1938 — and focuses on natural materials in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. In fact, the show was originally scheduled to open on Earth Day, April 22, but had to be rescheduled and reorganized because of the pandemic. “The projects for this year’s Frieze Sculpture deal with a range of issues including women’s suffrage, migration, urban planning, and ecology,” Littman said in a statement. “They are also grounded in the celebration of the natural and botanical worlds, and in some cases the artists use plants and flowers as part of their sculptures. Given our world’s current urgent concerns with ecological sustainability, climate change, and racial inequality — and the impact these issues have had in spreading Covid-19 — the idea of creating an outdoor sculpture installation within this discourse could not be more relevant.”
Thaddeus Mosley’s bronze trio melds with the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Greeting everyone at the Fifth Ave. entrance across from Sacks is ninety-four-year-old Pittsburgh-based self-taught artist Thaddeus Mosley’s freestanding bronze trio, Illusory Progression, True to Myth, and Rhizogenic Rhythms, three abstract totems inspired by the salvaged-timber pieces he’s created for decades; they look particularly striking when seen from behind the southwest corner, melding in with the towers of St. Pat’s in the distance. On either side of Channel Gardens is Egypt-born, New York-based artist Ghada Amer’s Women’s Qualities, plantings in the flower beds that form words describing women in a positive way while taking power over gender stereotypes that set impossible ideals, including such traits as Happy, Good Cook, Sexy, Strong, and Smart. In the middle of Channel Gardens is French artist Camille Henrot’s Inside Job, a sea-green bronze sculpture that recalls a breeching dolphin above two shark fins; the piece fits right in with the long, rectangular pools designed by Rene Paul Chambellan that contain fountainhead sculptures of Tritons, Nereids, and other mythic water creatures.
Last month, Rockefeller Center was home to “The Flag Project,” in which the 193 flags of the UN member nations were replaced by flags by established and emerging artists celebrating the resilience of New York City in the face of the current health crisis; for Frieze, Cheshire-born, Scotland-based environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy has installed Red Flags, 109 flags colored in earth samples taken from all fifty states. On September 7 at 1:00, in conjunction with his Frieze piece, Goldsworthy will take part in the Brooklyn Rail’s livestreamed discussion “The New Social Environment #124: Andy Goldsworthy with Jason Rosenfeld,” which will conclude with a poetry reading by Charles Theonia. “Red Flags may not have been conceived as a response to recent events, but it is now bound up with the pandemic, lockdown, division, and unrest,” Goldsworthy said in a statement. “However, I hope that the flags will be received in the same spirit with which all the red earths were collected — as a gesture of solidarity and support. At best, Red Flags will rise above individual states and become a single flowing work of canvas, earth, light, color, stillness, movement, and people.”
Sexy is just one of the words spelled out in the Channel Gardens flower beds in Ghada Amer’s Women’s Qualities (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
In the center of Rockefeller Plaza is El Salvador-born, LA-based artist Beatriz Cortez’s beguiling Glacial Erratic, a glittering, boulderlike construction made of steel frames and sheet metal that will age over the course of the exhibition, via weather and foot traffic, evoking ancient migration and the many forms of rock found across New York; the title refers to the geological term for rocks that have been transported by glacial ice until they find a home in a glacial valley. Next to that are German-born, New York-based artist Lena Henke’s playful, toylike R.M.M. (Power Broker Purple) and R.M.M. (Organ, Organ, Organ Red), a pair of distorted monster-face sculptures, one purple, one red, that are the same height as Henke and refer to Le Corbusier’s Modulor theory, his investigation into architecture, measurement, and the human body, as well as to Robert Moses’s controversial urban planning designs and several of the bas reliefs around Rockefeller Center. For a slideshow of all the Frieze works, go here.
Nuala Clarke, still from so i have observed (part two of five), five-part video, 2020 (funded by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon)
Who:Nuala Clarke What: Live discussion about so i have observed video series Where: Zoom When: Saturday, September 5, free with RSVP, 3:00 Why: During the pandemic, Irish artist Nuala Clarke created so i have observed, a five-part video that incorporates images from her series The Dream Drawing with text from Irish alchemist Robert Boyle’s 1664 Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours and her own dreams, with music by experimental composer Roarke Menzies. “I have sometimes thought it worth while to take notice, whether or no the Colours of Opacous Bodies might not appear to the Eye somewhat Diversify’d, not only by the Disposition of the Superficial parts of the Bodyes themselves and by the Position of the Eye in Reference to the Object and the Light, (for these things are Notorious enough;) but according also to the Nature of the Lucid Body that shines upon them,” Boyle writes in Experiment VII. The camera goes from shots of Clarke’s works on paper, seemingly floating in space, to scenes of her at work, washing her hands, folding clothing, at the beach, and wearing a mask, as she delivers the narration in voice-over. The first four videos total about twenty-three minutes, while the final one is eighteen minutes and features a score by Menzies.
Nuala Clarke will discuss her new video series on September 5 at 3:00 (photo courtesy Nuala Clarke)
“And then I see it in front of me, emerging from the dark. A body drawing is how I thought of it,” Clarke eloquently relates in part two, as shafts of light shine on abstract shapes twisting unhurriedly. “It was suspended, not square, paperlike, connected at points along the way, white and gold, curved, lungs, voids among the turning spaces. I woke slowly, remembering, made a drawing, and kept it in my mind’s eye.” On September 5 at 3:00, Clarke will host an informal and unrehearsed Zoom conversation in conjunction with the virtual opening of so i have observed. Having participated back in 2010 with Menzies and others in a performance Clarke curated for her show “You Delight Me” on Shelter Island, we are very familiar with the multidisciplinary approach she takes with all of her work, so we are excited about hearing her discuss this beautifully poetic project that deals with loneliness and loss, nature and beauty, centered around color. Be sure to check out the videos here first.
Who:Leonardo Drew, Mary Sabbatino What: “Galerie Lelong Conversations” Where:Galerie Lelong Zoom When: Wednesday, September 2, free with advance registration, 2:00 Why: “Galerie Lelong Conversations” continues September 2 with Tallahassee-born, Bridgeport-raised, Brooklyn-based sculptor Leonardo Drew, who will be speaking from his studio with gallery vice president and partner Mary Sabbatino. They will be focusing on Drew’s newest projects in addition to his first outdoor installation, City in the Grass, a striking amalgam of miniature buildings on undulating carpets with holes where grass can grow through.
In his artist statement about the commission, which was on view in Madison Square Park from June to December of last year, Drew explained, “Reaching. It’s all about reaching. Life lays out its plan, but you need to reach to achieve. My journey to realize City in the Grass is a life diagram filled with twists, turns, thrills, and doors blown wide open. What I had in mind and where I ended up are vastly different . . . for all the right reasons. Working outside and understanding the poetic and concrete concerns is a learning curve that needed to be addressed. The idea of meeting the existing (historic) skyscrapers with a vertical/monumental structure was quickly scrapped. . . . What if we switched the perspective? How the kids in my neighborhood read my works on the floor of my studio convinced me that this was the direction. Gulliver, Lilliput. From cinema, The Wizard of Oz, Metropolis . . . The details are explained in the piece itself. Imagining that my philosophy of viewers being complicit in the completion of the art could be made whole is truly a revelation in this particular work. While they walk on it, lie on it, climb on it, they add to (and subtract from) the new iteration ‘the new self of the work.’ Could not and would not have it any other way.” The work is currently on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art. You can watch previous “Galerie Lelong Conversations” with Kate Shepherd here and Jaume Plensa here.
