this week in art

PHENOMENAL NATURE: MRINALINI MUKHERJEE

“Mrinalini Mukherjee: Phenomenal Nature” continues at the Met Breuer through September 29 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Met Breuer
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Through September 29, suggested admission $12-$25
212-731-1675
www.metmuseum.org

It’s a shame that Indian artist Mrinalini Mukherjee didn’t live long enough to see her lovely Met Breuer retrospective, “Phenomenal Nature.” This first major US survey follows the career of Mukherjee, who passed away in 2015 at the age of sixty-five, as she balanced between figuration and abstraction, the traditional and the modern, and Western and non-Western modalities while moving from fiber wall hangings and free-standing works to ceramic and bronze objects. The show, arranged chronologically, features her feminist totems that at times evoke a walk through the Star Wars Cantina, populated by strange and intriguing, often erotically charged creatures.

Mrinalini Mukherjee, Aranyani
(Goddess of the Forests), fiber, 1996 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Inspired by nature, Mukherjee’s colorful fiber and hemp sculptures reference both humans and animals and bear Sanskrit names such as Apsara (Celestial Nymph), Yakshi (Female Forest Deity), Rudra (Deity of Terror), and Black Devi (Black Goddess). Thoughtfully curated by Shanay Jhaveri, it’s a menagerie of snakes, peacocks, palm fronds, flowers, and figures with sexual organs that form their own kind of iconography; other pieces mimic furniture, from chairs to lamps, but there is nothing mundane about Mukherjee’s oeuvre, which she intended to be seen as an artistic whole rather than craft pieces. “My work is physical — my body, my materials, the way of life, the environment, all work together,” she said. The fifty-seven works are on view through September 29, a poignant introduction to a sadly little-known artist you can learn more about at the free MetFridays lecture “Mrinalini Mukherjee: Materials and Experience,” with Julia Bryan-Wilson, Fred Moten, and Jhaveri at the Met Fifth Ave. at 6:30 on September 27.

MARTA MINUJÍN: MENESUNDA RELOADED

Marta Minujín’s La Menesunda has a neon-heavy room evocative of Buenos Aires and Times Square (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Through September 29, $12-$18
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

If you missed Mika Rottenberg’s “Easypieces” at the New Museum, you still have a chance to catch Marta Minujín’s similarly immersive, astute, and funny “Menesunda Reloaded,” continuing through September 29. The Buenos Aires-born Minujín, collaborating with Rubén Santantonín, debuted the participatory installation La Menesunda in 1965 at the Instituto Torcuato di Tella in her home city to huge acclaim, with long lines of eager art lovers waiting for their chance to go inside the multimedia labyrinth and experience the unique happening, one at a time. “‘LA MENESUNDA’/is a caprice/a nonsense/way of creating difficult/strange/embarrassing ‘situations’/for those who are willing to accept them/INTENSIFYING EXISTENCE/beyond gods and ideas/feelings/mandates and desires,” the pamphlet at the opening described.

Visitors meet a masseuse or a makeup artist in “The Woman’s Head” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

You’ll have to wait in line at the New Museum as well, but it moves pretty quickly as people make their way up and down stairs and into a series of rooms Minujín, who was only in her early twenties when she made the piece, calls “The Woman’s Head,” “The TV Tunnel,” “The Intestines,” “The Swamp,” “The Rotating Basket,” and “The Forest of Forms and Textures,” among others. Each space offers different types of interactions as visitors can see themselves on an old television monitor, watch a couple in bed, get a schpritz from a makeup artist, and navigate through glowing neon, soft sculptures, and a mirrored area with confetti. The exhibition is supplemented with a black-and-white documentary of people going through the original installation, but avoid watching it until after you come out so it doesn’t ruin any of the surprises.

La Menesunda features hidden surprises around every corner and through mysterious peepholes (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Now seventy-six, Minujín counted among her friends and colleagues Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow, Carolee Schneemann, Christo, and Andy Warhol and has constructed such other immersive environments as El Batacazo, The Academy of Failure, and Eróticos en Technicolor. She is quite a character, as she reveals in a catalog interview with Helga Christofferson and Massimiliano Gioni in which she touts her success and large ego, declares her work is not spectacle-driven, and explains why she hasn’t gone to a doctor since the birth of her daughter. When asked if La Menesunda was purposely designed so that it was possible for people to exit before seeing every room, she responds, “Yes. I always liked the idea that something is missing. For instance, I am very famous in Argentina, so I signed a dollar with the statement: ‘Take me, I am yours.’ People would then have to think about whether they wanted to sell the dollar with my signature on it, or use it. It’s like if you found a dollar bill signed by Andy Warhol in New York, would you sell it, keep it to sell it later, or spend it? I always want to create that kind of situation. That’s what I like about art: to wake up senses and ideas, to wake people up from their everyday lives, to wake up feelings they’ve never felt before.” Anticipating Instagram-friendly pop-up galleries and the need for publicly-announced instant gratification, La Menesunda accomplishes all that and more.

CONQUEST: A POPE.L CRAWL

Pope.L. "The Great White Way, 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street" (2000-2009). Performance. ©POPE. L. COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS AND MITCHEL-INNES & NASH, NEW YORK.

Pope.L., “The Great White Way: 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street,” 2000-2009 (©Pope.L, courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York)

Seravalli Playground, St. Vincent’s Triangle, Washington Square Park, Union Square Park
Saturday, September 21, free, 9:45 am – 3:30 pm
www.publicartfund.org
conquest slideshow

On September 21, Newark-born, Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Pope.L will lead “Conquest,” a crawl starting at Seravalli Playground at Hudson and Horatio Sts. at 9:45 am, continuing to NYC AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent’s Triangle around 11:00 and Washington Square Park at approximately 12:30, and then concluding at Union Square Park from 2:45 to 3:30. More than 140 volunteers will make their way on their bellies, becoming one with the New York City landscape. “The reason it’s called ‘Conquest’ is because that’s not what we’re gonna do at all!” (William) Pope.L explains in a Public Art Fund video. “We’re gonna give up stuff. And in giving up stuff, we’re gonna make more stuff for more people.” The one-day-only site-specific, 1.5-mile relay journey will offer up, according to the artist, humility, generosity, mirth, puzzlement, a guffaw, and maybe even some hectoring during these hard times, bringing a new perspective to how we all get by in this thoroughly amazing yet maddeningly frustrating city. Pope.L (eRacism: White Room, Thunderbird Immolation a.k.a. Meditation Square Piece) will be at the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at the Cooper Union on September 20 at 6:30 for a Public Art Fund talk (free with advance RSVP) about the project, which leads up to two concurrent New York museum exhibitions: “Choir” at the Whitney (beginning October 20) and “member” at MoMA (October 21), which with “Conquest” form “Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration.”

Pope.L helps “Conquest” participants in Washington Square Park find their way (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Follow-up: It was a beautiful, sunny day for “Conquest” as groups of five differently abled blindfolded volunteers, including pregnant women, the elderly, people with prosthetic limbs, the deaf and blind, the wheelchair-bound, and others, crawled on their bellies one block at a time to call attention to physical privilege. The crawlers were cheered on by well-wishers there to show their support; they were also stared at or ignored by passersby who had no idea what was going on, as if it were just another weird thing happening in the city. Pope.L was following along, either spritzing a perfumed mist in front of the participants to help guide them by sense of smell or, at my suggestion, bending down to feel how hot the sidewalk was. It was an inspirational event that, as with all of Pope.L’s pieces, had important social points to make. You can see photos and videos from “Conquest” here.

MIKA ROTTENBERG: EASYPIECES

A tunnel welcomes visitors to Mika Rottenberg’s Cosmic Generator at the New Museum (photo © Mika Rottenberg / courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Through September 15, $12-$18
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

Allegorical depictions of consumerism, the means of production, and the global reach of capitalism are at the center of Mika Rottenberg’s artistic concerns, and they are on full display in her first solo New York museum show, the delightful “Mika Rottenberg: Easypieces,” which continues at the New Museum through September 15. The presentation consists of three major video installations along with playful sculptures and an additional short film that immerse visitors in the Argentina-born, Israel-raised, New York–based Rottenberg’s unique visual and physical world. Her videos have an almost visceral and tactile appeal due to her inventive use of sound and imagery, while the uncanny sculptures that accompany them enhance the overall experience, bringing together humanity, nature, materiality, and technology. The title of the show was inspired by Richard P. Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher; Feynman, a theoretical physicist, writes in the introduction, “Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected.” Feynman might have been speaking to physics students, but it also reads like Rottenberg explaining her work to her audience.

A hallway of ceiling fans leads to Mika Rottenberg’s new Spaghetti Blockchain video installation (photo © Mika Rottenberg / courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth)

Visitors get a hint of what’s to come as soon as they get off the elevator, where they are greeted by AC and Plant, an air conditioner sticking out of a temporary wall, a slow drip from which waters a potted plant on the floor. The three main videos burst with bright colors, make absurdist connections, and depict the monotony of everyday work. You enter the new Spaghetti Blockchain through a hallway of ceiling fans seen through slits in the walls; the twenty-one-minute video travels from Siberia, where Tuvan throat singer Choduraa Tumat vocalizes in traditional dress in a vast mountain landscape, to a potato farm in Maine shot from above, to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. A rotating hexagonal kaleidoscopic structure at the antimatter factory turns to reveal a knife slicing a jelly roll, a man getting his bald spot sprayed, sizzling candy melting, and other odd actions that serve as ASMR cues.

Mika Rottenberg’s Finger might just contain the key to the universe (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

You have to walk through a tunnel to get to 2017’s Cosmic Generator (Tunnel Variant), a twenty-seven-minute video that connects Chinese restaurants in Mexicali to a wholesale market in Yiwu, China, through a network of abandoned underground tunnels, creating seemingly arbitrary relationships that comment on border towns, immigration, and cheap Chinese labor and plastic goods. (Be sure to ride the large elevator to get a cool bonus.) You exit the room through a floor-to-ceiling sparkling rainbow curtain, like the ones on display at the Yiwu market, leading you to the three-minute short Sneeze, in which barefoot men in suits sit at a table, sneezing out rabbits, lightbulbs, and steak, referencing Thomas Edison’s 1894 five-second Fred Ott’s Sneeze. That room and the next contain bags of (fake) pearls and bunnies made of the gems, leading into 2015’s NoNoseKnows (Artist Variant), linking a pearl factory in China, where women first infect oysters so they will produce pearls, then harvest them and separate them, with fetishist Bunny Glamazon, who sniffs flowers in a small room and sneezes out plates of noodles. Meanwhile, a pair of upside-down feet stick out of a bucket of cultured pearls.

Pearls are at the center of Mika Rottenberg’s NoNoseKnows (Artist Variant) (photo © Mika Rottenberg / courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth)

The videos are supplemented by a room of kinetic sculptures that are directly or indirectly related, physical manifestations of what we have seen and/or experienced onscreen, blurring the lines between fact and fiction: AC and Plant is joined by Frying Pans (duo), a pair of pans on stovetops into which drops of water fall from above and sizzle, emanating smoke and sharp sounds; Finger is a digit sticking out of a wall, slowly turning, the cosmos visible on its long nail; Lips (Study #3) is a pair of sultry red lips on a wall, a miniature video playing inside, with smoke occasionally wafting out; and Ponytail (Orange) is made of real hair, flopping out of a hole in a wall. You’re not going to make sense out of every detail, so don’t try; just enjoy the pure fun of it all, even as it takes on aspects of labor with a Marxist bent. Rottenberg’s (Bowls Balls Souls Holes, Seven with Jon Kessler) work can be extremely funny and surreal, but it also is deceptively smart and clever as it deals with the apparatus of making and using, manufacturing and consuming, that so dominates modern society.

CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL 2019

Crossing the Line Festival opens with Isabelle Adjani in Opening Night (photo © Simon Gosselin)

Crossing the Line Festival
French Institute Alliance Française and other venues
September 12 – October 12
212-355-6160
crossingthelinefestival.org

FIAF’s thirteenth annual Crossing the Line Festival, one of the city’s best multidisciplinary events, opens appropriately enough with the US premiere of French director Cyril Teste’s Opening Night, a multimedia adaptation of John Cassavetes’s 1977 film. The seventy-five-minute presentation, running September 12-14, stars the legendary Isabelle Adjani, along with Morgan Lloyd Sicard and Frédéric Pierrot; the actors will receive new stage directions at each performance, so anything can happen. (In conjunction with Opening Night, FIAF will be hosting the CinéSalon series “Magnetic Gaze: Isabelle Adjani on Screen,” consisting of ten films starring Adjani, including The Story of Adele H, Queen Margot, and Possession, on Tuesdays through October 29.) Also on September 12, Paris-born, New York–based visual artist Pierre Huyghe will unveil his free video installation The Host and the Cloud, a two-hour film exploring the nature of human ritual, set in a former ethnographic museum; the 2009-10 film will be shown on a loop in the FIAF Gallery Monday to Saturday through the end of the festival, October 12. Another major highlight of CTL 2019 is the US premiere of Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne’s Why? Running September 21 through October 6 at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, the seventy-five-minute show delves into the very existence of theater itself. The festival also features dance, music, and other live performances by an impressive range of creators; below is the full schedule. Numerous shows will be followed by Q&As with the writers, directors, and/or performers.

Thursday, September 12
through
Saturday, September 14
Opening Night, directed by Cyril Teste, starring Isabelle Adjani, Morgan Lloyd Sicard, and Frédéric Pierrot, FIAF Florence Gould Hall, $45-$55, 7:30

Thursday, September 12
through
Saturday, October 12
The Host and the Cloud, directed by Pierre Huyghe, FIAF Gallery, free

Friday, September 13
through
Sunday, September 15
Manmade Earth, by 600 HIGHWAYMEN, the Invisible Dog Art Center, $15 suggested donation

Tuesday, September 17
and
Wednesday, September 18
The Disorder of Discourse, Fanny de Chaillé’s restaging of a lecture by Michel Foucault, with Guillaume Bailliart, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, free with RSVP, 8:00

Saturday, September 21
through
Sunday, October 6
Why?, by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, Theatre for a New Audience, $90-$115

Radio Live makes its New York premiere at Crossing the Line Festival (photo © Louise Quignon)

Wednesday, September 25
Isadora Duncan, by Jérôme Bel, CTL commission, with Catherine Gallant, FIAF Florence Gould Hall, $35, 7:30

Thursday, September 26
through
Saturday, September 28
Somewhere at the Beginning, created and performed by Mikaël Serre, choreographed by Germaine Acogny, set to music by Fabrice Bouillon, La MaMa, $25, 7:00

Wednesday, October 2
Radio Live, with Aurélie Charon, Caroline Gillet, and Amélie Bonnin, based on narratives by young change makers from around the world, FIAF Florence Gould Hall, $15-$35

Thursday, October 3
through
Sunday, October 6
Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, world premiere choreographed by Stefanie Batten Bland, with music by Paul Damien Hogan, inspired by 1967 Stanley Kramer film, La MaMa, $21-$26

Friday, October 4
and
Saturday, October 5
The Sun Too Close to the Earth, world premiere by Rhys Chatham for nine-piece ensemble, inspired by climate change, along with Le Possédé bass flute solo and On, Suzanne featuring harpist Zeena Parkins and drummer Jonathan Kane, ISSUE Project Room, $25, 8:00

Thursday, October 10
When Birds Refused to Fly, conceived, directed, and choreographed by Olivier Tarpaga, featuring Salamata Kobré, Jean Robert Kiki Koudogbo, Stéphane Michael Nana, and Abdoul Aziz Zoundi, with music by Super Volta and others, FIAF Florence Gould Hall, $15-$35, 7:30

Friday, October 11
and
Saturday, October 12
Дyми Moï — Dumy Moyi, solo performance by François Chaignaud, the Invisible Dog Art Center, free with RSVP

PLAY IT LOUD: INSTRUMENTS OF ROCK AND ROLL

Joan Jett Melody Maker, 1977 Gibson (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Joan Jett’s 1977 Melody Maker Gibson is part of Met exhibition “Play It Loud” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Met Fifth Ave.
Gallery 199
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Through Through October 1, $25 suggested admission
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

In 2011, the Met hosted “Guitar Heroes: Legendary Craftsmen from Italy to New York,” focusing on the lutherie tradition of Italian Americans in New York and New Jersey, artisans making violins, mandolins, guitars, and other stringed instruments. In the current exhibition “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll,” the Met turns it up to eleven, celebrating the stringed and nonstringed apparatus of rock and pop music since the 1950s. In Mott the Hoople’s 1973 staple “All the Way from Memphis,” Ian Hunter refers to his guitar as a “six-string razor,” an “axe,” and “electric junk.” He continues: “Some dude said, ‘Rock ’n’ rollers, you’re all the same / Man, that’s your instrument.’ / I felt so ashamed.” Ian and Mott might not be represented in the Met exhibit — or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — but there’s nothing for anyone to be ashamed of regarding this exciting collection of nearly two hundred items, with most of the instruments displayed in vitrines, like sculptural works of art, which of course they are.

Keith Emerson’s 1960s Modified Hammond L-100 organ features two knives Emerson would stab the keys with (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Don’t go straight to the labels, which contain information about who made the instrument and who played it on what songs; it’s a lot of fun trying to figure out whose instrument it is. You’re likely to guess twangers by Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick, Prince, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Ravi Shankar, and Bruce Springsteen, but others will surprise and delight you. One of the first items you’ll encounter is Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1955 Petite Grand Piano; for some reason, the signage refers to Lewis, who is eighty-three, in the past tense. Among the many gems are Chuck Berry’s 1958 Gibson, Louis Jordan’s 1954 Mark VI alto saxophone, Muddy Waters’s 1958 Telecaster known as “the Hoss,” Les Paul’s 1942 “Klunker,” Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 “Love Drops” Flying V, Joni Mitchell’s 1978 GB10NT George Benson Signature, Jack White’s 1964 Airline Res-O-Glas, Joe Perry’s 1985-86 X-100 Blade Runner, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s 1963 “Number One” composite Stratocaster, Robert Trujillo’s 2007–08 “Aztec De La Chloe” five-string bass, Keith Emerson’s 1968 Customized Moog Modular Synthesizer with keyboard, ribbon controllers, and stand, Ian Anderson’s 1975 Model 18-0 flute, Lady Gaga’s 2014 ARTPOP piano with custom housing, and Paul Stanley’s 1979–80 Cracked Mirror Iceman in addition to instruments played by Duane Allman, the Edge, Angus Young, Jeff Beck, Flea, Patti Smith, Ray Manzarek, Paul Butterfield, Nancy Wilson, Clarence Clemons, Steve Vai, Neil Young, Tina Weymouth, Bob Dylan, and dozens more.

Met exhibition is not just about classic guitars (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

These are not mere artifacts; Jerry Garcia’s Wolf was taken out of the museum so John Mayer could play it at a recent Dead & Co. show at CitiField, and a Stones guitar is out on the road with the band right now. There are several striking guitars from Met fave Steve Miller, who will playing a show in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium on September 28 and contributed to the 2011 “Guitar Heroes” exhibit. Don’t miss Kurt Cobain’s destroyed 1993 left-handed Fender Stratocaster, Eric Clapton’s trippy 1964 “The Fool” SG (and the original headstock, which earns its own vitrine), Pete Townshend’s 1973 Gibson SG Special (which he smashed during a photo shoot and is now encased in Lucite), and a fragment of Hendrix’s 1967 Monterey Pop Fender Stratocaster, which he famously lit on fire. Four guitar greats tell their stories in a circular case that houses their gear and video monitors: Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, and Tom Morello. (Having seen Morello shred live, I understand exactly why he’s part of this elite quartet.) Several bands display their stage setup, including the Beatles, the Who, Metallica, and the Roots. The exhibition, which was inspired by Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna’s book Play It Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound, and Revolution of the Electric Guitar and is co-organized by the Met’s Jayson Kerr Dobney and the Hall of Fame’s Craig J. Inciardi, is supplemented by vintage concert posters by Lee Conklin, Bonnie MacLean, Rick Griffin, and others. It’s easy to argue why certain musicians are not part of the show (What, no Richard Thompson or Lou Reed?!? Where’s Ritchie Blackmore, Bob Mould, and Johnny Ramone?), but it’s better to just enjoy who is in it. Below are the remaining special events being held in conjunction with the exhibition, which runs through October 1.

Prince’s 1993 Love Symbol captures his trademark glyph (photo by Cathy Hapka for twi-ny)

Saturday, September 7
Black Rock Coalition: History of Our Future, with the BRC Orchestra, Fantastic Negrito, Nona Hendryx, Vernon Reid, Corey Glover, and Will Calhoun, “Captain” Kirk Douglas, Stew, the Family Stand, Carl Hancock Rux, and Toshi Reagon, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, $25, 7:00

Sunday, September 8
Sunday at the Met — Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll, panel discussion with Anthony DeCurtis, David Fricke, Holly George-Warren, Jayson Dobney, and Craig J. Inciardi, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, free with Museum admission, 2:00

Friday, September 13
MetFridays: Play It Loud — ETHEL and Friends: Four for Fighting, Great Hall Balcony Bar, 5:00–8:00; screening of Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970), Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall, 6:00; Conversations with . . . curators Jayson Dobney and Craig J. Inciardi, Gallery 199, 6:00; Signs and Symbols of Rock and Roll, with designers from ThoughtMatter, a band-name generator, and a button workshop, Great Hall, 6:00; Building Instruments with Atelier Rosenkrantz, Gallery 681, 6:00; Tie-Dye Workshop, Carroll Classroom, 6:00; Reflections on Woodstock with Chris Molanphy, Art Study Room, 6:30; Lez Zeppelin Live, preceded by discussion with Steph Paynes and Brad Tolinski, free with advance RSVP, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, 7:15; all free with museum admission, 5:00–9:00

Saturday, September 28
Steve Miller Band and Jimmie Vaughan Band in Concert, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, 7:00

WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2019

Nicole Eisenman’s aptly named Procession nearly proceeded out of the Whitney Biennial (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Wednesday – Monday through September 22, $18-$25 (eighteen and under free; pay-what-you-wish Fridays 7:00 – 9:30)
Some programs require advance registration and/or tickets
212-570-3600
whitney.org

The most viscerally entertaining work at the 2019 Whitney Biennial is Nicole Eisenman’s aptly named Procession, which first proceeded onto the sixth floor terrace, then nearly proceeded out of the building. The France-born, Brooklyn-based artist was part of a protest against the Whitney’s vice chairman, Warren Kanders, whose Safariland company makes tear-gas canisters, among other items used by security forces on civilians around the world. Eight artists — Eisenman, Michael Rakowitz, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Meriem Bennani, Nicholas Galanin, Eddie Arroyo, Agustina Woodgate, and Christine Sun Kim — demanded their work be removed from the biennial as long as Kanders remained on the board; they were responding to an original call for a boycott made by Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett. Two years ago, artist and writer Black argued that Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket, depicting Emmett Till in his coffin, “must go,” claiming it was cultural appropriation. The Whitney decided to add signage to Schutz’s canvas, explaining the controversy and letting viewers decide for themselves. But this time around, the Whitney agreed to pull the contributions from the eight artists — only to stop when Kanders resigned from the board, not admitting any guilt but not wanting the story to “undermine the important work of the Whitney.”

Agustina Woodgate’s National Times erases “master/slave” time (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The site-specific Procession is an oddball collection of near-mythical bronze and plaster figures trudging along, a mix of classical and contemporary styles. Visitors are allowed to walk on the platform and get up close to the individual elements, which contain plenty of humor; watch out for the gaseous release. If you’d like to comment on the piece, Eisenman has a message for you: “How’s my sculpting? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT.” Meanwhile, after much consternation, Marcus Fischer opted to keep his audio installation, Ascent/Dissent, in the Allison and Warren Kanders Stairway as a tribute to Felix Gonzalez Torres’s Untitled (America) string of lightbulbs that hang down the center of the stairwell. For more on the Kanders situation, Forensic Architecture’s eye-opening Triple-Chaser digs deep into the making and distribution of tear-gas canisters using an AI algorithm.

Joe Minter’s ’63 Foot Soldiers is composed of found objects (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The rest of the survey of twenty-first-century American art is, as always, a hit-or-miss affair, with many works dealing with international sociopolitical issues. Alexandra Bell’s Friday, April 21, 1989 — Front Page looks at how the New York Daily News reported the Central Park Five case. Bennani’s Mission Teens invites viewers to sit in a tropical “video viewing garden” to experience her films on colonialism. Robert Bittenbender uses garbage he collected in Long Island City to create wall sculptures that comment on gentrification. Kota Ezawa’s large-scale animation National Anthem was made from smaller watercolors of football players taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Sofía Gallisá Muriente explores the fraught relationship between mainland America and Puerto Rico in Lluvia con Nieve (Rain with Snow), as does Daniel Lind-Ramos in his found-object sculptures Sentinels and Maria-Maria; the latter reimagines the Virgin Mary through Hurricane Maria, which devastated his homeland.

Calvin Marcus (1988-), Los Angeles Painting, 2018. Watercolor and vinyl paint on linen, 79 x 101 5/8 in. (200 x 258 cm). Image courtesy the artist; Clearing, New York and Brussels; and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

Calvin Marcus, Los Angeles Painting, watercolor and vinyl paint on linen, 2018 (image courtesy the artist; Clearing, New York and Brussels; and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles)

Three videos by Ilana Harris-Babou take on such issues as reparations and redlining. Joe Minter’s ’63 Foot Soldiers uses found materials, including license plates, signs, helmets, sneakers, and a small flag, to reference the civil rights movement and the current state of wealth and class inequality. Woodgate’s National Times consists of clocks keeping “master/slave” time, the minute hand equipped with sandpaper that slowly erases the numbers. In My Soul Remainer, ballet star Jock Soto dances to Laura Ortman’s violin, playing a combination of musical notes and environmental sounds amid a mountain landscape. On select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, five dancers (Hector Cerna, Tiffany Mangulabnan, Charles Gowin, Violetta Komyshan, Josep Maria Monreal Vidal, Amy Saunder, Mauricio Vera, Allison Walsh, Jennifer Whalen, Tyler Zydel) move within Brendan Fernandes’s The Master and Form scaffold-like installation, in which the performers get ready at individual spots where they interact with ash wood and leather works on black carpets, their bodies mimicking the shape of the sculpture, then inhabit a central scaffold-like installation that looks like it belongs in a children’s playground before grabbing on to floor-to-ceiling ropes lined up in front of full-length windows.

Brendan Fernandes’s The Master and Form is performed Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Two of the most striking images in the show are Curran Hatleberg’s Untitled (Camaro), a photograph of a red Camaro stuck on top of two dumpsters in a junkyard, and Calvin Marcus’s gorgeous Los Angeles Painting, a fiery red future visible through a car windshield; both can be seen as harbingers of doom, a theme that hovers over this biennial, though the exhibit, curated by Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley, is not without hope. Also keep an eye out for impressive works by Simone Leigh, Brian Belott, Todd Gray, Maia Ruth Lee, and the late Barbara Hammer. Below are the remaining special screenings and live performances; some require advance tickets or RSVP.

Thursday, September 5
and
Saturday, September 7
Autumn Knight: Sanity TV, third floor, Susan and John Hess Family Theater, $10, 7:30

Saturday, September 7
Whitney Block Walk, free with advance RSVP, 4:30, 5:00, 5:30, 6:00

Friday, September 13
Steffani Jemison with Garrett Gray: On Similitude, third floor, Susan and John Hess Family Theater, $10, 7:30

Saturday, September 14
Whitney Block Walk, free with advance RSVP, 4:30, 5:30

Sunday, September 15
From Seneca Village to Brooklyn: A Conversation with Tomashi Jackson, with Tourmaline, Tsubasa Berg, Diana diZerega, Jonathan Kuhn, Meredith B. Linn, Kelly Mena, K-Sue Park, Nan Rothschild, Marie Warsh, and Stephen Witt, third floor, Susan and John Hess Family Theater, free with advance RSVP, 7:30

Thursday, September 19
Madeline Hollander — Ouroboros: Gs, Pamella and Daniel DeVos Family Outdoor Largo, free with museum admission, 5:00 – 9:00

Friday, September 20, 7:00
and
Saturday, September 21, 4:00
What Was Always Yours and Never Lost, short films followed by a Q&A with curator Sky Hopinka and some of the filmmakers, Susan and John Hess Family Theater, $10