this week in art

ASSEMBLY

Kevin Beasley’s Assembly takes attendees across three floors of the Kitchen (image courtesy Kevin Beasley)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
June 15-16, 22-23, 29-30, $10 (advance reservations recommended)
Installation on view June 21 & 28, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-255-5793
thekitchen.org

Hot on the heels of his widely hailed audiovisual Whitney exhibition, “A View of a Landscape,” which included several live performances using manipulated sounds emanating from a cotton gin motor, Yale MFA candidate Kevin Beasley is stripping down the Kitchen for the installation / performance series Assembly, taking place in newly empty rooms on three floors of the Chelsea arts institution. Beasley, in conjunction with Lumi Tan, Tim Griffin, and Nicole Kaack from the Kitchen, has created custom sound and video systems that will be activated on Saturday, June 15, 22, and 29, at 6:30, and Sunday, June 16, 23, and 30, at 4:00, in dialogue with the building itself and its position in a changing art world, specifically involving access and collectivity. The mix of musicians, dancers, performance artists, and DJs features Suzi Analogue and Pamela Z on June 15, King Britt presents Moksha Black and Richard Kennedy on June 16, Mhysa, David Thomson, and whoisskitzo on June 22, HPrizm, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, and stud1nt on June 23, Lafawndah, NAR, and Angie Pittman on June 29, and Jason Moran, Logan Takahashi, and Wetware on June 30. In a statement, choreographer Thomson called his piece, Body of work, “a palimpsest. A meditation on memory, identities, and boundaries. A marking of time on the body of a transitional space.” Admission is $10, and attendees are encouraged to walk throughout the Kitchen; advance purchase is recommended. In addition, the installation will be open to the public for free on June 21 and 28 from 11:00 to 6:00.

MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL 2019

Crowds will line Fifth Avenue for Museum Mile Festival on Tuesday night

Multiple locations on Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts.
Tuesday, June 11, free, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
www.museummilefestival.org

The forty-first annual Museum Mile Festival will take place on Tuesday, June 11, as eight arts institutions along Fifth Avenue between 82nd and 105th Sts. open their doors for free between 6:00 and 9:00. There will be live indoor or outdoor performances by Fogo Azul, Steven Bernstein’s Sexmob, Aurora Flores and Zon del Barrio, Palladium Mambo All Stars, and DJ Bembona in addition to face painting, art workshops, a birthday photo booth, and more. The participating museums (with at least one of their current shows listed here) are El Museo del Barrio (“Culture and the People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969 – 2019”), the Museum of the City of New York (“New York at Its Core,” “Pride: Photographs of Stonewall and Beyond by Fred W. McDarrah”), the Jewish Museum (“Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything”), the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (“Nature — The Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial”), the Guggenheim (“Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now,” “Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection”), the Neue Galerie (“The Self-Portrait, from Schiele to Beckmann”), the Africa Center (“Sudan Uprising”), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock&Roll,” “The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated”), along with presentations by the New York Academy of Medicine, the Church of the Heavenly Rest, and Asia Society. Don’t try to do too much, because it can get rather crowded; just pick one or two exhibitions in one or two museums and enjoy.

TRIPTYCH (EYES OF ONE ON ANOTHER)

Bryce Dessner’s Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) runs at BAM June 6-8 (photo by Richard Termine)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
June 6-8, $30-$60, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

I was prepared to be blown away by Bryce Dessner’s Triptych (Eyes of One on Another). I’m a big fan of his artsy rock group, the National; I love (who doesn’t?) Patti Smith, whose text figures prominently in the piece; and I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of the Guggenheim’s “Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now” exhibit, which includes several images that appear in Dessner’s seventy-minute multimedia work. Perhaps my expectations were too high.

Inspired by the 1990 obscenity case against Mapplethorpe’s “The Perfect Moment” exhibit, which took place in Dessner’s hometown of Cincinnati when he was a teenager, Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) explores demons and desire, objectification and beauty, specifically in Mapplethorpe’s XYZ portfolios, which focus on sadomasochism, flowers, and African American male nudes. Accompanying the large-scale projections (by Simon Harding), which appear on a front scrim and/or the back wall, is text from the trial and writings by Smith and poet and activist Essex Hemphill, the latter a critic of Mapplethorpe’s. Dessner’s haunting, ethereal score is performed live by Roomful of Teeth (Cameron Beauchamp, Martha Cluver, Eric Dudley, Estelí Gomez, Abigail Lennox, Thomas McCargar, Thann Scoggin, and Caroline Shaw), joined by soprano Alicia Hall Moran and tenor Isaiah Robinson, the women in silvery white, the men (except for Robinson) in black. (The set and costumes are by Carlos Soto.) Brad Wells conducts, with Jessica McJunkins on violin, Tia Allen on viola, Byron Hogan on cello, Kyra Sims on French horn, Ian Tyson on clarinet and bass clarinet, Laura Barger on piano and harmonium, Donnie Johns and Victor Pablo on percussion, and James Moore on guitar.

A man cannot look up at Robert Mapplethorpe images in Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) (photo by Richard Termine)

Korde Arrington Tuttle’s libretto boasts numerous phrases that stick in the mind as they are sung and projected on walls and screens: “The devil in us all / darkness as beauty”; “Aesthetics can justify desire”; “unsavory things”; “The Artist machetes a clearance.” However, there are also quotes from the trial, which feel trivial and pedantic, especially when juxtaposed with Robinson and Roomful of Teeth’s extensive later repetition of “In america, / I place my ring / on your cock / where it belongs,” from Hemphill’s American Wedding. Among the photographs are “Dominick and Elliot,” depicting a shirtless white man holding the nether regions of a naked white man tied upside down; Mapplethorpe’s famous 1988 portrait of himself gripping a cane with a skull on it; “Jack Walls,” of a black man pointing a gun above his exposed penis; and “Cedric, N.Y.C.,” in which a black man bows his head, the light and shadows making it look like his right side is black and his left side white.

Director Kaneza Schaal is unable to bring the piece together; the words, music, and imagery feel like separate entities. Through it all, a black man wanders across the stage and into the audience, looking up at the projections, a spectator commenting on the images of black bodies by saying nothing. When the audience enters the Howard Gilman Opera House, he is sitting at the front of the stage, watching the people wander in, implicating us all. But I’m not sure in what.

TRIPTYCH (EYES OF ONE ON ANOTHER)

Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) takes a unique multimedia look at the work of Robert Mapplethorpe (photo by Maria Baranova)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
June 6-8, $30-$60, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

The controversial work of the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe has been undergoing a renaissance over the last few years, with documentaries, gallery and museum shows, and, perhaps most influentially, Patti Smith’s award-winning memoir about her life with Mapplethorpe, Just Kids. Now comes composer Bryce Dessner and librettist Korde Arrington Tuttle’s multimedia Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), playing at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House June 6-8. The sixty-minute theatrical oratorio is divided into three sections based on Mapplethorpe’s XYZ portfolios, which explore sadomasochism, flowers, and African American male nudes, respectively. The first part centers on Smith’s poem “The Boy Who Loved Michelangelo,” set to a Monteverdi madrigal; the second on Dessner’s personal reaction to the 1990 Mapplethorpe obscenity trial in Cincinnati, the composer’s hometown; and the third on poet and performance artist Essex Hemphill’s “The Perfect Moment,” which was critical of Mapplethorpe’s depiction of black bodies. “Aesthetics can justify desire, / but desire in turn / can provoke punishment. / Under public scrutiny / the eyes of one man / are focused on another. / Is it desire, equality, / disgust, or hatred?” he writes. Meanwhile, in a program note, dramaturg Christopher Myers asks, “Is it possible to imagine these men who are photographed with the impersonal intimacy of flowers, or bronze sculptures, as full human beings, with desires and pleasures of their own? Can we read the desire of the photographer, his conflicts and self-denials, in his steadfast commitment to a classical language that recasts leather daddies and daddy’s boys into upper middle class living room fantasies? Where in this thorny bramble of gazes, objectification, outrage, and intimacy do our own wants and expectations as an audience live?”

The production, which features giant projections of rarely shown Mapplethorpe photographs, is directed by Kaneza Schaal, with music performed live by Roomful of Teeth (Cameron Beauchamp, Martha Cluver, Eric Dudley, Estelí Gomez, Abigail Lennox, Thomas McCargar, Thann Scoggin, and Caroline Shaw), joined by soprano Alicia Hall Moran and tenor Isaiah Robinson; Brad Wells is the music director and conductor, with Jessica McJunkins on violin, Tia Allen on viola, Byron Hogan on cello, Kyra Sims on French horn, Ian Tyson on clarinet and bass clarinet, Laura Barger on piano and harmonium, Donnie Johns and Victor Pablo on percussion, and James Moore on guitar. The set and costumes are by Carlos Soto, lighting by Yuki Nakase, and video by Simon Harding. On June 7 at 6:00, the talk “Mapplethorpe in Performance with Bryce Dessner, Kaneza Schaal, and Korde Arrington Tuttle” will be held in the BAM Hillman Attic Studio.

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES: EDMUND DE WAAL AT THE FRICK COLLECTION / MORONI: THE RICHES OF RENAISSANCE PORTRAITURE

Edmund de Waal, that pause of space, porcelain, gold, alabaster, aluminum, and plexiglass, on view in the North Hall; photo: Christopher Burke

Edmund de Waal, that pause of space, porcelain, gold, alabaster, aluminum, and plexiglass, on view in the North Hall (photo by Christopher Burke)

The Frick Collection
1 East 70th St. at Fifth Ave.
Moroni through June 2, de Waal through November 17, $12-$22
212-288-0700
www.frick.org

The brief confluence of two shows at the Frick, “Elective Affinities: Edmund de Waal at the Frick Collection,” which opened May 30, and “Moroni: The Riches of Renaissance Portraiture,” which closes June 2, offers an unexpected, unanticipated bonus. For “Elective Affinities,” author and ceramicist Edmund de Waal has created site-specific vitrines of objects made of porcelain, steel, gold, alabaster, and aluminum and placed them throughout the museum, interacting with individual paintings, sculptures, and furniture, resulting in intriguing dialogues involving form, shape, color, balance, and space while exploring such concepts as wealth, power, elegance, and industry. The Moroni show focuses on the Italian painter’s portraits, many of which are accompanied by vitrines of objects relating to elements found in the work. De Waal’s an alchemy is embedded in the bottom of a table on which resides André-Charles Boulle’s “Barometer Clock,” John C. Johansen’s portrait of Henry Clay Frick looming in the background; below Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville is sub silentio, which dramatically interacts with the painting’s composition; and the temptation of Christ on the mountain echoes the architectural structures in Duccio di Buoninsegna’s tempera on poplar panel depiction of Satan attempting to entice Jesus to the dark side. A mid-sixteenth century rapier stands by Moroni’s Gabriel de la Cueva, a sword on the subject’s left side; sixteenth-century shears hover by The Tailor, in which a man is cutting fabric; and a bejeweled “Marten’s Head” resembles one of the precious accessories adorning the portrait of Isotta Brembati. Each of the exhibitions is worth seeing on its own merits, but for a few days, they can be experienced together in an unintended yet fascinating way, in lovely dialogue with each other.

FIRST SATURDAYS: STONEWALL 50

The Queer Houses of Brooklyn and the Three Towns of Boswyck, Breukelen and Midwout during the 41st Year of the Stonewall Era. (Based on the drawing by Daniel Rosza Lang/Levitsky and with illustrations by Buzz Slutzky.) Crank-Knit Yarn, fabric, thread, sequins, poly-fil, 1" pins (free to the public and replenished endlessly). 9' x 9' x 14'. 2011

LJ Roberts, The Queer Houses of Brooklyn and the Three Towns of Boswyck, Breukelen and Midwout during the 41st Year of the Stonewall Era (based on the drawing by Daniel Rosza Lang/Levitsky and with illustrations by Buzz Slutzky), crank-knit yarn, fabric, thread, sequins, poly-fil, 1″ pins (free to the public and replenished endlessly), 2011 (photo courtesy of the artist)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, June 1, free (some events require advance tickets), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum honors Gay Pride and the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in the June edition of its free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, Linda LaBeija, Amber Valentine, and Madame Gandhi as well as teen staff members presenting an intersextions variety show inspired by “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall” and artists Morgan Bassichis, TM Davy, DonChristian Jones, Michi Osato, Una Osato, and special guests celebrating the updated edition of The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions; a book club talk with Jodie Patterson discussing her latest, The Bold World, with Elaine Welteroth; a curator tour of “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow” led by Lindsay C. Harris and Carmen Hermo; a hands-on workshop in which participants can design buttons based on LJ Roberts’s The Queer Houses of Brooklyn in the Three Towns of Boswyck, Breukelen, and Midwout during the 41st Year of the Stonewall Era; a community talk on radical queer histories with Audre Lorde Project; and an “Archives as Raw History” tour focusing on the museum’s LGBTQ+ histories. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Garry Winogrand: Color,” “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall,” “Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room,” “Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha,” “One: Egúngún,” “Something to Say: Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, Deborah Kass, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Hank Willis Thomas,” “Infinite Blue,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” “Kwang Young Chun: Aggregations,” and more.

NARI WARD: WE THE PEOPLE

“Nari Ward: We the People” continues at the New Museum through May 26 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Through May 26, $12-$18
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
www.nariwardstudio.com

This is the last weekend to see “Nari Ward: We the People,” the first museum survey of the Jamaican-born installation artist. His works fill three floors of the museum, including sculptures, videos, paintings, and repurposed found objects that bring together his ancestral heritage and his longtime home base of Harlem. “Hunger Cradle” is an ever-evolving site-specific web of rope and string from which objects are suspended. “T. P. Reign Bow” features a blue police tower guarded by a fox with an afro tail (named Cornel after Dr. Cornel West). “Amazing Grace” is a room of 365 discarded strollers tied together while a recording of Mahalia Jackson singing the spiritual song repeats.

“Amazing Grace” features the song sung by Mahalia Jackson in a room of 365 baby strollers (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Iron Heavens” is a construction made of burned wooden baseball bats and wooden cooking sheets, evoking slavery and the diaspora. “We the People” spells out those constitutional words in shoelaces. “Exodus” recalls slavery, migration, and the current refugee crisis, while “Naturalization Drawing Table” explores the US immigration process. “Spellbound” is a piano covered with keys, a video playing on the back. “Glory” is a unique kind of casket for America.

Materiality and history are central to Nari Ward’s artistic discipline (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The exhibition also includes such other works as “Carpet Angel,” “Savior,” “Homeland Sweet Homeland,” “Geography: Bottle Messenger,” and “Crusader,” each well worth delving into in detail as Ward takes stock of where we’ve been, and where we are today.