Finding “Escher: The Exhibition & Experience” amid the repurposed buildings of Industry City is like making your way through one of the Dutch artist’s architectural paradoxes and impossibilities. Once you finally get to the right location, you’ll encounter a fun retrospective, albeit more Instagram friendly than art-historically thorough. The winding galleries feature many of the finest pieces by left-handed, mathematically inclined artist Maurits Cornelis Escher, better known as M. C. Escher, who was born in 1898 and died in 1972, leaving behind a legacy of influential and popular op-art drawings, woodcuts, etchings, watercolors, lithographs, and engravings. His singular genius birthed works that became a pop-culture phenomenon, appearing on T-shirts and album covers, in advertisements and unauthorized black-light posters. He concentrated on spatial deformations, repeated geometric imagery known as tessellations, and cross-hatching techniques to create mind-blowing works that uniquely altered perception — and were embraced by the hippie counterculture of the 1960s.
Curated by Mark Veldhuysen and Federico Giudiceandrea, the show comprises more than two hundred works, including such familiar classics as Hand with Reflecting Sphere (Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror),Band of Union,Day and Night,Drawing Hands, and Relativity, the last one described in the catalog as “a clever perspective game based on three different vanishing points [that] allows you to bring together three completely different worlds.” Escher drew reptiles, birds, fish, insects, horses, human figures, and other creatures morphing into one another and emerging into and from physical objects. There are numerous dazzling works that most people won’t be as familiar with, such as Belvedere,Rind,Depth, and Eye. The exquisite, expansive Metamorphosis II journeys through geometric patterns, various living beings, a chess set, and Italian architecture before turning back on itself.
Among the Escher quotes on the walls are “We adore chaos because we love to produce order,” “He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder,” and “I don’t grow up. In me is the small child of my early days,” which is how his oeuvre makes even the oldest visitors feel. The show employs rather silly concessions to this era of social media with several installations that encourage people to photograph themselves either within an Escher work or an Escher-inspired environment. However, one of them, H. W. Lenstra’s reexamination of Escher’s Print Gallery, which involves the Droste effect, is utterly fascinating. The exhibition concludes with greeting cards, stamps, magazine covers, and other items designed by Escher, as well as articles about him and examples of his continuing influence. “His aim is to depict dreams, ideas, or problems in such a way that other people can observe and consider them,” Escher said of graphic artists. The show at Industry City might not be definitive, but it has plenty to observe and consider, and enjoy.
For eleven years, Times Square has celebrated the romantic month of February with the winner of the Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition. The 2019 runners-up were Agency Agency’s Heart Warmer, Büro Koray Duman Architects’s Times Crossing, Isometric Studio’s HOPE Sculpture, Pavilions Pavilions — Whole Hearts’ N H D M, Love Labyrinth’s Only If —, and Splice Design Architecture DPC’s Human Heartedness,, but it’s Reddymade and AIA New York’s X that has been standing in Duffy Square since February 1. Illuminating the Crossroads of the World, the Times Square Arts project is made of a pair of large rectangular aluminum planes that intersect each other through circular holes that form hearts when viewed from certain angles. In the center is the repeated phrase “Into difference add equality find love,” while the periphery advises, “Caution: Don’t forget the flowers.” Suchi Reddy, the founding principal of Reddymade and an Indian immigrant, said in a statement, “Exploring the idea of communities as spaces of intersection led me to the tectonic expression of the ‘X,’ which fits the context of Times Square, one of the most thriving intersections of people, place, and culture, and its XXX history. X is for love.” Previous Love in Times Square winners include Aranda\Lasch + Marcelo Coelho’s Window to the Heart, the Office for Creative Research’s We Were Strangers Once Too, and Collective-LOK’s Heart of Hearts.
There are only a couple more days to enjoy Iceberg, a cool immersive and interactive installation on Broadway in the Garment District. ATOMIC3 and Appareil Architecture constructed the musical piece, which consists of a series of connected metal arches that emit blue and red light and the sounds of water dripping as people make their way through it; the more visitors in the work, and the faster they move, the more the lights change and the louder the sounds get, resulting in a warmer atmosphere. Created in collaboration with sound designer Jean-Sébastien Côté and interactive system designer Philippe Jean for a Montreal festival in 2012, Iceberg might look like a chic, Instagram-friendly tunnel, but it is also a reminder of the melting, calving polar ice caps and the damaging man-made effects of global climate change.
The missing digit is a major mystery in Met jewelry show (photo by twi-ny/ees)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Met Fifth Ave.
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Daily through February 24, $12-$25
EmptyMet: VIP access February 23, 9:00 am, $50 (includes catalog)
212-535-7710 www.metmuseum.org
The Met’s “Jewelry: The Body Transformed,” which closes on Sunday, is a treasure trove of luxurious objects dating back more than three thousand years, from necklaces, pendants, and earrings to armbands, combs, and parure, from headdresses, breastplates, and bracelets to brooches, yashmaks, and daggers, divided into five themes: “The Divine Body,” “The Regal Body,” “The Transcendent Body,” “The Alluring Body,” and “The Resplendent Body.” But the biggest mystery you will take away from the gorgeous exhibition is, where are the missing toes? Two pairs of gold sandals from the Tomb of the Three Foreign Wives of Thutmose III, circa 1479-1425 BCE in Thebes, have only nine toe stalls each, the former without the right big toe, the latter sans the right little one. Was the Egyptian pharaoh, who ruled from the age of two to fifty-six, some kind of foot fetishist? And which two of the wives, Menwi, Merti, or Menhet, are a digit short? It’s more than a bit disconcerting, but you’ll probably get over it as you wander through the many other vitrines holding glittering items likely to catch your fancy. But then again, it may haunt you to your dying day.
Bruce Nauman, One Hundred Live and Die, neon tubing with clear glass tubing on metal, 1984 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Daily through February 18, $14-$25
212-708-9400
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Thursday – Monday through February 25, suggested admission $10
718-784-2084 www.moma.org
Jazz trumpet legend Miles Davis said, “Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.” That approach applies to the wide-ranging exhibition “Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts,” which will disappear from MoMA PS1 on February 25 and MoMA’s main Midtown location on February 18. For six decades, the Indiana-born artist has been creating painting, drawing, sculpture, video, sound, and installation that addresses both the artist and the viewer directly, examining physical and psychological presence and absence. At PS1, Mapping the Studio is a multichannel installation consisting of speeded-up shots of Nauman’s workspace, taken by surveillance cameras overnight; occasionally, a mouse runs past, headlights shine from outside, or other movement is noticed, but it passes by so fast you won’t necessarily know what you’ve seen. In the hall, Naumann has a detailed chart of what happens when, but it is so expansive as to be overwhelming in and of itself. In Two Fans Corridor, visitors are encouraged to stand in an empty space surrounded by three walls as fans on either side, behind the right and left walls, blow air toward no one while adding a sound element. One person at a time can walk through Double Steel Cage Piece, a prisonlike construction with narrow alleys that can cause claustrophobia even though you can see the outside; meanwhile, audible from the previous room is Get Out of My Head, Get Out of This Room, making it seem like a disembodied voice is yelling those words at the person making their way through the cage. For Untitled (Wall-Floor Positions), a dancer arrives at predetermined times and performs on the floor and against the wall, but most of the time there is nobody there. You might not know what to make of Lighted Performance Box unless you look at the ceiling, where light is projected; you can’t go in the box, and there is no “performance.”
Corridor Installation (Nick Wilder Installation) is a series of narrow passages, some of which you can walk down, and some of which you cannot; Nauman adds cameras and monitors, but what you see on the monitors does not mesh with your actual experience. In the painting Beating with a Baseball Bat, a shadowy figure has his arms lifted above his head as if to inflict violence, but there is no bat in his hands. In My Last Name Exaggerated Fourteen Times Vertically, Nauman employs neon tubing to make his name unreadable, as if erasing himself. Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five Famous Artists is made of fiberglass and polyester resin, not wax, and the impressions were not made by the five artists identified nearby. And A Cast of the Space under My Chair is a concrete sculpture of empty space from a nonexistent chair.
Bruce Nauman, Seven Virtues/Seven Vices, limestone, in seven parts, 1983-84 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Nauman also plays with opposites in Seven Virtues / Seven Vices, seven limestone blocks in which one vice and one virtue (for example, “Envy” and “Hope”) are spelled out in classical type over each other, making it difficult to read either. A black man and a white woman interchangeably say the same hundred phrases, including “I am a good boy” and “You are a good boy,” in Good Boy Bad Boy, which blurs distinctions between race and gender. Clown Torture is a room of television sets that show clowns being tortured, instead of the clowns doing the torturing. Leaping Foxes, made for this exhibition, is a group of skinless polyurethane animals hanging from the ceiling, stagnant in death. Nauman’s own body figures prominently throughout the exhibition. Contrapposto Split refers to one of his most famous series, in which he walks in a classical pose, but here he does so in 3-D, his body impossibly cut in half, the top out of sync with the bottom, something that is evident in a number of other old and recent videos projected on long walls.
Bruce Nauman, Untitled (Wall-Floor Positions), performance reenactment, ca. 1965 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“Disappearing Acts” is spread throughout three floors of MoMA PS1; back in Manhattan, it takes up the sixth floor with several large-scale installations that continue the theme of what’s there and what’s not there. “Nauman’s work teaches us that making and thinking about art involve all parts of the brain and body. As we move through his environments or stand in front of a drawing such as Make Me Think Me, ideas surface about what it means to be alert — to be in the world,” MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry writes in his foreword to the catalog. (You can read a free fifty-five-page sample from the catalog here.) “Challenging the ways in which conventions become codified, his work erases all forms of certainty, mandating that we craft our own meanings rather than accede to more familiar rules. The lessons learned from Bruce’s penetrating intelligence become more and more necessary every day, and I am confident that the importance of his work will be clear as long as people find meaning in art.” In a May 1973 article in Interview, Nauman said, “I thought I might have to give up art, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.” Thank goodness for Lowry, and for us, that Nauman did not give up art but forged ahead, pushing boundaries every step of the way. Going Around the Corner Piece is a huge cube you cannot go into, but you can walk around it, watching yourself appear and disappear on four black-and-white monitors placed on the floor. Audio-Video Underground Chamber shows what seems to be live footage of an empty room. You have to sign up in advance to be given the key to Kassel Corridor: Elliptical Space and be the one person every hour allowed to unlock the door and enter the extremely narrow area between two curved walls.
In Days, disembodied voices call out the days of the week from two rows of microphones; as you make your way through the room, you lose track of time and space. The neon sculpture One Hundred Live and Die flashes such phrases as “Cry and Live,” “Rage and Die,” “Laugh and Live,” “Kiss and Die,” “Live and Live,” and “Die and Die” in multiple colors. And Model for Trench and Four Buried Passages alters one’s understanding of what a model is, in this case a giant circular construction of plaster, fiberglass, and wire that calls out with emptiness. But there’s nothing empty about “Disappearing Acts,” an exciting retrospective filled with importance and meaning of your own choosing, in addition to plenty of fun. (There will be a closing party at MoMA PS1 on February 22, from 8:00 to midnight, with the galleries open late, DJ sets in the VW Dome, screenings of the documentary The Bruce Nauman Story, cocktails, and more.)
Rochelle Feinstein will celebrate the publication of her new book with a celebration at the Block Gallery (courtesy Ugly Duckling Presse)
Who: Rochelle Feinstein and Didier William What: Book launch and discussion Where:AIM: Artist in the Marketplace, the Block Gallery, 80 White St., second floor When: Monday, February 11, free with advance RSVP, 6:00 Why: Bronx native Rochelle Feinstein will celebrate the launch of her new book, Pls. Reply (Ugly Duckling Presse / Bronx Museum of the Arts / Stellar Projects, March 1, $22), with a special event at AIM’s new space in the Block Gallery on February 11. The trade paperback is a collection of her writings along with sixteen full-color book plates, edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa, and comes out in conjunction with her current exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, “Rochelle Feinstein: Image of an Image,” which continues through March 3 and was curated by Bessa. At the Block Gallery, the seventy-one-year-old Feinstein, a tenured Yale professor, will talk with Haitian visual artist and AIM alumnus Didier William; beer and wine will be served, and Pls. Reply will be available at a discount.
FIRST SATURDAYS
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 2, free (some events require advance tickets), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400 www.brooklynmuseum.org
The Brooklyn Museum honors Black History Month in the February edition of its free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by Winard Harper, YahZarah (“I’m Taking You Back”), and Toshi Reagon with violinist Juliette Jones and bassist, guitarist, and vocalist Ganessa James; curator tours of “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” and “Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room” with Ashley James; a Learning Lesson discussion with artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed inspired by Octavia Butler’s idea of “primitive hypertext”; pop-up gallery talks of “Soul of a Nation” with teen apprentices; a screening of Mr. Soul (Melissa Haizlip & Samuel D. Pollard, 2018), introduced by the directors; a hands-on workshop in which participants can create wearable activist patches inspired by the messages of the Guerrilla Girls and AfriCOBRA; an artist talk featuring Shani Jamila’s new podcast, Lineage, with photographers Ming Smith and Russell Fredrick of the Kamoinge collective; “Soul of a Nation”–inspired poetry with Karisma Price, Naomi Extra, and Stephanie Jean of Cave Canem; an “Archives as Raw History” tour with archivist Molly Seegers; and Black Gotham Experience’s immersive Magnetic Resonance, consisting of a photo studio by Kamau Ware with styling by Charles Johnson, video collage by Kearaha Bryant, and music by GoodWill, P.U.D.G.E., and Rimarkable. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” “Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room,” “One: Do Ho Suh,” “Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection,” “Something to Say: Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, Deborah Kass, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Hank Willis Thomas,” “Rob Wynne: FLOAT,” “Infinite Blue,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” “Kwang Young Chun: Aggregations,” and more.
