this week in art

YAYOI KUSAMA: FESTIVAL OF LIFE / INFINITY NETS

Be prepared to wait hours to get ninety seconds inside Yayoi Kusama’s 2017 “Infinity Mirrored Room — Let’s Survive Forever” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

David Zwirner
Festival of Life: 525 & 533 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., through December 16
Infinity Nets: 34 East 69th St. between Park & Madison Aves., through December 22
Tuesday – Saturday, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.davidzwirner.com

You probably should already be on line if you want to see Yayoi Kusama’s 2017 “Infinity Mirrored Room — Let’s Survive Forever,” part of her wide-ranging “Festival of Life” exhibition, which closes December 16 at David Zwirner’s Chelsea galleries. The wait times have been reaching upwards of six hours, and that will likely only increase as the end of the run approaches; you can stay updated about the line on Zwirner’s twitter feed. The approximately 12x20x20-foot carpeted room features stainless-steel balls hanging on monofilaments from the ceiling and arranged on the floor, with mirrored surfaces on all sides that seem to reflect into infinity. There is also a vertical box with three round viewing panes where visitors can look into a kaleidoscopic wonderland. Kusama, now eighty-eight, has been making the mirrored infinity rooms since 1963, when the Japanese artist was living and working in New York City. Five or six people at a time are allowed to enter the small space and spend ninety seconds there; be sure to actually experience the dazzling, brightly lit room and not just concentrate on taking selfies. In fact, each picture is a selfie because everyone inside is reflected again and again all over the room.

Yayoi Kusama’s “Longing for Eternity” brings people together at David Zwirner (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

There are three other sections of the exhibit that don’t require standing on line. In a dark room, the new “Longing for Eternity” rises near the center, a vertical box with four viewing holes where visitors can stick their heads inside to see more endless, ever-changing kaleidoscopes of multiple colors made of LED lights; you can also see the other people sticking their heads in the box, at different heights. You cannot put your camera or iPhone through the holes to snap a picture; if you were to drop it inside, it would break and ruin the piece. So again, just let yourself get lost in the awe-inspiring visuals and don’t worry so much about perfect documentation.

Yayoi Kusama, “With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever,” installation view, “Yayoi Kusama Eternity of Eternal Eternity,” the National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, 2012 (image © Yayoi Kusama; courtesy of David Zwirner, New York; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore/Shanghai; Victoria Miro, London; YAYOI KUSAMA Inc.)

You’ll next enter a captivating paradise known as “With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever,” a 2011 installation making its U.S. debut. The room is covered from floor to ceiling (including the hallway and the door) in big red polka dots on a white background; it also contains a trio of large-scale fiberglass tulips in planters that evoke the images you see when looking into Magic Eye stereograms. In fact, it can feel like you’re experiencing it through virtual reality glasses, but it’s actually right there, playing with your equilibrium in fun ways. But there’s more to it than just that; as Kusama, who combines Pop Art, Minimalism, and Abstract Expressionism and refers to herself as an Avant-Garde artist, writes in a “Message to the people of the world from Yayoi Kusama”: “Today’s world is marked by heightened anxiety connected to ever growing strife between nations and individuals, and to elusive prospects for peace. In the midst of such turmoil, we must, as human beings, be ever more vigilant and determined to build a better world through strengthened cooperation. . . . My greatest desire is that my vision of a future of eternal harmony among people be carried on.”

Yayoi Kusama’s “Festival of Life” combines “My Eternal Soul” paintings with “Flowers That Bloom Now” sculpture (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Finally, in the vast west gallery, Kusama, who works six days a week, nearly nonstop, has arranged sixty-six new paintings from her “My Eternal Soul” series, which she began in the late 2000s. Each canvas is 76.375 x 76.375 inches square, in two rows across all four walls. The works, which boast such titles as “When I Saw the Largest Dream in Life,” “Women in the Memories,” “Everyone Is Seeking Peace,” “The Far End of My Sorrow,” “A Soul Is Leaving the Body,” “Dear Death of Mine, Thou Shalt Welcome an Eternal Death,” and “Festival of Life,” contain repeated elements such as eyes, profiles, amoebalike organisms, aliens, faces, geometric patterns, and others in an endless array of colors. In the center of the room is a platform with a trio of forty-one-inch-high stainless-steel “Flowers That Bloom Now,” with long, snakelike green stems and polka-dotted petals and pistils, looking like a delightful ride in a children’s playground or amusement park (except it doesn’t rotate and you can’t go on it).

“Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Nets” has been extended at David Zwirner’s uptown space through December 22 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

There are no lines to see “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Nets” at Zwirner’s new space on East 69th St., which will afford you plenty of time to breathe in Kusama’s stunning, iconic net paintings, inspired by hallucinations she has experienced since childhood; Kusama suffers from obsessive neurosis and has been voluntarily living at Tokyo’s Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill since 1977. She first prepares the canvas in a solid color, then washes over it in a second color, her impasto brushwork evident, sometimes swirling, sometimes thick with clumps, as she makes hundreds of tiny arcs, like crescent moons or waves, in the background color. (She was influenced by a 1957 plane trip from Tokyo to Seattle, watching the ocean crests below her.) The works look different from every angle, at times offering optical illusions or what appear to be hidden figures, but that’s just your imagination getting in the flow. “My net paintings were very large canvases without compositions – without beginning, end, or center,” Kusama has said. “The entire canvas would be occupied by monochromatic nets. This endless repetition caused a kind of dizzy, empty, hypnotic feeling.” The ten works, which can be seen as traps or safety nets, include random letters in their titles that don’t actually mean anything (for example, WFCOT, BNDBS, and FWIPK), adding to the intrigue. “My desire was to predict and measure the infinity of the unbounded universe, from my own position in it, with dots — an accumulation of particles forming the negative spaces in the net. How deep was the mystery? Did infinities exist beyond our universe? In exploring these questions I wanted to examine the single dot that was my own life,” Kusama has explained. And in her unique universe, each single dot reveals the hand — and heart and mind — of the artist, a rare treat in a digital world.

WHO’S AFRAID OF THE NEW NOW? 40 ARTISTS IN DIALOGUE

Allen Ruppersberg, Who’s Afraid of the New Now?, from the series Preview Suite, 1988. Lithograph, image: 21 3/8 × 13 1/4 in (54.1 × 33.5 cm), sheet: 22 × 13 7/8 in (56 × 35.1 cm). Edition of thirty. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Allen Ruppersberg, “Who’s Afraid of the New Now?” from the series Preview Suite, lithograph, 1988 (courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Saturday, December 2, and Sunday, December 3, $5 per conversation, 10:00 am – 8:00 pm
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

The New Museum continues its fortieth anniversary celebration with “Who’s Afraid of the New Now? 40 Artists in Dialogue,” two days of free admission to the downtown institution and a fab series of five-dollar artist conversations that require advance purchase here. On Saturday beginning at ten o’clock, every hour on the hour (except for the two o’clock lunch break), you can catch Judith Bernstein and Linda Montano, Paweł Althamer and Cally Spooner, Ragnar Kjartansson and Carolee Schneemann, Hans Haacke and Carsten Höller, Donald Moffett and Nari Ward, George Condo and Jeff Koons, Paul Chan and Carroll Dunham, Thomas Bayrle and Kerstin Brätsch, Raymond Pettibon and Kaari Upson, and Simone Leigh and Lorraine O’Grady. Sunday’s lineup features Cheryl Donegan and Mary Heilmann, Jeremy Deller and Martha Rosler, Paul McCarthy and Andra Ursuta, Elizabeth Peyton and Allen Ruppersberg, Nicole Eisenman and Neil Jenney, Howardena Pindell and Dorothea Rockburne, Bouchra Khalili and Doris Salcedo, Camille Henrot and Anri Sala, Sharon Hayes and Faith Ringgold, and Carol Bove and Joan Jonas. It’s a crazy-good roster of artists who have shown at the museum, which was founded in 1976 by Marcia Tucker and opened at C Space in 1977 before moving to the New School and then 583 Broadway before its grand reopening at 235 Bowery on December 1, 2007. Currently on view are “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” “Kahlil Joseph: Shadow Play,” “Petrit Halilaj: RU,” “Helen Johnson: Ends,” “Alex Da Corte: Harvest Moon,” and “Pursuing the Unpredictable: The New Museum 1977–2017” in addition to a special window reinstallation of Bruce Nauman’s 1987 video No, No, New Museum from his Clown Torture series.

FIRST SATURDAY: FROM ANCIENT EGYPT TO THE AFROFUTURE

(photo by Gavin Ashworth / Brooklyn Museum)

“Ibis Mummy,” animal remains, linen, from the Ibis cemetery at Abydos, Egypt; excavated by the Egypt Exploration Fund. Late Period to Ptolemaic Period, 410–200 BCE (photo by Gavin Ashworth / Brooklyn Museum)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, December 2, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum honors World AIDS Day and looks at what’s to come in the African diaspora in its monthly free First Saturday program in December with “From Ancient Egypt to the Afrofuture.” There will be live music by Daví, Everyday People featuring DJ mOma and Jade de LaFleur, and Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, performing a Sun Ra tribute; a curator tour of “Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt” with Edward Bleiberg; an artist talk and tour of “Ahmed Mater: Mecca Journeys” with Ahmed Mater and Catherine Morris; a hands-on art workshop in which participants will create headdresses inspired by the museum’s ancient Egyptian collection; the scholar talk “Everything in the Future Is Black” with Makeba Lavan exploring the work of Wangechi Mutu, Octavia Butler, George Clinton, Janelle Monae, Erykah Badu, and others; teen pop-up gallery talks on Ancient Egyptian art; screenings of Terence Nance’s short films They Charge for the Sun, Swimming in Your Skin Again, and Univitellin, followed by a talkback with Nance; “Alternate Endings, Radical Beginnings” short films by Mykki Blanco, Cheryl Dunye and Ellen Spiro, Reina Gossett, Thomas Allen Harris, Kia Labeija, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and Brontez Purnell, curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett and commissioned for Visual AIDS’ annual Day With(out) Art in honor of World AIDS Day; and a feminist book club discussing Angela Y. Davis’s “Working Women, Black Women, and the History of the Suffrage Movement,” hosted by Glory Edim of Well-Read Black Girl in conjunction with “Roots of ‘The Dinner Party’: History in the Making.” In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Roots of ‘The Dinner Party,’” “Soulful Creatures,” “Rodin at the Brooklyn Museum: The Body in Bronze,” “Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo,” “Arts of Asia and the Middle East,” “Infinite Blue,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” and more.

BEYOND THE RULES: ARTIST TALK AND RECEPTION WITH MARK COCKRAM

Mark Cockram will discuss his unique book designs at Center for Book Arts on November 17

The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th St., third floor
Friday, November 17, suggested admission $10, 6:30
212-481-0295
centerforbookarts.org

“I work with the book. It is my chosen medium for the simple fact that it can contain and embrace all artistic media and expressions. Within the book, an infinitely complex array of materials and techniques come together and combine with a history as rich and diverse as we who create and use it. I often refer to the book in its totality as Alchemy.” So declares Mark Cockram, a faculty fellow at the Center for Book Arts, where on November 17 he will participate in an artist talk and reception in conjunction with his exhibition, “Beyond the Rules.” The show features several of his unique, multidimensional books and bindings, including The Lysistrata of Aristophanes, Wine from My Garden, Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay Eterniday, and Iskandar Jalil: Kembara Tanah Liat (Clay Travels). The exhibit continues through December 16; also currently on view at the center are “Felicia Rice: Collaboration and Metamorphosis” and the interactive “The Internal Machine,” consisting of pieces, many of which visitors can touch and activate, by Doug Beube, Ranjit Bhatnagar, András Böröcz, Caroline Bouissou, Gillian Brown, Brian Dettmer, Juan Fontanive, Arnaldo Morales, Bruno Munari, Alexander Rosenberg, Claudia Schmitz, Ward Shelley and Douglas Paulson, Kaethe Wenzel, Benjamin Wright, Nick Yulman, and Mary Ziegler.

BARBARA KRUGER: UNTITLED (KNOW, BELIEVE, FORGET; SCHOOL; THE DROP; SKATE)

Barbara Kruger takes back her iconic graphic style in pop-up skate shop as part of Performa 17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations
Daily through November 19, free
“Untitled (The Drop),” Thursday, November 16, $5, 4:00 – 8:00 pm
17.performa-arts.org

Newark-born artist Barbara Kruger has been making socially conscious, provocative signs, slogans, and billboards primarily using white Futura Bold Oblique letters on a red background since the 1980s (in addition to black-and-white statements over photographic images). Many call it her trademark style, but watch that language: “Trademark” is a weighty term. In 1994, the Supreme skateboard and clothing brand opened up shop, creating a logo co-opted from Kruger’s work, which explores aspects of women’s rights and American consumerism; the Pictures Generation artist is also a cultural critic and graphic designer for magazines. In 2013, Supreme sued Leah McSweeney of Married to the Mob for her “Supreme Bitch” T-shirts, which also utilized Kruger’s style with Supreme’s brand name. Kruger, who had not previously commented on Supreme’s use of her iconic design, sent an email to the Complex pop-culture site in response to the lawsuit, writing, “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.” Kruger, who is based in New York and Los Angeles, has taken the issue even further with her Performa 17 commissions, in which she reclaims her art, incorporating Supreme’s business practices in a series of ultracool installations. On the High Line at Seventeenth St., her billboard proclaims, “Know Nothing. Believe Anything. Forget Everything.” Kruger has added numerous signs to Coleman Skatepark on Monroe St. under the Manhattan Bridge, including “Love It. Share It. Praise It. Please It.,” “Bad Is Good. Happy Is Sad. Ignorance Is Bliss,” and “Plenty Should Be Enough.” Be on the lookout for a school bus traveling across the city wrapped in black-and-white phrases with the word War. And in her ultimate coup, she has built “The Drop,” a pop-up shop at the Performa Hub at Broadway and Canal where people wait on line to purchase skate-related items made by Volcom featuring white type on red backgrounds, including a white T-shirt saying, “Whose Hopes? Whose Fears? Whose Values? Whose Justice?,” a black hat, black sweatshirt, and black T-shirt proclaiming, “Want It. Buy It. Forget It.,” and skate decks declaring, “Don’t Be a Jerk.” Entry is $5 in advance, and the items for sale range from $15 for patches to $65 for a skate deck and $300 for a complete skateboard. It’s a fabulous way to turn everything inside out and upside down while raising money for Performa.

ARTIST TALK: ROBERT LONGO AND HAL FOSTER

Robert Longo (American, born 1953). Untitled (Raft at Sea) (detail), 2017. Charcoal on mounted paper, 140 x 281 in. (355.6 x 713.7 cm). © Robert Longo, Private European Collection. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York)

Robert Longo, detail, “Untitled (Raft at Sea),” charcoal on mounted paper, 2017 (© Robert Longo, Private European Collection / photo courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Thursday, November 16, free with museum admission and advance registration, 7:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

In conjunction with the excellent exhibition “Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo,” which equates primarily black-and-white etchings, drawings, and films by Spanish painter Francisco Goya, Russian auteur Sergei Eisenstein, and American visual artist Robert Longo as they relate to the socioeconomic and -political issues of their times, the Brooklyn Museum is hosting an artist talk with Longo and American art critic and historian Hal Foster, author of such books as Compulsive Beauty, The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, and The Art-Architecture Complex. The exhibition features stunning large-scale, multipanel charcoal drawings by the Brooklyn-born Longo that resemble photographs, including “Untitled (Black Pussy Hat in Women’s March),” “Untitled (Bullet Hole in Window),” and “Untitled (Mecca).” Longo and Foster will discuss how art and activism, and particularly photography, can have an impact in times of emergency, like what is happening right now in the United States and around the world.

WANGECHI MUTU: BANANA STROKE

Wangechi Mutu, Banana Leaves on Fallen Tree Trunk,

Wangechi Mutu, “Banana Stroke,” site-specific action painting, 2017 (courtesy of the artist / photo by Andrew Dru Mungai)

MetLiveArts / Performa 17
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Performance: Monday, November 13, and Tuesday, November 14, free with advance registration, 7:00
Talk: Wednesday, November 15, Performa Hub, 427 Broadway at Canal St., free, 1:00
212-570-3949
www.metmuseum.org
17.performa-arts.org

Kenyan-born artist and activist Wangechi Mutu, who is based in New York and Nairobi, will be at the Met Fifth Ave. on November 13 and 14 presenting the Performa 17 commission and MetLiveArts program Banana Stroke. The sculptor, collage painter, and multidisciplinary, multimedia artist is the founder of AFRICA’SOUT!, an organization that seeks to raise awareness and “advance radical change” regarding freedom of creative expression in Africa and the diaspora, with a particular focus on gender equality and gay rights. Banana Stroke is an immersive environment constructed from collages made with dyed, fermented, or saturated paper, a live performance, and a site-specific action painting. “A lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it’s insidious, some of it’s innocuous, some of it’s invisible. It’s there,” Mutu told Mother Jones in 2013. On November 15 at 1:00, she will be at the Performa 17 Biennial Hub at 427 Broadway for a free talk with writer and scholar Adrienne Edwards, concentrating on Mutu’s use of abstraction and performance over the last two years. The conversation is being held in conjunction with Performa’s AFROGLOSSIA program, curated by Edwards and featuring work by Mutu, Teju Cole, Tracey Rose, Julie Mehretu and Jason Moran, Yto Barrada, and others.

Wangechi Mutu, “Banana Stroke,” site-specific action painting, 2017 (courtesy of the artist / photo by Andrew Dru Mungai)

Update: Wangechi Mutu’s Banana Stroke is an intimate, immersive experience reminiscent of the Happenings of the 1960s and ’70s. A small, extremely lucky crowd is ushered into the Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium and onto the stage, where they take seats on white benches of various heights and lengths, placed to the right and left. In between is an empty space with large white canvas boards at the front and back. Sounds of nature seep in and two related videos produced, edited, and photographed by Andrew Dru Mungai are projected onto the boards, in which the Kenyan-born Mutu rises from the ground wearing long banana branches on both hands. The videos switch from color to black-and-white while Mutu gently recites Nobel Prize–winning St. Lucian writer Derek Walcott’s “A Far Cry from Africa,” including: “Again brutish necessity wipes its hands / Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again / A waste of our compassion, as with Spain, / The gorilla wrestles with the superman. / I who am poisoned with the blood of both, / Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? / I who have cursed / The drunken officer of British rule, how choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?” In addition, such words as “Wail,” “Cry,” “Promise,” “Profane,” and “Stroke” appear on one of the walls and are spoken. The lights go out, and Mutu walks into the center, two long banana branches shackled to her arms. She moves slowly while going back and forth between the two canvases, dipping the banana leaves in metal containers of black ink and banging, dotting, and swirling them onto the stark whiteness and dragging them over the floor, the ink at times threatening to touch the audience as Mutu dances and throws her arms in the air.

Banana Stroke, 2017 Site Specific Action Painting Courtesy of the Artist. Photo Credit: Andrew Dru Mungai

Wangechi Mutu, “Banana Stroke,” site-specific action painting, 2017 (courtesy of the artist / photo by Andrew Dru Mungai)

Satisfied with her stark creations, she leaves the stage in darkness, and soon two more videos are projected over the artwork, similar to the earlier films but not exactly the same. The action paintings are essentially abstract, but Mutu carefully crafted some very specific patterns that now make sense with what’s happening onscreen. The images and words clash with the black strokes on the white screens, calling into question the effects of the artistic intervention as well as that of the colonialists. And about sixty minutes before it all started, it’s over; the audience leaves in silence, Mutu not coming out to take a bow. Banana Stroke is a powerful, provocative experience layered with meaning that will take time and effort to decipher, but it’s well worth further investigation; perhaps Mutu will shed more light on it during her November 15 talk with curator Adrienne Edwards.