this week in art

PAUL RAMÍREZ JONAS: ALTERNATIVE FACTS

Paul Ramírez Jonas, detail, “Alternative Facts,” 2017 (photo courtesy of the artist)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Thursday, July 13 & 27, August 3 & 10, pay-what-you-wish, 7:00 – 9:00
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

“I create as I speak. From the beginning of my career in 1989 I have always considered myself merely a reader of texts,” Paul Ramírez Jonas explains in his official artist statement. On July 13 and 27 and August 3 and 10, the California-born Jonas will be creating, speaking, and reading at the New Museum as part of his residency and exhibition, “Half-Truths,” on the fifth floor. He will perform “Alternative Facts” during the pay-what-you-wish Thursday nights from 7:00 to 9:00, serving as a notary (once he uncovers an untruth) as he facilitates meetings with visitors, turning spare change into gold coins that pay for a pair of certification documents, one that becomes part of the exhibition while the other is given to the visitor. A presentation of the Department of Education and Public Engagement’s annual R&D Summers, “Alternative Facts” also takes place whenever the museum is open, facilitated by members of the Teen Apprentice Program, who also activate Jonas’s “Fake ID,” in which participants get a new identification card based on whatever information is currently on their person, from licenses and credit cards to currency and memberships. “Half-Truths” continues through September 17; also on view at the New Museum now are “Carol Rama: Antibodies,” “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Under-Song for a Cipher,” “Kaari Upson: Good thing you are not alone,” “Elaine Cameron-Weir: viscera has questions about itself,” and “Ugo Rondinone: I ♥ John Giorno.”

JACQUES HERZOG, PIERRE DE MEURON, AI WEIWEI: HANSEL AND GRETEL

Visitors’ paths are closely followed in immersive “Hansel & Gretel” installation at Park Avenue Armory (photo by James Ewing)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 6, $15 (free with IDNYC card)
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Upon walking into the Park Avenue Armory through a small back entrance on Lexington Ave. and Sixty-Sixth St. to see the immersive, interactive exhibition “Hansel & Gretel,” visitors face the following statement on a wall in front of them: “What would be a suspicious text?” The exhibit, the latest collaboration between Chinese dissident artist and activist Ai Weiwei and Swiss Pritzker Prize-winning architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, is all about suspicion. It is both a fun and revealing exploration of surveillance in the twenty-first century, best experienced with no advance knowledge, so I strongly advise you to stop reading now and pick up where you left off after you have made your way through the two parts of the eye-opening show. After walking down an eerie hallway, you emerge into the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, totally dark aside from occasional pockets of light — fewer if you are lucky enough to be there when there are not many other people, more if you are there when it’s busy. You are unsure of every step, as the material under your feet feels unsafe and there appear to be rises and dips, so your physical safety is threatened by the unknown. Soon you reach a series of large rectangular grids on which are cast white and red electronic lines that trace your path, along with distorted photographs of your head and body taken by infrared cameras located across the ceiling. Occasionally a drone whirs by overhead, the propellers sending down a burst of wind while the drones take yet more pictures of you. “Here the breadcrumbs of the famous Hansel and Gretel fairy tale are not eaten by birds but rather digital crumbs are gathered and stored, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s poignant 1953 science-fiction, Fahrenheit 451, where an omniscient state surveils its citizens from the skies,” curators Tom Eccles and Hans-Ulrich Obrist write in the exhibition program.

Latest collaboration by Ai Weiwei, Jacques Herzog, and Pierre de Meuron reveals much about privacy and surveillance in the twenty-first century (photo by James Ewing)

The installation then leads you outside, where you walk around the block to enter through the main doors on Park Avenue and encounter a series of tables with available laptops in the hallways of the Head House, lined with blurry large-scale photographs of the people around you. The computers offer an illuminating look into the history of surveillance and frightening military drone statistics while also providing background information on the creation of the project, including the facial recognition technology by Adam Harvey, the floor projections by iart, and the drones by PhotoFlight Aerial Media and Easy Aerial. Despite having just been surveiled in the drill hall, you are likely to have the computer take your photo, locate your image in its database, and reveal it on the wall — and you’re even more likely to be happy about your face now joining photos of other exhibition-goers and the portraits of American military heroes that regularly fill the hallway. It’s a brilliant commentary on how blithely we leave our personal trail of crumbs now, inured to constantly sharing our email addresses, phone numbers, image, and other facts about ourselves via social media and online purchasing. “I think we all have a personal experience of being under surveillance, but the character of surveillance is that you only see one side of the story,” Ai, who knows what it’s like to be under 24/7 watch, said at the press opening. Ai, Herzog, and de Meuron, whose fifteen-year collaboration includes the Bird’s Nest Stadium at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion at the London 2012 Festival — Herzog and de Meuron are also overseeing the restoration of the Park Avenue Armory itself — have created an immersive environment that is far from a fairy-tale world and instead a dramatic and engaging public space that highlights just how much we have accepted being tracked constantly. A pair of tiny keyholes in the door at the top of the balcony lets viewers move aside brass disks to secretly observe installation visitors below, a down-to-earth analog reminder of the age-old delight humans take in spying on one another, now magnified by today’s technology into monstrous, inescapable form — with an added soupçon of exhibitionistic enjoyment.

RADAMÉS “JUNI” FIGUEROA, “LA DELICIOSA SHOW”: LOS VIGILANTES

Los Vigilantes (photo by Timothy Schenck)

Los Vigilantes will activate Radamés “Juni” Figueroa’s “La Deliciosa Show” on the High Line with a free concert on July 12 (photo by Timothy Schenck)

Who: Los Vigilantes
What: Free live performance presented by High Line Art
Where: On the High Line at Thirtieth St.
When: Wednesday, July 12, free (advance RSVP recommended), 6:00
Why: For the current High Line Art group exhibition “Mutations,” which continues through next March, Puerto Rican artist Radamés “Juni” Figueroa contributed “La Deliciosa Show,” a funky open-air nightclub in a construction shed on the High Line at Thirtieth St. On July 12 at 6:00, San Juan garage band Los Vigilantes will take the stage there, playing a free set in conjunction with the exhibition, which focuses on the relationship between humanity and nature. Since 2012, Los Vigilantes — consisting of Javier Garrote, Pepe Carballido, Jota Mundo, and Rafael Díaz — have released such albums and EPs as Al Fin, the eponymous Los Vigilantes, and Viento, sereno y el mar, featuring such songs as “Un Dia Nada Mas,” “Un Tono Mas Siniestro” (“Paint It Black”), “Me Siento Azul,” and “Mi Mami Dijo.” Figueroa, who had a solo show at Taymour Grahne on Hudson St. in 2015, has invited Puerto Rican punksters Reanimadores to play the space on September 27.

UP CLOSE: MICHELANGELO’S SISTINE CHAPEL

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes are brought down to earth in temporary exhibition in the Oculus (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Oculus at Westfield World Trade Center
33-69 Vesey St.
Daily through July 23, $20, 10:00 am – 9:00 pm
www.westfield.com/upclose
up close slideshow

In 2010 at the Park Avenue Armory, iconoclastic auteur and art historian Peter Greenaway used cutting-edge digital technology to explore, in great detail, Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” and Paolo Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana.” Now Westfield is offering a decidedly more analog examination of Michelangelo’s frescoes that adorn the interior of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, including the barrel-vault ceiling, one of the most famous, and most seen, works in history, dating from 1508 to 1512 and 1535 to 1541. Michelangelo might have needed special scaffolding to get up there, and visitors must climb nearly five hundred steps to reach the top of the dome, but creative designers Susan Holland & Company and construction firm Atomic have brought it all down to earth in Santiago Calatrava’s white-winged Oculus, placing nearly three dozen large-scale photographs of sections of Michelangelo’s masterpiece on freestanding blocks, accompanied by brief text and an audio tour. Standing above it all in the back is a giant reproduction of Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment,” which was commissioned by Pope Paul III. (All works are near original size.)

Display offers close-up look at Michelangelo’s extraordinary masterpiece (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

As the name of the show promises, people can get up close to the photos to gain insight about the work. Among the sections on display are “God Separates Water from the Heavens,” “The Fall of Man and Expulsion from Paradise,” “The Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Earth,” “The Great Flood,” “Haman’s Punishment,” and “The Creation of Adam,” in which God reaches his finger out to the first man. As visitors walk through the space, they will come upon classic Italian Renaissance portrayals of such biblical figures as David and Goliath, Noah, the five Sibyls, Judith and Holofernes, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zachariah, Jonah, and Daniel, and such ancestors of Christ as Jesse, Zerubbabel, and Uzziah. “The painting depicts God from below and by choosing to do so, Michelangelo violated all image conventions at the time,” the text notes about “The Separation of Light and Darkness.” Although you can see much of the exhibition by walking outside the roped-off area on the main floor of the Oculus, admission to the central part is twenty dollars, which includes access to the audio tour as well. The exhibition runs daily from 10:00 am to 9:00 pm through July 23, after which it will travel to New Jersey, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Chicago, and Annapolis.

NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM VINTAGE BUS BASH, FULL MOON FESTIVAL, IT’S YOUR TERN! AND MORE ON GOVERNORS ISLAND

New York Transit Museum Vintage Bus Bash pulls into Governors Island on Saturday (photo by Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

Governors Island
Saturday, July 8, most events free
govisland.com/events

Tomorrow is a busy day on Governors Island, one of the city’s genuine summer treasures. The New York Transit Museum Vintage Bus Bash (11:00 am – 4:00 pm, free) pulls into Colonels Row, four classic old vehicles that used to shuttle passengers around the city. You’ll be able to check out 1956’s Bus 3100, 1958’s Bus 9098, 1959’s Bus 100, and 1971’s Bus 5227. The seventh annual Full Moon Festival takes place from 12 noon to 2:00 ($50-$61) on the Play Lawn, with Vic Mensa, Larry Heard a.k.a. Mr. Fingers, Kelela, DJ Harvey, Connan Mockasin, Abra, Jeremy Underground, Axel Boman, Tops, Awesome Tapes from Africa, Selvagem, Donna Leake, and Mass Meditation by the Big Quiet. The fourth annual It’s Your Tern! Festival (12 noon – 4:00, free) celebrates the threatened common tern, many of which have been nesting on Tango Pier. There will be games, arts and crafts, a scavenger hunt, a special spotting scope viewing, and bird tours led by Annie Barry and Kellie Quinones. The free Rite of Summer Music Festival in Nolan Park presents “Pamela Z — Works for Voice and Electronics” at 1:00 and 3:00, a live performance by the San Francisco-based composer and media artist. In addition, you can visit such free continuing exhibitions and programs as “The Public Works Department Presents: Sanctuary City,” “Christodora: Nature, Learning, Leadership,” “New York Electronic Art Festival,” “Art of Intuitive Photography,” a family-friendly literary party at “The Empire State Center for the Book,” the NYC Audubon Summer Residency, “Escaping Time: Art from U.S. Prisons,” “Billion Oyster Project Exhibit,” “Sculptors Guild Presents: Currently 80,” A.I.R. Gallery’s “Taken on Trust,” the Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s Island Outpost, LMCC’s “A Supple Perimeter” by Kameela Janan Rasheed, the Woolgatherers’ “Genesis 22,” and the Dysfunctional Theatre Company’s “Dancing with Light.”

BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: WE WANTED A REVOLUTION

Jan van Raay, “Faith Ringgold (right) and Michelle Wallace (left) at Art Workers Coalition Protest, Whitney Museum,” digital C-print, 1971 (© Jan van Raay)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, July 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

For July, the free First Saturday program at the Brooklyn Museum is zeroing in on its current exhibition “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85.” There will be pop-up teen apprentice gallery discussions about the show in addition to a tour led by Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art curatorial assistant Allie Rickard; a hands-on workshop in which you can create your own silkscreened political messages; live performances by Tamara Renée (music inspired by collages by Romare Bearden), Billy Dean Thomas, and DJ Reborn; a screening of Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras’s Flag Wars, about gentrification in Ohio, followed by a talkback with Goode Bryant; BUFU Presents Us: A Convening on Collective Action, with workshops by Yellow Jackets Collective, Sisters Circle Collective, Artrepreneurship, QTPOC Mental Health Initiative, and others; a community resource fair with G!rl Be Heard, Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, Voices of Women Organizing Project, and the Black Girl Project; a reading and signing by Morgan Parker for her latest book, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé; and the Black Lunch Table Edit-a-Thon, in which participants can work on Wikipedia articles on artists in the “We Wanted a Revolution” exhibition and get their Wiki portrait taken by Noelle Theard. In addition, you can check out such other exhibits as “Infinite Blue,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” and, at a discounted admission price of $12, “Georgia O’Keefe: Living Modern.”

JEFF KOONS: SEATED BALLERINA

Jeff Koons’s “Seated Ballerina” has extended her stay at Rockefeller Center through July 5 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

30 Rockefeller Plaza
49th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Extended through July 5, free
www.rockefellercenter.com
seated ballerina slideshow
www.artproductionfund.org

In 2000, controversial American artist Jeff Koons placed “Puppy,” a forty-three-foot-high stainless-steel sculpture of a dog covered in tens of thousands of flowering plants, in the plaza at Rockefeller Center, a work that Koons called a symbol of “love, warmth, and happiness.” In 2014, he installed at the same spot the thirty-seven-foot-high stainless-steel “Split-Rocker,” part toy pony, part dinosaur, also covered in flowering plants. And now Koons, who also had a major retrospective at the Whitney in 2014, has brought “Seated Ballerina” to Rockefeller Plaza, a forty-five-foot-high inflatable tchotchke that would feel at home in the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Inspired by a smaller piece from his “Antiquity” series, the sculpture, which recalls his balloon dogs and is sponsored by the Art Production Fund and Kiehl’s, is based on a porcelain figure by Oksana Zhnikrup, who created statuettes for the Kiev Experimental Ceramic-Art Factory beginning in 1955. Koons’s nylon ballerina, which is supposed to reference a modern-day Venus while also raising awareness for the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, is sitting on a tuffet, leaning over to her left and adjusting one of her ballet slippers. In the wind, she slowly rocks back and forth, her left arm in motion, strings holding her in place. (On days with severe weather she is deflated, only to rise up again on balmier times in shining gold, silver, red, and blue.) Although the signs say she will remain in Rockefeller Center through June 5, her stay has been extended until July 5, so there’s still time to catch her. As with so much of Koons’s oeuvre, what you see is pretty much what you get; some people love it, some hate it; some find it plagiaristic art lacking originality, while others consider it an entertaining bit of artistic appropriation, one of the foundations of Koons’s practice. In any case, it certainly attracts attention, both up close as well as from a distance, where “Seated Ballerina” hovers over Paul Manship’s monumental sculpture of Prometheus in the light-up fountain below. “I hope the installation of ‘Seated Ballerina’ at Rockefeller Center offers a sense of affirmation and excitement to the viewer to reach their potential,” Koons said in a statement. “The aspect of reflectivity emulates life’s energy; it’s about contemplation and what it means to be a human being. It’s a very hopeful piece.”