this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

JULIE MEHRETU / PALIMPSEST / PRIDE CELEBRATION

Julie Mehretu, Ghosthymn (after the Raft), ink and acrylic on canvas, 2019–21 (photo by Tom Powel Imaging / © Julie Mehretu / courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)

JULIE MEHRETU
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Exhibit continues Thursday – Monday through August 8, $18-$25
Palimpsest: Thursday, June 17, free with RSVP, 8:00 (available on demand June 18-20)
Pride Celebration with Julie Mehretu: Friday, June 25, free with RSVP, 7:00
212-570-3600
whitney.org

Over the years, I’ve seen many works by Julie Mehretu, but her eponymously titled midcareer retrospective at the Whitney is still a revelation. Running through August 8, the show consists of approximately thirty paintings and forty works on paper and prints from 1996 to the present by the Ethiopian-born artist, who moved with her family to Michigan when she was seven in 1977 and is now based in Harlem. Her large canvases are palimpsests of architectural urban maps, news clippings, allegorical references, economic charts, art history, and abstract lines and shapes, coming together to form a tantalizing whole that is both visually dazzling and empowered with meaning. “Mehretu analyzes and reimagines divergent cultural narratives through her own artistic methodology; an extraordinary thinker and observer, she produces work that is full of empathy, innovation, complexity, and contradiction,” LACMA CEO and director Michael Govan writes in the forward to the catalog.

Installation view of “Julie Mehretu” at the Whitney, with Cairo, 2013, and Invisible Line (collective), 2010-11 (photo by Ron Amstutz)

As captivating as her works are from a distance, the exhibition rewards visitors who spend time with them at close range, their face as near as permissible to the smooth surfaces to take in every detail. “Few artistic encounters are more thrilling than standing close to one of her large canvases, enveloped in its fullness, color, forms, and symbolic content,” Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg writes in his catalog introduction. “One is easily swept up, into, and away by the works’ informational overload and force field of visually magnetic strokes, lines, routes, and trajectories. Viewers can, and do, lose their bearings in the attempt to read, comprehend, locate themselves, and make meaning from the confrontation.”

Julie Mehretu, Stadia II, ink and acrylic on canvas, 2004 (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg; gift of Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Nicolas Rohatyn and A. W. Mellon Acquisition Endowment Fund 2004.50 / photo courtesy the Carnegie Museum, © Julie Mehretu)

Such ink-on-acrylic canvases as Conjured Parts (eye), Ferguson, Haka (and Riot), (A Painting in Four Parts) Part 1, Transcending: The New International, and Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation are prime examples of the virtuosity of her technique, from her delicate brushwork to her attention to the smallest of elements, as she explores such issues as migration, colonialism, white supremacy, and racial injustice. Meanwhile, ink-on-paper drawings such as her “Inkcity” series delve into the psychology behind her vision. “I was really interested in mining myself and who I was and what made me,” Mehretu says in a Whitney video. “My interest is not in trying to dictate or determine or explain or try to give any information to anyone in that way. There aren’t any directives or any proposals in these paintings. These paintings are really experiential paintings that are informed by the time, by me, by this moment, by trying to digest that.”

Julie Mehretu, Epigraph, Damascus, photogravure, sugar lift aquatint, spit bite aquatint, and open bite on six panels, 2016 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Kelvin and Hana Davis through the 2018 Collectors Committee M.2018.188a–f, printed by BORCH Editions, Copenhagen, © Julie Mehretu)

The centerpiece is Ghosthymn (after the Raft), a large-scale canvas that has its own space opposite a window looking out at the Hudson River, David Hammons’s Day’s End, and the recently opened pier park known as Little Island. Created specifically for the Whitney show, the work references Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa as well as New York City’s past. “The insistence on new work and the idea of how that’s important . . . there was this time of suspension with the pandemic,” Mehretu says in the video. “There’s a wall that faces the river, and I was really interested in that wall and the relationship to the river and the relationship to the exterior. As you look out — I look at it every day from my studio [in Chelsea] — you sense the nineteenth-century-ness of this city even though so much of the architecture has changed. The Hudson River is the reason the city exists. There’s a sensibility in different periods of life, of the history of the making of this place, and the kind of immigrant nature of this place.” From a distance, bursts of red, yellow, and green battle it out with ghostly whites, but up close you’re likely to be surprised by what Mehretu uses to create some of her smaller images.

Julie Mehretu works on Haka (and Riot) in new documentary Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest (photo courtesy Checkerboard Film Foundation)

Mehretu was intimately involved with the survey, which began at LACMA before coming to New York City; she is extremely generous on the audio guide when talking about her process, a must-listen. You can also find out more when the museum premieres the documentary Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest from June 17 to 20, introduced by exhibition cocurator Rujeko Hockley and Checkerboard Film Foundation president Edgar Howard. And on June 24 at 7:00, Mehretu will be at the Whitney for a special in-person Pride celebration with DJ Reborn and refreshments, during which the ravishing exhibition will be open.

LITTLE ISLAND

Little Island is an urban oasis that juts out on Pier 55 in Hudson River Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LITTLE ISLAND
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
Open daily, 6:00 am – 1:00 am
Free timed tickets, noon – midnight
littleisland.org
little island slideshow

While billionaires Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk battle it out to see who can rocket to Mars first, New York socialite couple Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg have their feet firmly planted on the Earth. Ten years ago, the Diller-von Fürstenberg Family Foundation contributed $20 million to the construction of the High Line, a converted elevated railway that has become one of the most glorious parks in the world. And in 2015, they cemented their local legacy by donating $113 million to Little Island, a lovely new paradise built on the remnants of a ramshackle pier at West Thirteenth St., in the shadow of the Whitney and just down the street from David Hammons’s Day’s End, a 325-foot-long brushed-steel outline of an abandoned warehouse on Pier 52 where Gordon-Matta Clark carved holes in the walls in 1975, a ghostly homage to what — and who — is no longer there. (The Diller-von Fürstenberg Family Foundation was one of many donors who helped fund Hammons’s permanent installation.)

Concrete tulip pillars welcome visitors to Little Island (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Little Island is a warm and welcoming oasis rising more than 60 feet above the Hudson River, shaped like a large leaf, leading visitors from the land into water. It is bursting with more than 350 species of flowers, trees, and shrubs, a 687-seat amphitheater for live performances known as the Amph, the Play Ground plaza where you can get food and drink (sandwiches, salads, fried stuff, vegan options), and stage and lawn space called the Glade. More than 66,000 bulbs and 114 trees have been planted, taking into account the changing seasons and even the differences in light between morning, afternoon, and night. It all sits upon 132 concrete pillars of varying heights that resemble high heels or slightly warped tulip glasses.

Winding paths lead to fun surprises on Little Island (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

There are several sloping paths that take you through the greenery and up to lifted corners that offer spectacular views of Lower Manhattan and Jersey City across the river. Little Island was designed by Thomas Heatherwick of London-based Heatherwick Studio, with landscape design by Signe Nielsen of the New York City firm MNLA, offering unique surprises and sweet touches as you make your way across the stunning environment, including rusted cylindrical metal posts that evoke the pier’s eroding wooden piles, a small wooden stage, interactive dance chimes and an instrument sculpture (“Instrument for All”) by Alfons van Leggelo, and a pair of black-and-white optical spinners.

Little Island has unique architectural elements around every corner (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the middle of the Play Ground, an abstract-shaped floor plaque pronounces, “In this year of 2021 we dedicate Little Island to the people of New York and to visitors from around the world — for their everlasting enjoyment, for gamboling and cavorting, playing and ramping, repose and reflection — and with the hope that it fulfills that ambition with as much joy as it has brought to those that built it.”

The Amph will host free and ticketed live performances all summer long and into the fall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

That joy continues with free year-round multidisciplinary programming that kicks off this month with such series as “Free Music in the Amph,” “Sunset Sounds,” “Little Library,” “Live! at Lunch,” “Late Night in the Play Ground,” “Weekend Wind Down,” “Savory Talks,” “New Victory LabWorks,” and “Creative Break: Music,” “Creative Break: Visual Art,” and “Creative Break: Dance.” Admission is first-come, first-served; however, entry to Little Island, which is open daily from 6:00 am to 1:00 am, requires advance reservations between noon and midnight. There will also be paid ticketed performances such as “Broadway Our Way” and “An Evening with American Ballet Theatre,” both of which sold out quickly, and free shows that must be reserved in advance, such as “Tina and Friends: BYOB (Bring Your Own Beautiful),” a Pride Month celebration on June 26 at 8:00 with award-winning playwright and director Tina Landau. Landau, tap dancer and choreographer Ayodele Casel, actor, singer, and music director Michael McElroy, and PigPen Theatre Co. are Little Island’s inaugural artists-in-residence; they will be curating and participating in numerous events in the next several months. Below is a list of upcoming ticketed shows.

Saturday, June 26, 8:00
Tina and Friends: BYOB (Bring Your Own Beautiful), with Tina Landau, the Amph, free tickets available June 16 at 2:00

Saturday, July 10, 2:00
Little Orchestra Society’s Things That Go Bang, the Amph, $25-$65

Saturday, July 24, and Sunday, July 25
Little Island Storytelling Festival, with Mahogany L Browne, Sarah Kay, Jon Sands, Shaina Taub, Broken Box Mine, Daniel Nayeri, Phil Kaye and the Westerlies, Michael Thurber, and others, the Amph, some shows require advance tickets available June 22

Friday, September 17, Saturday, September 18, and Sunday, September 19, 8:00
Little Island Dance Festival, with Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, Barkha Patel, Michela Marino Lerman, Tomoe Carr, Danni Gee, Andre Imanishi, and others, the Amph, tickets on sale June 22

KYLE MARSHALL: BAC / THE SHED

Kyle Marshall (right) has a busy June with Stellar at BAC (above) and two live performances at the Shed

Who: Kyle Marshall, Charmaine Warren
What: Dance film, virtual discussion, live performance
Where: BAC online, the Shed
When: BAC Zoom talk Wednesday, June 16, free with RSVP, 7:00; Shed performances Friday, June 25, 7:00, and Saturday, June 26, 8:00, free with RSVP
Why: In a May 2018 Movement Research Critical Correspondence talk with performer, historian, consultant, and dance writer Charmaine Warren, dancer, teacher, and choreographer Kyle Marshall said about working with Myssi Robinson, Mimi Gabriel, Nick Sciscione and Dare Ayorinde, “So it’s the five of us and we’ve known each other for a long time and so coming together, that sense of community I’m realizing is important to my work. The people in the room and that personal investment has to be there and that’s something I’m realizing going into new projects. But with Wage as opposed to Colored, which was a celebration of a black identity, I think with Wage I’m looking at white supremacy and capitalism and how it kind of fits within our bodies and how our bodies are victims of that cycle and perpetrators of that cycle. And how through making Colored I realized I had white supremacist thinking in my own body, about myself, about other people. And so this work came out of that thinking. I’m working with two male-identified dancers, two female-identified dancers, two black dancers, and two white dancers. I’m interested in how these binary things collide and the tension of these things. I’m curious about how bodies are seen and how bodies learn things, and how that history and learning comes into the room and also as a viewer, how do you see a performer as an archetype, as a stereotype. And also themselves because we’re both but we see each other as both and that kind of messy gray area, it’s a lot.”

Marshall continues to explore “that kind of messy gray area” in his Baryshnikov Arts Center commission Stellar, streaming for free through June 21. In the twenty-two-minute piece filmed at BAC’s Jerome Robbins Theater, Marshall, Bree Breeden, and Ariana Speight, in colorful, artistically designed hoodies (by Malcolm-x Betts), float about the space, lifting their arms, kneeling on the ground, clapping, running in circles, and staring into an ominous darkness, set to an electronic score that incorporates jazz, Afrofuturism, and percussive and other sounds by Kwami Winfield. Filmed and edited by Tatyana Tenenbaum, who previously shot Holland Andrews’s meditative Museum of Calm at BAC, it’s a poignant piece that furthers what Marshall was talking about with Warren three years ago.

Marshall and Warren, who last July spoke about creating dance during the pandemic in a “Black Dance Stories” episode, will be back in conversation on June 16 at 7:00 in a BAC Zoom discussion about Stellar. Marshall, who released the dance film Hudson in January, is also part of the Shed’s “Open Call” exhibition, performing live at the Hudson Yards venue on June 25-26, presenting a “dance honoring the spirit of humanity and sacredness of gathering”; limited free tickets are available, and the first show will be livestreamed as well.

BLOOMSDAY ON BROADWAY AT 40

Who: Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Chabon, Regina Porter, Colm Tóibín, Daphne Gaines, Maggie Hoffman, Vin Knight, April Matthis, Scott Shepherd
What: Fortieth anniversary celebration of “Bloomsday on Broadway”
Where: Symphony Space online
When: Wednesday, June 16, $15, 7:00
Why: Symphony Space’s fortieth annual salute to James Joyce’s Ulysses, “Bloomsday on Broadway,” will take place virtually on the 117th anniversary of the day the novel is set, June 16, 1904. The online presentation begins with a discussion and audience Q&A between Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Chabon, Regina Porter, and Colm Tóibín about the legacy of the work, followed by performances by Daphne Gaines, Maggie Hoffman, Vin Knight, April Matthis, and Scott Shepherd from experimental immersive theater experts Elevator Repair Service (Gatz, Measure for Measure). As a bonus, there will be a link to clips from last year’s virtual show, which featured a vast array of celebrities reading sections of the tome. Produced in cooperation with Irish Arts Center, the event is directed by John Collins and dedicated to Symphony Space cofounder Isaiah Sheffer, who passed away in 2012 at the age of seventy-six. Last week I bumped into Shepherd on the street and he was excited about what they were planning for this edition of “Bloomsday on Broadway,” which only got me more pumped. You should be too. Tickets are $15, and the recording will be available through June 30.

STATE OF DARKNESS AT THE JOYCE

STATE OF DARKNESS
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
June 16-20, $500-$1,000 for one-to-four-seat pods
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org/state-darkness

Last October, the Joyce presented a digital version of Molissa Fenley’s State of Darkness, in which seven dancers performed Fenley’s thirty-five-minute solo onstage, the first shows to take place at the Joyce since the pandemic lockdown began, albeit without an audience. Now, from June 16 to 20, six of those dancers will be back onstage, playing to a socially distanced crowd organized in pods of one to four people who paid between $250 to $2,000 in a benefit for the theater. The lineup features Annique Roberts on June 16 at 8:00, Jared Brown on June 17 at 8:00, Sara Mearns on June 18 at 8:00, Lloyd Knight on June 19 at 2:00, Michael Trusnovec on June 19 at 8:00, and Cassandra Trenary on June 20 at 2:00. Each performance, set to Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps” (“The Rite of Spring”), will be followed by a Q&A with the dancer and Fenley, along with a Champagne toast.

In October, Joyce executive director Linda Shelton said, “It has been truly inspiring and uplifting to see the dancers and Molissa tackle State of Darkness during this difficult and unprecedented interruption to our lives. To me, this piece is about emerging from the darkness we have been coping with since March.” Fenley added, “In 1988, environmental, political, and social unrest inspired me to create State of Darkness. Today, a response to similar influences affecting us feels even more urgent and necessary.” With theaters back open and audiences allowed in, “urgent” and “necessary” only begin to tell the story.

RED BULL THEATER: VOLPONE, or THE FOX

Who: Red Bull Theater company
What: Livestreamed benefit reading of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or The Fox
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live
When: Monday, June 14, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30 (available on demand through June 18 at 7:00)
Why: In December 2012, Red Bull Theater presented a stellar version of Ben Jonson’s classic 1606 English Renaissance satire, Volpone, or The Fox, at the Lucille Lortel Theater, which I called “a deliriously entertaining streamlined version . . . a frenetic farce fraught with fanciful flourishes.” Red Bull is bringing the play back for a live benefit reading on June 14 at 7:30, starring Grammy, Emmy, and Tony winner André De Shields as the title character and Hamish Linklater as Mosca, with Peter Francis James, Roberta Maxwell, Kristine Nielsen, Mary Testa, Jordan Boatman, Sofia Cheyenne, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Clifton Duncan, Amy Jo Jackson, and Sam Morales. The reading, which will be available on demand through June 18 at 7:00, is directed by Jesse Berger, who explains, “Human greed and con artists appear to be timeless parts of human nature – damnable in life, but hilarious onstage! We had so much fun with this delicious satire in our 2012 production, and I am excited to share the material again in this new way with a wholly new stellar cast of great comic actors. Plus there’ll be fun new nips, tucks, and comic wrinkles by the brilliant Jeffrey Hatcher and some design surprises and delights from our terrific creative team. Oh – this and all of Red Bull’s online events are performed live. Nothing is prerecorded – And just like with live theater: Anything can happen. With this hilarious cast, I think that’s truer than ever.” The visual design is by John Arnone, with costumes by Rodrigo Muñoz (based on original designs by Clint Ramos), original music and sound by Scott Killian, and props by Faye Armon-Troncoso.

On June 17 at 7:30, Berger, members of the company, and scholar Jean E. Howard will participate in a live Bull Session discussion. “The play opens with the main character, Volpone, making a rapturous speech to his gold. Nearly every other character is also in thrall to this ‘dumb god,’ and to attain more and more wealth these Venetians are ready to prostitute their wives, disinherit their sons and defile their honor. The action of Volpone exposes and satirizes the actions of its avaricious characters, but it does so with dazzling ingenuity. The play is dominated by a magnificent con artist, Volpone, and his tricky servant Mosca. Together they dupe the well-off doctors, lawyers, and merchants of Venice into giving rich gifts to Volpone, who pretends to be near death, in the hope that one of them can become his heir,” Howard notes. “Volpone, more perhaps than any other Jonsonian comedy, takes risks in its concluding scenes, stretching comedy to its limit as the tricksters dangerously overreach themselves and slam up against the harsh strictures of Venetian law.”

BLOOMSDAY REVEL 2021

Who: Terry Donnelly, Fiona Walsh, Una Clancy, Ed Malone, Aidan Redmond, Fiona Walsh, Gina Costigan, Sarah Street, Alan Gogarty
What: In-person and livestreamed Bloomsday celebration
Where: Blooms Tavern, 208 East 58th St., and online
When: Sunday, June 13, $45, 3:00
Why: For nearly one hundred years, people have been celebrating Bloomsday, when James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place, June 16, 1904. Yes, the seven-hundred-plus-page novel about Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus is set during one day in Dublin. On Sunday, June 13, at 3:00, Origin Theatre Company is presenting its eighth annual “Bloomsday Revel,” happening both live at Blooms Tavern on East Fifty-Eighth St. as well as online. The socially distanced afternoon features dramatic readings by such New York-based Irish actors as Terry Donnelly, Fiona Walsh, Una Clancy, Ed Malone, Aidan Redmond, Fiona Walsh, Gina Costigan, and Sarah Street, musical interludes from Alan Gogarty, and a juried costume contest. Tickets for the in-person show, cocurated by Paula Nance and Michael Mellamphy, are $45 and include Bloomsday-inspired hors d’oeuvres and an open bar. “Luckily we didn’t miss a year in 2020,” new Origin artistic director Mellamphy said in a statement. “We were fully virtual last year, in a program packed with great performances and heartfelt messages. But this year we are creating an all-new hybrid that celebrates the many ways we share experiences like this unique and important literary holiday. James Joyce after all was all about setting new rules in art. . . . We’re immensely pleased to continue that tradition in 2021.”