Tag Archives: bruce nauman

BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION: ART HISTORY WITH LABOR / OPEN HOUSE

Bronze rat watches over Bruce High Quality Foundation installation in Lever House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Lever House
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through October 1
Admission: free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com

When we were photographing the latest display in the Lever House lobby a few days before the official opening, a young man in a suit, seemingly on his way to lunch, stopped us and asked, “What is this?” When we told him it was an art installation by the Bruce High Quality Foundation, he just looked blankly around and said, “Is it finished?” We said that we thought it was probably pretty close to completion, if not done yet, and he sneered. “What the hell! I gotta walk through this every day?” And he stormed off, shaking his head. An arts collaborative formed eight years ago and named for a fictional character, Bruce High Quality, who supposedly died in the September 11 terrorist attacks, BHQF creates multimedia installations and performances that comment on the state of art, politics, and the world. Indeed, “Art History with Labor” at first appears unfinished, with working materials all around the lobby, including a bucket with a mop, a wheelbarrow with a bag of soil, a floor polisher, a ladder, a trash can, and other elements that make it look like a construction site. Meanwhile, outside in the plaza, a giant rat faces the gallery, growling, but instead of his being another blow-up Scabby the Rat seen at so many city construction sites that employ nonunion workers, this twelve-foot-high bronze casting is called “The New Colossus,” directly evoking the 1883 Emma Lazarus poem that is on a plaque within the Statue of Liberty (“‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’”).

The Bruce High Quality Foundation reimagines Martin Luther’s 95 Theses for the modern age (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

But everything is part of the exhibition, along with a lone briefcase, an old watercooler, and a knocked-over filing cabinet spilling out printouts of “Art History with Labor: 95 Theses.” Free for the taking, the stapled-together four pages mimic Martin Luther’s 1517 document, a major force in the arrival of the Protestant Reformation, with quotes from Luther as well as Jean-Luc Godard, Roland Barthes, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Oscar Wilde, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jamie Dimon, Thomas Edison, and Sun Tzu in addition to facts about Ayn Rand, the Art Workers Guild, Auschwitz, Nikola Tesla, Paul Robeson, Iwo Jima, and the Lever Brothers, who built the company town Port Sunlight in 1888 for the men and women working in their soap factory. Each object in the lobby is equipped with a speaker pronouncing the theses, accompanied by a video, examining the nature of art and labor and how they have intertwined through the ages. The exhibit also includes “Double Iwo Jima,” a two-panel painting that raises questions about art, truth, propaganda, and labor by re-creating multiple images of Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. So, is the installation actually finished? One could argue that it’s only a start to further investigation on the part of the visitor. You can find out more about the Bruce High Quality Foundation and their unaccredited art university (a self-described “‘fuck you’ to the hegemony of critical solemnity and market-mediocre despair”) on Sunday, September 9, when they host an open house at their headquarters at 34 Ave. A, and there will be a closing reception for “Art History with Labor” at Lever House on October 1.

TONY OURSLER / BRUCE NAUMAN

Tony Oursler, “Castouts,” mixed media, 2010 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

TONY OURSLER: PEAK
Lehmann Maupin, 201 Chrystie St. between Stanton & Rivingston Sts.
Tuesday – Saturday through December 4, 212-254-0054
www.lehmannmaupin.com
BRUCE NAUMAN: FOR CHILDREN / FOR BEGINNERS
Sperone Westwater, 257 Bowery at Stanton St.
Tuesday – Saturday through December 18, 212-999-7337
www.speronewestwater.com

Two longtime stars of the multimedia installation currently have exceptional exhibits right around the corner from each other on the Lower East Side. For decades, New York native Tony Oursler has been projecting faces and other images onto a multitude of objects, creating what appear to be living, breathing sculptures. His current show at Lehmann Maupin’s space on Chrystie St., “Peak,” consists of seven technologically virtuosic miniature dioramas in which theatrical scenes and performance art takes place, delving into obsession, festishism, and the human psyche. In “Artificial Hazard,” a man is trapped in a glass cage, an infantile face screaming behind him, a finger pointing upward in the corner. Numerous minuscule projections cover “Via Regia,” “Valley (Flowchart),” and “Castouts,” so be sure to scan every inch of the pieces, while a naked woman delivers a monologue in “Black Box” and a shirtless man seen in multiple sections of a chunk of disintegrating metal gets serious in “Mirror Return.” Meanwhile, Oursler’s companion to “Peak,” “Valley,” is currently on view at the online Adobe Museum of Digital Media.

Bruce Nauman, “For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and fingers),” HD video installation (color, stereo sound), continuous play, 2010

Following the success of his multimedia “Topological Gardens” installation at the 2009 Venice Biennale, which earned him the Golden Lion, Indiana-born artist Bruce Nauman has put together the captivating “For Children / For Beginners” at Sperone Westwater on Bowery, just around the corner from Lehmann Maupin. The central piece of the show is the two-story-high HD video projection “For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and fingers),” with two large hands at the top, and two more at the bottom, closing fingers as an unseen voice calls out “thumb,” “first finger,” “second finger,” etc. However, what is said and what is seen do not necessarily match; in addition, the hands occasionally flip upside down while the background changes from white to black and Terry Allen’s piano soundscape echoes throughout the gallery (emerging from the far elevator). The work is supplemented with a pair of graphite drawings and a smaller monitor showing one pair of hands responding to instructions. As with his recent “Days” exhibit at MoMA (also part of the Venice Biennale), in which different voices came out of fourteen speakers all calling out the days of the week in varying order, “For Children / For Beginners” is both exhilarating and confounding, a trademark of Nauman’s work. But don’t bother trying to figure it all out; just let the meditative sound and images take you away. It’s fascinating to see how well the two shows work together, as Oursler and Nauman each uses very different sizes in their installations — with fingers playing a role in both exhibits.

BRUCE NAUMAN: DAYS

The days go flying by in Bruce Nauman’s audiovisual installation at MoMA (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through August 23
Admission: $20 (includes same-day film screening)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

As the August doldrums begin to take hold, it’s getting harder and harder to even remember what day it is. To add to the confusion, multimedia performance artist Bruce Nauman has installed “Days” at MoMA. For nearly fifty years, the Indiana-born Nauman, who has been based in New Mexico since 1979, has been challenging the conventions of art and language via neon sculptures, film and video, live performances, and unique installations. Created for the 2009 Venice Biennale, “Days” is not really much to look at: fourteen relatively bland speakers in two rows, with a handful of stools between them in an otherwise empty room. But oh, what beautiful noise reverberates throughout the gallery. Nauman recorded seven people reading off the days of the week, each person given a different, random order, none following the established Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. Visitors can approach a particular speaker, where that specific voice and order will gain prominence, or can stand off to the side or in the middle and let all the days of the week reverberate in ways that end up being more comforting than confusing. By having men, women, and children of different ages and speech patterns calling out the days, Nauman allows the viewer/listener an opportunity to contemplate time as both a personal reality and a metaphysical concept. We recommend grabbing a stool, sitting in the middle of the room, and letting the “music” roll over you like waves on the beach. As far as forgetting what day it is goes, you should try to remember Fridays, when admission to MoMA is free after 4:00, and Tuesdays, when the museum is closed. And as long as you’re there, you might as well check out a couple of other pretty sweet exhibits, including “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917,” “Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography,” and “The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today.”