Tag Archives: Hans Haacke

ALFREDO JAAR EXHIBITION WALKTHROUGH: THE TEMPTATION TO EXIST

Alfredo Jaar, What Need Is There to Weep Over Parts of Life? The Whole of It Calls for Tears, neon, 2018 (photo courtesy Galerie Lelong)

Who: Alfredo Jaar, Carlos Basualdo
What: Exhibition walkthrough of “The Temptation to Exist”
Where: Galerie Lelong & Co., 528 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: Saturday, May 14, free with advance RSVP, 4:00
Why: Alfredo Jaar is one of the most provocative and innovative artists working today. Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1956 and based in New York City since 1982, the artist, architect, and filmmaker uses multimedia works to immerse viewers in the images and sounds of sociopolitical strife across the globe, exposing the lies associated with war, government control, rampant capitalism, and other issues. At the Whitney Biennial, people wait on line to experience his 06.01.2020 18.39, a video installation comprising footage from a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020, incorporating a bonus element that makes visitors feel like the helicopters are coming for them. His 2011 installation Three Women made a trio of female activists the focus of the media; it has since been expanded to thirty-three women. Neon projects declare, “I Can’t Go On / I’ll Go On,” “Be Afraid of the Enormity of Possibility,” and “This Is Not America.” Other potent projects include The Skoghall Konsthall, Culture = Capital, Shadows, and Lament of the Images.

His 2018 installation, What Need Is There to Weep Over Parts of Life? The Whole of It Calls for Tears, a quote from the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca, makes its New York debut on May 13 at Galerie Lelong as part of the exhibition “The Temptation to Exist.” The name of the show is inspired by Emil Cioran’s 1956 book of the same name; the Romanian philosopher wrote, “The universe is one big failure, and not even poetry can succeed in correcting it.” Dedicated to Italian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, who passed away in April at the age of eighty-seven, “The Temptation to Exist” features lightboxes, ink prints, and such neon phrases as “Gesamtkunstwerk” and “Other People Think.”

For the exhibit, Jaar has also curated works from more than sixty-five artists seeking change in the world, creating what he calls “a space of resistance, a space of hope.” Among those included are Dawoud Bey, Luis Camnitzer, Lygia Clark, Valie Export, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Félix González-Torres, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Emily Jacir, Joan Jonas, On Kawara, Glenn Ligon, Piero Manzoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat, Yoko Ono, Adam Pendleton, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Carolee Schneemann, Nancy Spero, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Lawrence Weiner, and Francesca Woodman.

There will be an opening reception on May 13 at 6:00; on May 14 at 4:00, Jaar will hold a public walkthrough of the exhibition, joined by Philadelphia Museum of Art senior curator Carlos Basualdo. Admission is free with advance registration. Don’t miss this rare chance to witness art history in the making.

TITAN

Minerva Cuevas’s “Apocalypse” and “Climate Change” are two of her three contributions to Titan phone booth project (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

TITAN
Sixth Ave. between 50th & 56th Sts.
Through January 3, free
titan.kurimanzutto.com
titan online slideshow

I’ve never owned a cell phone. For twenty-plus years, I’ve traveled around the city with quarters in my pockets in case I needed to suddenly call someone, ready to slide the change into the slot of one of the thousands of telephone booths on street corners everywhere, booths once more numerous than drugstores and coffee chains are now. However, slowly but surely, phone booths have been going the way of the dinosaur, their population shrinking not only because of the preponderance of the smart phone but also with the installation of free digital phone kiosks that also connect users to the internet. And now total extinction awaits, as the city announced in February that the more than three thousand booths that are still on the streets are being taken down, including the last four in working operation.

As a memorial to the end of another era that even Superman will lament, curators Damián Ortega and Bree Zucker, in collaboration with the Kurimanzutto gallery located on East Sixty-Fifth St. and Mexico City, have put together “Titan,” a public project spanning West Fifty-First to West Fifty-Sixth St. on Sixth Ave. in which a dozen artists have added text and/or images to the outsides of the Titan-run phone booths, where advertisements usually appear. In fact, several of the works could easily be mistaken for ads.

You have until January 3 to see the outdoor exhibition, which has a lot to say about the state of the country. Anne Collier’s 2011 “Questions” consists of photos of three open file folders that she found on the street that ask questions related to “Evidence,” “Supposition,” and “Viewpoint,” including “How do we know what we know?” Glenn Ligon’s “Aftermath” and “Synecdoche (For Byron Kim)” involve neon that are lit at specific times revolving around the November 3 election. “At the beginning of the Trump regime I began to think about whether our democracy would survive and what it means to be a citizen,” he explains in his artist statement. Meanwhile, his “Red Hands #2” is a photo of hands being raised at the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, DC. Yvonne Rainer presents “Excerpts from Apollo’s Diary, Written During His Last Visit to Earth From Mount Olympus,” in which she excoriates the current president, referring to him as “Shameless Schmuck Number One.”

Jimmie Durham’s “You Are Here” tells us where we are literally and figuratively (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Minerva Cuevas’s “Capitalism,” “Climate Change,” and “Apocalypse” pair photos of animals with mottos in front of angled, colorful shapes, like social media memes; for example, a picture of a grumpy cat is joined by the declaration “Another end of the world is possible.” Renee Green’s “TITAN Billboards,” from her 2015 “Space Poem #5 (Years & Afters),” is a trio of statements that, put together, read, “After You Finish Your Work,” “After the Crisis,” “Begin Again, Begin Again.” Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “Ohhh… untitled 2020 (remember in november)” comprises three text-only messages in bold fonts, advising us to “Remember in November” and to “Febreze for Fascism” as well as pointing out there are “Impostors of Patriotism.” Patti Smith tells us to “Let your peace flag fly” and that “It’s in our hands,” while Hans Haacke reminds us that “We (all) are the people” in a dozen languages, a phrase that was adopted by East Germans against the oppressive GDR but was later coopted by “right-wing, xenophobic groups in Germany with a very different meaning.”

Cildo Meireles’s “Sermon on the Mount: Fiat Lux (1974–1979)” is part of a bigger performance piece created during Brazil’s military dictatorship; here, a mirrored space features beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount (“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”). Hal Fischer’s “Handkerchiefs,” “Signifiers for a Male Response,” and “Street Fashion: Jock,” from his 1977 Gay Semiotics series, look like clothing ads but actually describe specific gay signifiers that helped identify who was gay and what kind of sex act they were interested in. “As the gay community is polarized on some issues and cohesive around others, the semiotic process which helps locate it in the larger culture will flourish with the interesting and undoubtedly provocative results,” Fischer notes. No text or artist statement accompanies Zoe Leonard’s “Crossing the Gateway International Bridge from Matamoros to Brownsville,” three photos of the border crossing between Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Tamaulipas.

Anne Collier’s supplies “Evidence” as part of her “Questions” series (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Perhaps no other work gets right to the point as does Jimmie Durham’s “You Are Here,” a spare drawing, inspired by Saul Steinberg’s classic 1976 New Yorker cover map, “How New Yorkers See the World: View of the World from 9th Avenue.” In Durham’s version, a large red circle tells visitors where they are, at the crossroads of “wilderness” and “incognito,” with an asterisk proclaiming, “Lucky you! . . . Most people had to be some place else today.” Amid a surging health crisis, during which so many of us are sheltering at home, not seeing friends, family, colleagues, or even strangers, it’s important to know where we are, both literally and figuratively, as well as who we are, as individuals and part of a whole that can make change happen, even when there are no phone booths left for Superman to save the day in our grand city.

HANS HAACKE: ALL CONNECTED

Hans Haacke’s 2014 Gift Horse is centerpiece of first museum survey in more than thirty years (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Tuesday through Sunday through January 26, $12-$18
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

In 1986, the New Museum held the survey “Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business”; more than thirty-three years later, its follow-up, “Hans Haacke: All Connected,” which runs through January 26, reveals that the German-born longtime New Yorker is still hard at work with lots on his mind. “‘Artists,’ as much as their supporters and their enemies, no matter of what ideological coloration, are unwitting partners in the art-syndrome and relate to each other dialectically,” Haacke wrote in 1974. “They participate jointly in the maintenance and/or development of the ideological make-up of their society. They work within that frame, set the frame and are being framed.” The retrospective takes up nearly the entire museum, long since moved from its much smaller 1980s Bowery location, from the lobby to the fifth floor, and comes along at just the right moment; several artists recently threatened to refuse to allow their work to appear in the Whitney Biennial due to the corporate activity of a member of its board of directors, while other artists will not participate in arts institutions that accept money from the Sacklers and other billionaire families who made their fortune in controversial industries. The now-eighty-three-year-old Haacke was well ahead of them; in 1971, his solo show at the Guggenheim was canceled because it revealed questionable financial ties between museum trustees and the art world. One of those works, Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, which uses text and images to document the holdings of a slum landlord, is part of “All Connected,” which is populated by works Haacke has created for more than a half a century, pieces that uncover sociopolitical links between art and commerce, class, corporations, and the environment through photography, sculpture, and installation.

State of the Union, A Breed Apart, and News explore ideas of systems, organizations, and information (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Gallery-Goers’ Birthplace and Residence Profile, Part 1 tracks where visitors to his November 1969 exhibit at Howard Wise Gallery resided; attendees of “All Connected” can share some of their personal data in New Museum Visitors Poll on the fifth floor. Politics takes center stage in works depicting Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, the American flag, George H. W. and Barbara Bush, and the Bundestag. A Breed Apart consists of Leyland Vehicles ads for Jaguar and Land-Rover with photos and statements that raise issues of racism and colonialism. In a similar vein, Thank You, Paine Webber uses the broker’s catchphrase to go inside the company’s business culture. “After thirty years, Thank You, Paine Webber gained an unfortunate new topicality,” Haacke writes on the accompanying label. “While much had changed, we were rudely reminded that much is still the way it was then. The exploitation of people’s misery — in this particular case, for PR purposes, but indicative of corporate attitudes and behavior more generally — continues unabated.” Seurat’s “Les Poseuses” (small version) traces the ownership of Georges-Pierre Seurat’s 1888 painting Les Poseuses, which started out as a gift and eventually was sold at auction for more than a million dollars in 1970. And On Social Grease comprises six photo-engraved magnesium plates that display quotes about corporate art ownership from a media executive, bank chairmen, and a politician. “From an economic standpoint, such involvement in the arts can mean direct and tangible benefits,” David Rockefeller is quoted on one of the plaques. “It can provide a company with extensive publicity and advertising, a brighter public reputation, and an improved corporate image.”

The second floor is an environmental wonderland of kinetic sculpture involving earth, air, fire, and water. Condensation Cube creates its own liquid ecosystem, complete with rainbows. Fans propel Blue Sail, White Waving Line, and Sphere in Oblique Air Jet. A small spark makes its way down High Voltage Discharge Traveling. Water sloshes in Large Water Level and Wave and freezes in Floating Ice Ring and Ice Stick. And Grass Grows is a large clump of dirt, right on the floor, that indeed has grass growing on it. In a catalog interview, Haacke talks about a shift that occurred in 1968. “I realized that my work did not address the fraught social and political world in which we lived. It was an incident that made me understand that, in addition to what I had called physical and biological systems, there are also social systems and that art is an integral part of the universe of social systems. The present debate over climate change is a perfect example of the interconnectedness of the physical, biological, and social.”

Detail, On Social Grease, six photo-engraved magnesium plates mounted on aluminum, 1975 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The showpiece of the exhibit is Haacke’s 2014 Gift Horse, a large-scale sculpture, designed for Trafalgar Square, of the skeleton of a horse mounted on a plinth. An electronic bow around its frontal thighbone transmits a live digital printout of the FTSE 100 ticker of the New York Stock Exchange. In the catalog, which includes contributions from Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Höller, Park McArthur, Sharon Hayes, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Thomas Hirschhorn, Walid Raad, Tania Bruguera, and others, Haacke talks about Boris Johnson’s reaction to Gift Horse. “I heard him say that the skeleton of the horse reminded him of the London subway system’s need for urgent repair. People were rolling their eyes,” he tells exhibition curators Gary Carrion-Murayari and Massimiliano Gioni. “I was standing behind him when he was spouting these lines and took a close-up photograph of his hair. The Brexiteer’s hair matches that of Donald Trump.” And let’s leave it at that.

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.

MARINELLA SENATORE AND NÁSTIO MOSQUITO: VISIBLE ON THE HIGH LINE

Nástio Mosquito will perform “S.E.F.A. Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I Were Angolan)” to help kick off Creative Time Summit

The High Line
Gansevoort St. entrance to Chelsea Market Passage
Friday, November 13, free, 6:00
thehighline.org
creativetime.org

The Creative Time Summit, a two-day series of workshops, roundtables, and open discussions exploring the intersection of art and social justice, takes place November 14-15 at the Boys and Girls High School campus on Fulton St. in Brooklyn, featuring such participants as keynote speakers Nikole Hannah-Jones and Boots Riley along with Bill Ayers, Hans Haacke, Leonard Lopate, Luis Camnitzer, Hope Ginsburg, Tahir Hemphill, Chloë Bass, Tania Bruguera, and many others. But the summit, “The Curriculum NYC,” kicks off Friday night with the special event “Visible on the High Line,” an evening of site-specific participatory performances focusing on collaboration and social interaction, curated by Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander of the Visible Project, “a research project in contemporary art devoted to art work in the social sphere, that aims to produce and sustain socially engaged artistic practices in a global context.” Italian visual artist Marinella Senatore will present the latest iteration of her “School of Narrative Dance” project, beginning at the Gansevoort St. entrance to the High Line and continuing on to the Chelsea Market Passage above Sixteenth St., where Angolan artist and musician Nástio Mosquito will perform “S.E.F.A. Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I Were Angolan),” a look at media and identity, with visuals by Vic Pereiro. Admission to the High Line performance is free; tickets to the Creative Time Summit run from $25 to $350, depending on what you can afford.

LAST CHANCE: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

Richard Hamilton, “Man, Machine and Motion,” exhibition reconstruction, 1955/2012 (photo by Benoit Pailley)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Friday – Sunday through September 30, $12-$16
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

“From a contemporary perspective, the distance between our machines and our selves has never been closer,” writes Gary Carrion-Murayari in “The Body Is a Machine,” one of several marvelous essays in the catalog of the fascinating New Museum show “Ghosts in the Machine,” which runs through this Sunday. Curated by Carrion-Murayari and Massimiliano Gioni, the exhibit examines the intersection between man, motion, art, and machine in a consumer society growing more and more obsessed with pop culture. Spread across four floors, “Ghosts in the Machine” features painting, sculpture, film, and installations focused on a time before the personal computer, when a developing technology was not as all-pervasive as it is today. In Stan VanDerBeek’s 1960s “Movie-Drome,” visitors can lie down inside a dome and watch myriad images projected onto the curved ceiling, an early version of the internet. A reconstruction of Richard Hamilton’s seminal 1955 “Man, Machine and Motion” follows humanity’s pursuit of going faster, farther, and higher, even foreseeing space travel. “The Medium Is the Medium” is a 1969 public television program in which Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, and Aldo Tambellini create short films using cutting-edge technology. Paul Sharits makes the film projector itself the key element in “Epileptic Seizure Comparison.” Harley Cokeliss’s “Crash!” video, Claus Oldenburg’s “Profile Airflow,” and Thomas Bayrle’s “Madonna Mercedes” examine the world’s growing love affair with the automobile. Works by Channa Horwitz, Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, and Emma Kunz play with perception in mathematical, scientific, and architectural patterns. Otto Piene’s “Hängende Lichtkugel” and Gianni Colombo’s “Spazio Elastico” use light to alter reality. Hans Haacke creates a bit of magic in “Sphere in Oblique Air Jet” and “Blue Sail.” Among the more contemporary pieces, Henrik Olesen pays homage to Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alan Turing, and outdated machines in such works as “Apple (Ghost) (1),” an old apple computer wrapped in plastic, and “Imitation/Enigma (2),” a sewing machine tied up in a blanket, while Seth Price repurposes licensed images in “Film/Right” and Philippe Parreno investigates an automaton in the miniature “The Writer.” Other artists represented in the show are J. G. Ballard, Eduardo Paolozzi, Rube Goldberg, Robert Smithson, Konrad Klapcheck, and Herb Schneider. In today’s crazy, fast-paced, constantly connected world, “Ghosts in the Machine” offers an intriguing, involving look back at a different era, one that, knowingly or not, paved the way for today’s consumer-driven digital age. (Also this weekend at the New Museum, the “Propositions” series continues with writer and curator Fionn Meade presenting “When Genealogy Becomes Critique,” a two-day seminar [Friday at 7:00 and Saturday at 3:00, $8 plus half-gallery same-day admission] dealing with art criticism, cinefication, and historiography.)