Tag Archives: Hiroshi Sugimoto

THE HOLLYWOOD CLASSICS BEHIND WALKERS: BE KIND REWIND

Mos Def and Jack Black have a wacky plan to save their video store in BE KIND REWIND

BE KIND REWIND (Michel Gondry, 2008)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, November 8, 4:30
Series runs through November 8 – December 27
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

When old man Fletcher (Danny Glover) takes off for a week, leaving Mike (Mos Def) in charge of his soon-to-be-demolished video store called Be Kind Rewind (they don’t have any DVDs or recent movies), his most important rule is to “Keep Jerry Out.” Jerry (Jack Black) is a crazy conspiracy theorist who covers himself in metal to ward off alien rays. After a botched attack on the local power plant, Jerry becomes a walking magnet (in a laugh-out-loud hysterical scene) and unknowingly erases all the videos in the store. Taking a page from the Little Rascals plots when Spanky and Alfalfa would suddenly put on a show for some local cause, Mike and Jerry recruit Alma (Melonie Diaz) as they proceed on their very strange attempts at Sweding — making their own versions of such films as Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, and Robocop and renting them out as if they were the real thing. Following the brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the extremely strange The Science of Sleep, writer-director Michel Gondry has fashioned a really stupid movie that has an overabundance of heart and charm. Glover and Mos Def are soft and gentle in this Capra-esque comedy, offsetting Black’s hyperactivity. Every time you’re ready to write the film off as being just too silly and ridiculous, something comes along to make you double over in laughter. Be Kind Rewind kicks off the Museum of the Moving Image series “Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact,” being held in conjunction with the new exhibition that examines how contemporary artists have used iconic Hollywood imagery in their work, with sculptures, photographs, paintings, videos, drawings, and more by Francis Alÿs, Richard Avedon, Jim Campbell, Gregory Crewdson, Jean-Luc Godard, Douglas Gordon, Isaac Julien, Martin Kippenberger, Guy Maddin, Mary Ellen Mark, Richard Prince, Tom Sachs, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Piotr Uklanski, Pierre Bismuth, and many others. Be Kind Rewind is screening November 8 at 7:00, preceded by Oscar winner Bismuth’s Where Is Rocky II? trailer. Bismuth will introduce the films, then participate in an artist talk with curator Robert M. Rubin afterward. After a break, the series picks up after Thanksgiving, continuing through December 27 with such iconic and influential classics as Dr. Strangelove, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, Chinatown, Psycho, and The Wild Bunch as well as several cult faves by Maddin, who will be on hand to talk about his latest, The Forbidden Room, on December 12.

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO: STILL LIFE

Hiroshi Sugimoto, “Manatee,” gelatin silver print, 1994 (courtesy Pace Gallery)

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO: STILL LIFE
Pace
510 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through Saturday, June 28, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.pacegallery.com
www.sugimotohiroshi.com

In his “Portraits” series, Tokyo-born, New York City-based artist Hiroshi Sugimoto created what appear to be painting-like photographs, in stark black-and-white, of such figures as Pope John Paul II, Fidel Castro, and Yasser Arafat as well as, quite impossibly, Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Rembrandt. The long-exposure pictures were actually taken of figures from wax museums, set against a dark background to take them out of historical context. In his ongoing “Dioramas” series, Sugimoto similarly plays with reality, as what at first seem to be beautifully composed deep-focus shots of living, breathing nature scenes turn out to be photographs of dioramas of fake trees, painted mountains, and taxidermied animals taken in natural history museums. Seventeen of the stunning photographs are on view in “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Still Life,” running through June 28 at Pace’s 510 West 25th St. gallery.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, “Olympic Rain Forest,” gelatin silver print, 2012 (courtesy Pace Gallery)

“Upon first arriving in New York in 1974, I did the tourist thing,” Sugimoto points out on his website. “Eventually I visited the Natural History Museum, where I made a curious discovery: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.” The inviting pictures look very real indeed, from groups of wapiti, California condors, and South Georgian penguins to several lush forests. The most dazzling of the silver gelatin prints features a manatee floating just above some rocks, rays of sunlight breaking through the surface of the water, bathing the fascinating creature in an otherworldly glow. It practically makes you want to tap the glass to get the large mammal’s attention. Sugimoto, who was just awarded the Isamu Noguchi Award for Kindred Spirits in Innovation, Global Consciousness, and Japanese/American Exchange, has also explored the nature of how we visually interpret what we see in such other series as “Seascapes,” “Theaters,” and “Lightning Fields”; in “Dioramas,” he again makes the viewer question what is real while examining the very meaning of “still life” in his own special way.

OUT OF HAND: MATERIALIZING THE POSTDIGITAL

Richard Dupont’s digitally created “Going Around by Passing Through” greets people outside the Museum of Arts & Design as part of “Out of Hand” exhibition (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Broadway
Through June 1, $12-$18 (pay-what-you-wish Thursday & Fridays, 6:00 – 9:00)
800-838-3006
www.madmuseum.org

Exhibitions at the Museum of Arts & Design often feature handcrafted objects, often with a folkie appeal. But “Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital” changes that dramatically, gathering more than 120 works from the past nine years that have been created using cutting-edge digital technology. Divided thematically into “Modeling Nature,” “New Geometries,” “Rebooting Revivals,” “Remixing the Figure,” “Pattern as Structure,” and “Processuality,” the pieces range from chairs, tables, and lamps to clothing, jewelry, and abstract and figurative sculptures. Artists have employed such techniques as 3D printing, digital scanning, and manipulated computer animation to create the objects, and nearby videos show how some of the works have been made, while the labels list the exact methods used. Barry X Ball reimagines Giusto Le Court’s seventeenth-century “La Invidia” in the golden honeycomb calcite sculpture “Envy.” Michael Schmidt’s “Fully Articulated 3D-Printed Dress” is made of laser-cut Strathmore. HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts offers a new form of transportation with “Rapid Racer,” which was made in one solid piece using 3D printing. Nick Hornby references art history and uses algorithms in making the white marble resin composite “I Never Wanted to Weigh More Heavily on a Man than a Bird (Coco Chanel).” Marc Newson used mathematical formulas to create the fractal “Doudou Necklace.” The exhibition also features works by Frank Stella, Chuck Close, Anish Kapoor, Ron Arad, Wim Delvoye, Maya Lin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Roxy Paine, Zaha Hadid, and Richard Dupont, who uses himself as a virtual model in an untitled, heavily distorted full-body sculpture on the fifth floor and the large-scale head, “Going Around by Passing Through,” that resides outside the museum. “There’s this deep resistance to the idea that a digitally sourced thing can be an art piece,” Dupont says in a promotional video for the exhibition that explores his process. “Out of Hand” should significantly reduce such resistance in the future. (The show ends June 1, but on June 14, Andrew Payne of LIFT Architects will lead an afternoon workshop showing how to use 3D printing in design and programming.)

T. J. WILCOX: IN THE AIR

T. J. Wilcox’s “In the Air” gives visitors a panoramic view of New York City both past and present (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
Mildred and Herbert Lee Galleries, second floor
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Through Sunday, February 9, $16-$20 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

In his Whitney installation “In the Air,” Seattle-born, New York-based artist T. J. Wilcox invites visitors into his Union Square rooftop studio for a swirling look at his view of the city, past and present. Upon entering the second floor galleries, people can duck into a 360-degree panorama of the city composed of shots from six projectors. Over the course of one day compressed into thirty-five minutes, the film breaks into half a dozen short narratives on individual panels, each of which explores a part of New York history associated with that area. The short documentaries look at heiress and jeans designer Gloria Vanderbilt, the plan to have zeppelins dock on top of the Empire State Building, Andy Warhol preparing silver Mylar balloons to greet Pope Paul VI’s motorcade passing by the Factory, Manhattanhenge glowing in the distance, fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, and Wilcox’s building super describing in detail how he watched 9/11 unfold from the roof. In the short pieces, Wilcox, a pop-culture junkie who has previously made short films about Marie Antoinette, Jerry Hall, and Marlene Dietrich, relates how the subject influenced him as an artist and a human being. “I became really interested in this idea that I was seeing the view in the present tense as I was looking at the New York City scape but that I was also looking across time,” Wilcox says in a video about the piece on the Whitney website. Part of the fun of “In the Air” is spinning around, wondering where the next of the six documentaries is going to appear; it also makes viewers create their own narratives, peering out at a section of the city and being hit with a personal memory. Wilcox supplements the installation with fifteen works selected from the Whitney’s permanent collection that all involve ways of looking (in general and at New York specifically), including videos, assemblages, photographs, and paintings by Charles Atlas, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Helen Levitt, Joseph Cornell, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joan Jonas, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, and Gordon Matta-Clark.

SANBASO, DIVINE DANCE

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
March 28-29, $30-$50
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

In conjunction with the major Guggenheim exhibition “Gutai: Splendid Playground,” which continues through May 8, the museum is teaming up with Japan Society to present the North American premiere of Sanbaso, divine dance, taking place in the rotunda of the Frank Lloyd Wright building March 28 at 2:00 and 8:00 and March 29 at 8:00. The ancient celebratory ritual dance will feature Kyogen actor Mansai Nomura (Onmyoji, Ran) as the title character, joined by five noh musicians and three noh chanters, with the set and costumes designed by Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto based on his recent “Lightning Fields” series of photographs. “It is believed that the roots of Sanbaso lie in the myth of Amaterasu-omikami, the goddess of the sun, who hid in the heavenly rock cave Ama-no-Iwato,” Sugimoto explained in a statement. “This performance expresses how the gods descend to earth and is regarded as the most important performance piece among all the Shinto rituals. . . . The audience of this performance will witness the gods’ presence even in these jaded modern times.” This special program, a tribute to Gutai avant-garde artist Shiraga Kazuo’s Ultramodern Sanbasō, which opened the seminal “Gutai Art on Stage” presentation in 1957, is sold out, but there will be a standby line, with each person allowed to buy one ticket if any become available. In addition, on March 26, Japan Society will host a screening of Yuko Nakamura’s 2012 documentary Memories of Origin — Hiroshi Sugimoto, which follows Sugimoto around the world and includes appearances by architect Tadao Ando, artist Lee Ufan, critic and curator Akira Asada, and actor Mansai Nomura; Sugimoto will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A afterward.

Striking production of SANBASO, DIVINE DANCE lights up the Guggenheim (photo by Enid Alvarez; © 2013 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)

Update: Slow and steady, performed with split-second timing, Sanbaso, divine dance is a striking piece, a highly stylized, precisely choreographed combination of music, vocalization, movement, architecture, and design, beautifully tailored to its surroundings in the Guggenheim rotunda. The mesmerizing performance begins with a noh music medley featuring drums and flute, a traditional sonic introduction that sets the mood for what follows. After the trio of musicians departs, the full cast enters, with Kazunori Takano as Senzai, Haruo Tsukizaki as Koken, and kyogen star Mansai Nomura as the title character, along with a slightly larger group of musicians and vocalists. They all proceed slowly down the spiral from the Guggenheim’s second floor, emerging from behind one of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s lightning-themed curtains and winding their way to the bare stage, which stands about three feet off the ground. As the musicians play — the earlier trio of Rokurobyoe Fujita on fue (flute), Atsushi Ueda on ko-tsuzumi (small hand drum), and Keinosuke Okura on o-tsuzumi (large hand drum) is joined by Yotaro Uzawa on ko-tsuzumi (lead hand drum), Kensaku Araki on waki-tsuzumi (second small hand drum), and a ji-utai (chorus) of Ren Naito, Hiroharu Fukata, and Shuichi Nakamura — a ritual takes place in which the senzai is presented with gold hand chimes, known as suzu, from a box held by the koken. Soon Sanbaso approaches the koken and is given a small, dark mask of an old man’s face that he puts on, then starts taking loud steps and shaking the chimes in unison with the drummers. Flashing his lightning-patterned blue robe designed by Sugimoto, he stops, jerks his head, then lifts and brings down a heavy foot, creating an echo that reverberates throughout the Guggenheim. Nomura is also wearing a tall, dark hat — similar to the one he wore in the two fantastical Onymoji films — that reflects light and the late Motonaga Sadamasa’s water tubes, which arc across the museum, in such a way that it looks like bolts of lightning are streaking down it. At times, Nomura’s foot stomps are like thunder, matching Rie Ono’s lighting that makes the bolts on Sugimoto’s curtains come alive, as if a storm has suddenly arrived. Having honored the gods, Sanbaso returns the mask and chimes to the koken, and the company prepares for the finale, after which they go back up the winding Guggenheim ramp and disappear behind the lightning curtains. It’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off Nomura, who inhabits his role like it’s part of his soul. He even adds a final flourish as he accepts the accolades of the delighted audience, which on Thursday night included Sugimoto as well as Cai Guo-Qiang, whose stunning “I Want to Believe” exhibition filled the Guggenheim five years ago.