Rockaway Artists Alliance | This Week in New York

Yayoi Kusama’s silver spheres glitter in Rockaway (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

ROCKAWAY! 2018
MoMA PS1
Gateway National Recreation
Fort Tilden
Friday – Sunday through September 3 (and Labor Day), free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
www.moma.org
narcissus garden slideshow

In 1966, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama invited herself to the Venice Biennale, setting up “Narcissus Garden,” a collection of plastic silver spheres, on the lawn outside the Italian Pavilion; she even sold the mirrored balls for about two dollars apiece before being told to stop the vending. Original footage of the intervention is one of the highlights of the excellent new documentary Kusama: Infinity, which opens September 7. In the meantime, visitors can experience “Narcissus Garden” for themselves Friday through Sunday through Labor Day (including that Monday) as part of MoMA’s biannual “Rockaway!,” the free site-specific exhibition started in 2014 by MoMA PS1 curator-at-large Klaus Biesenbach and multidisciplinary artist Patti Smith, both Rockaway residents who were determined to rebuild the area following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy. Kusama, who lived in New York City from 1958 to 1973 and staged many controversial art happenings here, has placed fifteen hundred mirror balls in a former train garage in Fort Tilden in the Gateway National Recreation Area. Kusama’s popularity has risen dramatically this century, with record prices paid for her works and fans lining up for hours and hours (and hours and hours) to get thirty seconds inside one of her Infinity Mirror Rooms at Chelsea’s David Zwirner gallery, for example. So don’t be surprised when you arrive at the Rockaway building only to find that there’s a wait even in the middle of nowhere.

Yayoi Kusama’s 1966 “Narcissus Garden” is reimagined in abandoned Rockaway building (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Narcissus Garden” has been displayed around the world over the years, but it is more relevant than ever in the age of social media and selfies. At Venice, Kusama’s installation included a sign that said, “Your Narcisium [sic] for Sale,” and that is very much still true today. The spheres, each of which rests on a small, barely visible stand to keep them from rolling, reflect not only the surrounding area, consisting of other balls, walls covered in colorful graffiti, blown-out windows, and a high, dilapidated ceiling, but the viewer as well. Thus, people snap photos of themselves in the spheres, ready for posting. Others get so caught up in being photographed within the installation that they don’t listen to security guards telling them not to sit on the ground, not to go past the dangling hook, not to touch the pieces, and not to wander down inviting pathways, which are there to tantalize but not follow. There are even some spheres behind a rusted cage, locked away from the rest, segregated as if imprisoned. When we were there, one man muttered about this not being art and actually kicked one of the spheres, causing it to roll away, after which he was ordered to get out, still mumbling as he exited. Thus, “Narcissus Garden,” a presentation of MoMA PS1, the National Park Service, the Jamaica Bay — Rockaway Parks Conservancy, and the Rockaway Artists Alliance, continues to be a reflection of ourselves, now going back more than half a century, although Kusama, an eighty-nine-year-old firm believer in love and peace who still works every single day, is not condemning anyone or criticizing contemporary culture; she just wants us to enjoy the art. And it’s hard not to love it, especially as sunlight filters in and causes one area to suddenly glow.

The balls also are like three-dimensional manifestations of the dots and infinity lights Kusama has been obsessed with since the beginning of her career. “My desire is to measure and to make order of the infinite, unbounded universe from my own position within it, with polka dots,” Kusama said in a 2016 statement for an exhibition at the Glass House in Connecticut. “In exploring this, the single dot is my own life, and I am a single particle amongst billions. — I work with the principal themes of infinity, self-image, and compulsive repetition in objects and forms, such as the steel spheres of ‘Narcissus Garden’ and the mirrored walls I have created.” Don’t get caught up in taking photographs of the installation; instead, experience it for its many wonders, reflecting on your place and the place of others in the universe, contemplating the circularity of life, enjoying the sheer beauty of what is right in front of you. Then snap a bunch of photos and leave, allowing others to come in and get lost in the infinite joy of “Narcissus Garden.” You can then grab a seat and relax as you watch a screening in the main front space of Jud Yalkut’s 1967 seminal counterculture classic, Kusama’s Self-Obliteration.

Visitors are encouraged to move around rocks in Patti Smith installation in Rockaway Beach (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
Fort Tilden and Rockaway Beach
Thursday – Sunday through September 1, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
www.momaps1.org
rockaway! slideshow

Both MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach and multidisciplinary artist Patti Smith had close ties to the Rockaways prior to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, each having homes there that were affected by the disaster. As part of the continuing recovery effort, the two have teamed up with the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, the Rockaway Artists Alliance, and the National Park Service for the free public arts festival “Rockaway!” Held in conjunction with the reopening of Fort Tilden, a former U.S. Army Coast Artillery Post established nearly a century ago and a place that Smith visited often with Robert Mapplethorpe back in the 1970s, “Rockaway!” consists of several projects spread throughout the vast acreage. In the military chapel, which is undergoing restoration, Janet Cardiff has installed her delightful audio piece “The Forty Part Motet,” which has previously been shown at MoMA PS1’s home base in Long Island City and at the Cloisters, the first contemporary artwork ever presented at the Met’s medieval-themed outpost in Fort Tryon Park. “The Forty Part Motet” consists of forty speakers on stands arranged in a circle, each speaker playing the voice of one of the forty members of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir as they perform Thomas Tallis’s sixteenth-century choral composition “Spem in Alium Nunquam habui,” the English translation of which is “In no other is my hope,” a title that is particularly appropriate given the location. First walk around to hear each unique voice, then sit in the middle and let the glorious full music envelop you. “The Forty Part Motet” is on view through August 17; the rest of the show is up through September 1.

Patti Smith’s “Resilience of the Dreamer” creates a kind of fairy tale in middle of decimated building (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In another building, Smith and her daughter, Jesse, pay tribute to one of Patti’s heroes, Walt Whitman, with the short film The Good Gray Poet, in which Patti reads the New York-born writer’s “Country Days and Nights,” “Mannahatta,” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face! . . . On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose”) while wandering through the Camden cemetery where he is buried. The film also includes shots of other places related to Whitman’s life, and there are various historical items in a display case and a bookshelf where visitors are invited to read more by and about the Bard of Democracy.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is Smith’s “Resilience of the Dreamer,” a gilded four-poster canopy bed positioned in the middle of building T9, a former locomotive repair facility that has been filled with junk and detritus since Sandy. The piece, which calls to mind the destruction of so many homes along the beach, their facades ripped away during the storm, exposing people’s lives, has been decaying since its installation in June; the canopy is ripping, the sheets turning yellow, dirt collecting on the bed as the elements lay waste to it through the broken windows and battered roof. In a heavily graffitied side room, Smith has collected white stones and placed them in a large birdbath, where people are encouraged to pick one out and place it somewhere else — there are rocks in virtually every nook and cranny, from light switches and windowsills to holes in the wall and floor — or even take one home as a memory. In addition, in the sTudio 7 Gallery, Smith is displaying more than one hundred small-scale black-and-white photos primarily of possessions of friends, colleagues, and influences as well as gravesites. Among the images are Robert Graves’s hat, William Burroughs’s bandanna, Virginia Woolf’s cane, Mapplethorpe’s star mirror, and the Rimbaud family atlas, as well as beds belonging to Woolf, Victor Hugo, John Keats, Vanessa Bell, and Maynard Keynes and the tombs and headstones of Susan Sontag, Herman Hesse, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Jim Morrison. There is also a stage in the room where musical performances are held on Sunday nights; the next one will be the Jammin Jon Birthday Concert Bash on August 17 at 6:00, with fusion trio Dream Speed and experimental guitarist and Brooklyn native Jammin Jon Kiebon.

Granite cubes throughout Fort Tilden are part of Patti Smith tribute to Walt Whitman (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Scattered throughout Fort Tilden, which is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, are five granite cubes on which Smith has put Whitman quotes (“O madly the sea pushes upon the land, with love, with love”; “Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you”) in addition to a dozen small mud-and-straw nests from Adrián Villar Rojas’s “Brick Farm” series, which evoke both home and protection. There’s a map to help locate these objects; wear long pants and closed-toe shoes because several of the passageways are laden with poison ivy. And be sure to walk to the top of the battery for a spectacular view, then make your way down a winding path to the beach. “Rockaway!” is a not only an exciting artistic venture but a terrific exploration of the past, present, and future of the area, so decimated by Hurricane Sandy but even more determined to rebuild its way of life.

Janet Cardiff’s captivating sound installation continues through August 17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

(The exhibition is supplemented by a satellite show of works by more than seventy artists — from Marina Abramović and Ryan McNamara to Michael Stipe and Laurie Simmons, from Doug Aitken and Olaf Breuning to Olafur Eliasson and Ugo Rondinone — at Rockaway Beach Surf Club. There are several ways to get to Fort Tilden, all of which involve multiple modes of transportation. You can take the $3.50 Rockaway ferry from Pier 11 downtown to Beach 108th St., then get on the Q22 bus, or take the A train to Broad Channel, switch for the shuttle, then get the Q22 at 116th St. None of the options are quick and easy, but the ferry ride does go past Coney Island and the Statue of Liberty and under the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge. Yes, it’s a hassle, but it’s well worth it.)

Tag Archives: Rockaway Artists Alliance

YAYOI KUSAMA: NARCISSUS GARDEN

ROCKAWAY!