Tag Archive - Daniel Felsenfeld

Art On the Radar : Gwarlingo’s Don’t-Miss List for September

September 14, 2012 in Events, Images, News, Performance, Sounds with 2 Comments

 

British Street artist Slinkachu left this miniature “Hanging On” in the streets of Hong Kong. It’s one of the many images on view in his New York and London show, Global Model Village. (Photo © Slinkachu courtesy the artist)


 
The invitations, event notices, emails, and review copies are pouring in. The fall arts season has officially arrived. If only I could clone myself, then perhaps, I’d have a chance of catching even a handful of these concerts, openings, and shows.

I wish I could attend everything listed here, but since I can’t, I hope you’ll venture out in the coming weeks and report back on what you loved (and what you didn’t).

Here is my completely biased Don’t-Miss List for the coming month (in no particular order).

If I’ve overlooked an event you think Gwarlingo readers would enjoy, feel free to add your event to the Comments section below or to the Gwarlingo Facebook page.

 
 

Slinkachu in London and New York

British street artist Slinkachu (a favorite here at Gwarlingo) is celebrating the launch of his new book with two solo shows in London and New York. Global Model Village opens to the public September 27th at Andipa Gallery in London and runs until October 27th. There will also be a pop-up show in New York City from October 3rd through the 7th. Both shows will feature new work shot in different cities around the world.

 

 
Also be sure to check out Slinkachu‘s new book Global Model Village: The International Street Art of Slinkachu, which collects together images of installations the street artist has left in cities around the world, including New York, Moscow, Cape Town, Beijing, Berlin, Hong Kong and, of course, his hometown of London. The books is available in UK, US, and German editions. There will also be a Japanese version released in the new year by Sogensha (図書出版 創元社), along with a Japanese version of Slinkachu’s original book. 驚くべき.

 

 

 

John Kelly in 1993 as Cocteau in Light Shall Lift Them (Photo by Rick Gillette courtesy John Kelly)

John Kelly at Joe’s Pub in New York City

When performance artist-actor-writer-video artist-singer-dancer John Kelly is scheduled to perform, count me in. Kelly has the reputation as an artist’s artist. Over the years, he has worked with everyone from Nan Goldin to Antony and the Johnsons and James Franco. His work is so daring and original it can be difficult to boil down to a bite-sized blurb. He has received numerous awards, including Obies, Bessies, and The Rome Prize (a testament to how diverse his work is). If you don’t know Kelly’s work yet, keep him on your radar. I’m building an entire New York trip around his upcoming cabaret performances at Joe’s Pub. Seeing Kelly perform is always revelatory.
 

John Kelly (Photo by Billy Erb courtesy John Kelly)


John Kelly makes his solo Joe’s Pub debut performing songs by Kurt Weill, Charles Aznavour, Holcombe Waller, Richard Einhorn, The Incredible String Band and Richard Thompson, among others. Tickets are $20. Performances are October 14th, October 28th, and November 4th. Visit the Joe’s Pub website for more information or to purchase tickets. You can also read more about the show on John Kelly’s Facebook event page.

 

 

 

OPERAtion Brooklyn 2012. Back Row: Zach Redler, Sidney Marquez Boquiren, Daniel Neer, Kayleigh Butcher, Daniel Felsenfeld. Front Row: Sara Cooper, Noah Himmelstein. (Photo by Meghan Hickey courtesy of American Opera Projects)

OPERAtion Brooklyn Brings Opera to The BEAT Festival

American Opera Projects and Opera on Tap’s acclaimed series returns for a new showcase of operatic works from and inspired by Brooklyn.

Composer Daniel Felsenfeld will premiere A Genuine Willingness to Help (Book I), the first installment in the composer’s “Author Project,” which features music and multi-media performance based on texts by living writers and songwriters, such as Rick Moody, Jonathan Lethem, Stephen Elliott, and Fiona Maazel. Felsenfeld’s Raw Footage: Composer’s Cut, based on Robert Coover’s novel The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Director’s Cut, is also on the program, along with Stop and Frisk by composer Sidney Marquez Boquiren and librettist Daniel Neer and Male Identity by composer Zach Redler and librettist Sara Cooper.
 

Topping off the program are four songs drawn from One Ring Zero’s album As Smart As We Are (The Author Project). Viggo Mortensen (yes, that Viggo Mortensen) calls these “mysterious pop songs,” arranged for piano and chamber ensemble by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp,  “…a well-orchestrated booby trap for music lovers everywhere…“ The works feature texts by Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and David Wondrich.

OPERAtion Brooklyn is part of the first annual BEAT Festival. BEAT creates a platform to celebrate Brooklyn’s finest performing artists, ”extraordinary world-class performers who stand as the greatest innovators of the performing arts,” says festival artistic director Stephen Shelley. From September 12-23, artists will perform in venues throughout the borough. For complete information and festival passes visit www.beatbrooklyn.com.

Individual tickets for OPERAtion Brooklyn are $20 (passes to the entire BEAT Festival are also available). There will be three opportunities to see this special OPERAtion Brooklyn performance:
 

Thursday, Sept. 13 – 7:30 PM
Flatbush Reformed Church
890 Flatbush Avenue, Flatbush

 

Wednesday, Sept. 19 – 7:30 PM
Brooklyn Conservatory of Music
58 7th Avenue, Park Slope

 

Saturday, Sept. 22 – 7:30 PM
The Irondale Center
85 S. Oxford Street, Ft Greene

 

 

 

Andrew Ohanesian’s The House Party under construction at Pierogi’s The Boiler (Photo by Will Femia courtesy ny.curbed.com)

Andrew Ohanesian’s The House Party at Pierogi’s The Boiler in Williamsburg

Artist Andrew Ohanesian is fascinated with art that imitates reality. He’s built a confessional-booth-sized bar for one (with beer on tap), a row house  and a fully stocked, walk-in, refrigerated cooler (installed at English Kills Art Gallery). For his latest work, The House Party, Ohanesian has constructed a full-sized suburban home inside Pierogi’s satellite gallery, The Boiler, a former factory boiler room with 40 foot ceilings located at 191 N. 14th St. in Willisamburg.

Ohanesian’s house will be opened up to the public for a house party on September 14th, the opening night of the exhibition. In this at once creative and destructive act, the artist enlists the audience to provide the final element of the work itself, giving each viewer the unique opportunity to physically leave his or her own scar on the House, by partying within it throughout the evening. You can see an animation of the house in this video:
 


 
As Stephen Truax reported on Hyperallergic, “depending on New York Fire Department’s ruling on the certificate of occupancy, visitors may or may not have to sign a waiver to enter the space. However, if you do get in, you will enjoy a functional bathroom and kitchen with plumbing (as well as, thankfully, ventilation), a working stove (including an oven hood), dishwasher, fridge (complete with water dispenser), garbage disposal, 94,000 BTUs of AC cooling power, dish cable, and wifi.”

There will be a lot of openings to choose from the night of the 14th, but be sure to put this one on the must-see list.

Andrew Ohanesian’s The House Party is on view at Pierogi’s The Boiler at 191 North 14th Street in Brooklyn September 14th-November 18th.

 

 

 

Fred Hersch Trio at the Village Vanguard and On Tour

Composer and pianist Fred Hersch’s return to jazz after several months in an AIDS-related coma was nothing short of miraculous. (You can hear Hersch discuss his illness and recovery with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross here). Hersch is back with a new tour, a new album, and is better than ever.

The Grammy-nominated performer is currently performing at the Village Vanguard with his trio, John Hébert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums, to celebrate the release of his new two-disk CD, Alive at the Vanguard. Recorded in February 2012, the new album contains seven new Hersch compositions, as well as music by Coleman, Kern, Porter and Monk.

I’ve seen Hersch perform over seven times now, and he never disappoints. If you can’t catch The Fred Hersch Trio for their six-night performance at the Village Vanguard in New York, you can also see them on tour this September in Boston, Chicago, D.C., Baltimore, and Cincinnati. Tour dates and venues are listed below. You can listen to tracks off the new album right here:

 


 

You can purchase a copy of the Fred Hersch Trio’s new album Alive at the Vanguard from Amazon or iTunes. (A portion of your purchase will benefit Gwarlingo).

 

The Fred Hersch Trio’s U.S. Tour Dates:
 
Tuesday-Sunday Sept 11th-16th: Village Vanguard, NYC
Wednesday September 19th: Scullers, Boston, MA
Thursday-Sunday September 20th-23rd: Jazz Showcase, Chicago IL
Monday-Tuesday September 24th-25th: Blue Wisp, Cincinnati OH
Thursday, September 27th: Blues Alley, Washington, DC
Friday September 28th: An Die Musik Live, Baltimore, MD

 

 

 

Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus in New York City

Thanks to the Public Art Fund, Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi has created a different kind of “house party” at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Discovering Columbus places the 13-foot-tall statue of Columbus in the center of an American living room six stories above the city streets, temporarily transforming it into a contemporary artwork. According to the Public Art Fund website, the room will feature many of the trappings of a domestic living room—lamps, a couch, a coffee table, a television, and more—as well as custom wallpaper by the artist. Through large, loft-style windows, visitors will have dramatic views of Central Park and Midtown Manhattan that will be seen from Columbus’s perspective for the first time.

Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus (Photo courtesy of the artist and the Public Art Fund, NY)

In a stroke of genius, the Public Art Fund is simultaneously overseeing the conservation of the 1892 Columbus Monument in cooperation with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. The scaffolding supporting Nishi’s living room is allowing conservators to access the column and figure at its top. The restoration is expected to be completed by January of 2013. (Why can’t all government bureaucracies be this creative with their resources?)

Over 100,000 people are expected to visit the installation, which is on view from September 20th through November 18th.

Tickets to climb six stories to this home-away-from-home are free, but must be booked in advance. (Elevator access is available for those who require special assistance.) Register for free tickets at the Public Art website.

 

 

 

Norman Mooney, Series 4 No. 1, 2007. Carbon on aluminum panel, 72 x 144 inches. (Photo courtesy the artist and Causey Contemporary)

Norman Mooney’s Close Your Eyes at Causey Contemporary in Williamsburg

If you’re in Williamsburg Friday night to catch the opening of Andrew Ohanesian’s The House Party, stop by Causey Contemporary for Norman Mooney’s solo show of monumental carbon smoke drawings, Close Your Eyes. The Irish artist’s carbon drawings are created with layers of billowing smoke preserved on aluminum panel and have both a physical and metaphysical presence.

Causey Contemporary is located at 92 Wythe Avenue in Brooklyn. The gallery will be participating in the Williamsburg Gallery Association‘s Every Second Friday on September 14, 2012 from 6-10 p.m. along with Art101, Figureworks, Front Room, Gitana Rosa, Parker’s Box, Pierogi, P339, Skink Ink Editions, T.A.P.S. Gallery, The Boiler, Ventana 244 and Williamsburg Art and Historical Society. Galleries will be open late and the wine and cheese will be in heavy supply. More information is available at the Causey Contemporary website.

 
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The Gwarlingo Index: 2011′s Most Memorable Experiences in the Arts

January 5, 2012 in Events, Images, News, Performance, Sounds, Spaces, Words with 3 Comments

Michael Clark Company performing in Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern was chosen as one of the most memorable experiences in the arts for 2011. (Photo courtesy camelwritesart.blogspot.com)


 
It’s the New Year, which means it’s time for lofty resolutions and the annual onslaught of “best of” lists.

Here at Gwarlingo, I thought I’d provide readers with a new twist on the traditional “Best of 2011″ list.

I asked an array of artists, composers, filmmakers, writers, musicians, and performers to tell me about their most memorable experiences in the arts during 2011. I wanted to know which books, concerts, albums, art shows, films, plays, performances, essays, etc. had personal resonance with artists this past year. I gave participants the option to comment on their choice or not.

A critical difference between the Gwarlingo Index and other year-end lists is that the chosen work didn’t have to be created or released in 2011. The Index wasn’t meant to be comprehensive. The idea was to see if any zeitgeist emerged in the responses and to get a glimpse of how the arts impacted our lives in the past twelve months.

There are a few surprises here.

I was particularly struck by the cross-disciplinary nature of the list. Many artists chose works or events from outside their own discipline. (Who, for instance, could have guessed that Moosewood author Mollie Katzen would choose a dance performance as her most memorable art experience of 2011?) Five of the composers and musicians polled listed events in the visual arts, which was a surprise. It just proves that creative inspiration comes from a myriad of sources and that cross-pollination between disciplines is a fertile pursuit for today’s working artists. After all, creative people don’t live in boxes.

Dance was a popular category among the artists who responded. Music, less so. Curiously, no plays appear on the Index, but two literary classics from the 19th century do.

 

"I was fascinated to read that some British filmgoers were hopping a ferry and crossing the English Channel to see Tree of Life in France, where the film was already showing. Any movie that can incite this much passion, love or hate, must be doing something right."


 
I was pleased to see two controversial works appear in the Gwarlingo Index—Peter Greenaway’s monumental take on Da Vinci’s The Last Supper and Terrence Malick’s polarizing film Tree of Life.

In early June I began to hear all sorts of rumblings about Malick’s film. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. Some people were walking out of movie theaters in disgust. When I arrived in London that same month, where the film’s release date had been pushed back to July, I was amused to read that some British filmgoers were hopping a ferry and crossing the English Channel to see Tree of Life in France, where the film was already showing. Any movie that can incite this much passion, love or hate, must be doing something right.

As for Greenaway’s monumental installation at the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Carter gave the show a scathing review in the New York Times calling the piece “a dud.” “It is, however, a big, expensive, technological-bells-and-whistles-to-the-max dud, which is something,” Carter added. And yet, despite this public drubbing, Greenaway’s installation appears here as one composer’s “most memorable art experience.” It’s a useful reminder that art is exactly that–an art, and not a science. It’s also a reminder to keep an open mind when reading those New York Times’ reviews.

 

An installation view of "Leonardo's Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway." The installation received a scathing review in The New York Times, but appears on the Gwarlingo Index as a most memorable art experience of 2011. (Photo courtesy Luciano Romano/Change Performing Arts)

 
Many large-scale, public events received a mention, including two different art installations at the Park Avenue Armory and an impromptu concert at the Occupy Wall Street protests.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, artists like Rosanne Cash, Bill Powers, and Will Rawls speak eloquently about the relationship between art and solitude. They remind us how rewarding intimacy with a work of art can be. This is one of the benefits of art in the 21st century–it allows us to slow down, to think, to push away those pesky distractions that chip away at our dwindling attention spans, to encounter the world of others.

What were your own memorable experiences in the arts in 2011? Please share your own picks on the Gwarlingo Facebook page or in the “Comments” section below.

 

Singer and Writer Rosanne Cash

The de Kooning retrospective at MoMA had the most profound impact on me in 2011. To see the entire scope of his artistic life, from the small painting he made at age 12 through the complex figures, vast abstracts and sculptures, to the sparse canvasses at the end of his life when his mind was deteriorating, was so moving, heartbreaking, inspiring… overwhelming. I was in tears by the last few paintings.

My friend Laurie Beckelman, who is friends with John Elderfield, who organized the show, arranged for a private tour. Walking through empty galleries with nothing but the art added to the impact. I feel extremely fortunate to have seen this show.

 

Willem de Kooning, Woman, ca. 1969. Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in. (Photo © 2011 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society, New York)

 

“De Kooning: A Retrospective” fills MoMA’s entire sixth floor with some 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures. The show is on view through January 9th. (Photo courtesy c-monster.net)

 

Grammy-winner Rosanne Cash has recorded 15 albums and 11 number-one hit singles. Her most recent albums are The List (Manhattan, 2009) and The Essential Rosanne Cash (Sony Legacy, 2011). Her prose and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Oxford-American, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and other publications. Her most recent book, Composed, was published by Viking in 2010. For more information visit her website or follow her on Twitter.

 

 

Writer William Powers

Last summer, I spent several days alone in an isolated house with no internet connection, dog-sitting for friends. My plan was to do nothing all day but read, and I brought along a novel, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which somehow I’d never got around to. I dove into that beautiful book — it was the Richard Pevear / Larissa Volokhonsky translation — like I haven’t done since college days, and it was glorious. Crime and Punisment is a masterpiece, so in one sense it’s no surprise I had a powerful experience. But the circumstances, a rare chance, in a world of distractions, to focus for an extended period on just one thing, were also a big part of why it was so memorable. Four months have gone by and I still think about that extraordinary inner journey, and fantasize about repeating it with another book, one of these days.

 

 

William Powers is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Hamlet’s BlackBerry, which has been widely praised for its insights on the digital future. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times and many other publications. He has been featured in dozens of major news outlets, including interviews with Katie Couric, NPR, Good Morning America, the PBS NewsHour, CNBC and the BBC, and coverage in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Wired, and The Guardian. For more information, visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

 
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Where Art Fears to Tread

September 5, 2011 in Images, News, Sounds with Comments Off

Photographer Carla Shapiro hand copied nearly 2,500 obituaries from the "New York Times" in honor of those who died in 9/11, a labor-intensive process which took five months to complete. The resulting photographs, "Obituaries to Prayer Flags," will be on view in four locations in New York this month. (Photo © Carla Shapiro)

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, there is no shortage of news stories, official ceremonies, and tributes. But this weekend I’ve been contemplating how the arts community fits into all of this speechifying and memorializing. What is the artistic legacy of 9/11 now that it is a decade behind us?

September 11th is tricky creative territory. How can any artist convey the horror of that day without over-simplifying it or reducing it to some narcissistic, naval-gazing exercise?

It’s true that time has passed, but perhaps not enough time. Reactions to 9/11-themed fiction, art, music, and memorials remain passionate, emotional, and highly personal. We cannot help but view such works through the lens of our own experience, cannot help but compare art to memory. Art that dares to address the events of September 11th is often found lacking by comparison, but just as often it cuts too close to our recollections of that day, threatening to unearth some forgotten pain or fear. We cannot tolerate 9/11 art that feels shallow or untrue, but we are equally leery of art that is too faithful to reality. At one end of the spectrum lies criticisms of “self-indulgence” and “sentimentality,” and at the other, “crassness” and “insensitivity.”

We cannot tolerate 9/11 art that feels shallow or untrue, but we are equally leery of art that is too faithful to reality. (Eric Fischl's "Tumbling Woman" before it was removed from Rockefeller Center)

The fervent response to Eric Fischl’s bronze nude called “Tumbling Woman” — a piece in the tradition of Rodin’s “Martyr” and Aristide Maillol’s “The River” — is an excellent case in point. Fischl’s larger-than-life sculpture, which was dedicated to 9/11 victims, was barely installed at Rockefeller Center in 2009 when the complaints began pouring in. Rockefeller Center responded by putting curtains around the statue, and then removed the sculpture altogether. The lifespan of Fischl’s “Tumbling Woman” was a mere week.

As the Star-Ledger observes, images of the attacks of the World Trade Center are noticeably absent in the September 11th-themed gallery and museum shows opening this month, such as the upcoming exhibit “September 11″ at the Museum of Modern Art’s PS 1 annex in Queens. Out of the 70 images made by 41 artists, not one shows the burning towers burning or a plane flying into the World Trade Center. Curators remain convinced that these images are too raw and disturbing for most viewers.

Mary Lucier/San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Mary Lucier's video installation of a sunrise over north Brooklyn in 1975, one of the works to be in MoMA PS1's "September 11." Most of the art in the show was made before the attacks.

Mary Lucier's video installation of a sunrise over north Brooklyn in 1975 is one of the works in the MoMA PS1 show "September 11." Most of the art in the show was made before 9/11. (Image courtesy Mary Lucier and The San Francisco Museum of Art)

In the months following September 11th, writers like Don DeLillo and Taylor Branch predicted that the event would change our actions for years to come and would finally put an end to our culture’s pervasive cynicism. But as Michiko Kakutani argues in her recent New York Times article, “the New Normal…[is] very much like the Old Normal, at least in terms of the country’s arts and entertainment.” Here are Kakutani’s thoughts on post-9/11 culture:

 

Ten years later, it is even clearer that 9/11 has not provoked a seismic change in the arts. While there were shifts in the broader culture — like an increasingly toxic polarization in our politics, and an alarming impulse to privilege belief over facts — such developments have had less to do with 9/11 than with the ballooning of partisanship during the Bush and Obama administrations, and with unrelated forces like technology,…which magnified the forces of democratization, relativism and subjectivity.

Economic worries — sparked by 9/11 and amplified by the 2008 Wall Street meltdown — accelerated trends already in place, including the Internet’s undermining of old business models in music and publishing. Warier than ever of taking risks, Hollywood looked even harder for special-effects extravaganzas that could readily find a global audience, and Broadway doubled down on shows starring big-name celebrities that could guarantee advance box office.

In response to 9/11, the artistic community quickly mobilized. Jane Rosenthal, Craig Hatkoff and Robert De Niro put together the Tribeca Film Festival (which had its 10th anniversary this spring) to help revitalize a ravaged Lower Manhattan. And musicians including Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, the Who and Jay-Z did a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden.

There was also an outpouring of art, like Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising,” Neil Young’s “Let’s Roll” and Anne Nelson’s earnest play “The Guys.” Such works served useful purposes — cathartic commemoration, therapeutic expression, public rallying — but in retrospect, many of them now feel sentimental or heavy-handed…

Some eloquent or daring works of art about 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq eventually did emerge — most notably, Kathryn Bigelow’s harrowing film The Hurt Locker, about a bomb disposal squad in Iraq; Gregory Burke’s haunting play “Black Watch,” based on interviews with soldiers who served in Iraq with a Scottish regiment; Amy Waldman’s novel The Submission, which explored the fallout of 9/11 on American attitudes toward Muslims; Donald Margulies’s play “Time Stands Still,” about the Iraq war’s effects on two journalists and their relationship; and Eric Fischl’s “Tumbling Woman,” a bronze sculpture commemorating those who fell or jumped to their deaths from the twin towers…

Compelling as such works are, however, none were really game-changing. None possess the vaulting ambition of, say, Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, or the sweep of Mr. DeLillo’s Underworld, which captured the entire cold war era. Instead, these 9/11 works feel like blips on the cultural landscape — they neither represent a new paradigm nor suggest that the attacks were a cultural watershed. Perhaps this is because 9/11 did not really change daily life for much of the country. Perhaps it’s because our A.D.D. nation — after the assassinations of J.F.K., R.F.K. and M.L.K. in the ’60s, and decades of violence on 24-hour news — has become increasingly inured to shock.

We are a culture of contradictions. We have no trouble watching the character Jack Bauer torture terrorists on the television show 24, but we cannot bear the brutal punch of images and art work that remind of us that real terrorism exists. Even Eric Fischl’s bronze sculpture of a falling woman proved too visceral for many viewers.

There is a reason that escapist books and films like Harry Potter, Avatar, and The Lord of the Rings have flourished over the past decade. They exorcise our impulse for revenge and our desire to see “good” triumphing over “evil.” The plots of these stories are familiar, but the fantasy settings allow us to avoid the discomfort of reality.

9-11 anniversary

"Tribute in Light" is arguably the most powerful artwork to emerge from 9/11 (Photo by Francisco Diez)

So how is an artist to navigate this hypersensitive, contradictory climate?

Here are several examples of talented artists who are responding to the anniversary of 9/11 in their own unique way.

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