Tag Archive - Spaces

Tatzu Nishi Builds Christopher Columbus a Living Room in the Sky: Exclusive Photos

September 21, 2012 in Events, Images, Spaces with 1 Comment

 

Tatzu Nishi’s public art installation, Discovering Columbus, opened in Manhattan on Thursday. Here Nishi is pictured with Gaetano Russo’s 1892 sculpture. (Photo by Tom Powel courtesy the Public Art Fund, NY)

 

Last week I featured Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus on my Don’t Miss List for September. Two New Hampshire friends, who were on their way to Manhattan this weekend, asked me to recommend the one thing they shouldn’t miss during their trip. My response: Discovering Columbus, which finally opened yesterday.

Since no interior photos of the installation were available last week, a few readers were clearly baffled by the project when it appeared on my list. Trying to explain the project in person proved to be no easier:

Me raving with enthusiasm: “It’s Christopher Columbus…inside a room!”

Skeptical friends starting at me with pity and suspicion: “Hmm. Right. Sounds interesting. But what exactly is it again?”

Tatzu Nishi, a Japanese artist who lives in Berlin, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan, is known for his unconventional, site-specific public art projects, which transform historical monuments by placing them in domestic settings. The idea is to place public monuments, which are so often invisible and taken for granted, into a new context. After all, how often are we allowed to get up close and personal with a 13-foot statue with Christopher Columbus?

To better understand the Columbus project, it’s useful to look back at some of Nishi’s earlier projects. In 2002 the artist created Villa Victoria, a temporary functioning hotel around a statue of Queen Victoria for the Liverpool Biennial, and in 2011 the artist built a temporary hotel suite around Singapore’s iconic Merlion fountain for the Singapore Biennial. As these photos show, Nishi’s invented domestic spaces are surprising, highly original, as well as intimate.

 

In 2002 Nishi created Villa Victoria, a temporary functioning hotel around a statue of Queen Victoria for the Liverpool Biennial (Photo © Tatzu Nishi 2011 via tatzunishi.net. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

People sit next to Nishi’s installation surrounding the monument of former Guatemalan President Justo Rufino Barrios during an art biennial in Guatemala City on April 19, 2010. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd via the AP. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Tatzu Nishi, War and peace and in between, 2009-10. One of two spaces Nishi built around equestrian sculptures at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Kaldor Public Art Projects (Photo © Tatzu Nishi. Click to Enlarge)

 

Until yesterday, the interior of Nishi’s latest installation, Discovering Columbus, was a secret. But on Thursday the public art project, a living room that hovers six stories above Columbus Circle, officially opened. Luckily, artist Amy Jenkins was one of the first in line to attend the opening and sent these exclusive photos to Gwarlingo.

“I was certainly transfixed,” Jenkins told me in an email. “It was a truly magical experience and reminded me of why I love New York.”

Perched on top of six flights of stairs and metal scaffolding, Nishi has cleverly placed Gaetano Russo’s 1892 sculpture of Christopher Columbus inside of an airy living room.  The 13-foot marble statue sits on top of a coffee table in a space that measures 30 feet by 27 feet. The ceilings are 16-feet high in order to accommodate this oversized, coffee-table “knickknack.”

Magazines and books are scattered on the table beside the statue. Guests hang out on the couch as though they were watching the game at a friend’s house (conveniently, a working flat-screen television is nearby, but sadly, is tuned to CNN). The pink wallpaper, which depicts pop culture icons like Elvis, McDonald’s Malcom X, and Marilyn Monroe, is another special detail designed by Nishi.

 

A first glimpse of the finished interior of Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus (Photo by Tom Powel courtesy the Public Art Fund, NY. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi (on right) discusses his installation during Thursday’s opening. He also designed the pink wallpaper seen behind him.  (Photo © Amy Jenkins)

 

 

A close-up of Nishi’s pink wallpaper (Photo © Amy Jenkins)

 

 

Exterior scaffolding and a six-story stairwell support a 30-foot by 27-foot living room in Columbus Square. (Photo © Amy Jenkins)

 

 

Russo’s statue of Columbus before Tatzu Nishi’s installation (Photo by Jesse Hamerman courtesy the Public Art Fund, NY)

 

 

Tatzu Nishi and Columbus. (Photo by Tom Powel courtesy Public Art Fund, NY via Papermag)

 

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15+ Books Worth Reading from Hello Hello Books in Rockland, Maine

September 19, 2012 in Books Worth Reading, Spaces, Words with 3 Comments

 

A Nancy Drew collection at Hello Hello Books in Rockland, Maine (Photo by Lacy Simons)

 

I do quite a bit of traveling for Gwarlingo these days and one of the best things about being on the road is discovering out-of-the way, independent bookshops. For me, walking into a deftly run, well-curated bookstore is almost as good as losing myself in a bang-up novel: there’s a sense of forgetting, as well as discovery.

That is exactly how I felt when I walked into Lacy Simons’ shop Hello Hello Books in Rockland, Maine, in late August.

I was fresh from a week on a boat and was literally finding my “land legs” when I stopped into the Rock City Cafe for a cup of coffee. Hello Hello Books is tucked away at the back of the cafe, but don’t let its location or size fool you. As one Hello Hello customer recently said, the store “is small, but powerful.”

I knew I was in the right place when I saw The McSweeney’s Book of Lists (funniest book ever), Mary Ruefle’s Selected Poems, and The Cloud Collector’s Handbook (an obscure, personal favorite) near the register and overheard the store’s owner, Lacy Simons, giving passionate, personal advice to a customer about a particular author.

Almost two hours later, I emerged from the shop with my arms full and my hunger for a little oceanside culture entirely satisfied.

 

(Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Lacy Simons assists a customer at Hello Hello Books (Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

The Main Street entrance for Rock City Cafe and Hello Hello Books in Rockland, Maine (Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

(Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Lacy Simons, owner of Hello Hello Books in Rockland, Maine (Photo courtesy Lacy Simons)

 

Simons grew up in Maine, worked as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Sitka, Alaska (which Lacy says, also has “an awesome bookstore), and then went on to earn her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminar in 2003. For three years, she worked as the Managing Editor of Alice James Books, a forty-year-old independent poetry press based in Maine and one of my own favorite publishers.

Lacy is hardly new to the book scene in Rockland. “I worked for the previous business from 2003-2006 as the assistant bookshop manager (one of just two employees) and then returned in 2009 as the manager,” Lacy told me via email. “In early 2011, Susanne Ward (Rock City’s owner) decided she just couldn’t do the bookstore business anymore, and offered to sell it to me. I got my act together super quickly, and just a few months later, June of 2011, it became officially mine; in August of that same year, I officially opened for business!”

 

(Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

(Photo by Lacy Simons)

 

 

(Photo by Lacy Simons)

 

 

(Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

(Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Click to Enlarge)

 

At Hello Hello Books the shelves are teeming with unusual children’s books, quality magazines like The Paris Review, Uppercase, Lucky Peach, and The Believer, handmade cards, one-of-a-kind artist books, and funky finds like decorative Japanese tape and journals handmade from record album covers, as well as plenty of well-chosen books from every category under the sun. Simons doesn’t waste a single inch of space in her carefully curated store. There is a mixture of new, used, and sale books as well, which only adds to the fun.

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The Illusionist: The Mind-Bending Installations of Artist Felice Varini

April 10, 2012 in Images, Spaces with 7 Comments

 

Felice Varini, "Orangerie du cha‰teau de Versailles," 2006 (Photo by André Morin)

 

 

"Orangerie du cha‰teau de Versailles" from a different perspective (Photo by André Morin)

Note: This is a guest post by Riley MacPhee, a regular contributor to the Johnston Architects Blog. Johnston Architects PLLC is a small architectural firm focusing on creative, innovative, and sustainable design throughout the West. You can see their designs and learn more about their work at the Johnston Architects website.

 

To walk into a space exhibiting the art of Felice Varini is to be confused. You’ll immediately notice vaguely geometric, monocolor shapes stretching and sprawling across the room, but you won’t be able to determine any kind of method to the apparent madness. Varini’s work looks like interesting, abstract art superimposed on an architectural space.

But if you walk around and explore the space a little more, you’ll start to notice that the shapes change as you move.  The more you move, and the more you stare at them, the more you’ll start to realize that there’s something you aren’t getting. But then, suddenly you’ll arrive at a spot where everything comes together with startling clarity, and you’ll realize that you’re looking at a brilliantly composed perspective work that seems to pop out of the scene and hover eerily in front of it.
 

Felice Varini, "Encerclement à dix," Chapelle Jeanne d'Arc/Centre d'Art Contemporain, Thouars, France, 1999 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Encerclement à dix," Chapelle Jeanne d'Arc/Centre d'Art Contemporain, Thouars, France, 1999 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Carré aux seize disques," Commande du ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Centre national des arts plastiques, 2011 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Another perspective of "Carré aux seize disques," 2011 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Another perspective of "Carré aux seize disques," 2011 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

Varini’s work is really the opposite of a stereogram: a series of unintelligible figures painted across three dimensions, that when seen in just the right way, flatten themselves into a mind-bending 2D shape.

Varini is a Swiss artist who currently lives in Paris, and has done dozens and dozens of these types of installations. He thinks of his works comprehensively, not just from the single point where they come together:

“The viewer can be present in the work, but as far as I am concerned he may go through it without noticing the painting at all. If he is aware of the work, he might observe it from the vantage point and see the complete shape. But he might look from other points of views where he will not be able to understand the painting because the shapes will be fragmented and the work too abstract. Whichever way, that is ok with me.”

Felice Varini, "Une ligne, mille et une droites," Musée Bourdelle, Paris, France 2008 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Tra il Pieno e il Vuoto (In the Fullness and Emptiness)" 2003 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Tra il Pieno e il Vuoto (In the Fullness and Emptiness)" 2003 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Tra il Pieno e il Vuoto (In the Fullness and Emptiness)" 2003 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

“If you draw a circle on a flat canvas it will always look the same. The drawn circle will retain the flatness of the canvas. This kind of working is very limiting to me, so I project a circle onto spaces, onto walls or mountain sides, and then the circle’s shape is altered naturally because the ‘canvas’ is not flat. A mountain side has curves that affect the circle, and change the circle’s geometry. So, I do not need to portray complicated forms in my paintings. I can just use the simplicity of forms, because the reality out there distorts forms in any case, and creates variations on its own accord.”

“The same goes for colours. Usually I use one colour only, and the space takes care of altering the colour’s hue. For example, if I use one type of red colour on a mountain side, the result is many kinds of red, depending on the mountain’s surface and the light conditions. Sunlight will affect the different areas on the surface and the same red colour may become stronger or darker or clearer in certain areas, depending on how the sun rays hit the surface. The sky can be bright or dark. And if the surface has its own colour or a few colours then that will affect the red that I apply on it. So, I do not need to use sophisticated colours.”

 

Felice Varini, "Cinq Ellipses Ouvertes," Exhibition: Constellation, En attendant l'ouverture, du Centre Pompidou, Metz 2009 (Photo by André Morin courtesy varini.org)

 
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Filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara: Gaudi Made Me Realize the Lines Between the Arts Are Insignificant

February 16, 2012 in Images, Process, Spaces with 1 Comment

 

In Barcelona Hiroshi Teshigahara came face-to-face with Gaudí. "The magic of it overwhelmed me."

 

In the West, Hiroshi Teshigahara is best known as the avant-garde director of the 1964 film Woman in the Dunes–an erotic, surreal film that was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Teshigahara’s haunting shots of sand, skin, and water amid the advancing sand dunes have stayed with me over the years. But there is another Teshigahara film, one that is less well-known, that left an even greater impression on me.

Antonio Gaudi is like no other movie I can think of. Teshigahara’s 72-minute meditation on the Spanish Art-Nouveau architect is essentially wordless. He avoids conventional  narrative and instead, lets Gaudi’s buildings do the talking.

Before watching this film, I didn’t consider myself a fan of the Spanish artist. (George Orwell described Gaudi’s cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, as “one of the most hideous buildings in the world.”) But my judgment was based on ignorance–on some vague, false impression that Gaudi’s work was not much more than bulbous, overdone kitsch.

But after viewing Teshigahara’s breathtaking film, my opinion of the Spanish architect has been entirely transformed. Anotnio Gaudi was nothing less than a visionary genius–an original, madly brilliant artist who was unappreciated and misunderstood in his own time.

 

Teshigahara's passion for Gaudi's work comes through on every frame. He's a patient, attentive director with a craftsman's eye for details. He takes the time he needs, allowing the camera to linger.

 

 

Gaudi's Casa Batllo, Barcelona, Spain (Photo by Roby Saltori via Flickr Commons)

 

 

A still from Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy The Criterion Collection)

 

 

Gaudi's Casa Batlló in Barcelona. The roof, terminating in a turret and cross, could represent the sword or spear of Saint George (patron saint of Catalonia), which has been plunged into the back of the dragon. (Photo by Marcel Germain via Flickr Commons)

 

 

A still from Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy The Criterion Collection)

 

 

The Casa Milà is Gaudi’s second most visited building in Barcelona. The roof of this apartment building and office block is one of the city’s hidden treasures, for its view of the nearby Sagrada Familia, as well as for its whimsical and imposing sculptures.

 

Teshigahara’s passion for Gaudi’s work comes through on every frame. Once he has set the scene with opening shots of contemporary Barcelona, Teshigahara brings his camera into Gaudi’s universe, taking us up a characteristic Gaudi spiral staircase. He’s a patient, attentive director with a craftsman’s eye for details. He takes the time he needs, allowing the camera to linger. Blue tiles shift in the light like water moving. Mosaics morph into a dragon’s scales. Güell Park, a planned garden village, feels like a surreal, fairy-tale landscape.

Teshigahara moves his camera slowly through these fluid, organic spaces. Slow tracking shots give us a sense that we’re actually inhabiting these bizarre, sublime places. Gaudi’s curved, organic designs are shockingly surreal and erotic. Like Woman in the Dunes, Antonio Gaudi pulses with human sensuality, and yet there is also something of the divine in both Teshigahara’s film and Gaudi’s fertile imagination.

Hiroshi Teshigahara

This meditation on the power of and beauty of nature is enhanced with music and sound effects by the renowned Japanese  composer Toru Takemitsu and two collaborators, Kurodo Mori and Shinji Hori. As the critic Stephen Holden explains, Takemitsu was an eclectic impressionist “whose music blended avant-garde Western techniques, electronics and random compositional methods with more conventional symphonic music and Japanese traditional instruments.”

The spiral motif, associated with the seashell, is emphasized in Takemitsu’s soundtrack, which incorporates the sound of the distant sea. “The score for Gaudi is a kind of free-floating East-meets-West impressionism,” says Holden, “whose organic flow mimics the sprouting curvilinear shapes of Gaudi’s buildings. The score includes four Catalan folk pieces, electronically altered and combined with other sounds.”

Antonio Gaudi is a tactile film–a visual poem that lingers in your memory long after its over. If you have the patience to listen and look and to defer any pressing questions you may have about Antionio Gaudi the man until the DVD extras, you will find the melding of Gaudi’s inventive architecture, Teshigahara’s sensitive camerawork, and Takemitsu’s haunting score a rewarding experience.

 

A spiral staircase in the bell tower of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The spiral motif, associated with the seashell, is emphasized in Toru Takemitsu’s soundtrack, which incorporates the sound of the distant sea. (Photo courtesy SantiMB via Flickr Commons)

 

 

The atrium of Casa Mila (Photo by Chong Ming courtesy WikiCommons)

 

 

The Park Güell bench as seen in Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy the Criterion Collection)

 

 

Gaudí’s structures, Teshigahara once said, "made me realize that the lines between the arts are insignificant. Gaudí worked beyond the borders of various arts and made me feel that the world in which I was living still left a great many possibilities."

 

 

Tile patterns from the Park Güell Bench, designed by Gaudi (Photo courtesy Make Mine Mosaic)

 

 

The staircase at Casa Batllo (Photo by Chong Ming courtesy WikiCommons)

 

But how exactly did the avant-garde, Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara develop such an intense appreciation for the architecture of Antonio Gaudi? I was curious to know more.

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Creative Spaces: A Legendary Songcatcher Inspires Two Musicians on a Vermont Farm

October 9, 2011 in Creative Spaces, Images, Sounds, Spaces with Comments Off

Robin MacArthur and Tyler Gibbons are Red Heart the Ticker (Photo by Doron Gild)

Two weeks after Hurricane Irene I’m wandering the back-roads of Marlboro, Vermont, making my way to Robin MacArthur and Tyler Gibbons, also known as the music duo Red Heart the Ticker.

Route 9–the main thoroughfare between Brattleboro and Bennington–is closed because of storm damage, so Robin sends me “the back way.” When her lengthy driving instructions arrive by email, she says, “I realize these directions sound crazy…your phone might work along the way, or might not…if you get lost just knock on a door and ask directions.”

On the drive I pass cows, orchards, and working farms. As predicted, my cell phone has no signal, but so far, there’s been no need to rely on the kindness of strangers. The dirt roads wind and curve. As I climb Ames Hill, I catch glimpses of the Green Mountains rising above barns and fields.

Although it’s been two weeks since Irene, the storm has left a mess in its wake. Water rushes through deep gullies and the road is like a washboard. I pass hand-painted signs that say Bridge Out and Road Closed. Totally impassable. Bridge gone. Dangerous gullies. No sightseers please.

Marlboro, Vermont-Hurricane Irene

“Hurricane Irene was pretty devastating around here. The road to and from our house was eviscerated in about 20 places…twenty-foot deep chasms where gravel and concrete used to be. Houses were lost, businesses were lost. There are the short term, disastrous effects of homelessness and trauma…” (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

Hurricane Irene damage in Brattleboro, Vermont

Flooding from Hurricane Irene caused this house in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont, to collapse. (Photo by Acorn via Flickr Commons)

 

Red Heart the Ticker

Berries grow in the fields surrounding Margaret MacArthur’s Vermont farmhouse (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

The Vermont back-roads are named for local landmarks and the families who have lived here for generations. Finally, after miles of twists and turns, I see the name I am searching for: MacArthur Road.

There have been MacArthurs here since the 1940s. Decades ago a young woman named Margaret MacArthur and her husband, John, moved to an abandoned 1803 farmhouse in these woods. Margaret grew up hearing traditional music, first in the mountains of northern Arizona where her step-father was cruising timber in the Tonto National Forest, later in Missouri where he was raising seedlings for the Mark Twain National Forest, then in Southern California where he was raising guayule rubber plants during the war.

But in Vermont, the only songs Margaret heard were church songs. Hungry for the musical traditions she had left behind, Margaret bought a Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder, trekked around Vermont with her two-year-old daughter in tow, and began recording the forgotten folk songs of the region.

When Moses Asch, the director of Folkways Records, learned about Margaret, he asked to hear her music. She put some batteries into her Wollensak, sat down at the kitchen table after her five children were asleep, and recorded fifteen songs, never imagining anything would come of it. Six months later she received a letter from Moses and a record of the music she had recorded. The resulting Folkways’ record, Folksongs of Vermont, became the first album in MacArthur’s nine-record career. Her life-long dedication to the lyrical ballad would make her a seminal figure in Vermont’s folk music scene.

In the 1940s Margaret MacArthur moved to an abandoned 1803 farmhouse in Marlboro, Vermont–a house with no electricity or running water–and started collecting the region’s folk songs. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

Red Heart the Ticker re-recorded the Vermont folk songs collected by Robin’s grandmother in Margaret’s study, where her instruments, books, awards, and folk art collection are still housed. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

“My grandmother, when she was dying, held the hands of her three granddaughters and said, ‘Whatever it is, just do it. Just go for it. Whatever it is.’” (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

“The textures ended up being quite simple in a lot of places: just a banjo and voice and cymbal, or just a pump organ and glockenspiel. The orchestration was, in some ways, more a process of elimination than one of addition.” (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

More than 70 years later, Margaret’s granddaughter, Robin MacArthur, and her husband Tyler Gibbons, set up their instruments and recording equipment in Margaret’s study–the same room where she died in 2006–and began making their third album, Your Name in Secret I Would Write. The album is comprised of their favorite Vermont folk tunes in Margaret’s collection.
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Rockefeller Center’s Secret Roof Gardens

August 21, 2011 in Design, Images, Spaces with Comments Off

Rockefeller Center's hidden rooftop gardens (© James Maher via Inhabitat)

Inhabitat has just published a short piece on Rockefeller Center’s hidden rooftop gardens. The Center has been maintaining these gardens for the past 75 years, but public access to the gardens is a rare event.

According to Inhabitat, the building’s developer John R. Todd and architect Raymond Hood originally envisioned a network of rooftop gardens connected by pedestrian bridges (an homage to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon), but this design idea never came to fruition.

Inhabitat says that the gardens are primarily enjoyed by the building’s employees, though my friend’s husband has worked in the building for eleven years and has never been permitted to use the gardens. For a price, the space can be rented for weddings and private events, and according to my friend, the gardens are an occasional setting for Saturday Night Live skits. At this point, it seems that the gardens are primarily eye candy for those who live and work in the surrounding buildings. Only a lucky few get to experience the roof gardens up close.

Until the garden’s next open house, you’ll have to settle for these photographs. You can also peruse Inhabitat’s slideshow of the Rockefeller Center’s rooftop garden’s here.

The rooftop gardens overlook St. Patrick's Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan (© James Maher via Inhabitat)

 

(Photo by Brian Dubé via New York Daily Photo)

 

(Photo by Taismelillo via Flickr Commons)

 

(Photo © James Maher via Inhabitat)

 

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Olafur Eliasson: Your Blind Passenger

July 25, 2011 in Images, Spaces with Comments Off

Olafur Eliasson's "Your Blind Passenger" (Courtesy Photo)

Olafur Eliasson, the Danish artist who brought the sun to Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and created man-made waterfalls in New York City, has a new project at the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen.

Eliasson’s installation Din blinde passager (Your blind passenger) is a 295-foot-long tunnel filled with dense fog. Because of the tunnel’s limited visibility, visitors passing through the tunnel must use senses other than sight to orient themselves.

Din blinde passager is the sort of quality, experiential artwork that is attracting larger crowds to contemporary art museums and galleries in recent years. The worst examples of this type of installation art are a bit like a ride at Disney World–they give us a short-lived thrill, can be gimmicky, and lack resonance. But thoughtful works like Eliasson’s offer a deeper museum experience and allow us to engage in the world in an original way. I love the fact that Eliasson’s exhibit disorients museum-goers and invites them to pay close attention to subtle environmental changes like sound or the slow shift of light.

Your blind passenger uses many types of white light–bright daylight, a golden sunrise, chilly blues, deep twilight. Normally, these changes in our environment are so slow and commonplace that we hardly notice them, but Eliasson’s piece condenses an entire day down to a singular, intense experience. With the distractions of our surroundings eliminated, with limited visibility in a contained space, we notice light in a way we never have before. Eliasson’s piece is a reminder that we are enveloped by changing light (both natural and unnatural) on a continual basis, but few of us detect it as we go about our daily lives.

Arken Museum

"Eliasson's exhibit disorients museum-goers and invites them to pay close attention to subtle environmental changes like sound or the slow shift of light." (Courtesy photo)

Eliasson’s exhibition is the final instalment in ARKEN’s three-year UTOPIA series, which examines the role of utopia in contemporary art and culture. “For me, utopia is linked to the now, the moment between one second and the next,” Eliasson explained in an interview. “It constitutes a possibility that is actualised and converted into reality, an opening where concepts like subject and object, inside and outside, proximity and distance are tossed into the air and redefined. Our sense of orientation is challenged and the coordinates of our spaces, collective and personal, have to be renegotiated. Changeability and mobility are at the core of utopia.”

Christian Gether, director of ARKEN, believes that Eliasson is unique in how he engages with gallery spaces. “Eliasson is extremely interesting because he takes a new view of the institution of the museum,” she says. “He does not see the museum as separate from the world but as a concentrate of the world – a space made available for the contemplation of human relations. Hence, he is the ideal artist to conclude the UTOPIA project.”

Olafur Eliasson’s Your blind passenger is open through November 2, 2011. Luckily, for those of us who can’t make it to Copenhagen, there are two excellent videos of the piece available here. The first video was produced by the Tate and includes an interview with Eliasson, as well as footage of his installation. The second video is from Eliasson’s own website. Because the second video contains no voiceovers or cuts, it gives a better sense of what it is like to walk through the 295-foot-long tunnel in silence. (If you’re reading this article in an email, click here to watch the videos).

 

 

 

Din blinde passager – Arken museum from Studio Olafur Eliasson on Vimeo.

 
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Gwarlingo Visits the Tate Modern

June 22, 2011 in Images, Spaces with 2 Comments

A painting from Cy Twombly's "Bacchus, Psilax, Mainomenos" series (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

This week I paid a visit to the Tate Modern in London. The museum is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world with over 4.7 million visitors a year. Currently, the Tate has special exhibitions by Joan Miró and Taryn Simon. (The Simon exhibit is particularly interesting, but more on that in a future Gwarlingo article).

Jenny Holzer's "Blue Purple Tilt" (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

Another painting in Cy Twombly's "Bacchus, Psilax, Mainomenos" series (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Some of my favorite highlights from the Tate Modern’s collection were Jenny Holzer’s “Blue Purple Tilt“ and Cy Twombly’s striking Bacchus, Psilax, Mainomenos series, which is comprised of three large-scale, canvases covered in whorling, red brushstrokes. Like Matisse in his later years, Twombly created this 2005 series by attaching a paintbrush to the end of a long pole. The deep vermilion color is reminiscent of both blood and wine.

"Maroon and Orange" (Seagram Mural) by Mark Rothko (Courtesy photo)

The Tate’s Rothko Room, which showcases Mark Rothko’s luminous, large-scale murals originally commissioned for The Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York, is particularly memorable and offers a welcome respite to weary museum-goers. Rothko’s soft-edged rectangles radiate deep maroon, orange, gray, and black and glow meditatively in the dimly lit gallery. I also enjoyed Cindy Sherman’s 1975 Super-8 film “Doll Clothes,” which dates back to Sherman’s art school days, as well as a collection of posters by The Guerilla Girls.

One of the many works by The Guerrilla Girls on view at the Tate Modern (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

While the gallery’s permanent collection of modern and contemporary art is excellent, what makes a visit to the Tate Modern especially memorable is the building itself. The museum is housed in the former Bankside Power Station on the south bank of the Thames River. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of the original station, was also the designer of the the now-famous, red telephone boxes scattered across Britain. The massive Turbine Hall, which once housed electricity generators, stands five stories tall and has 11,155 square feet of floor space.

The height of the power station chimney at the Tate Modern is 325 feet. It was intentionally built shorter than the Dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, which stands at 375 feet. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

The architects Herzog & de Meuron wisely chose to retain the character of Scott’s original design and have successfully transformed this utilitarian building into an engaging public space. The old and the new complement each other perfectly. I was particularly struck by Herzog and de Meuron’s sensitivity to the surrounding vistas. There are numerous vantage points for visitors to enjoy. I found myself lingering in one gallery contemplating a panoramic view of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The way the scene is framed through the large, rectangular window encourages visitors to consider the cathedral as a work of art, just like the Twombly and Barnett Newman paintings hanging nearby. Another balcony offered a lovely vista of the river, Millennium Bridge, pigeon-filled courtyard, and London skyline.

View of Millennium Bridge from the third level gallery

A view of St. Paul's Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge from a third level gallery (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

St. Paul's Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge from the Tate Modern

A view of the London skyline from a balcony at the Tate Modern (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

But some of the most unique views were of the building’s own interior. Each level of the museum offered a different perspective of Turbine Hall. From the upper galleries I watched visitors move through the geometric shadows and ascend and descend the stairwell below. From this bird’s eye perspective, I had the sense that I was inside an M.C. Escher drawing. The Turbine Hall was especially striking at sunset as the light and shadows shifted minute by minute.

Looking down on a stairwell in Turbine Hall (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

A bird's eye view of Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

Turbine Hall in the late afternoon (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

The hall at sunset (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Between October and March each year, the Tate Modern uses the hall to display large commissioned pieces by contemporary artists. Louise Bourgeois was the first artist commissioned to create a special installation for the space. Since Bourgeois’s 2000 piece “I Do, I Undo, I Redo,” a number of memorable works have been installed there. Olafur Eliasson filled the space with a giant orange sun (“The Weather Project”), Rachel Whiteread cast and stacked 14,000 white boxes (“Embankment”), Doris Salcedo created a giant crack running down the center of the hall (“Shibboleth”), and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei filled the massive room with 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds.

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MacArthur Fellow Anna Schuleit & the Whole Sweep of Trying

May 31, 2011 in Creative Spaces, Images, Process, Spaces with 7 Comments

 

For the public installation "Bloom" Anna Schuleit and a team of volunteers filled the Massachusetts Mental Health Center with 28,000 blooming flowers and 5,600 square feet of lush, green sod, including corridors, stairwells, offices and even a swimming pool. (Photo by Anna Schuleit courtesy This is Colossal)

 

 

Anna Schuleit's studio is located in a renovated mill building in the historic town of Harrisville, New Hampshire. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Welcome to the first installment of “Creative Spaces,” a regular Gwarlingo series that will focus on the creative habits and work spaces of visual artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and other talented individuals.

I’m so pleased to kick off the series with an intimate profile of visual artist and MacArthur recipient Anna Schuleit.

Anna graciously agreed to talk with me about her daily work habits, studio space, recent projects, and much more. She also gave me permission to photograph her studio in exceptional detail, granting me access not only to her works in progress, but also to many of her sketches, personal collections, notes, and books.

Such generosity is in keeping with Anna’s personality. She is curious, playful, open-minded, intelligent, and exudes a positive, contagious energy. But forget the stereotypes of flighty creative geniuses (a word that makes most MacArthur fellows squirm). Anna is as deep and introspective as she is energetic and outgoing.

Born in Mainz, Germany, and raised in a family of artists, Anna came to the US at 16 as a high school student. She went on to study painting at RISD and creative writing at Dartmouth.

 

Visual artist Anna Schuleit (Photo by John Solem)

 

 

"Bloom" by Anna Schuleit (Photo courtesy Anna Schuleit)

Anna’s early, large-scale installations included Habeas Corpus (2000), in which she brought the crumbling Northampton State Hospital to life with the music of J.S. Bach, and Bloom (2003), where she filled the Massachusetts Mental Health Center with 28,000 blooming flowers and 5,600 square feet of lush, green sod. In 2007 she created Landlines–a public art project commemorating the centennial anniversary of The MacDowell Colony.

In 2009 Anna’s paintings and drawings were exhibited at the Coleman Burke Gallery in New York City. In 2010 she completed Just a Rumor, a large painting commission at UMass Amherst, as well as a painted set-design for Ivy Baldwin Dance at the Chocolate Factory Theater in New York. Her work has been praised for its “conceptual clarity, compassion, and beauty.”

Anna has been a visiting artist and lecturer at MIT, Brown, Smith, RISD, The New School, Bowdoin, and other institutions. Residency programs have been an important cornerstone to her artistic development. She has been a fellow at The Blue Mountain Center, The MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco, Yaddo, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard, among others. In 2006 Anna was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.

(Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

The following interview and photo shoot took place in the early spring of 2011 in the small, rural town of Harrisville, New Hampshire, where Anna’s studio is currently located. On the morning I arrived at the studio, Anna’s dog Finnegan was relaxing on the couch and Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” was playing on the stereo. When I commented on this musical choice, Anna explained that she begins every work day in the studio by listening to Steve Reich’s “Drumming“ and “Music for 18 Musicians.”

 

Michelle Aldredge: Anna, what is your typical routine? Do you have any rituals that are important to your creative work?

Anna Schuleit: When I wake up in the morning I first go outside with my dog to check on the weather and the overall feel of the day. That’s the very first thing, going outside. Then a walk or run in the woods, then breakfast. And then off to the studio for the rest of the day.

Once there, I usually continue working on what I was doing the night before–a series of works, never just a single piece. If I stay long enough in the studio, just stay with the work even if it doesn’t feel great or seem satisfying or directional or conclusive, if I just stay to tend and garden, then my mind gradually yields control to the more automatic labor of painting, and with that comes a sweet spot in the process further down, a worn groove, a sense of ease.

"If I stay long enough in the studio, just stay with the work even if it doesn't feel great or seem satisfying or directional or conclusive, if I just stay to tend and garden, then my mind gradually yields control to the more automatic labor of painting, and with that comes a sweet spot in the process further down, a worn groove, a sense of ease." (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

That’s a bit elusive and hard to describe, and it doesn’t really depend on any rituals other than, well…presence. Just staying with it allows it to open up. The same is true for any creative task, no?

I listen to music while I work, usually abstract things. But I also enjoy the quiet, sounds from elsewhere–birds. I eat simple meals, more lunch than dinner, and I read the news when I can, or make phone calls, or run quick errands, but usually I’m in the studio for long stretches of sameness: mixing paint, looking at paintings, drawing, looking more, painting, mixing more paint, drinking some tea, looking more. And so on. Just maintaining a presence. And I do enjoy this more than I can adequately express.

By the time I leave the studio at night I often feel deeply connected to my work, and I have to tear myself away like a kid from a playground. The process feeds itself, somehow, and I get to be a part of it, which is the best and simplest, and most tumbling and humbling feeling I know.

"By the time I leave the studio at night I often feel deeply connected to my work, and I have to tear myself away like a kid from a playground." (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

What do you do when you hit a roadblock or get stuck on a certain piece?

For the past six years I’ve been working in series: multiple panels of drawings and paintings that help prevent the formation of serious roadblocks by creating a multitude of views of the same thing. That means there are multiple options spread out across more than a single pictorial plane, side-by-side, which means repetition, which in turn, means a built-in possibility for continuation.

I try to keep going at the speed each particular piece seems to require naturally, some slow, some fast. Slow for me means more than a month, and I actually have several works in that category right now, large paintings on linen. They just seem to need more time to remain “open” while I keep them around, keep looking without specific expectations other than to stay engaged.

"Ultimately, this is what I repeat most often to myself: avoid tip-toeing around, Anna. Stay. Go deeper. DON'T LEAVE." (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

When I do get stuck and nothing moves forward for several days I will take a snapshot of the painting and enlarge it at a copy shop onto a large piece of paper, which I bring back to the studio with me. I cut the copy apart, paint on top of it, and use it as an impermanent collage. It gets me back into the work through a back-door and lets me see the colors and the composition differently, which can be crucial to getting unstuck again. But that kind of roadblock is ultimately part of the piece like all the rest, a sort of necessary detour.

"The different parts of the studio help me to keep moving, like stations along a road." (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

I love the combination of intense creative energy and controlled order in your studio. Can you explain how your studio is organized?

My studio is one large space subdivided into several parts: paintings on the walls, drawings and prints on tables in the middle, paints and inks and dry media and other tools in-between, and books and papers on the fringes. The different parts of the studio help me to keep moving, like stations along a road.

"Good advice is really anything that keeps you afloat via a sense of shared struggle. Good advice is the kind that tugs at your heart a little, since it addresses something you know you need help with, be it focus, authenticity, endurance, fearlessness, etc." (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Things are in flux though; it’s definitely not overly neat, nor is it too tidy. But it’s not chaos either. It’s a good, medium kind of state with room for dried paint and dust and empty bottles and clothes and traces of use. And there are large, handsome industrial windows overlooking a row of trees. Oh, and lots of lamps and spotlights, since I work at night, too. Working at night makes all the other things that aren’t part of the paintings fall away, adding contrast and saturation and a kind of temporary authority in the composition that the next day supersedes again.

"Now I'm switching over to found shoes and old wheels and pulleys--just ordinary things that are lovely and precious in small, unexpected ways when held and handled." (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Are there any objects in your studio that have special meaning to you?

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