The semester is flying by...

As some of you know, I went home a couple weeks ago.  It was a sad trip, but also a happy one.  Being with family was great, even if it was for only a moment.  And I got to see this guy:

The Dukester!

I woke up to this and it made me so happy!

 Last week, I attended a gallery opening at C24 Gallery

for All Systems Go!, a show curated by my friend Suzanne

For more photos and a press release, go here.

This week our class went to visit several galleries, including a performance which is part of Performa 11; Text from the Art 21 blog

The laboratory of "Seven." Performa commission by Mika Rottenberg and John Kessler. Image from www.thelmagazine.com

At Nicole Klagsbrun in Chelsea, visitors rotated in and out at half hour intervals to see Seven, the performance-installation by video artist Mika Rottenberg and sculptor/machine-maker John Kessler. Occupying an entirely different performance world than the above-mentioned solo performances, this piece was run by many performers who played lab technicians, bicyclists and sauna-sitters activating a “chakra-juicer” that in turn fueled a surreal color explosion in Botswana.

Sweating in the "chakra juicer" sauna. Image from www.artinamericamagazine.com

Viewers watched as a performer would go into the small, transparent sauna, choose a color from the ROYGBIV chakra lantern, and begin to sweat while another performer rode a stationary bicycle attached to the sauna. Sweat drops were collected through a tube and emptied into a glass vessel by a “technician” who converted it into a dye-colored “juice.” In one half-hour period, this cyclical routine occurred about four times, while simultaneously a video of Africans digging samples from the earth and bringing them to a machine that conveyed the samples to the gallery was played. What ensued was a fantastical activation of a brief-case sized chakra-light machine that electrified the juice. It was then spilled back into the earth, culminating in an animated eruption of streaming colors and birds.

The alchemical chakra machine. Image from Performa 11's website, http://11.performa-arts.org

So many parts of Seven were complete anomalies: a sauna in the middle of a gallery, scantily-clad performers who appeared pedestrian in nature, a virtual laboratory with intricate lighting and sound that gave the effect of something real happening, and the shared dream that we were experiencing the performance alongside those in a village in Botswana. The success of the piece lies in how it references the fitness-productivity and mechanized culture of Russian Constructivism, and Fluxus-inspired absurdity, within a contemporary context of relational art and global exchange.

I also saw a Richard Serra show at Gagosian

"I consider space to be a material. The articulation of space has come to take precedence over other concerns. I attempt to use sculptural form to make space distinct."
– Richard Serra

Read more here.

 

[Images from Gagosian site]

And another show at Gagosian: Andreas Gursky

In the Oceans (2009-10), Gursky relinquished his position behind the camera to work with satellite images of the world as raw material, resulting in contemporary mappe del mondo on a scale befitting the cosmic grandeur of the subject. Read more here.

[Images from Gagosian site]