Oh New York, New York. Even when it is rainy, hot, and humid like the days I visited, I still love this city. As I made my way back from June's residency in Boston, I had the opportunity to soak up a few excellent exhibitions in the Big Apple. Here are some highlights:
1. Guggenheim: James Turrel's site specific installation
I was excited to experience Turrell's installation live since I’ve only read about his works. As expected, it does take time to slow down and immerse yourself in the environment. As I watched the glowing, ethereal color gradients
change, I found it just as fascinating to note how other observers experienced
the space. Some visitors sat quietly with their eyes closed, others laid back
on the recliner benches with eyes wide open as if in awe. On my left, a couple
felt inclined to kiss and directly in front of me, children shouted “Woooow!” On the upper floors, there were older works of Turrell's on view that gave context for his projects and career trajectory. Another highlight was seeing his Afrum (White) or aka White Cube in person.
"My work is about space and light that inhabits it. It is about how you confront that space and plumb it. It is about your seeing." - James Turrell
Click here for an 8 min video link on Turrell & the project:
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell
2. The Met
Everyday Epiphanies: Photographs and Daily Life Since 1969
At War with the Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston
Punk: Chaos to Couture
Frank Lloyd Wright Room
Impressionist Wing
3. Museum of Modern Art
Painting and Sculpture floors
XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography
Artist highlights: Liz Deschenes, Allan Sekula, Stephen Shore, Taryn Simon, Robert Frank, Běla Kolářová, Dora Maurer, Paul Graham, Óscar Muñoz, Mariah Robertson
4. International Center of Photography: A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial
(One of my favorite museums in Manhattan, the triennial did not disappoint!)
Artist & work highlights: Trevor Paglen
Untitled (Predator Drone), Wangechi Mutu, Elliot Hundley Pentheus, Mishka Henner Dutch Landscapes, Thomas Hirschhorn Touching Reality, Gideon Mendel Drowning World, Sam Falls, Sohei Nishino Diorama Maps, Mikhael Subotzky & Patrick Waterhouse
Excerpt from press release:
"The exhibition sketches the contours of the new visual and social territory in which photography finds itself today. A number of key themes serve as guidelines that link the works in the exhibition:
• Artist as aggregator identifies one of the main aesthetic offshoots of the digital image environment: the present-day descendants of the “image scavengers” of the 1980s who are now busy plundering and reorganizing found, online photographs into highly personal, web-based archives.
• The resurgence of collage is evident in works that combine photographic fragments, digital images, paint, three-dimensional objects, and audio and video material to blast open and reconfigure the space of the photograph in unprecedented ways.
• At a time when all manner of power structures are being called into question, mapping has become a renewed subject of artistic inquiry—part of a wider fascination with the power of ordering systems that has emerged in response to the dematerialized disorder of the Internet’s environment.
• The Internet’s dissolution of geographic distance has spurred the development of new forms of community, allowing artists to explore new forms of connection, collaboration, and multiple authorship that do not depend on physical proximity.
• In cooperation with ICP Associate Librarian Matthew Carson, the exhibition will also include an installation of approximately 100 recent photo books, which testifies to the extraordinary boom in self-published and small-press photo books now occurring around the world."
Small video I made as the train approached Manhattan
