As I noted above, these photographs hardly due justice to the experience of walking through Steir’s installation at the Sue Scott Gallery. The Nearly Endless Line manages to create an energy that is hard to capture without being able to sense all the surfaces of the darkened rooms. There are just two rooms of average size but they seem expansive if not endless. It feels like walking through an Abstract Expressionist painting–a neat experience–and a much warmer one than works by some of her contemporaries like Sol LeWitt.
Another almost useless installation shot
Up close: thin red grid
While the dark lighting smacks a bit of stagecraft, this piece raised the bar for how I want installations to affect me. The precise red grid on the dark background shows off the choas and energy of the white line. Up at the Sue Scott Gallery through January 9th if you want a surprisingly trippy, simple yet immersible art experience.
In Ranjit Bhatnagar’sMisericordiam, an old accordion hangs in space, suspended from cords and cables. If you press one of the 4 buttons in front of it, the keys begins to move and then play the “tune” you selected. Tune, here, seemed to be more a clacking of keys than anything else and had names like “Shake.”Ad Misericordiam is traditionally an appeal to pity, and in this case you start to feel bad for the old accordion still struggling along make mournful noise.
It has the appeal of fascinating old mechanical things, even as it plays itself at your command. It was definitely one of the pieces I really enjoyed at the DUMBO Arts Festival last weekend.
More from the artist here (and a lot of it is awesome.)
Jonathan Schipper’s Raining Blood Pierogi Gallery at Verge Art Fair
So here I am in Mexico, and I feel like I haven’t written in weeks. I have a lot to catch up on, plus a new place to explore!
If only I had a sheet of music, like Schipper’s figure who dances (or twitches?) in response to the sheet of piano music scrolling through the machine, that could help me bang out some of my thoughts. For my writing, I think I’ll have to pick a sound track other than Slayer’s Raining Blood though.
So much art from the New York art fairs, so little time.
