October 2 - 17, 2009
Download this week’s PLAN as a word doc here. You can print out this PLAN and take it with you to the galleries as you explore the four shows on your own. We have ordered the galleries by physical location, but you can experience them in any order you wish!
1. Anthony Goicolea at Posmasters
459 West 19th Street
2. Hans-Peter Feldman at 303 Gallery
547 West 21st Street
3. Maya Lin at Pace Wildenstein
545 West 22nd Street
4. Marc Andre Robinson at Tina Kim Gallery
545 West 25th Street
1. Anthony Goicolea at Postmasters
“Once Removed”
September 12 – October 17, 2009
Goicolea uses drawing, photography, and video installation to explore his family history and identity as well as larger themes of tradition, alienation and assimilation.
Just to the left of the door to the gallery, there is a large three-panel painting of the artist’s extended ancestral family called Night Sitting. Click HERE to see it. Four generations of the artist’s family are represented in a scene that looks like a film set – as though his family were actors in a movie.
The artist has said he feels “a strange sense of nostalgia for something I have never been a part of or experienced directly.” Take a minute to look at all of the people:
- What do you notice about the people – how are they dressed? What do their faces look like?
- The artist used old photos as source material for this painting – how can you tell that just by looking at the painting? What else tells you that this painting is created from looking at photos?
Next to the painting is series of color photographs that are mounted on aluminum called Foundation, Jettisoned, and Si Tio. Take a minute to look at each photo, noting the details of each and thinking about how the artist constructed these photos using many different images. In 2008, Goicolea visited the homes, schools and churches of his parents and grandparents in Cuba.
- What similar elements do you see in the photos?
- What do you think the story is in each of the photos?
- How might these stories relate to the artist’s family?
In the back room of the gallery is a film installation the artist created called Displacement. The video is projected from a model of the home that his parents left behind in Havana shortly after the revolution.
- If you were the artist’s parents, what would you think about this work of art?
POST GALLERY VISIT:
Think about your own parents, grandparents, or even great-great-great grandparents. Find photos of these people and create your own work of art based on their images or stories. These could be portraits or even a collection of things that relate to these people.
LINKS TO MORE OF ANTHONY GOICOLEA:
http://www.anthonygoicolea.com/
http://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2009/3D7F
2. Hans-Peter Feldman at 303 Gallery
“Shadowplay”
September 12 – October 17, 2009
Feldmann entered the art world in the late 1960s when he began to construct and exhibit editions of small booklets containing found images such as postcards, magazine clippings, and posters. These images constituted part of Feldmann’s massive “picture archive,” an assortment of images categorized according to the artist’s own system. (PS 1)
In the middle room of this gallery, there is an installation called Shadowplay. Click HERE to see a photo of the installation or HERE to see a video. The room is spanned by a makeshift table populated by items that don’t really seem to relate. These pieces, placed atop turntables that rotate at different speeds, have their shadows projected onto the wall.
- What objects are represented here – try to catalog the objects on at least one turntable. What is there?
- They seem like familiar, everyday objects, but what happens to their shadows?
- How do they relate to each other on the wall? What new connections or stories can you create?
Look again at the table. The artist is transparent about how the work is created – tools used to build the table are left out, tape used to hold things together is not covered up. It’s as if the artist is trying to create a magical illusion while showing you how the trick is done.
- How is the piece constructed?
- Why do you think the artist would want you to see how it was made?
3. Maya Lin at Pace Wildenstein
“Three Ways of Looking at the Earth”
September 10 – October 24, 2009
Born in 1959 in Athens, Ohio, Maya Lin catapulted into the public eye when, as a senior at Yale University, she submitted the winning design in a national competition for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial to be built in Washington, D.C. She was trained as an artist and architect, and her sculptures, parks, monuments, and architectural projects are linked by her ideal of making a place for individuals within the landscape.(ART:21)
In this installation, Lin employs tools such as models, grids, and topographic drawings as well as more advanced scientific technology (sonar and radar mapping, satellite photographs) to study and respond to regions of the naturalworld that are largely inaccessible, and often times, impossible to experience or observe with the naked eye.
The first piece called 2×4 Landscape employs 50,000 pieces of wood that create a pixilated hill or wave. It rises 10 feet high at its center. Take a minute to walk around the entire sculpture:
- How would you describe the shape of this work?
- What is your initial reaction to it? Does it look more like a landscape or a hill to you? Why?
- Why do you think the artist used vertical 2×4’s that creates a jagged or stepped hill, instead of using something that would be smooth?
- How does this work relate to the building you are in?
Make your way to the piece in the back that is made out of wire. Take a minute to explore all parts of the work – some of it will be above your head, others will come down below your sightline. It is a topographical map of one of the most remote parts of the world and depicts the ocean floor along the Mid-Atlantic ridge as it ascends to Bouvet Island about 1000 miles north of Antarctica. It is called Waterline.
- How has the artist installed this piece?
- Part of this grid maps the ocean floor (below eye level) while the other part maps the island (above eye level). Where does that place the viewer?
- How does this piece help you relate to this place?
- What can we learn about this place that few people have ever been?
- How does this work relate to the 2×4 Landscape?
LINKS TO MORE OF MAYA LIN:
http://www.mayalin.com/
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/
4. Marc Andre Robinson at Tina Kim Gallery
“You Are the Current, I Am the Wire”
September 17 – October 17, 2009
Born 1972, Los Angeles, Californa. Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Marc André Robinson works with sculpture, drawing, painting, and video to express the ever-shifting status of blackness in Western culture.
Robinson often works with photographs, video, and drawings to investigate societal concerns like the constructs of race and cultural vernaculars. The sculptures in this exhibition were created from various pieces of used furniture. Take a minute to walk around the first piece called Wingback Throne for the Next Right Excellent. ClickHERE to see it.
- What kind of furniture was used to make this piece?
- How is it put together?
- Is there a place for a person to sit or do you think it is non-functional?
- Who do you think this work was made for?
- What does it remind you of besides a chair or throne?
Both of the sculptures here have a sense of motion to them. Take a minute to walk around the piece in the back called Right of Return.
- Both sculptures have a sense of motion in them. How is that motion created?
- How are the everyday materials found here transformed into more meaningful objects?
- If these were ancient artifacts, what would they tell us about the people who made them?
POST GALLERY VISIT:
Find objects in your home that you see everyday – things that you never think twice about and put them in a new context. Try placing them in a new room or putting them next to a different object. Try drawing them multiple times, combining them into new shapes. Show these pieces to someone else and discuss how the objects were transformed.
LINKS TO MORE OF MARC ANDRE ROBINSON
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/marc-andre-robinson/