Unidentified Photographer, "On the Spot," December 9, 1939. (Weegee with his camera on the right) (All images courtesy the International Center of Photography)

“Everybody ought to go careful in a city like this,” Joseph Cotten’s character Holly Martins is warned in The Third Man, the classic 1949 film noir that takes place in a war fractured Vienna. The line came into my head while viewing the photographs in Weegee: Murder is My Business at the International Center of Photography (ICP), where corpse after splayed corpse was flashbulb lit on the New York streets, crowds watching in curiousity or strange amusement while lantern-jawed police officers and a fedora-wearing photographer analyzed the scene.

Despite their expressionistic angles and hardboiled characters straight out of the shadowy films of Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger, these were photographs of real New York crimes, taken by that notorious cigar-chewing tabloid photographer who called himself Weegee. The city in his photographs was a dense maze of people and darkness with sudden illuminations from the barrels of guns and tenement fires. Above all other gruesome scenes, from car crashes to seedy city squalor, what he liked to document most were the murders.

Weegee, "Hats in a pool room, Mulberry Street, New York" (1943)

Weegee, who was born in Austria as Usher Fellig, came to the United States in 1910 and changed his name to Arthur. After a series of odd jobs revolving around photography and darkrooms, he established himself as a freelance photographer in 1935 and built a reputation for shining a hard, unflinching light on the gritty, nocturnal world seldom seen by much of New York City.

When his photographs were published in the tabloids, the grisly urban underbelly was suddenly rolled into public view, the sheet pulled back off the fresh bodies. It helped that his tabloid career, which continued until 1946, occurred at a time when New York City had eight daily newspapers that were competing with one another for sensational stories of organized crime, public bombings and the poverty of the Great Depression.

Weegee, "Line-Up for Night Court" (1941)

His curious pseudonym was a play on “Ouija,” as in the occult parlor game, which was earned by his unique ability to be at the right place at the right time, sometimes even before the police.

The exhibit at ICP starts with a largescale photograph of Weegee sitting on a fire escape with his camera behind a huge gun, a sign for the Frank Lava Gunsmith store below. In the gallery itself, there is a duplicate of this gun hanging above the photograph, right alongside the blaring sans serif WEEGEE MURDER IS MY BUSINESS exhibit title text. At least you know what you’re getting into.

The beginning of the exhibit is devoted to Weegee himself, and it touches on how he crafted his tough guy image through staged photographs. One of these has him casually holding a bomb, another holding his camera and clinching a cigar in his teeth with “The Genuis [sic] of the Camera” written below. If you are going to proclaim yourself a “genuis” it’s probably best to spellcheck it, but sleepless crime photographers probably don’t have much time for dictionaries.

In another photograph Weegee is shown speculating over debris from a 1940 building bombing, and then in another playing the violin next to a pile of “Loot,” including instruments and other presumably stolen or counterfeit items.

Weegee, "Body of Dominick Didato, Elizabeth Street, New York," August 7, 1936

Some personal belongings are displayed, including flashbulbs and cameras, as well as some pages from a manuscript (titled, “Murder Is My Business”), and a reconstruction of his studio apartment. He extensively documented this apartment, which was conveniently located at 5 Centre Market Place across from police headquarters. To reflect his growing popularity, he carefully posed souvenirs, awards and news/magazine clippings in his photographs. One of his early photo montages for Life magazine is a play-by-play of a police procedural, from arrest to incarceration, with Weegee standing in for the criminal. The editors at Life were so fascinated with this strange man that they decided to scrap the piece and do the story on him instead.

Weegee, "Installation view of 'Weegee: Murder Is My Business' at the Photo League, New York" (1941)

ICP got lucky in 1993, when Wilma Wilcox, the late Weegee’s lady friend who cared for him in his final years, donated an archive of 20,000 photographs, negatives, personal artifacts and other documents and materials to the institution. Weegee: Murder Is My Business is the fifth Weegee exhibit to be staged at ICP, following Weegee the Famous (1977, curated by Wilcox), Weegee’s World: Life, Death and the Human Drama (1998), Weegee’s Trick Photography (2002) and Unknown Weegee (2006). It seems that just like the tabloid readers of the Great Depression, we can’t get enough of Weegee’s expertly lurid photographs.

Murder Is My Business was the title Weegee used for his self-curated 1941 exhibit at the Photo League, where he pinned and pasted his photographs beneath titles like “MURDER” (quotations included) and SUNDAY TRAGEDY. These black and white images had their blood splatters garishly “enhanced” by Weegee with red nail polish (the wall text refers to these as “hand-colored graphic elements,” which is incredibly generous). I especially liked the original comment book from the exhibit, which included one admirer asking: “Are there any schools teaching how to be Weegees?”

Weegee, "At An East Side Murder" (1943)

Like craning your neck at a car crash, the photographs are all inherently interesting and guiltily entertaining. However, the exhibit seems structured with the fear that you might somehow get bored with all the mayhem and bodies stuffed in trunks. There are interactive touch screens that go into detail on individual murders, and a confusing assortment of crime photographs that were not taken by Weegee placed directly in the show.

A wall of photographs by members of the Photo League, which Weegee was a member of, has no other purpose but to show more about life in the 1930s/40s and the Photo League mission, which seems like it would take a whole exhibit to do properly. Most distracting is a rather scandalous video Weegee made of the beach at Coney Island, with lingering shots of tight fitting swimsuits on lovely sunbathing ladies. What does this have to do with the business of murder?

There is one photograph of Coney Island that fits with the unsettling spirit of the exhibit, which is a crowd shot where a man in what looks like a gas mask is standing tall above the rest of the beachgoers. According to the wall text, this man said he liked to wear the mask to scare people. It still works!

Weegee, "Anthony Esposito, Accused 'Cop Killer'" (1941)

If you look at every one of the over 100 photographs in the exhibit, you will be exhausted and want to take a break in the museum’s café, where you will find that you are still in Weegee’s sardonic world. On one wall is a photograph of “Inflating Santa Claus for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, November 21, 1940,” where the giant balloon St. Nick is heavily reclined much like a cadaver, and on another wall is a street scene of Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Street, which happens to be where ICP is located.

Beyond the secret thrill of looking at the crime photographs, what I liked most about the exhibit was getting a chance to peer back to a more feral New York. Murder isn’t eradicated from the city, but probably no photographer in New York today would claim, like Weegee, to have witnessed 5,000 murders. Yet even if the city is different, much is still the same. The remaining tabloids and online news blogs still relish a horrific crime, publishing photos when they can that stretch to the edges of decency. New York’s buildings tend not to change much from the waist up, at least in the tenement areas, and it’s possible to see the ghost of the city of the 1930s and 40s with a twist of the head upward. And even if on-the-spot crime photography has been almost completely relinquished to the cellphone-carrying masses, the crowds still gather at wrecks and carnage. And we find ourselves drawn to join them.

Weegee, "Police officer and assistant removing body of Reception Hospital ambulance driver Morris Linker from East River, New York," August 24, 1943

Weegee: Murder Is My Business continues at the International Center of Photography (1133 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan) through September 2, 2012.

Juan Angel Chavez, "No Campground Just Water" (2005) in "RE: Chicago" at the De Paul Art Museum (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

CHICAGO — Is Chicago an artistic center on the same level as New York, London or LA? Is there an identifiable “Chicago school,” in the same way as the school of Paris or the post-war art movements in Manhattan? Does Chicago produce “famous” artists and artists worthy of greater fame?

Marienne Dawson, "Study for Differential Complex" (1910)

These are the central questions posed by the show RE: Chicago at the newly expanded De Paul Art Museum on the Windy City’s north side. The art museum at De Paul University used to be a couple of galleries in the campus library, until September 2011, when it moved up in the world and into a purpose built museum on a vacant parking lot nearby. To inaugurate the new space, the museum now has a Big Boys acronym (DPAM!) and a great show of works by Chicago artists past and present.

On two floors, the curators have installed paintings, prints and sculptures produced by Chicago artists over the past 150 years. There are some nineteenth century portraits, which used to belong to the excellent but now defunct Terra Museum of American Art on Michigan Avenue. There is a good selection of work by early twentieth century artists: a 1910 abstract painting by Marienne Dawson called “Study for Differential Complex” (why does nobody create titles like that anymore?) and a sensitive, Degas-like portrait by Archibald Motley, the first African American to graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. From the mid-twentieth century generation of artists, there are good pieces by Margaret Burroughs (who founded the Du Sable Museum of African American History), installation pioneer Don Baum and Imagist artist Suellen Rocca.

Foreground: Don Baum, "ARF" (1986); Background: Suellen Rocca, "Dream Girl" (1968)

Tony Fitzpatrick, "The Winter Tiger" (2010)

About half of the work in the exhibition is contemporary, from the museum’s own collections or on loan from galleries, museums and collectors around the US. No current survey would be complete without a tattoo-like collage by Tony Fitzpatrick or a painting by Kerry James Marshall. Fine as those pieces are, they are matched by the direct honesty of Dawoud Bey’s photograph of a young boy in a park and Juan Angel Chavez’s trash-sculpture-spaceship construction. Not even the inclusion of a Sound Suit by that tiresome dilettante, Nick Cave, can spoil the impression conveyed by the show of a city that is a breeding ground for the talents of unique individuals.

And that’s where I arrived after looking at some good art, reading the informative wall texts (a rare feat these days) and admiring the new building. There may indeed be a “Chicago style,” but it’s not clear to me what would that would be, based on the work selected for this particular exhibition. It seemed more like a showcase for very good artists, responding to the artistic currents of the times (Impressionism, abstraction, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art) in their own way.

If there is a discernible trend, it would be in the work of the African-American and Latino artists, each of whom used or uses their art to respond to their own experience in this particular place. Chavez and Bey demonstrate that Chicago is a rich source for artists who want to talk about people and about the urban environment. To go from that to saying Chicago is on the same level as New York seems like a game that can’t be won. And why enter that race anyway? The talk about “fame” or being famous is a peculiar way to represent the artists in this show, unless the intention is to draw attention to artists whom the wider art world may have bypassed. The art is the reason to see RE: Chicago – that, and the fact that the new building housing it is a great addition to the museum culture of the Second City.

Re: Chicago will be on view at the De Paul Art Museum (935 W Fullerton, Chicago, Illinois) until March 4.

An installation view of "Rembrandt in America" at the North Carolina Museum of Art (photo by the author)

BOONE, NORTH CAROLINA — The Rembrandt in America show at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) is the largest Rembrandt show ever staged in America, containing 47 works. It’s organized into eight or nine mini-shows in a gallery space that’s laid out in an elongated “U” shape. The first half of the exhibition covers Rembrandt’s early career and the Amsterdam portraits. The back room (or the bottom of the “U” shape) is an exhibit of all of the major catalogues on Rembrandt’s work. The second half of the exhibit progresses from a room of pieces by Rembrandt’s workshop and his students, then into the history paintings and finally into to a room of portraits of his family members.

Rembrandt, "Portrait of a Man Reading" (1648)

The paintings are incredibly preserved. They seemed clean — the colors were varied, shockingly bold at times and the paint seemed fresh. There is hardly a crack to be seen in any of the paintings. The wall text uses standard language and is enough to help interpretation along without going into great depth. The most humorous element is the way they’ve written the attributions — everything from “Rembrandt” to “Rembrandt(?) and workshop” to “Follower of.” The lighting is on the dim side, which is unfortunate, but lighting is a fine line and you want to see the vibrancy of the color.

The idea for the show is two-fold. The curators wanted to gather most of the Rembrandt paintings that were already in North America, and they wanted to explore the idea of collecting Rembrandt’s work in a world of ever-changing attributions.

The mania for Rembrandt began among European collectors in the 18th and 19th C. Every noble collection in England, Russia, France and Germany had to have at least one Rembrandt. With the decline of the European economy at the end of the 19th Century, collectors began to sell off their Rembrandt paintings to the newly minted American industrialists. J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Andrew Mellon are among the most notable names responsible for the influx of Rembrandt’s work. Eventually, a great number of the privately purchased Rembrandts were donated to public collections. According to the catalogue for Rembrandt in America, all but one Rembrandt painting in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in DC and New York’s Metropolitan Museum were donated. By World War II, the pace of the Rembrandt trade died down and the evaluation of the paintings began.

For a location such as Raleigh, NC, the Rembrandt show is an excellent idea. The inspiration for the show began with a fortunate connection between Rembrandt and the NCMA. One of the former directors of the museum, Wilhelm (William) R. Valentiner, was one of the foremost Rembrandt scholars of his time, and in 1931, he published Rembrandt Paintings in America, which documented the 175 so-called Rembrandts on the continent.

Valentiner’s attributions were optimistic, at best, and very few of those 175 paintings are still considered to be authentic. The exact number of official Rembrandt paintings has wavered within the last century from between 230 (according to The Rembrandt Research Project) to just over 700 (Wilhelm Valentiner’s number). The back room of the exhibition is devoted to Rembrandt catalogues which have varying opinions on the exact number of official paintings. The curators tracked the numbers in each catalogue and posted the data on the wall above the books.

A collection of Rembrandt catalogs featured in the exhibition with conflicting opinions on the number of real Rembrandts

Currently, most of the extant Rembrandt paintings are in Germany, the UK, France and the US, with a few others in the Netherlands, Russia, Italy and elsewhere. Very few of the history paintings are in private collections and almost all of the portraits passed around in private collections until landing in museums. So in a sense, the portraits were easier to acquire by the time American collectors wanted and could afford them so they make up the bulk of the American Rembrandts.

Rembrandt, "Lucretia" (1666) (Photo courtesy of Minneapolis Institute of Arts)

During the American buy-up of Rembrandt’s work, there was a faction of vocal critics who encouraged European collectors not to sell off their treasures for fear of losing track of their heritage, but the major Rembrandt masterpieces were already established in museums at this point. A brief look at the Rijksmuseum‘s website puts their acquisitions of their major Rembrandt works in the early 1800s, with lesser works acquired in the early 1900s. The history of American collecting with respect to Rembrandt seems to be that of picking through the mass of lesser works to find brilliance that was overshadowed by the major works in European collections.

The ability to find genius in the lesser known Rembrandt paintings is what defines American connoisseurship of Rembrandt, and that’s a big part of this show. “Lucretia” (1666), “Self-Portrait” (1659) and “Portrait of an Old Man” are truly great paintings. A good example of the kind of issues that curators are currently debating is embodied in Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man Reading.”

Dennis Weller, co-curator of the exhibition explained to me that Ernst van de Wetering,head of the Rembrandt Research Project, believes that this painting, signed and dated in 1648, isn’t actually a Rembrandt, but that it’s supposedly by one of his students or someone in his workshop.

Given the lighting setup, this painting is something of an outlier. There is no direct light on the face, but it is back lit, with a well-lit hand. Weller said:

“There are only two paintings done that year — this one and one other. At the time, he had stopped painting almost completely to work on prints, and in many of the prints, he was working on back lighting. So it’s possible that it really is Rembrandt experimenting with a technique from his prints and applying it to his painting.”

The label has the attribution, “Rembrandt van Rijn (?) and workshop.” It is signed, after all, and the hand and book are skillfully painted, but the face lacks the network of mark-making that seems to be something only Rembrandt could do. The paintings that unequivocally belong to Rembrandt’s hand have an interlocking network of marks that echo each other through the highlights, mid-tones, shadows and the backgrounds, perfectly revealing light and shade and following the form with respect to anatomy. The network exists partially in the paintings that are attributed to his students or are workshop collaborations, but the marks in those paintings just don’t cohere, repeat and echo the way they do in the paintings attributed to the master himself.

Detail of "Portrait Of A Young Man In An Armchair" (1660-65)

We’re left to wonder about Rembrandt the artist and how he worked. How did his followers, students and his workshop come into play? Which sections of the paintings did he prefer to paint himself? What did he leave to his workshop? Was there even a sense of ownership or authorship comparable to our contemporary thoughts? The followers of Rembrandt did produce some good work, as displayed in the fascinating “Rembrandt or Not Rembrandt” room of the show.

The concept of authorship that we operate with in our culture currently places the artisan at the bottom of the hierarchy, with the artist or idea-generator at the top. It’s curious to think that most people nowadays seem to be content with the notion that artists often don’t produce their own work, and some even scoff at people who do, but looking back we’d never accept that a work is by Rembrandt just because it is created based on his idea.

Rembrandt in America will be on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art (2110 Blue Ridge Road Raleigh, North Carolina) until January 22, 2012. The exhibition will also travel to the Cleveland Museum of Art (11150 East Boulevard  Cleveland, Ohio) from February 19 – May 26, 2012 and to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota) from June 24 – September 16, 2012.

Homepage image credit: Rembrandt, detail of “Self Portrait” (1659), image courtesy of The North Carolina Museum of Art.

The South African National Gallery in Cape Town. (All photos courtesy the author).

CAPE TOWN — What do Ghanaian photographer James Barnor, local Simonstown painter Peter Clarke, British superstar artist Richard Long and Russian World War II posters have in common? Aside from a show at the South African National Gallery, it seems nothing at all.

Normally, when I take visitors to the National Gallery I am proud to walk them through the introductory permanent collection exhibition, specifically touting Jane Alexander’s seminal and haunting Butcher Boys sculpture, and I’m excited to discover a usually insightful and pertinent exhibition selection. Instead, the exhibition program I walked into in Cape Town last week caused me a twinge of embarrassment.

A room of hundreds of Peter Clarke's drawings, prints and paintings.

Rounding the first corner, I come across a pleasant selection of James Barnor’s black and white photographs, collectively entitled Ever Young after the name of his photography studio in Accra, Ghana. I’m not sure if this is a retrospective or a long series of his work and there is little hint at the social dialogue or “African” context. In short, the exhibition appears vapid and offers little rhyme or reason for it being shown at the National Gallery in South Africa. Mildly disappointed, yet optimistic, I walk on to two large rooms of paintings. Hung in what seems to be an attempt at a “salon style”, I encounter Peter Clarke’s work — a mish-mash displayed in a manner akin to that of a flea market. If this were intentional it may have been quite cool — but alas, not.  In the middle of the every-square-inch-covered wall is a video room with a short film of Peter Clarke being interviewed in his home. I walk to this for redemption. It’s mildly interesting except I can’t help but think of the sensational William Kentridge video I had seen in the same room a year and a half prior.

A tired Richard Long pinwheel and installation.

Moving away from the two African artists (this is the only connection I can find between Barnor and Clarke), I move on to the third room that has an exhibition by British artist Richard Long. A culmination of his research in Southern Africa as well a recent residency in South Africa, Long spent time walking in the Karoo (a South African desert-like landscape), resulting in a circular rock installation in his signature style. This ‘recognizability’ is perhaps what the gallery curators were going for, however, the pieces feel repetitive and obscure, isolated in the National Gallery room. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled living in New York, and I can’t help thinking, “So what?” The work feels dated and I wonder if this is even interesting to a newcomer to his work who I would suggest would find a disconnect between their own experience of the landscape and Long’s land art experiments that have been appropriated to “Africa.”

A dynamic intervention by visitors as part of the Richard Long exhibition.

Thankfully, I find an unintentional moment of salvation — a side space adjoined to the education room as part of the Richard Long exhibition. It’s a small curtained room filled with mud and water that invites the audience to create wall drawings and rearrange a pile of rocks “Long-style” in any desired format.

The security guard excitedly tells me that I can do whatever I want and to have fun. The wall drawings that are already there are phenomenal with their raw and playful aesthetic and I feel like I’m finally bearing witness to the first honest and relevant interaction. I want to contribute, but there is no more mud and water.

I proceed to the last two rooms of the gallery to find my brief moment of enjoyment quashed by another disconnected presentation (the South Africa connection is a push), this time of Russian World War II posters hung like a high school project. I decide that I am indeed spoiled, having enjoyed a tour of the Wolfsonian museum propaganda poster exhibition in Miami last September that felt vast, interrogative and informational. I can’t help but feel the curators of this show would have benefited from that experience.

Maybe this is harsh as I know the National Gallery curators and they are, in fact, very aware. This is perhaps why I feel so disappointed. I’ve tried hard to find correlations between these four exhibitions that seem to have haphazardly happened. It appears that a once very sharp and interrogative program has fallen victim to a “take what we can get” mantra that results in putting everything up in the hopes that something may resonate.

The result is a random grouping of obscure exhibitions that, if pushed further, may have succeeded individually, but that together have no correlation and no overarching thematic intention — and least of all a cohesive dialogue with its local or international visitors. I leave wracking my brain for relevance.

The South African National Gallery is located at Government Avenue, Gardens, Cape Town. Ever Young: Jmaes Barnor continues until January 29. Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke continues until February 19. Richard Long continues until April 10. Windows on War – Russian Posters from World War II continues until November 24.

Yael Bartana, "Zamach (Assassination)" (2011), production photo, (photo courtesy Marcin Kalinski)

IRVINE, California – There is a call for Jews to return to Poland — and it’s coming out of Irvine. Well, actually it’s coming from Israeli artist Yael Bartana, whose trilogy … and Europe Will Be Stunned, which occupied the Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, is currently having its American debut at the University Art Gallery at UC Irvine. The videos present the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), which calls for the return of Jews to Poland to reconstitute the country as it was and make it whole again (there were 3,300,000 Jews living in Poland prior to the Holocaust — this number is invoked by the JRMiP in their moto, emblazoned on the grass in the stadium in the first film: 3,300,000 Jews can change the lives of 40,000,000 Poles).

In Irvine, the gallery space echoes with the booming voices of the speakers in the three films, which play in different rooms simultaneously. There is a red glow to the room courtesy of a neon sign with the work’s title. In the center stands a large stack of posters with the JRMiP manifesto — Poland’s colors of red and white with the JRMiP symbol and the Polish eagle combined with the Star of David — imprinted behind the text.

The trilogy leads us through the progression of the JRMiP movement. In the first film, Mary Koszmary (Nightmares) (2007) the leader of the fledgling JRMiP movement (played not by an actor but rather Sławomir Sierakowski, a Polish left-wing activist) gives a speech calling for Jews to return to Poland, to heal Poland’s past and make the country whole again. He speaks from the empty and overgrown Olympic stadium in Warsaw — the only other people there with him are some uniformed youths who look something like a cross between Boy Scouts and Hitler Youths.

Yael Bartana (photo by Daniel Meir)

The second film, Mur I wieża (Wall and Tower) (2009) shows the first group of Jews to take action out of this movement. A group of Hebrew-speaking kibbutzniks build a wooden enclave consisting of an uninviting wall (despite a hand-written sign welcoming people in Hebrew) complete with barbed wire and a tower equipped with a searchlight. The kibbutz is situated directly across from the Warsaw ghetto monument, which emphasizes both the kibbutz’s appearance as another ghetto, as well as a fortress protecting from a separate Polish community that had allowed for such things to happen previously and seems to reveal a lack of belief that they wouldn’t let something like that happen again. Rather than seeming to integrate into the population, this new group of Jewish immigrants seems even more separate from the Polish community (though the video does also show the members of the kibbutz learning Polish).

The final film, Zamach (Assassination) (2011) shows the funeral and memorial service for the movement’s leader, who has been assassinated at an art opening (in the same fashion as the first democratically elected president of the Second Polish Republic was). The movement is at this point portrayed as utopian by its members — the leader’s casket it carried by pallbearers of a variety of races (and presumably religions). The emphasis is no longer on purely a Jewish movement to Poland but rather an acceptance of all people who are without a homeland. However, throughout the speeches given at the memorial ceremony (which unveils an almost comically large bust of the leader), it is clear that the idealized utopia that the JRMiP envisions (an anti-nationalism — a Europe welcoming and including all nations, races and religions) is not embraced by all. It’s not accidental that the strongest support for the movement comes from the youngest speakers — two uniformed youths — who preach the doctrine of the JRMiP manifesto. Older generations of curators and journalists (as well as the leader’s wife) seem to relish more ties to Israel and they cannot seem to let go of the past and react against it, whereas those who did not experience it first hand can look to the future without being tainted by the past.

An installation view at UC Irvine (image courtesy the gallery)

The experience of watching the films is incredibly unsettling — though I enjoyed being unsettled. The preaching leader, the obedient uniformed followers. They are the counterpoint to the Nazi experience of pure nationalism as they want extreme integration of all nations. However, if one considers the Nazis “pure evil” then does that make the JRMiP “pure good”? I definitely wasn’t left with that impression.

There is certainly something still very ominous and isolationist about the movement. Both the fact that it centers on creating this “utopia” within Poland to “stun” Europe — what about the rest of Europe being included or what about non-European countries? And if they were to suggest including them all wouldn’t it give the impression of world domination?

As the movement expands, it offers inclusion to all peoples without a homeland, not just Jews — but it seems naive to think that then they would all live in peace and harmony. The call for Jews to return to Poland is rooted in the fact that they were once there, but would the same attachment of homeland extend to refugees from Sudan? Palestine? And how would those who had ancestral connection to Poland feel about or relate to those that didn’t? It’s hard to believe that the movement to Poland would suddenly make everything all peace and harmony (especially with those winters!) And what of the countries that these Jews or other refugees leave? Wouldn’t the creation of this “utopia” in Poland lead to a hyper-homogenous population in the countries they leave behind? Would right wing Israelis support the JRMiP not for Jews, but rather for Palestinians as another group (they would deem) without a homeland in order to help fulfill their “perfect Zion” in Israel through the migration of Palestinians to Poland?

These are disturbing questions that are made even a little more unsettling by the fact that the border between reality and fiction with the JRMiP movement has been somewhat blurred — some real people support (and oppose) it as an actual movement — not just an art project. As I watched the videos, the light from the neon title sign always cast a red bar across the room and to me it read as the bloodshed that movements such as this can manifest.

Throughout the trilogy, Bartana clearly draws parallels between the JRMiP movement and the situation in Israel/Palestine. Notions of belonging and citizenship — one of the speakers at the memorial now lives in Israel but is requesting to have her Polish citizenship, which was stripped from her when she left for what she saw as the more welcoming Jewish state, returned to her — clearly relate to the Palestinians who have no Israeli citizenship despite being from the land that is now Israel.

The idea of the “right of return” which the JRMiP is trying to get Jews to excersize in Poland is a vital issue in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Law of Return allows for any Jew to become an Israeli citizen by virtue of Israel being his Jewish homeland. The Right of Return, which is an international principle codified in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is what many Palestinians require as part of any peace deal, allowing for families that were ousted during the Nakba in 1948 when Israel declared its statehood to return to the homes and land in which they had lived.

The issue of return came up again recently during the recent release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian and Arab-Israeli prisoners. None of the prisoners released were allowed into Israel proper, some were released into the West Bank but given major restrictions on their movements, some to Gaza, and still others released were sent into exile (these decisions were based on the Israeli government’s assessment of the threat level of each of these individuals). Bartana’s link between her work and what is happening in her country of birth are made explicitly clear in the dedication of Assassination to Juliano Mer-Khamis, one of the founders of the Freedom Theater in Jenin, who was assassinated during the filming of this work.

The issues of nationalism are also particularly pertinent considering the past year and the unsuccessful Palestinian bid for recognition by the United Nations (and their successful acceptance into UNESCO, which resulted in the suspension of US funding to the organization). The JRMiP presents an alternative to the multitude of nation states that have arisen in a world of people that fears the other and sees comfort only in surrounding themselves in people exactly like themselves — Jewish states, Polish states, Islamic states, American (meaning no people who got here “after me”) states, etc. The movement does not want everyone to be identical but stresses that only through an inclusion of all differences will we truly be whole.

This push against separatism can even be seen closer to home in the Occupy Wall Street movement we saw spring up this past year. People are pushing against the “us vs. them” mentality, which is exemplified in what has become of our two-party system and its degradation into pure rhetoric and ratings.

People want the world to work for us, for all of us, not just the 1%, for everyone. A desire for action — and a movement that can effect change — is clearly something that people are hungry for now, all over the world. Art’s interaction with political movement has been present throughout as well. From images tagged on walls throughout the Middle East during the Arab Spring to Shepard Fairey’s Occupy poster, art appears to be everywhere is contemporary movements.

The companion publication to Bartana’s exhibition in Venice, A Cookbook for Political Imagination, includes a collection of recipes, drawings, photos, political essays and links between the JRMiP movement and real world situations past and present (such as the Arab Spring). This 400+ page tome blurs the lines between the JRMiP as art project and political movement (much like Walid Raad and his Atlas Project) and works to clearly indicate that such a line is insignificant. I spent two days consumed by this book and I suggest you do the same.

This work was brought to UC Irvine by Artis, an organization that promotes Israeli artists internationally. They are quite active in New York, and Bartana’s exhibition at UC Irvine is their first foray into the West Coast, where they will now have a continued presence. If this exhibition is any indication of the quality of programming we have in store, then I eagerly await what is to come in the new year.

… and Europe Will Be Stunned runs through March 10, 2012. A one-day conference with the artist will be held at UC Irvine on February 4. 

The Austrian Cultural Forum invited me to participate in a gallery talk about their current show Beauty Contest. As I made my way to the engagement, I noticed a series of Uniqlo ads in the subway, which feature the young and the beautiful. Each mug shot reminded me of my expanding waistline, thinning hair and distressed complexion. As my self-worth dropped, I continued to look at one face after the other as if I were eating potato chips.

Who decides what is and what is not beautiful? To address these questions, Berthold Ecker, Claude Grunitzky and Andreas Stadler, the curators of Beauty Contest at the Austrian Cultural Forum and MUSA (Museum – Start Gallery – Artothek), selected 20 internationally acclaimed artist who grapple with society’s obsession and fascination with physical appearance.

The result is a small but engaging exhibition, with the overall tenor of the show being defiant. Whereas beauty pageants see the body as a beautiful thing best celebrated in a bikini, this show views the body as a karate chop to the solar plexus of mainstream notions of attractiveness. Despite the unconventional work, the exhibition includes glamour queens in swimsuits, evening wear and talent performances.

Clarina Bezzola’s wearable sculpture sets the tone of the exhibition. The components include a red cocktail dress, a pair of swollen breasts (a set of teeth run the length of the cleavage), and a long, oversized hand that protrudes from the back of the dress. It’s grotesque, and creepy, but I could not stop looking at it. I could easily imagine her feminine wiles shredding my manhood to pieces. The costume is worn as part of a performance (that I saw on video) in which the artist walks through the streets of Manhattan while singing Musetta’s “Aria” from Puccini’s La Bohème. The video I could take or leave. The dress, however, is seared in my unconscious.

Katarina Schmidl, "Ein schönes Stück Österreich / A beautiful piece of Austria" (2002) (image courtesy MUSA, Vienna)

Katarina Schmidl’s sculpture, “Ein schönes Stück Österreich” (2002), is the most alluring work in the show, and its most cheeky — literally. The honeycomb-like object, which was constructed from red and white plastic drinking straws and rests on chest-high podium, resembles a classical torso. The installation showcases the figure’s buttocks, which meets the viewer face to face. Like much of the artist’s work from the early aughts, she used her own body as a starting point. The title of the work, which translates in English to Nice Piece of Austria, is a self-portrait.

More than any other work in the show, Schmidl’s sculpture invited the viewer to take pleasure in her physical assets. As a viewer, I felt like a judge in a beauty pageant appraising a contestant during the swimsuit competition. The work, however, offered more than titilation. I applaud her use of cheap materials, which can be found almost anywhere. Back in the day, the figure was immortalized in stone and marble, but now, it is canonized in strips of plastic.

Birgit Jurgenssen, "Everybody has his own point of view " (nd) (image courtesy MUSA, Vienna)

Birgit Jürgenssen also uses her body as a point of departure in her work. In 1975, Jürgenssen had the phrase Jeder hat seine eigene Ansicht (“Everyone has their own opinion) written on her back, and she photographed it. At the time the photograph was taken, Jürgenssen received a lot of flack from second wave feminists who condemned her beauty, love of fashion and use of cosmetics. As an individual work, it’s not much to look at. But I appreciate the curators’ decision to include the work in the show. Why? It’s a beauty contest and we can’t see the model’s face. Like most of the artwork of view, the photograph has a “fuck you I’m going to do what I want whether you like it or not” attitude.

Jakob Lena Knebl is not a beauty queen in the standard sense of the term. The artist is short, massive and transgender, with a smart pageboy haircut. No Romy Schneider, she bears a striking resemblance to Charles Durning in the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon. Knebl’s contribution to the show is a video-based gender-bending karaoke performance, which features two protagonists dancing to “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill and “Dead Souls” by Joy Division. (I love the choice of music — the two songs maintain top dog status on my playlists.)

I was not sure what to make of the work upon first view, and I am not sure what to make of it now. Like many people, I love to sing along to my favorite songs, but what does it have to do with beauty? My friend suggested it might be a desire to express our need to feel pretty and that may be the point. When I sing “Sunshine Superman” by Donovan I feel like a teenage heartthrob.

To picture Maria Petchnig’s videos, think of obese men and women throwing a sex party inside the Salvation Army. What is shocking is not the subject matter but the lack of feeling the footage illicits. To be blunt, it’s boring. Like most porn, the participants engage in repetitive, robotic movements and the camera’s point of view is fixed. The only difference the videos offer is a cast of unattractive characters. The one video of hers that I did find captivating involved a group of senior residents exercising in an old folks home. There is something poignant about watching a group of men and women on the precipice of death trying to keep their muscles limber.

Beauty Contest is not pretty, and some of it is grotesque. However, the show is captivating and rewards repeated viewings. To the curators credit, the exhibition does not condemn our obession and fascination with physical appearance, but rather, provides an opportunity for us to see how other people regard their own bodies. It is a subject I find fascinating. As I approach my thirty-eighth year, I am still getting used to my own appearance, which seems to change daily.

Beauty Contest is on view until January 3, 2012 at The Austrian Cultural Forum (11 East 52 Street, Midtown, Manhattan).

Ana Mendieta. "Untitled (Silueta Series, Mexico)" (1973–77/printed 1991). (via artic.edu)

CHICAGO — In a darkened gallery in the Art Institute of Chicago, a grainy video from decades ago begins. Standing with her face pressed up against a white wall, a woman reaches down and scoops up a handful of red, viscous liquid — presumably blood — from an enamel tray, and in a series of arcing gestures she traces a crude outline of a doorway, or a cave entrance, or maybe just the close demarcation of her own small body, around herself onto the wall. Then she grasps another handful of blood and begins to write, the words obscured by her body, only gradually emerging as she bends down for more blood to write with. Finally, she stops, looks at her work, and then walks out of shot to the viewer’s left. The image holds for about fifteen seconds on the phrase “There is a devil inside me,” scrawled in a column inside the doorway of blood. Fade to black.

The video, called “Untitled (Blood Sign # 1), is by Ana Mendieta, and it’s part of a small selection of her work on display in two rooms of the ‘Tute’s modern wing. Another gallery is filled with work from the artist’s Siluetas series. The walls are lined with dozens of photographs, a sculpture made from braided Ficus root, drawings and a set of photo-etchings.

On the floor in the center of the room is a piece of baked earth, imprinted with the ‘body’ shape that Mendieta used repeatedly. The shape occurs in almost every photo, carved into soil, the sides of hills, outlined in flowers, outlined in burning candles at night, dug into the ground and scattered with red pigment. In a few images, there is a real body, probably the artist’s, though we can’t be sure just by looking at the picture because the face and most of the torso is obscured by flowers.

sdfadas

Sometimes the shapes resemble ribcages, spines, the female body, a vulva. The selection of images chosen to represent Mendieta’s oeuvre is full of intimations of the fragility of the body, of the female body under threat, of the inside of the body turned outside, ripped open, laid bare. Most of the pictures seem to have been taken in graveyards, or old Mexican ruins, which introduce elements of ancient ritual, incantations to protect the self, or offerings to annihilate the self, to return the body back to the earth it came from. Why else go to this place? Why else make these crude marks in the ground, as if desperate to leave some trace of her personality amidst these crushing symbols of religious power? There is a photoseries entitled Burial Pyramid, and in almost every picture there is a powerful sense of death. The repetition of the body shape, the disturbing burial pits that she digs out just as crudely as she painted on the wall with blood, and then sometimes laid in: they feel like prefigurations of death and a plea to nature to commemorate her frail flesh.

A work from Mendieta's "Silueta" series (photo by the author) (click to enlarge)

It’s perhaps too sensational to relate these feelings to her own violent death, falling (or perhaps pushed) from the third floor balcony of the apartment she shared with sculptor Carl Andre.

What is interesting is that a piece by Andre lies on the floor in a nearby gallery, and how the art of these two tragically once-connected artists affords such a jarring contrast: he, the high priest of the Minimalist movement, whose work says that if I arrange a set of pre-existing industrial materials in a grid, that does all the work of modern sculpture without requiring any other intervention by the hand of the artist; and then Ana Mendieta, all violence, hot emotion, performative gesture, a voice screaming to be heard, masochistic and brilliant, her work grabbing you by the neck and pushing your face into the blood and the dirt.

My final thought was that time is treating Mendieta’s art more kindly than Andre’s. His work could only exist, maybe could only have meaning within a gallery or a museum. Mendieta’s work, on the other hand, doesn’t feel like it belongs here at all. It still feels like the rude intrusion of a force too powerful to be contained in the forensic, taxonomic spaces of the contemporary museum. This is the paradox, however, of this kind of art-making: it comes from a place we like to call reality, but the only way we can see it is either in books or in a gallery. So long as we are aware of that, we should be grateful for the opportunity to see this great artist’s work, or at least the traces, the physical remains of that work.

The kinds of ideas she focused on in the 1970s have changed in the hands of newer generations of feminist artists, perhaps even improved in terms of their formal qualities or their capacity to effect social change. But for sheer audacity, and guts, and the bravery to attempt something without regard to whether or not it looks like art, we can still all learn a lot from Ana Mendieta, whatever our age or gender.

Ana Mendieta continues at the Art Institute of Chicago (111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago) until January 15, 2012.

A view of the exhibition at Manhattan's Czech Center (All photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

One of the most difficult things to evoke in an art show is a snapshot of a culture. On the other hand, when I write about zines, I find it difficult to separate the object itself from the ephemeral culture that surrounds it. In Samizdat: The Czech Art of Resistance, 1968-1989, curator Daniela Sneppova brings American viewers in to the heart of a print-based resistance.

Organized as part of Roads to Freedom: Czech Alternative Culture Before November 1989 (an event series in commemoration of the Czech holiday known as Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day), Samizdat is a multimedia show featuring independently published print works (books, pamphlets, zines, photographs, flyers and posters) as well as films and underground Czech music, all created in the USSR and Soviet Bloc under communist rule. The books were a crucial medium for anyone who was interested in culture outside of that sanctioned by the government, and they proliferated because of the scarcity of these materials.

I visited the Czech Center on a Thursday in the middle of the day, and the gallery was quiet. With no one around to crowd me, I spent an hour in the space, peeking at every possible detail. As the work is pre-1989, this is a predominantly analogue show; it felt like I was digging through someone’s secret attic of activist ephemera.

F. Lazecky, Srpnova noc, "August Night"

Astrid Lindgrenova, "The Brothers Lionhearted"

Political resistance in underground print culture is interesting in its own right, but one of the most pleasant surprises of the Samizdat show is that nearly every piece of work on display is a product of great design. From typewritten words to lithographs to woodcut carvings, each book grabbed my attention with its fresh and clever approach to print.

Ludvik Vaculik, "The Czech Dreambook - 2nd Part"

Viewers have a wealth of information to dig through: three walls of shelves as well as coffee-table style cases filled with books, posters on the wall and a beautifully hung screen projection.

There is yet another component to the visually and content rich show: a recreation of the very rooms in which this work was made. With a wallpaper pattern silkscreened directly onto the wall, this section quite organically (and unobtrusively) fits in with the other intimate aspects of the show.

One of the “rooms” provides a reel-to-reel listening station that plays underground Czech bands of the era on a loop. I was seriously surprised with what I heard: bands that fused the pummeling sounds of the Stooges with the likes of my favorite riot grrrl bands. This inclusion of music is no mere footnote: it gives the viewer a sense of the sheer amount of culture that was bubbling under the surface during this particularly repressive regime.

Two days after my visit to Samizdat Vaclav Havel, the leader of the “Velvet Revolution,” revered “man with a guitar” and President of the Czech Republic, died. Fortunately Sneppova’s tasteful, jubilant and powerful exhibition pays tribute to the “power of ideas” that Havel so believed in.

Samizdat: The Czech Art of Resistance, 1968-1989 runs until January 12, 2012 at the Czech Center (321 East 73rd Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan).

"Weird Wonder Tales: The Man Who Found Shangri-la,” by Stan Lee with art by Jack Kirby (all images courtesy Rubin Museum of Art)

Something about Tibet has always seemed very mysterious to the West. Maybe it’s the terrain of the towering Himalayas possibly inhabited by savage yetis, the legends of the heavenly Shangri-La, or the ancient traditions of Tibetan Buddhism embodied by the reincarnated Dalai Lama. All of these impressions, founded on fact or not, have naturally made for great comic book fodder, where the exotic and mystical image of Tibet fits in perfectly with superheroes and mad villains. The Rubin Museum of Art’s Hero, Villain, Yeti: Tibet in Comics is now presenting over 50 comics related to Tibet dating back to the 1940s.

Cover of "Green Lama (no. 2), by Richard Foster with art by Mac Raboy, 1945

All of the comics are available for reading for free in the lower level of the museum, accompanied by explorations on comic book themes like “The Third Eye” and “Levitating Lamas and Flying Mystics.” A mannequin of comic book hero the Green Lama soars over the exhibit. I spoke to curator Martin Brauen over the phone, and he stated that the Green Lama was one of the oldest appearances of Tibet in comics, going back to the early 1940s. However, as you may notice above, despite being a “lama,” the superhero doesn’t appear very Tibetan. “If you look at the superhero section of the exhibit, very often a monk or several monks are the superheroes, but they are hardly Tibetan,” Brauen said. “The subject is Tibet, and it has something to do with Tibet, but it’s white people.”

Page 7 of "Green Lama (no. 2), by Richard Foster with art by Mac Raboy, 1945

After acquiring his mystical skills, including holding back bullets, in Tibet, the Green Lama goes back to New York City to fight evil. He changes into the Green Lama by reciting a famous Tibetan mantra. “When he speaks out this mantra, it echoes to Tibet and he transforms into the Green Lama,” Brauen said. “When he’s done his good work, he reverses the mantra and transforms again.”

"Buddha, He Lit the Path (Amar Chitra Katha)," by S.K. Ramachandra with art by Souren Roy, editor Anant Pai, 1971

Although the Green Lama is a white man fighting Western battles with appropriated powers, the idea of a levitating lama originates with traditional Himalayan paintings and teachings. There is another exhibit currently at the Rubin Museum, Once Upon Many Times: Legends and Myths in Himalayan Art, that further explores narrative art of the Himalayan region, with legends of great teachers, spiritual quests and heroic adventures played out in pigments on cloth. Hero, Villain, Yeti includes one Tibetan scroll painting with spiritual elements that shows how the visual narrative relates to the frames of contemporary comic books.

"Milarepa," Wisdom of Tibet series

Hero, Villain, Yeti has some examples of biographical comics by Tibetan writers and artists, that further this tradition of narrative art through stories about the 14th Dalai Lama or Milarepa, “Tibet’s Greatest Yogi.” There are also educational comics from Tibet created for children, that include morality tales like “Settling the Dispute Between Birds and Monkeys” and comics on hygiene and behavior. Another section on political comics is focused on comic books as a way of confronting and interpreting Tibet’s tumultuous recent history. Mercy and Asura is a graphic depiction of Tibetans’ experiences during the Chinese government’s ethnic cleansing, in which the main character is detained and tortured, then returns home to find his wife is pregnant, having been raped by Chinese soldiers. Forgiving his wife, but knowing he can never be a father to this child, he kills himself.

"Creepy: King Keller,” by Nicola Cuti and Syd Shores, 1971

Most of the exhibit, however, is devoted to the more fanciful depictions of Tibet by outsiders. Yetis, both menacing and friendly, and the utopia of Shangri-La are popular tropes, as is the third eye, which gained its popularity due to The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa, a British man who claimed to have grown up in a Tibetan monastery and wrote the book about his adventures encountering yetis and the mummy of his previous incarnation. He also said that he had an operation to open his “third eye” by having a hole drilled in his head. A private detective hired by Tibetologist Heinrich Harrer revealed that Rampa was the son of a plumber and had never set foot in Tibet.

The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier also had a large role in cementing misinformation about Tibet. The 1960s book on the occult included unverified claims that in Berlin there was a Tibetan monk, nicknamed “the man with the green gloves,” who regularly met with Hitler and foretold in the press on three occasions the number of Hitlerian deputies elected to the Reichstag. Also included was an unfounded story about 1,000 dead Himalayans in German uniforms being discovered by Russians entering Berlin. The myth of a Nazi connection with Tibet has persisted, whether it’s SS soldiers hiding out in the Himalayas or Tibetans taking on the Nazis in battle, and is illustrated in the comic books Pharaon: The Ice Brain and The Sign of Shiva.

"Bugs Bunny's Dangerous Venture,” art by Carl Buettner, 1946

Hero, Villain, Yeti is part of the Rubin Museum’s overarching goal of appealing to a wider audience by featuring cross cultural exhibits and contemporary art.

“When I started working as chief curator, it was clear to me that we cannot only focus on traditional Tibetan art,” said Martin Brauen, who recently retired as chief curator after working at the museum for three years. During his time at the Rubin, exhibits like Remember That You Will Die, which examined Eastern and Western notions of death and remembrance, and the current exhibit Modernist Art from India have thoughtfully bridged between the traditionally-centered permanent exhibitions and the broader idea of Eastern and Western culture. With Hero, Villain, Yeti, Brauen’s last exhibit as chief curator, cross cultural understanding and Tibetan history is presented in the most accessible way yet: through the quick turning pages of contemporary comic books.

Hero, Villain, Yeti: Tibet in Comics is showing at the Rubin Museum of Art (150 West 17th Street, Chelsea, Mahattan) through June 11, 2012.

A view of the performance in Storefront from Kenmare Street (image courtesy Storefront)

During a brief two-week run, Storefront for Art and Architecture was transformed into a laboratory by the creative team of Harrison Atelier (HAt) in their latest iteration of dance-installation titled Pharmacophore: Architectural Placebo.

Choreographer Silas Riener (photo by the author)

Conceived, dramaturged, directed and designed by the husband and wife team of Seth Harrison and Ariane Lourie Harrison the project explores “the cultural and philosophical economy that surrounds medicine, technology, and the human prospect.” Quite a heady agenda.

Architectural Placebo is the third installment in HAt’s Pharmacophore series of design-dance hybrids. HAt developed two prior versions: a ten-minute performance at Storefront in December 2010 with dance team Catherine Miller and James McGinn; and a full length performance at the Orpheus Theater in August 2011. For this iteration HAt collaborated with dancer/choreographer Silas Riener, who currently dances for Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Bringing such lofty scientific terms and advanced terminology into a project certainly carries the risk of alienating an audience unaccustomed to such things. Pharmacophore is certainly unique in concept, but audiences don’t have to know much about the science of pharmacology or macrobiotics to appreciate this. The project is exceptionally designed and presented. And I’m sure that having a couple of dancers from the Cunningham company involved doesn’t hurt.

Architectural Placebo incorporates nearly every inch of the uniquely triangular ground-level space on Kenmare Street. It is perfectly suited for the complexities of HAt’s collaboration. Dancers Rashaun Mitchell, Jamie Scott and Melissa Toogood join Silas Riener and cellist Loren Dempster offers live accompaniment and original score.

The custom-contoured seats are suggestive of medical apparatus offer the audience a place to sit. (image by the author)

HAt set out to create a “pharma-cultural landscape.” The installation consists of 24 eight-foot-tall, tempered glass plates that run the entire length of Storefront’s 100-feet-long back wall, which is backlit in blue neon (lighting designed by Aaron Copp and Nick Houfek). It appears like a cross between a radiological suite and futuristic space ship.

Custom contoured seats, suggestive of medical apparatus, offer the audience a place to sit. My iPhone fit nicely into one of the recessed spaces sculpted into shallow arm rests and in another small space, as I understand, one could place their pills if they had them. A plastic glass filled with either water (placebo?) or vodka (drug?) is placed on the right. Inflatable columnar forms lined the backs of the seats to cushion one’s back or function as an armrest. The inflatable forms are also used as set pieces, costumes and props throughout the performance. I must say, the installation is quite overwhelming.

Reiner climbs through the space (photo by the author)

As the performance begins, the four dancers, dressed in black, wear opaque lab coats and stand behind the four black steel supportive columns original to the space. They are lit from a light source from above. Dempster’s cello resonates throughout the gallery, as one by one the dancers congregate at the narrow end of the triangular gallery and steadily step their way through the space. Their movement is predictably sterile with clean lines and raised arms perhaps indicating simple allotropes. Dancers pose in studied profiles, like Kronos in parallel. They are particularly interested in activating the space in between like the careful marking and special relationships one might expect from Cunningham trained dancers. The movement remains basilar, grounded, without aggravated jumps or aggressive partnering.

Dancing in Storefront's door passages (photo by the author)

To produce any pharmacological effect, a minimum three-point attachment of a drug to a receptor site is required. It seems rather fitting then when a trio begins to form around Reiner, supporting his back bends and forward falls. The three even begin to tag him with protein-like properties that take the form of inflatable benzene rings. Dempster converts to an electronic score and things get more interesting as the trio converge on Reiner, now on the floor, rolling him up and forcing him through the paneled façade and onto the street.

The slightest changes in the molecular structure of a drug can drastically change specificity. It’s at this point when I wonder whether or not it’s actually water or vodka I’ve been sipping. Reiner and Mitchell begin to manipulate Storefront’s façade. The gallery’s renowned paneled exterior facade plays perfectly into HAt’s world, acting once as a walled laboratory with experiments mixing within, and next as a porous proscenium where dancers begin to climb, crawl and wander. Dancers Scott and Toogood pair up in the center in an improvised series of fluid, connected movements as if reacting to the waves made by the changing façade.

Having been bathed in blue neon, the light from the street has the most remarkable red glow. Just as the space opens up, so does the choreography and the façade is constantly being manipulated by the dancers. The most enjoyable aspect of the performance is catching bits and glimpses of the dancing happening out on the street.

The performance is successful in so many ways but best in how it totally blurs the border between place and non-place, inside and out, audience and non-audience, performer and pedestrian. It strikes the right balance between design and choreography with neither out doing the other. It’s egoless in its virtuosity.

The final performance of Pharmacophore: Architectural Placebo was November 30, and the installation has been extended until December 10 at Storefront for Art and Architecture (97 Kenmare Street, Soho, Manhattan)