I’m on the plane back to San Francisco, contemplating the next stage of my life as a newly single homosexualist. But first, a bit about the last few days in New York:
Our last weekend in the Big Apple was shared with my old high school buddy Jason, now an environmental consultant working in Our Nation’s Capital. We spent the day visiting galleries and museums, and eating Cuban and New American cuisine.
Murray Guy on 17th Street had a show of photographs by Barbara Probst that we really liked. The subject of her photographs is the moment of exposure itself, and how our point of view affects our understanding of the image. She’ll photograph a scene with several cameras positioned at different angles, the shutters of the cameras released at the same moment. An array of five photographs, for instance, depicts the same girl, with hands up, but in one image it looks like she’s playing catch outside, in another it’s revealed that she’s standing in front of a backdrop and modeling for the camera, and in another it looks like she’s on the street and possibly in trouble. Any strict reading of the narrative is confounded by the different views.
We then hopped on the train for Long Island City and a visit to the Sculpture Center, where another old friend, Mary Cerutti is now the director. They have a fantastic group of works on display. A Scottish artist, Anya Gallaccio, cut down and reassembled a 30-foot tall weeping cherry tree in the central gallery space. The means of the tree’s support are all visible–large cables and big bolts used to piece the limbs back together. The piece elegantly represents our desire to tame nature, to create landscapes that mimic the natural, while drawing our attention to the extraordinary sculptural qualities of the tree itself. The smell is wonderful, too. There are also some fantastic installations downstairs: In one dark corridor of the industrial brick setting, Mary Temple has painted the brick and floor to make it seem that sunlight is streaming in through a nearby bricked-up arch, casting shadows of trees and shrubs on the walls and floor. The illusion is so realistic that you don’t notice it as anything extraordinary, even though it’s impossible. When it suddenly dawns on you that light can’t pass through brick, it’s quite magical. There were also wonderful tiny one-inch sculptures by Michael Ross, transforming found objects into wonders of form and color, and several other fabulous experiential installations that I’ll just have to tell you about later.
Here are some pictures of my new symbol, the weeping cherry tree that was cut to pieces and bolted back together, no longer blooming, but still solid and lovely:
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P.S.1 is not far from the Sculpture Center, so we strolled over to see Peter Hujar’s work, and the Wolfgang Tillmans show. The Hujar images–portraits, nudes, abandoned places–were printed all the same size, each image formally framed with subject in the center and beautifully balanced, very poignant. The Tillmans show is a big survery of this young photographer’s work, and is dynamite. His subject is photography itself–the way a photograph conveys information, the subject, color, and the paper as conveyor of information and object. He addresses the entire process, from taking the image to how it’s presented. There are large color-field abstractions made from blowing up images so large that just the grain is visible and a single color, or very subtle shifts in gradation. Some pieces are called “Impossible Color,” and are indeed of indescribable colors made possible only through photochemistry. In other images, he exposed the paper with no negative, just light, the resulting image a record of his interaction and intervention. Some images are folded and creased, the paper a sculpture that interacts with the ambient light to extend the experience of “painting with light” into another dimension. Very clever, inventive, and smart.
NOTE TO EXHIBITING ARTISTS: If you’ve shown your work in any exhibition during the past year, bring an invite to MoMA’s membership desk and get a $25 one-year membership!