Farewell Franz

The Baltimore Museum of Art's Franz West retrospective has closed and the work is now being packed away in crates marked FRAGILE. Fragile is a word that could be applied to the work itself, not only for the materials used to make it (papermache, cardboard, and plaster, among other things), but also for the feeling it evokes. West is an Austrian artist who grew up in the unsettled (and unsettling) atmosphere of post WWII Europe, a period which he describes as "a time of darkness". A sense of unease pervades the work, though it is not without a wonderfully dry and deadpan humor. With his pieces titled "Adaptives", West invites the viewer to experience the work in an unusual way. During the BMA's show, visitors could pick them up and try them on for size. Though they serve no specific utilitarian purpose, each adaptive offers the user the possibility of engaging physically with something usually off limits in museums: a work of art.
The show travels to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and will open there in March. An excellent catalog is available titled FRANZ WEST: To Build A House You Start With The Roof, Work 1972-2008, by Darsie Alexander.

Purcell and projections at Joyce Soho

This weekend I got a chance to be part of a fun project at Joyce Soho in New York City. It was a workshop performance by Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects: a multimedia version of Dido and Aeneas, an opera by Henry Purcell. The story of the opera is excepted from the Aenied by Virgil, but Jody updated the setting and recast Dido and her lover Aeneas as a modern Hollywood supercouple, hounded and eventually separated by media moguls and paparazzi, instead of the gods of Mt. Olympus.

The production was unusual not only because of the updating, but Jody used live musicians on stage (sadly increasingly rare in dance performances these days): a small orchestra conducted from the harpsichord, plus a quartet of wonderful opera singers singing the lead roles, each of whom was mirrored by an equally wonderful principal dancer portraying the action simultaneously. Jody also created witty projections that played on the wall behind the dancers, as well as on their bodies as they moved about the stage.

The choreography was athletic, sensuous and funny, and the production really gave this baroque opera a fresh twist. Hopefully the piece will tour in the future. Road trip!

Here are some clips from the production...

And some upcoming projects by the Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects!

It was really an energizing and inspiring way to start the New Year. Cheers!

Composition, color and craftsmanship

Shelley Thorstensen - The Preponderance of Evidence
The Print Center
1614 Latimer Street
Philadelphia, PA

This was a show of prints on paper using various printing processes such as lithography, etching, screen printing and relief printing.


"Charge" silkscreen 7 x 10 inches

I'm still thinking about Shelley Thorstensen's work. My experience of seeing her series of framed prints spread across four walls of the room. I carefully looked at each print up close, engaging in the layers of color and form. I loved them. The layers. The subtle depth of color. The play of light. The outlines ~ the gentle repetition of the drawn lines, precise yet sensual. Wondrous moments of visual pleasure, upclose and personal with the detail. From further away the blocks of light or darkness take on larger, organic forms. The opening reception was on a freezing, rainy night and to feel the color and have that experience with the work was remarkable. I think Shelley's work is about process of making beautiful spatial images. This abstract, atmospheric world of warm hues was truly beautiful, visually and conceptually.

Upon more reflection because of writing this blog, I was thinking about my experience of standing in front of Shelley’s work. I was thinking about the physical form of the paper, the process the paper had been through the printing, Shelley’s craftsmanship, working the paper, printing process and the image, and the materials being inherent to the making of the image. It made me appreciate the prints in a way I hadn’t considered, as corporeal objects, and through this reflection, I couldn’t help but think of my own physicality, substance as a body standing in relation to the work. My body, my materiality vs the materiality of the work, and our temporality. Body to body.

"A lot of those songs were the response to what struck me as beauty, whatever that curious emanation from a being, or an object, a situation, or a landscape. You know, that had a very powerful effect on me, as it does on everyone. And I prayed to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me, and they were alive."

Leonard Cohen, from the film “I’m Your Man”