Philippe Parreno at the Armory—Ghosts of Broadway

There are many worse ways to spend a half day in New York than absorbing Philippe Parreno's multi-faceted installation at the Park Avenue Armory, on view through August 2. The idea that it's a love letter to the city crept up on me, despite the city's monogram being embedded in the title—H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS, 2015. (It's pronounced "hypnosis.") Indeed, the exhibition's power has grown in my mind during the days after seeing it.

The drill hall is divided into a nave-like space by two columns of Parreno's marquee sculptures, suspended works that mimic the portal fixtures above Broadway and smaller theaters, collectively entitled Danny The Street. Where the apse should be stands Bleachers, a rotating accretion of stepped seats, evoking similar casual step seating at Times Square and the Highline. On the three sides of the apse hang huge screens, which move up and down, onto which New York-themed films are projected. (The films were not screening while I attended a preview. Subsequent photos show their importance in the environment.)

Ann Lee. Photo: Susan Yung

An LED panel work, Ann Lee, sits among the marquees. It—she—comes to life periodically in an animated manga avatar, whose words are eerily parroted by human girls performing throughout the space. The character was purchased several years ago and "employed" by various artists, notably Tino Sehgal, co-credited on this piece. Ann Lee is a symbol of collaboration—programmed, at rest, or animated.

Photo: Susan Yung

Yet another important dimension to the installation is music, at a preview performed player piano style by Mikhail Rudy on three grand pianos. The selection includes pieces by Scriabin, Wagner, Feldman, and Ligeti. Other sound/music was composed by contemporary musicians for the marquees, which pulse on and off in rhythm with the compositions. It is worthwhile to park yourself on one of the many benches or chairs and observe as the environment's components sync and the lighting increases and diminishes, as daylight does. When the space is at its darkest, a haunting evocation of the bygone city emerges, like a lively and twinkling Broadway ghost town that operates on its own; people are merely observers.

Admission to the exhibition is $15, which is in keeping with the going museum prices, but high when compared to the thousands of galleries in the city which charge no admission. Still, there is more than enough content in the Parreno show (the artist guessed that it might wind up at five hours) to justify the cost and time invested. And the Armory continues to mount work unlike any in the city—more along the lines of an installation at a bienale, and with great thought given to the complex context. 

Marooned in Manhattan

It's an unlikely time of year for the Park Avenue Armory to mount tears become... streams become..., given that its premise is to flood the Armory's vast hall along artist Douglas Gordon's specifications, and have pianist Hélène Grimaud give a concert of water-themed piano pieces (or at alternate times, have a player piano operating). Especially during weather like this week, when rain drenches the cold air. But the Armory has not shied from ambitious projects that few other presenting institutions in their right minds would undertake. 

The logistics of the project alone are breathtaking. At a press preview, as Grimaud sat on her piano island (there are so many metaphors to this image alone) surrounded by mostly dry black material, water began to seep up through the seams, nearly silent except for a stray burble or bloop. In a matter of minutes—under 10—the Drill Hall was a glassy pond. Grimaud played Fauré's Barcarolle No. 5 in F# minor, Op. 66, and Berio's Wasserklavier. While the acoustics are challenging, the effect of one brilliantly played piano floating on a glassy lake was transporting. Gordon sat beside her, giving lighting cues; after she was done, they walked through (on?) the pond to the dry deck, sloshing and looking like beached shipwreck survivors. Grimaud wore a sporty white track suit designed by Agnès B.

The most surprising and powerful aspect is how the hall's ceiling and roof trusses were illuminated by the choreographed lighting cues. From engulfing darkness, the east/west spine at the apex of the hall's ceiling was lit gradually. Then the "ribs" of the ceiling's armature were emphasized, and it appeared—seated at the very center to capture the symmetry of the ceiling in the reflecting water—as if we were in a giant whale's ribcage. Spots hit Grimaud's piano, and then the idle player piano. This tranquil yet humbling image will likely never be replicated in the middle of New York City... one more singularly memorable experience in a one-of-a-kind space, provided by the Park Avenue Armory.

James Turrell—Light Ascending

Aten Reign, 2013. Daylight and LED light. Site-specific installation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 
Looking up into the Guggenheim's rotunda.

What more appropriate day to view James Turrell at the Guggenheim than yesterday, the summer solstice, with more hours of sunlight than any other day of the year? Well, basically any other day through September 25 (natural light is just a part of it); just try and get there for this transporting installation.

Aten Reign, the main artwork, occupies the entire rotunda of the Wright building, which apparently influenced Turrell's concepts for his ongoing, monumental Roden Crater, based in a volcano in Arizona. Once inside, you may not recognize the Guggenheim. The airy ground-floor lobby has been walled off to create a viewing area. Lie back on one of the encircling benches, look up, and spend as much time as you can observing the light, continually shifting hue and intensity. (As Turrell remarked, he included his favorite colors, and, like musical notes, you need them all to make music.) Additional artworks are installed in the High Gallery, just up the ramp (which is devoid of artwork), and in the Annex on 2 & 5.

The installation of Aten Reign is extremely well executed. The surfaces of the nesting oval rings that narrow toward the perfectly egg-shaped oculus are made of stretched fabric. Rounds of LEDs provide the continually phasing light. The effect is simple, humbling, and so profoundly, mysteriously moving that it feels silly trying to talk about it. Previous works by Turrell have had a similar, if muted, effect; it's magic spun from relatively simple materials and technology and, most of all, light. Perhaps part of the allure is the evanescence of light, the key material—the coaxing and sculpting of it, like some supernatural, life-giving substance tamed.

It's hard not to contrast it with the other big show that opened this week—the Paul McCarthy show at the Armory, an exercise in excess, indulgence, and the messy side of human imagination and the psyche. Both recreate certain circumstances of nature and tap emotions and subconscious feelings. The Turrell caused my to heart sing and made me want to stay indefinitely, although it demands little work. The McCarthy show, which is nothing if not demanding, made me queasy and want to run out the door. Together, they cover the emotional and cerebral gamut of the human condition.

A handful of older works by Turrell are on view, including the very cool Afrum I (White), 1967, in which projected light forms a floating cube. But you may, as I did, regret every moment I spent away from Ater Reign. Crowds may be a problem, but it's worth it.

Paul McCarthy's WS—Your Wildest Nightmare?

Of WS, the immersive installation at the Park Avenue Armory by Paul McCarthy, I can say one thing for sure: I will not soon forget it. Its scale and ambition are unquestionable, and McCarthy seemed not to have compromised the darkest of his very dark visions. Any serious interpretation of its disturbing Snow White/Walt Disney symbolism is best left to the shrinks. 

Some description of what's on view:

• Two huge screens on each end of the Armory show the seven-hour video at the core of the installation. The footage, of which I admittedly saw a mere fraction due to time and digestion restraints, features a bachannale/orgy with Snow Whites, dwarves, and the Walt Snow character (McCarthy). The soundtrack of preverbal human communication is extremely loud and inescapable. On one end, there's a bank of theater seats where you can plant yourself if you don't mind sitting 15 feet away from an I-Max sized screen of naked dwarves doing creative things with balloon animals and food.
• The set where the video was taped is installed in the west end of the Drill Hall; a full-scale ranch house with some open walls and window cutouts. The aftermath of the bachannale remains; it looks like a tornado hit a catering hall at Christmas time.
• In the center of the hall, on a raised platform, sits a massive forest with gnarly, ominous trees and giant flowering plants. Nestled into the foliage is, additionally, a 3/4-scale replica of McCarthy's childhood home, of which you can only see the clean suburban exterior. Imagine approaching a strange house on Halloween, lit from within, beckoning yet off-putting.

• Carpeted aisles lead you through the maze of woods. You will be admonished by diligent ushers to not touch the styrofoam base, which is hilarious given the context of abject avarice, physicality, and consumption.
• Climb the stairs to the balcony catwalk, the best perspective of the huge installation.
• Refrigerator cases on the north and south aisles hold suspicious-looking frozen food and one of McCarthy's incredibly life-like human replicants*. The fridges are pretty big appliances, but in the Drill Hall, they seem pathetically small.
• The small rooms that line the Drill Hall contain additional videos from the artist's White Snow Mammoth, which, depending upon what's on screen, can be a respite or further discomfort. In any case, the color is spectacular, and the production values admirably high, generally speaking.

Alex Poots, new artistic director of the Armory, who organized the show with curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Tom Eccles, calls it a Gesamtkunstwerk, but there must be a better term in German for "realization of all your nightmares." Anyone? (McCarthy's son Damon collaborated on creating WS, along with an entire page of helpers.) All credit to the folks at PAA for allowing McCarthy free rein; at the same time, I imagine that paying the $15 admission fee for this house-of-horrors experience may not sit well with people expecting a fun day with art, as Ann Hamilton's installation was (not to denigrate the complex layers of meaning and symbols that she embedded in addition to the world's largest swing set. It's just, swings!).

* Life Cast, McCarthy's concurrent exhibition at the uptown Hauser & Wirth Gallery, nearby at 32 E 69th, includes five of these replicants, so real-looking that I seriously expected them to blink an eye or twitch. It runs through July 26, as does another H&W McCarthy show on 18th St. in a new space, which I have yet to see.

  

Ann Hamilton's Thrilling Event of a Thread

Experiencing Ann Hamilton's The Event of a Thread at the Park Avenue Armory is both exhilarating and humbling. Kind of like visiting the vast Armory itself, which makes you simultaneously consider humankind's ambition and peon-like size.

It's exhilarating, because even if you aren't much into audience participation (ahem), you'll probably be giddy with delight (double ahem) when you sit on one of the 42 broad wooden swings and begin to sail back and forth. The sheer joy of this simple action recalls all that is good about being a kid. The swings are suspended from the rafters by 75' chains, which are loosely tethered together near the top and attached to a vast silky cloth that divides the Drill Hall in half, Christo style. The "membrane" billows and shimmers in reaction to, as Hamilton so poetically put it, "the weather" of the installation. 

If you're on a swing, your flight trajectory neatly illuminated by a rectangle, by now you've passed two "readers" (members of SITI Company) who sit at a table stacked with 42 homing pigeons in cages. They read text that follows the graphic structure of a concordance, which essentially organizes variously sourced phrases by common words which align in "spines." This concept of the weaving of fabric permeates the installation; it is found here in the spoken text, which is transmitted to radios in neatly-wrapped paper bags that are scattered throughout the hall and are meant to be carried and passed along to others while feeling the breath—the vibration of the noise—of the speaker. You with me?

On the Lexington end of the hall sits a "writer," who writes with a pencil on a carbonized form in response to the read text and the goings-on in the hall. Nearby is a record lathe which will record a daily song sung by a soloist and chorus, from a balcony, to the fat homing pigeons, which are traditionally used as a means of communication. Recurring instances of action and documentation form a sort of metaphorical dialogue, or weaving, of the duration of the performance and installation. The desk set-ups are reminiscent of previous Hamilton scenarios—repetitive labor and language are trademarks—but the sheer visceral and emotional impact of the large-scale dramas are nothing short of thrilling.

Clearly there are infinite ideas in Hamilton's work, which reaffirms the power and potential of art, but there is also nothing quite like the simple thrill of sailing through the air on a swing. It's on view through January 6 (and free this Saturday, December 8).

Trisha Brown's Astral Converted at the Armory

Astral Converted, performed in inner space. Photo: Stephanie Berger

The name Trisha Brown immediately conjures upright choreography, a deceptively plush style with ample leg brushes, twisting upper bodies, and rapid direction shifts. Or perhaps, her early, action-oriented pieces, involving wall walking or leaning. But watching Astral Converted (1991) at the Armory last week was to revisit the rigorous Valiant period of her career. Of particular note are the knotty still floor poses where the shoulders and head are treated as equal support elements to the limbs, the dancers' bodies folded into blobby pyramids, morphing into abstract sculptures. 


The collaboration with Robert Rauschenberg (visual presentation) and John Cage (sound score) might suggest that the piece was created earlier, since they contributed elements to dances decades before. There is an odd temporal tension between the Judson swag (push brooms) and the taut, formal choreography in which they're used. There's none of that shaggy incidental aspect here; everything is deliberate, designed, constructed. 


Rauschenberg's rolling towers are brilliantly economical, compactly serving the functions of set, lighting, and sound. He assembled auto parts in a metal framework, powering the headlights with car batteries, and employing car stereo systems and sensors for timing and triggering. The directional lighting amid the yawning dark of the Armory evoked images of midnight dancing in a parking lot lit by parked cars.


He garbed the dancers in silver unitards with contrasting silver panels; the womens' had sheer panels between the legs, like bat wings. Cage's score was fairly tame for him, sustained brass notes and bleats that felt somewhat distant due to the speaker locations. From time to time, a dancer would roll a tower to a new location, once more shifting the aspect.


Momentum built as time passed. Rather than loose-knit groups, Brown used straight lines of four dancers, or neat pairs. A late trio featured careful, yet daring, partnering, the men swooping a woman from the floor and flipping her rotisserie-style, with her leg and torso as a spit. Leanings did appear in sections, which when combined with the brooms, braided Brown's past with a more modern, stringent period. It's humbling to realize these were but a couple of genres within this inventive choreographer's creative output. While Astral used the Drill Hall's spectacular vastness less than previous productions, it did take on an otherworldliness from the void, like a glimpse of a beautiful, intelligent alien civilization.

The Philharmonic Does a 360

Alan Gilbert as the teeny, tiny maestro of the NY Phil. Photo: Stephanie Berger

Philharmonic 360, performed last week by the New York Philharmonic, was another production that met the high stakes put forth by the gargantuan parameters of Park Avenue Armory's Drill Hall. The huge space absolutely inspires, and the organization selects artists and allows them to pursue their visions on a high level. Within the last year, many memorable productions have included the RSC's residency, Streb, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company's farewell Events.


The orchestra, led by Alan Gilbert, was set up in the pattern of a flower, with orchestra platforms and audience tiered sections alternating like petals. In the central hub was placed a small dais for Gilbert, or a few soloists, surrounded by floor seating for the audience, all facing toward the center. It was impressive if a little creepy, perhaps unintentionally emphasizing the power of the orchestra's artistic director. Some musicians were also positioned in the catwalks.


The program started off with a largely improvised fanfare, Gabrieli's Canzon XVI, which felt appropriate to the grandeur and history of the hall, the brass notes pinging brightly around the space. Pierre Boulez's Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna for Orchestra in Eight Groups (1974-75) took advantage of the volume, as notes and percussion beats seemed to ricochet off the walls and cluster in unexpected coordinates. Despite the relative informality  compared to the Phil's home hall of Avery Fisher, the sense of occasion felt heightened in this work.


When we entered the hall, we were greeted with preening, poshly dressed people, the women in Marie Antoinette wigs, lined up before a red, backlit wall. A bit further in, under the bleacher bowels, were more characters, lounging and observing us trooping in. These were the chorus members for Mozart's Don Giovanni finale to Act I, from the Oratorio Society of New York and the Manhattan School of Music Chamber Choir. It's understandable how this excerpt must have appealed for its inherent theatricality and staging turmoil, but the vastness of the Drill Hall subsumed the sung lines of many of the singers. Keith Miller (Leporello) was able to take command with his strong projection and charisma. And despite the novelty of placing soloists in the far reaches of the bleachers, and moving the chorus in sweeping circles around the rotunda, the artifice fell short.


The keystone of the program was Stockhausen's Gruppen for Three Orchestras (1955-57). You could see why this piece was the ostensible inspiration for the evening, with its highly specific set-up requiring three conductors (Gilbert plus Matthias Pintscher and Magnus Lindberg) who are able to watch one another. Listening to it, I could visualize the notes rising above us and forming a sort of alternate universe of their own in the space. And when one chord chased its way through the three orchestras in succession, it felt like a rendition of the Doppler effect.


A small percentage of the audience made an exodus after the Stockhausen, which was obviously their reason for coming, but they missed the most beautiful work of the program: Ives' The Unanswered Question, a shimmering meditation that came across as both simple and vastly complex. It was the punctuation to an evening of possibilities and experiments for the venerable Philharmonic, and another success for the Armory.

Streb and Merce End Things with a Bang at the Armory, 1/16/12

-->

Streb and Merce End Things with a Bang at the Armory

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/streb-and-merce-cunningham-dance-co-end-things-with-a-bang-at-the-armory/2057/

Merce Cunningham Dance Company in Park Avenue Armory "Events." Photo by Anna Finke, courtesy Cunningham Dance Foundation.

Two recent end-of-2011 dance events at the Park Avenue Armoryunderscored the venue’s potential for artistic discourse on a grand scale—Elizabeth Streb’s Kiss the Air! and Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s final Eventsleading up to New Year’s Eve. Both performances felt carnivalesque; Kiss the Air! truly like a three-ring circus, complete with a barking ringmaster. The dancers’ (or “action engineers”) entrances set the bar high, literally, as each, hanging from a t-bar strung from a descending cable, swooped down from a tower, slamming at high speed, full-force, into a padded pillar.

As the show unfolded, they worked through the installations of equipment scattered throughout the vast drill hall. Streb’s apparatus (credited to her and Hudson Scenic) are often sculptures in and of themselves, such as one that is essentially a rotating ladder from which the dancers hung, balanced, in pairs or groups, spinning faster and faster. Springboards propelled with compressed air made the dancers graceful projectiles before falling to earth. (Obviously landings are a key, but even done properly, you have to wonder about repeated impacts.) And in an overly long section, they dove off of a multi-tiered Hollywood Squares-like structure, splatting on mats in formation. The raucous finale involved bungee harnessed dancers, a shallow pool, and much juvenile splashing of the audience, but not before cannonballs were dropped onto concrete blocks (in plexiglass sleeves), shattering into shards and dust just inches from the audience, apparently for the shock value. Several live and recorded videos were projected onto huge screens, and swivelling lights enhanced the circus feel.

Lincoln (Center Festival) Log, 7/14/11

-->

Lincoln (Center Festival) Log: Royal Shakespeare Co. at Park Avenue Armory, Mariinsky Ballet at Met.

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/ballet/lincoln-center-festival-log/1457/

On Vanishing. Photo by Michael Hart.

The end of an era began two years ago, when Merce Cunningham passed away. After an intense period of (ongoing) mourning by the dance world and the world at large, plans were unveiled by the company for the ominously titled Legacy Tour, which is in its final stages, after which the company will disband. The third-to-last New York phase took place last weekend as part of Lincoln Center Festival. (It will appear in BAM’s Next Wave Festival in December with three programs, and then leading up to New Year’s Eve at the Park Avenue Armory. Then, kaput.) But meanwhile, at the Guggenheim a few days prior to “Merce Fair,” MCDC alumnus Jonah Bokaer was quietly adding to his own oeuvre (and, in a sense, to Merce’s) with a polished, solid work, On Vanishing.

Tune-In Festival: From Bach to Reich, 2/24/11

-->

Tune-In Festival at Park Avenue Armory

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/tune-in-festival-from-bach-to-reich/1077/

Tune-In Festival. Photo by James Ewing.

You can’t fault the musical ensemble eighth blackbird, curators of the Park Avenue Armory’s recent Tune-In Festival, for lacking ambition. The program I caught,PowerLESS (one of four) had a listed runtime of three hours, but the evening lasted closer to four hours. Granted, it featured works that were supposed to be about form and not content (the prior night, PowerFUL, was about loaded work), but there was still an awful lot of form to process. The festival is part of an eclectic season at the Armory; highlights to come include the RSC in residence in a replica of the Globe Theater, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s final performances ever.

Leading off the program was George Haas’ in vain (2000), performed by the Argento Chamber Ensemble conducted by Michel Galante. For me, the highlights were less about the music, perhaps best summarized by the title—shimmering pools and wavelets of sound that ebbed and flowed seamlessly—and more about the blackouts that occurred periodically, during which the musicians continued to play. We in the capacity audience of 725 were left to close our eyes or raise our hungry gazes upward, where sparsely-spaced LEDs twinkled like stars in the cavernous Wade Thompson Drill Hall; strobe lights in the pitch dark added a tear-inducing lightning effect. Steven Schick performed Kurt Schwitters’ UrSonate (1922-32), a devilish tour de force composed of gibberish phrases repeated and sampled. Some took on the cadences of imagined sentences, and others became amusingly absurd in Schick’s ardent performance.

Armed with Dance Moves, 2/25/10

-->

Brennan Gerard/Ryan Kelly’s Armory Show, site specific performance at Park Avenue Armory

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/performance/armed-with-dance-moves/803/

The Park Avenue Armory has become an increasingly alluring venue for performances in the past few years, as the location for events such as Lincoln Center Festival’s Die Soldaten,Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Ephémères, and now Brennan Gerard/Ryan Kelly’s Armory Show, co-presented by Moving Theater and the Park Avenue Armory. Performed last weekend, the company of dancers and actors, plus the musicians of ICE, inhabited the ornate side halls, capacious even though minute compared to the main Armory space, and bedecked with wrought-iron candelabras and sconces. The audience sat on risers watching the action performed in between two halls; we later followed the players into another room with a small Juliet balcony. Live, close circuit video was projected onto two screens overhead, so we were able to watch live the dancers as they gamboled in the hallways of the complex.

Les Ephemeres—Theater Alchemy, 7/21/09

-->

Theatre de Soleil—Les Ephemeres at Park Avenue Armory

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/performance/les-ephemeres%E2%80%94theater-alchemy/731/

Ariane Mnouchkine/Théâtre de Soleil’s Les Éphémères, which closed this last Sunday, July 19th, is one of those productions that elicits from New Yorkers periodic European theater awe. Much of it is from the mise-en-scène, the overall set-up of the working space on and offstage, contained inside the hulking Park Avenue Armory, co-presenters with Lincoln Center Festival. And then there is its seven-hour total length, split into two shows.

Every detail conspired: from the ushers and greeters, who seem so more polite than the usual. The cast’s dressing area—with communal make-up tables and racks of costumes lit by golden incandescent light, revealed by parted, striped tent curtains. The atmospheric music that summons up things that have nothing to do with real life. The company’s shipping crates, warmed by votive candles, even enchant.