Art21 New York Close Up

Weekly Roundup

Charles Atlas. "Joints Array," 2011.

Charles Atlas,"Joints Array," 2011. Video installation. Courtesy the artist and Vilma Gold, London.

In this week’s roundup, Charles Atlas gets close-up on Merce Cunningham’s joints, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photography is explored, Shana Moulton creates on-site art in China, and more.

  • Charles Atlas‘s Joints Array is on view in the ground-floor gallery at the New Museum (NYC).  This multimedia installation features excerpts of Atlas’s first Super-8 color films of Merce Cunningham: close-up shots of a wrist, elbow, ankle, and knee capture the dancer’s unique style of movement and function as a fractured portrait of motion and form. Atlas’s films, videos, installations, performances, set, and lighting designs have involved several collaborations with artists, including Mika Tajima.  This show closes August 28.
  • Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s year-long project, Origins of Art is a four-part exhibition that began at the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (Japan) last year and explores the inspirations behind the artist’s photography.  The third exhibition, entitled History, includes prints from negatives created by the inventor of negative-positive photography William Henry Fox Talbot, stylized sculpture images of the changing forms of twentieth century fashion in context, and other works of historical inquiry. The current exhibition is on view until August 21.
  • Jessica Stockholder is part of the group exhibition, Not About Paint, at Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston).  In this show, Stockholder’s featured work investigates the ordinary as art object and the artist lists as its components: “carpet, framed leather, yarn, plastic parts, place mat, shelving unit part …’’ The show closes August 20.
  • Shana Moulton is part of Shift, an exhibition on young American and Chinese artists creating on-site artwork at the Guangdong Times Museum in China  The show features various works that use materials found in major wholesale markets in Guangzhou and local manpower. Additionally, five Chinese artists from around the country will interact with the Americans at the Museum. Each evening seminar invites one Chinese artist and one American artist to present their works, followed by discussions and idea exchanges with the other artists on issues that concern them.  This exhibition is on view until August 28.

 

  • Jeff Koons‘s BMW Art Car, among others by famous artists from around the world, recently had its Internet world premiere.  BMW is offering a virtual tour online of the collection with information and videos about the production process. The videos include racing footage and clips of artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Koons at work.
  • Cao Fei is currently featured in San Francisco Arts Quarterly.  Charlotte Miller covers the artist’s “critical vocabularies of artistic expression through the use of ‘games’ as an art form in The Gamificiation of Everyday Life: Cao Fei’s COSplayers, 2004.  The article highlights Cao’s role as an observer, creating “docu-dramas” that capture the daily realities of the new urban youth generation in China.