John Baldessari. "The First $100,000 I Ever Made," 2011. Photo by Bill Orcutt. Courtesy John Baldessari and the Marian Goodman Gallery.
In this week’s roundup: John Baldessari’s first $100,000, Mark Dion explores archeology in Istanbul, Krzysztof Wodiczko Dis-cusses his work, and more.
- John Baldessari erected a billboard that’s also a bill board of a $100,000 bill with Woodrow Wilson’s portrait at the center of a 25-foot-by-75-foot ad space. Only 42,000 of the real bills were printed during the Great Depression, and none of the bank notes circulated to the public. In fact, they’re illegal to own. The First $100,000 I Ever Made is on display near the High Line, an elevated luxury park in NYC.
- Mark Dion created a specially composed installation for Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914 at SALT Galata (Istanbul) that presents the story of archaeology in the Near East in a chronological narrative around selected archaeological sites. These works further address some of the issues raised by the conceptual framework of the exhibition and touch on our everyday understanding of and relationship to the field of archaeology. The exhibition is open until March 11, 2012.
- Krzysztof Wodiczko and Nina Katchadourian recently talked about DisFluency, a group exhibition and series of events in NYC that examine compromised communication as a universal human condition. Wodiczko’s Dis-Armor focuses on the “psycho-social situation of Japanese students and school refusers, with their difficulty of speech and facial expression,” who use “the ancient tradition of arms-making to conceive an alternative to face-to-face communication.” The work features a pair of video screens worn on the back that display live images of the wearer’s eyes from the cameras attached to helmets. A loudspeaker below the screens amplifies the wearer’s voice. This show closes December 16.
- James Turrell‘s new Skyspace will open on Winter Solstice at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. At more than 3,000 square feet, it is the largest Skyspace yet created, featuring a 24 foot square aperture in the canopy 35 feet above, and a central colonnade composed of columns 20 feet high. Located in the William G. and Marie Selby Foundation Courtyard of the Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing of the Ringling Museum of Art, this is the only Skyspace in Florida and one of only two public Skyspaces on the East Coast. The Skyspace will officially open during Greet the Light: Solstice Celebration in the Courtyard taking place from 8:00 pm to midnight on the Winter Solstice, December 22, 2011.
- Coming soon is Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle‘s group exhibition, Placemakers, at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. Always After (The Glass House) is the fifth, final installment of a set of works that Manglano-Ovalle filmed in buildings by Mies van der Rohe. In this HD video, Manglano-Ovalle documents an event that “refers to the end of the utopia of transparency.” The work observes a ceremonial window smashing — by Mies’ own grandson — and aftermath at Mies’ Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus in Chicago. The show will run January 13 – March 31, 2012.