Weekly Roundup

Charles Atlas. "Views on Video," 2005. Image courtesy the artist.

In this week’s roundup Charles Atlas creates new montages; Arts for Transit mobile app features Elizabeth Murray, Maya Lin and Nancy Spero; William Kentridge discusses his work; and more.

• Charles Atlas’ first Dutch exhibition, Discount Body Parts, is at De Hallen Haarlem. The artist uses his extensive film and video archive to make new montages and combinations of footage. All three video installations in the show are new adaptations of existing films, videos and installations. A special part of the exhibition is a video installation focusing on Atlas’s collaborations with Merce Cunningham, whose dance company gave its last performance in December 2011. This work is on view through June 3.

• Elizabeth Murray, Maya Lin, Nancy Spero and several other artists’ works will soon be featured in a new MTA Arts for Transit mobile app for subway and commuter rail systems in New York City. The app will include photos, background information, and turn-by-turn directions for each of the different art installations. MTA Chairman stated, “This app will help our customers recognize that New York’s transportation system, besides helping 8.5 million people get to work every day, is a world-class art museum with works by many of the most renowned artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

• Fred Wilson‘s new solo show is at Pace Gallery (NYC). Venice Suite: Sala Longhi and Related Works, features Sala Longhi, a room-sized installation comprised of twenty-seven paintings made of black Murano glass, which reference Pietro Longhi’s 18th-century painting cycle in the “Sala Longhi” in the Palazzo ca’ Rezzonico in Venice. Wilson’s Sala Longhi was installed in Glasstress during the 2011 Venice Biennale. This is the first time that it will be shown in the United States. This work is on view until April 14.

• Judy Pfaff‘s work was selected by an alumnus from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS). Celebrating its 20th anniversary, CSS kicks off a new season with Matters of Fact, which revisits a number of key encounters from the institutional history of the Hessel Museum of Art–between collector and artist, curator and exhibition, and art and art history. The show is a collaboration between CCS curatorial and program staff, alumni and graduate students who have overseen the reinstallation of two exhibitions. The current show is open through May 27.

• Doris Salcedo‘s most recent work recently opened at Maxxi in Rome. She is presenting the installation Plegaria Muda, a message of pain but also, and above all, of hope. Plegaria Muda is an installation composed of over 100 pairs of wooden tables, in which each one is turned over another, from which thin blades of grass emerge. In its modular repetition, the work evokes a collective burial place and is a metaphor for sacrificial lives led on the margins of society. The exhibition closes June 24.

• Shana Moulton‘s opera performance Whispering Pines will take place at Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill, NC. The performance integrates a three-channel video system and live performance into an opera show. Moulton appears as a speechless main character, Cynthia, who searches for meaning in a world where God has faded from importance. The performances are scheduled for March 27 and 28, both nights starting at 7:30pm.

• William Kentridge talks with Five Themes curator Mark Rosenthal about the uncertainty, ambiguity and polemical politics in his work. The show is on view at the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI) through May 27.

 [youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq0r90xcYts]