Yesterday evening, another hot summer evening in the Lower East Side. The New Museum, is definitely a space quite in competition with the art shown, especially for installation based art. Nevertheless, I found the two main exhibitions quite engaging and well integrated in the "forceful" architectural space.
A Day Like Any Other, by the conceptual Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander, merges different themes ---temporality, language and quotidian poetics--- as well as media. The viewer is involved in participation at different levels, from writing their wishes to describe their first loves face to a police portrait artist.
Viewing the exhibition "Dream Machine" of works by Brion Gysin (1916-1986) was for me quite "educational". I learned more about Brion Gysin ---a poet, performer, painter and innovator who was a major figure in the Beat Culture. Gysin developed the Cut-Up Method, based on cutting the paper of written words and phrases into pieces and then rearranging them. Gysin's Cut-Up experiments, were also in collaboration with his lifelong friend William S. Burroughs, The exhibition also includes "an original Dreamachine—a kinetic light sculpture that utilizes the flicker effect to induce visions when experienced with closed eyes." Gysin was quite involved with the building at 222 Bowery, almost across the street from the New Museum, main landmark in the life of the Beat Generation now inhabited by another eclectic Beat creative, the poet and artist John Giorno, also former lover of Gysin.
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RivaneNeuenschwander, A Day Like Any Other
Brion Gysin, Dream Machine
