camminando | NYC Post Blizzard

Central Park, Oak Bridge

Life return almost to normal on Sunday, after the second biggest snowstorm recorded in New York City. Snow accumulation reached 63 cm in Central Park, only a few millimeters shy off the 63.8cm recorded in 2006.
It was sunny and cold, yet the snow was already turning into slush.

Central Park

Central Park West

Hamilton Fountain, Riverside Park

Broadway at 77 Street

camminando | NYC 2016 snowscapes

Winter storm Jonas, the first massive 2016 snowstorm, has arrived to NYC. Impressive record numbers, with blizzard warning 28 inches accumulation at JFK airport. Travel ban has been issued since 2:30 pm this afternoon, no subway or buses.
Below are my first snowscape impressions from a stroll in Central this afternoon at about 3pm.

Broadway at 72nd Street, Verdi Statue covered by snow

Central Park views

Central Park West at 77th Street, looking south

vernissages | NYC January 11-18

Marcel Drama & Raymond Pettibon "Forgetting the hand" at David Zwirner Gallery

vernissages NYC | William Kentridge "More Sweetly Play the Dance" at Marian Goodman Gallery

Immersion is the first word which came to my mind while the elevator opened to the Marian Goodman Gallery, where the multi-channel film installations More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015)  & Notes Toward a Model Opera  (2015) opened yesterday. The two installation are 2015 works by the South African artist William Kentridge (1955): More  Sweetly  Play  the  Dance was commissioned   by   the   EYE   Filmmuseum   Amsterdam   and   the   Lichtsicht- Projection  Biennale,  in  Bad Rothenfelde (Germany) and Notes  Toward  a  Model  Opera,  was firtst shown  at  the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing fin June 2015.

 

 

More Sweetly Play the Dance is defined by the gallery press release as "an eight-screen danse macabre,  reminding  one  of  the  medieval  tradition  which  summons  diverse  vestiges  of  humanity  in  a paradox  of  revelry  and  mourning.  Kentridge  presents  us  with  part  carnival,  protest,  and exodus:  a 45 metre caravan traversing in a sphere around us with figures in procession, a form the  artist  invoked  in  his  1999 Shadow  Procession." 
The  three-screen  film  installation Notes  Towards  a  Model  Opera is  part of series of works which according to by  Kentridge   “ respond unwittingly  to  the  despair  at  the  end  of  utopian projects.”

 

Vernissages | NYC, January 5-9

My picks from the first vernissages of 2016 in New York, from the Upper West Side and Midtown to Chelsea and Tribeca.

January 5: Soho Photo

January 7: Tilton Gallery

January 7: Perrotin Gallery

January 7: Blum & Poe Gallery

January 7: Pace McGill

 January 7: Sean Kelly Gallery

January 7: Lincoln Center

January 8: Roger Hiorns at Luhring Augustine Gallery

January 9: Coco Fusco at Alexander Gray Gallery

January 9: Bortolami Gallery

 

January 9: Claude Bragdon, 3D printing and textiles at Paula Cooper Gallery from Auerbach

January 9: Voices from the Estate of Marting Wong

January 9: Andrew Kreps Gallery

Exhibitions | In the Name of Geometry: "Frank Stella: a Retrospective" at the Whitney

The rigorously simple yet majestic volumes of the fifth floor of the Whitney have been transformed in a feast of forms and colors, where geometric explorations are the connecting thread of the multi-scale and multi-media works. It the retrospective of Frank Stella’s work spanning over six decades of work of the American artist (b. 1936), one of the greatest examples of contemporary geometric abstraction.
Both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional works are at the crossover between art and architecture; the scale of the paintings and sculpture is such that the artworks transcend the boundary of the object to enclose surrounding space.

 

Some of the iconic paintings, characterized by band of colors defining geometric primitives, span over twenty meters, transforming the space of the galleries in a built homage to color and geometry. The three-dimensional work also seems to aim to a transformation of space, transcending the boundary of geometry to become installation art. In his sculptural work Stella  artist uses a diverse set of material, often found in industrial construction: fiberglass, bent metal sheets, steel tubing, perforated metal; more recently the often rough materials are combined with highly detailed 3D printed smaller components.

 

     The regular geometry of the painting evolves into the irregular forms of the three-dimensional works—yet driven by geometric foundation. Regular geometries reappear in the most recent three-dimensional work: Plato solids and Kepler polyhedra are source of inspiration for the 2014 large scale outdoor sculptures: Wooden Star 1  (570 x 570 x 570 cm) and the carbon fiber Black Star (520 x 520 x520 cm). Quite ironically the artist's last name "Stella" is the Italian word for "star".

     Missing from the exhibition is a “personal touch”: the process behind the works could have been included to define a fluid continuity between the final production and the creative impulse behind mediated by the many diverse media used by the artists, from physical actions to digital design and fabrication, in the fluid encounter between forms and materials.
    Yet the exhibition is so powerful and engrossing, a pure joy of colors and forms, which perhaps leaves the visitors with curiosity about the beauty of geometry.