Weekly Roundup
Co Lab: Jenny Holzer with Miguel Gutierrez at ICA Boston, 2010. Photo Credit: Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe
Soon after last week’s roundup went live, I discovered a Jenny Holzer event happening in my backyard. In this week’s roundup, CNN shows William Kentridge drawing apartheid, Scotland shows William Wegman’s beloved Weimaraners, Julie Mehretu is about to show her new Manhattan studio work, and much more.
- For three nights last week the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (ICA) projected poetry onto it’s northwest-facing facade. The text is by Wislawa Szymborska and it was conceived and arranged by Jenny Holzer. The event was a collaboration between Holzer and performance artist Miguel Gutierrez as part of the Co-Lab series at the ICA.
- 20th Century Abstract Art from the Ringling Collection is currently on view featuring pieces by Richard Serra, among others. The show is composed entirely of the museum’s permanent collection and provides a “glimpse at this watershed moment in the history of Western art. Visitors will experience in two galleries work by many of the pioneers of this artistic revolution, and its various manifestations, which has become a hallmark of high modernism.”
- CNN’s African Voices showcased William Kentridge whose art has “chronicled South Africa’s shift from an apartheid to a post-apartheid society, evokes the tensions and memories of the former regime and reflects the inequalities of modern life.” Kentridge told CNN, “This is where I’ve lived for 55 years,” he said, explaining how the city inspires him. [It] is a city that deconstructs itself the whole time, it’s busy erasing itself the way you erase a drawing.”
- The City Art Centre in Scotland reopened on 31 July 2010 and is exhibiting William Wegman: Family Combinations that explores the “extraordinary photographic relationship with his beloved family of Weimaraners. This is the first comprehensive show of Wegman’s work in Scotland and the only UK opportunity to catch this exceptional photographic display.” The show highlights 25 years of Wegman‘s photography celebrating Weimaraners and are from the artist’s personal collection. Many have rarely been exhibited in public.
The Search
Following is a final post from our previous guest blogger, Baseera Khan. — Ed.
On Saturday March 20, I practically walked my way up from Chelsea to 125th Street. It was one of those days where every cab disappeared and every subway wrapped their platforms with pink ribbon. The whole modern city had shut down for repairs. My pedestrian efforts led me to Maysles Cinema, a non-profit theater in Harlem dedicated to the exhibition of documentary film and video. That night, the cinema was hosting a Tibetan filmmaker named Pema Tseden who, on his first trip to the US from Tibet, presented one of his films called The Search.
The Search depicts a movie director and his crew navigating through the vast Himalayan Mountains in and around Lhasa, Tibet. The group travels by way of sports utility vehicle (SUV), searching for dramatic characters and elements for a film adaptation of the Tibetan opera, Prince Drime Kundun — though what exactly they are looking for that they cannot quite describe. What they do find seems rooted in specific places, and their search is complicated by the expansive passages from one town to the next. Lhasa, located at the bottom of a small basin surrounded by mountains, has an elevation of about 11,800 feet, and lies in the center of the Tibetan Plateau with the surrounding mountains rising to 18,000 feet. The film tells a familiar story, pitting modernity against traditional culture and it questions how the expansive role of movies can capture the micro-narratives that each town embodies. Ambivalent himself, Tseden’s work suggests that the greatest weapon his native culture has against the forces of modernization is its domineering landscape.
The space and conversation is typically enveloped by the landscape in this film, as the director quotes, “I don’t shoot close-ups of my characters, I want the view to take part in directing the story.” Tseden does this by placing the characters far enough away from the viewer to suggest room for interpretation. Communication is difficult, the film claims. A boy is bribed with school supplies to run a message from one town to the next. Inevitably, the words will change in the space between one town and the next and in this space, Tseden seems to find the heart of his Tibet.
