Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest 3

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capecodchandelier-1

The artist calls this 2001 work ‘Cape Cod Chandelier’. She goes on to say:

I like to surprise people with their reactions to these chandeliers. under-trousers cover the exits for the body’s garbage, so seeing them placed centrally in a room, giving off light, causes some people to think, ugh! that’s underwear! but others find underwear sexy. the chandeliers bridge the contradictions between the things we ignore and the things we long for, the places we come from and want to go back into.

(Source: pipilotti rist: the tender room).

In case it’s not obvious from the above, the entire piece is made from underwear.

Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest 2

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shadowpeople-1

Shadow people 1.

This was the second room we visited in the exhibition – on another floor and with a completely different feel. I much preferred it to the first (see: Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest 1). This one was full of moving lights and video projected onto walls and drapes (which also moved).

Fascinating thought it was, I was more interested in the shadows cast by the people moving through the exhibition. I’m calling this series of pictures “Shadow people”.

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Shadow people 2

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Shadow people 3

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Shadow people 4

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Shadow people 5

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Shadow people 6

Although this was the first picture I took in this room, I like this picture least. I prefer the touch of mystery when you can’t actually make out the people casting the shadows.

Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest 1

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pixelforest-1

Last November we went to see an exhibition at the New Museum in New York City. It was by Swiss Artist Pilotti Risk and I must admit that I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It spanned several floors and the Museum’s website describes it as follows:

Over the past thirty years, Rist (b. 1962) has achieved international renown as a pioneer of video art and multimedia installations. Her mesmerizing works envelop viewers in sensual, vibrantly colored kaleidoscopic projections that fuse the natural world with the technological sublime. Referring to her art as a “glorification of the wonder of evolution,” Rist maintains a deep sense of curiosity that pervades her explorations of physical and psychological experiences. Her works bring viewers into unexpected, all-consuming encounters with the textures, forms, and functions of the living universe around us.

Occupying the three main floors of the Museum, “Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest” is the most comprehensive presentation of Rist’s work in New York to date. It includes work spanning the artist’s entire career, from her early single-channel videos of the 1980s, which explore the representation of the female body in popular culture, to her recent expansive video installations, which transform architectural spaces into massive dreamlike environments enhanced by hypnotic musical scores. Featuring a new installation created specifically for this presentation, the exhibition also reveals connections between the development of Rist’s art and the evolution of contemporary technologies. Ranging from the television monitor to the cinema screen, and from the intimacy of the smartphone to the communal experience of immersive images and soundscapes, this survey charts the ways in which Rist’s work fuses the biological with the electronic in the ecstasy of communication.

Pipilotti Rist was born in Grabs in the Rhine Valley, Switzerland, and currently lives and works in Zurich. She studied graphic design, illustration, and photography at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and audiovisual communications and video at the Basel School of Design. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented internationally at venues including Kunsthaus Zürich (2016); Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2015); Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2013); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2012); Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2011); the Hayward Gallery, London (2011); the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2011); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2009); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2007); and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2006); among many others. Rist was awarded the Zurich Festival Prize (2013), the Harper’s Bazaar Art China Prize (2012), and the Joan Miró Prize (2009).

The picture was taken on the first floor we encountered. It was actually a lot darker than it appears in the photograph.

Did I like the exhibition? Yes, I believe I did. Unfortunately, it closed in January, 2017

Peekskill Riverwalk Park – Fjorward

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fjorward-1

A nearby sign reads

FJORWARD
Christine Corday
Weathering Steel

The Hudson River is a fjord that was carved by ancient ice flows, and moves both north and south. This is abstracted by a circular band that is held in tension by two directional plates, separated by an inch of air. It represents a continuous carving of time and space, just as the ice flow did millennia before. The weathered Cor-ten steel is reminiscent of Peekskill’s historic iron foundries. “Fjorward” phonetically echoes the natural history of the site, but also symbolizes human progress as people move through the sculpture – one visitor at a time.

2014

According to Wikipedia:

Christine Corday (born in 1970, Laurel, Maryland) is an American painter and sculptor. Her work draws from earlier studies in astronomy, cultural anthropology, chemistry, and sensory perception science. Corday’s artistic approach consist of manipulation of matter into different states, producing massive sculptures that viewers are meant to experience through touch, leaving memories on the surface of her work. Her works are found in private international collections: Paris, Madrid, Dublin, Tokyo, Los Angeles, San Miguel de Allende, Dubai, Brussels, Washington DC, and New York City. With Corday’s first solo exhibition: PROTOIST SERIES: SELECTED FORMS, presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Peekskill Riverwalk Park – Tides

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tides-1

A nearby sign reads:

Tides
Emil Alzamora
Bronze

Tides represents the spirit of eternal relaxation and enjoyment of two things that are dear to us – family and loved ones and communion with the world in which we live. Tides softened details bring to mind subtle aquatic forms – waves, ripples, reflections – that one might find in the Hudson River on a calm day. The smooth surfaces transport the figures through a timeless doorway into another dimension, inviting the viewer to join them in a place of ease and contentment, forever observing the ebb and flow of the waters before. us.

2014

According to the Emil Alzamora website (in the bio/artist statement):

Emil Alzamora was born in Lima, Peru in 1975. His family moved to Boca Grande, Florida when he was two. He later attended Florida State University where he graduated Magna cum Laude in 1998 earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts. Alzamora harnesses a wide range of materials and techniques to deliver unexpected interpretations of the sculpted human figure. He often distorts, elongates, deconstructs, or encases his forms to reveal an emotional or physical situation, or to tell a story. Alzamora’s keen interest in the physical properties of his materials combined with his hands-on approach allow for the process to reveal and inform at once the aesthetic and the conceptual.

Alzamora started his sculpting career in the Hudson Valley of New York working with Polich Tallix in the fall of 1998. Since his departure from the art foundry in early 2001, he has produced his work full-time and shown regularly throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Alzamora’s works have been exhibited in multiple solo and group shows, many national and international art fairs as well as the United Nations Building, Pepsico World Headquarters, The Queens Museum of Art, The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, and The Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas. His work has been reviewed by publications such as The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, The L Magazine, El Diario, Boston Metro News, Juxtapoz, High Fructose, ArteFuse and Cool Hunting. He currently lives and works in Beacon, NY.