Tag: installation

Pipilotti Rist at Hauser & Wirth Gallery and Luhring Augustine Gallery

Iconic Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist is acutely attuned to the comfort of her audiences.  Visitors to her atrium-filling video installation at MoMA in 2008 might have lounged on a low couch while another level of relaxation – beds – awaited at the artist’s New Museum retrospective in 2016.  Rist’s current show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea offers both a bed and assorted furniture, enticing the public into the artwork itself to be bathed in constantly morphing patterns and images.  Rist (seen in this photo conversing with visitors) conceived of Hauser & Wirth’s back gallery space as a living room; her simultaneous show at Luhring Augustine Gallery is a projection-filled back yard.  (On view at Hauser & Wirth through Jan 13th and at Luhring Augustine through Feb 3rd).

Pipilotti Rist, (installation view) Welling Color Island West, video installation with projector skirt, projection on carpet, plants and furniture, silent, unique, dimensions variable, 2023.

Kayode Ojo at 52 Walker

“If you look at the work, it is actually posing for you,’ explained New York artist Kayode Ojo in a past video describing his elegantly spare sculptural installations, now on view at 52 Walker in Tribeca.  Having studied photography before becoming known for in-the-round artworks, Ojo now creates arrangements of fast-fashion clothing, accessories and other objects sourced via on-line shopping that elicit admiration and desire.  By titling each artwork with the text originally used to sell each it, Ojo centers his practice squarely in conversations about consumption while transporting each piece into the realm of luxury art object.  (On view in Tribeca through Jan 6th).

Kayode Ojo, Comfort, New Orleans 4-Light Clear Unique/Statement Geometric Chandelier with Crystal Accents, 84 x 72 x 16 inches, 2023.

Shilpa Gupta at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

‘Uncontrollable Desirrs,’ ‘Between Places’ and ‘Until they Dsiappear’ are among the suggestive phrases that appear in Shilpa Gupta’s ‘StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream’ flapboard sculpture at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.  The sound of the board’s moving panels creates a sense of dynamism and anticipation as the text constantly changes, while the words themselves conjure unsettled feelings compounded by Gupta’s use of alternative spellings of select words.  In the show’s other works, Gupta speaks the works of jailed poets into bottles, capping them and arranging them in an ‘reimagined library’ and presents a sound installation of protest songs sung globally, a collective tribute to the power of words and the need to protect freedom of speech. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 16th).

StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream, motion flapboard, 35 min loop, 93 ½ x 5 x 9 ½ inches, 2021.

Sui Park at Sapar Contemporary

Water worn rocks, amoebas, cells, sea creatures and more come to mind in Sui Park’s exhibition of colorful abstract sculpture at Sapar Contemporary in Tribeca.  Crafting her work from looped cable ties and monofilaments, Park turns mass-produced plastic materials into artworks that, ironically, foster appreciation of the natural world. This installation’s handsome black background color is somewhat misleading; titled ‘Sprinkles,’ Park has explained that she was inspired by dessert sprinkles.  (On view through Nov 27th.)

Sui Park, Sprinkles, cable ties, hand-dyed cable ties, variable size, 2023.

Tony Cragg at Lisson Gallery

Protesters and police clash in a blaze of color in British sculptor Tony Cragg’s 1987 piece ‘Riot’ a sculptural installation running the length of one of Lisson Gallery’s Chelsea spaces.  Forty years ago, Cragg made a name for himself with artworks and installations composed of found plastic elements, a material that lacked the associations carried by more traditional media like bronze, marble or wood.  Inspired by social unrest in ‘80s Britain, Cragg employs a modern material, fragmented and formerly discarded, to illustrate conflict between citizen and state. (On view in Chelsea through April 15th).

Tony Cragg, detail of installation of Riot, 1987 at Lisson Gallery in Chelsea, March ’23.