Tag: New Museum

Pepon Osorio at the New Museum

When he had a son in the 90s, Puerto Rico-born artist Pepon Osorio started thinking of how to raise him without perpetuating unwanted ideas about masculinity. This consideration (and a commission from Real Art Ways in Connecticut) led the artist to create the multi-media installation ‘No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop,’ now on view at the New Museum in a solo survey show presenting Osorio’s work from the 90s to today.  Originally installed in a working-class Puerto Rican neighborhood in Hartford, CT, the installation sprang from community conversations identifying barber shops as places where “…ideas surrounding machismo are formed and performed in Latinx culture from generation to generation.”  Overwhelming in its decorative detail, the recreated barbershop builds a powerful and absorbingly complex picture of male identity formation from the influence of actors, sports heroes and other public figures to the car culture alluded to in wall-mounted hubcaps.  (On view through Sept 17th).

Pepon Osorio, installation view of ‘No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop (En la barberia no se llora), mixed mediums and video installation, 1994.

Kapwani Kiwanga at the New Museum

Paris-based artist Kapwani Kiwanga’s fifth floor exhibition ‘Off-Grid’ at the New Museum makes powerful use of the gallery’s high ceilings with two large-scale installations employing evocative materials.  Lengths of light-colored sisal hang in a curving grid to create what the museum calls a ‘warm cocoon,’ though with the piece, Kiwanga also references the freighted history of sisal in Tanzania, from colonial introduction to contemporary export.  The show’s other piece, a two-part combination of geometric mirrors and hanging beads, features surfaces spray coated with aluminum meticulously harvested from floodlight reflectors used by urban police forces.  The metallic surface reflects the gallery’s natural light, vs the light of nighttime surveillance.  (On view on the Lower East Side through Sept 5th).

Kapwani Kiwanga, installation view of ‘Off-Grid’ at the New Museum, July 2022.

Hans Haacke at Paula Cooper Gallery

If you can’t get to politically-oriented artist Hans Haacke’s New Museum retrospective before it closes on Jan 26th, check out his huge pack of Marlboros in Paula Cooper Gallery’s tiny 21st St vitrine-like space, a sculpture about the relationships between art, politics and commerce.  Made in 1990, the piece highlights cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris Company’s contradictory support both for the arts and for North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who was famously critical of government support for the arts.  Each five-foot long cigarette features a copy of the constitution (the company offered to supply a copy to anyone who asked), while the packaging bears the statement that the company’s ‘fundamental interest in the arts is self-interest.’  (On view through Jan 25th).

Hans Haacke, Helmsboro County, silkscreen prints and photographs on wood, cardboard and paper, 30 ½ x 80 x 47 ½ inches, 1990.

Pipilotti Rist at the New Museum

Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist shouts for help in several languages, adding, ‘I am a worm and you are a flower!’ as she reaches up from a burning pit of lava in this 1994 video at the New Museum.  Part of Rist’s retrospective exhibition, it’s a tiny but powerful appeal to our empathic natures. (On the Lower East Side through Jan 15th).

Pipilotti Rist, Selbstlos im Lavabad (Selfless in The Bath of Lava)(Bastard Version), single-channel video and sound installation, color, on mobile phone; 6:20 min, 1994.
Pipilotti Rist, Selbstlos im Lavabad (Selfless in The Bath of Lava)(Bastard Version), single-channel video and sound installation, color, on mobile phone; 6:20 min, 1994.

Goshka Macuga at the New Museum

Miroslav Tichy surreptitiously photographed unsuspecting women in the Czech Republic for decades; the resulting images are often celebrated in New York galleries and museums. For her solo show at the New Museum, Polish-born artist Goshka Macuga created this tapestry, featuring women from Tichy’s photos (and other sources) along with two women who wear body suits based on Tichy’s drawings.  The women in the tapestry clean Karl Marx’s tombstone, summoning not workers but women to unite. (At the New Museum through June 26th).

Goshka Macuga, Death of Marxism, Women of All Lands Unite, wool tapestry, collection of the Broad Art Foundation, 2013.
Goshka Macuga, Death of Marxism, Women of All Lands Unite, wool tapestry, collection of the Broad Art Foundation, 2013.