Tag: migration

Broomberg & Chanarin at signsandsymbols.art

London and Berlin-based artists and photography professors Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin’s short film, ‘The Bureaucracy of Angels’ grabs the imagination immediately with an unlikely casting choice; the star of the show – a mechanical wrecking arm – makes a riveting appearance as a soulful ballad singer lamenting the pain of migration.  Currently available to watch via the Lower East Side gallery Signs & Symbols’ website, the piece’s premise is absurd but the effect is first mesmerizing, then moving.  Part destroyer, part guardian, the machine keeps watch over migrants being intercepted by rescue agencies before eventually wrecking boats abandoned by travelers who made it to Sicily.  (Available online at signsandsymbols.art through May 13th).

Broomberg & Chanarin, still from ‘The Bureaucracy of Angels,’ 2017.

Michal Rovner at Pace Gallery

Lines of moving silhouettes endlessly crisscross rugged terrain in ‘Blue Hills,’ an arresting video at the entrance to Michal Rovner’s latest solo show at Pace Gallery.  Suggesting constant migration across inhospitable land, the piece’s calm colors belie more overt alarm in several of the show’s other works, in which bodies with flashing red lights for heads or constantly waving arms sound a warning.  Reflecting on the role of technology in our daily lives, Rovner muses that we are becoming ‘bar codes with DNA.’  (On view at Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location through June 29th).

Michal Rovner, Blue Hills, LCD screen and video, 57 1/8 x 32 5/8 x 3 3/8 inches, 2018.

Benjamin Degen at Susan Inglett Gallery

Naked feet running along the shore at night in this painting by Benjamin Degen at Susan Inglett Gallery could belong to cavorting friends or fleeing migrants.  The lack of distinction is the point; Degen created his latest paintings “…in celebration of human movement” and in favor of choosing liberation over self-destruction.  (On view in Chelsea through March 10th).

Benjamin Degen, Night Move, oil and spray enamel on canvas, 60 x 84 inches, 2018.

Tiffany Chung at Tyler Rollins Fine Art

Tiffany Chung’s meticulous maps plot migration crises around the world, turning conflict into art that informs. In this detail from an eleven-foot long embroidered world map at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, circles stand in for groups of internally displaced people offering a glimpse into the magnitude of global upheaval. (On view through Oct 21st in Chelsea).

Tiffany Chung, (detail of) IDMC: numbers of worldwide conflicts and disaster IDPs by end of 2016, embroidery on fabric, 55 x 137 ¾ inches, 2017.

Martin Roth at Louis B. James Gallery

Parakeets without owners occupy the upper reaches of Louis B James Gallery, while rubble shipped in suitcases from the Syrian/Turkish border is strewn on the floor, creating a situation that prompts meditation on freedom and migration by Austrian born, NY-based artist Martin Roth. (On the Lower East Side through Oct 18th).

Martin Roth, installation view of ‘untitled (debris)’ at Louis B. James Gallery, Oct 2015.