Brooklyn-based Danish artist Joachim Koester channels the wild west in a distinctly avant-garde way in his absorbing video installation, The Place of Dead Roads, in which dancers dressed as grubby gunslingers move around an eerie boarded-up space as if locked in a tense shootout, all without weapons or an obvious enemy. (At Chelsea’s GreenNaftali through Feb 14th).
Joachim Koester, The Place of Dead Roads, HD video installation, color, sound, 33:30 min, 2013.
New media takes a turn for the traditional in David Hockney’s new series at Pace Gallery, for which his iPad drawings are displayed as prints. Still, the Brit art icon’s colors remain vibrant, transforming the English countryside with fantastical, south-of-France brightness. (At Pace’s 508 West 25th Street space in Chelsea through Nov 1st).
David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) – 5 May, 2011, iPad drawing printed on paper, 55” x 41 ½”
Japanese collaborative digital artist group teamLab are making a huge splash on the New York art scene this summer with their exhibition, ‘Ultra Subjective Space.’ A seven screen installation featuring animated mythological crows in impossibly complicated flight patterns, an endlessly blossoming outcropping, a digital waterfall and more make this stunning show one to remember. (In Chelsea at Pace Gallery through August 15th, 2014).
Guido van der Werve’s 2007 video ‘Nummer acht’ is a standout in Marlborough Gallery’s excellent ‘Lone Tree,’ a show dedicated to artists inspired by 19th century painter of the sublime landscape, Caspar David Friedrich. The Dutch artist walked about 10 meters in front of a towering ice-breaker off the frozen coast of Finland, suggesting bravery and folly in equal measure in one lone individual. (In Chelsea through May 3rd.)
Guido Van Der Werve, Nummer acht, Everything is going to be alright, 16mm to HD, 10 minutes, 10 seconds, 2007.
Mariano Sardon not only gives us portraits, he tells us how we look at them. The Buenos Aires-based Argentinian artist shows a picture of a face to viewers while a camera records their eye movements. The information from many viewers is then mapped onto the face, which is drawn before our eyes following the sequences of the gazes. (At Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 21st).
Mariano Sardon, from the series ‘150 Gazes looking around them,’ digital video, 2012.
