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).
