The party continues in the Museum of Modern Art’s atrium (which this fall has housed group dance sessions and a monumental garage sale) with British designer Philip Worthington’s interactive installation, ‘Shadow Monsters.’ When visitors stand in front of a lightbox, vision recognition software tracks their movements and adds teeth, tongues, eyes and more to their shadows in two huge projections on the atrium walls. (Through January 2nd.)
Artist Nicholas Party is aptly named considering his mixed media installation, ‘Dinner for 24 Dogs’ which he designed for a dinner party at Salon 94 this fall. Seen here afterwards at Salon94’s Freemans Alley space, 24 hand painted ceramic plates that once held artistically arranged edibles rest on a sliced, patterned table while wooden dogs wait patiently below to support the diners who complete this participatory artwork. (At the LES’s Salon 94 Freemans through Dec 22nd).
Rodney Graham is the artist behind this brightly colored lightbox titled ‘Sunday Sun, 1937,’ but who is the character hidden by the Technicolor funnies surrounded by gentile flowers on wallpaper and bedspread? Male or female, kid or adult, this character maintains his/her private world of reading pleasure with an upturned paper. (At 303 Gallery, Chelsea, through Dec 21st).
The sheer size of ‘Wandering Songs I (Canti errabondi I)’ from 1983 makes it a standout in ‘Mario Merz: Major Works from the 1980s’ at Sperone Westwater Gallery on the Lower East Side. The Arte Povera artist’s natural materials abound in an oil painting of leaves and pine cones on a 25’ long canvas, accompanied by a block of beeswax formed around a tree branch. The contrast between nature depicted (the painting), sampled (the branch) and made (wax made by bees) gives the piece its energy. (through Dec 22nd).
Here’s a look at Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream,’ a version of the iconic artwork from 1895 in pastel-on-cardboard, currently installed at the Museum of Modern Art. Recently purchased at auction for nearly $120 million, its owner has anonymously loaned it to the museum for six months. (Arrive early to avoid a new nonmembers line just to get into the fifth floor galleries.)