Álvaro Urbano: TABLEAU VIVANT

Álvaro Urbano: TABLEAU VIVANT at SculptureCenter, New York, 2024.

Álvaro Urbano's recent exhibition Tableau Vivant at SculptureCenter breathes new life into Scott Burton's Atrium Furnishment, a seminal public artwork originally installed in Manhattan’s Equitable Center in 1989 until 2020, when it was taken apart and stored. Rescued from demolition, Urbano revisits these pieces to discuss memory, queerness, and the creation of a ruin in progress.

Scott Burton, working in the 70s and 80s before dying of AIDS-related complications, was a prominent minimalist artist who queered the New York minimalist scene with his sensual designs. Atrium Furnishment, crafted from verde larissa marble and pink onyx, common materials in his work, symbolized the rigid corporate life through its circular arrangement resembling a clock’s face marking 9 to 5. Urbano disrupts this reference by scattering these elements across the gallery floor, transforming the sculptural installation into a trompe l'oeil landscape echoing the foliage of Central Park’s Ramble. A historical cruising area for queer communities active since Burden’s time. 

The exhibit invites viewers to admire the beauty in contrast. The sensual organic designs erected in cold, hard marble, overcrowded by dainty botanical motifs in painted metal, a queer sensibility that challenges the original corporate symbolism of the atrium. The juxtapositions highlight themes of growth against decay, bouncing back and forth from organic to rigid. Above, a light installation mimics a city grid, with a timed choreograph of changing colors and brightness. At times, the room was bathed in a warm glow with stark shadows, and later, there was a white light reminiscent of an office cubicle. The play on lights keeps the room in constant flux, animating the inanimate, creating an interplay between visibility and obscurity, the private and public. 

- Cristobal Cosio* Final

 

Cooper Hewitt, Liam Lee and Tommy Mishima: Game Room

Though not technically its own exhibition, Liam Lee and Tommy Mishima’s Game Room is one of twenty-five site-specific installations part of Cooper Hewitt’s thematically expansive museum-wide show, Making Home– Smithsonian Design Triennial. This collaborative installation is, however, read as its own exhibition, self-contained in a relatively small room, each installation with its own distinct theme. Game Room responds to the truest context of its location; the former office of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, found within Carnegie’s converted mansion. The installation combines Mishima’s schematic drawings– representing Carnegie’s network of influence in education, finance, science, and geopolitics– with Lee’s neon needle-felted wool furniture, organic and buoyant in form, resembling growing fungi. Additionally, Mishima’s Monopoly-style game, Philanthropy, sits in the center of the room. All of the work, playful in color, contrasts the geometric floor pattern and dark, rigid oak walls. 

The caption of Game Room claims the installation to be a critical examination of Carnegie, who ruthlessly built his fortune to become one of the richest men. Yet, the tone of that very text contradicts what the work claims to do, instead mentioning his ‘legacy’ and ‘profound influence.’ Rather than critically examining Carnegie, the artwork is inviting. Philanthropy, a version of which is playable during museum programs, allows one to imagine Carnegie there, friendly, and encouraging sales, fundraising, and grantmaking.

Certainly, Carnegie is objectified into reinterpretations and diagrammatic maps. However, this objectification is not done critically, but appearingly celebratory, similar to how a monument might objectify one into an idea of a hero. While the framework of the installation had potential, the work contradicts the concept it set out to complete, not taking itself seriously. 

-James DeBay

(Friday, 3:00 PM class)

 

Thomas Schütte: A Journey Through Perspectives

Thomas Schütte: A Journey Through Perspectives, at the MoMA

Thomas Schütte’s retrospective at the MoMA spans the entire 6th floor with moments of playfulness which dauntingly shines a flashlight on our present history. The viewer is first greeted by a large intimidating statue framed in the archway of a bright blue wall. One of the highlights of the exhibit is its display of Schütte's use of a variety of materials. Each room creates a unique environment for the work; the most notable being the watermelon room. Here, the work, Meloney, is in the center on the floor while paintings of minimalist melon slices are framed along the walls. 

Placing the work outside of the chronological order of Schütte’s career takes it out of its historical context, letting it speak to the contemporary world showing how history can inform the present. For instance, the Large Wall in its historical context drew comparisons to the Berlin Wall. Now we can apply it to the contemporary context of Trump’s agenda to build a wall. The illusion of a brick wall made from small maroon abstract paintings displayed in the pattern of a brick wall can be applied to multiple historical moments of division. 

Once one reaches the end of the exhibition a fallout shelter sits in the middle of the last room with a soundtrack playing faint sirens overtaken by a barking dog. An eerie feeling of doom and abandonment sticks with you as you exit the retrospective. The work reminds us of history and reflects back onto us how the world continues to mimic its past.

Franka Ziemann #

"Heart Throbs" by Mary Stephenson at Chapter NY

Chapter NY Gallery, Hearthrobs

Mary Stephenson's "Heart Throbs" solo exhibition at Chapter NY Gallery invites viewers to explore memory and emotion retrospectively. The artist turns the unconscious and memories into physical spaces, transforming surfaces into a medium for storytelling. For example, she applies thin layers of brightly colored paint that seep and recede into her canvases before revealing a final image.


Works like “Strong Parasols” capture this, with glowing geometric orbs suspended in a haze surrounded by a perspective environment. The work “Blue Stage” also does something similar, portraying a staircase ascending into a tranquil void, offering a contemplative metaphor for the passage of time and memory.

Strong Parasols, 2024
Oil on Linen
160x200cm

Blue Stage, 2024
Oil on Linen
170x200cm

Stephenson invites viewers to look closer at minute gestures such as a change of color, little marks, or light slivers, which are memory points. Stephenson's canvases have diffused edges and sharp lines, drawing the eye across compositions that expand and contract within vast yet barely populated fields of vision. These diffused edges and sharp lines suggest a desire for connection and belonging.


Stephenson wishes to explore the quiet intimacy of loneliness, seeing how to occupy and give meaning to a space without the presence of a being. Many works play on perspective composition, like one-point perspective, which pulls the eye towards a point. This allows the viewer to interpret Stephenson’s emotions and memories through a vast or intricate space, with the surfaces acting as touchstones for personal experiences.


Though the works exude an introspective calm, the exhibition may be too subtle, leaving some pieces feeling unresolved. "Heart Throbs" offers a captivating meditation on memory's emotional and spatial dimensions.

Alvin You

Governor's Island: "Tropical Frequencies"

    Tropical Frequencies at LMCC at Governor's Island showcased six artists from the Caribbean. The artworks are meant to engage with the alternate realms these artists explore in their processes. These realms are shaped by Caribbean cultures, the artists’ roots, and their connection to the land itself.

Tiempo de Zafra, La Bandera, 2017, found objects and discarded materials

       Tiempo de Zafra's is a multidisciplinary collective based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, who works with found materials and waste to elongate its life and speak on consumption. La Bandera, 2017, creates a Dominican flag out of trash and waste found near Avenida George Washington in Santo Domingo, a beachy seafront area, otherwise known as "el Malecon," or “the seawall.” Some of the found materials in TDZ’s work that  I could pick apart were a Hielo Colonial bag, a denim belt loop, many pieces of lingerie, and the same curtain found in my aunt's own kitchen, with chickens on its border. This work becomes simulacra, showing us familiar objects and a shape we recognize and turning it into something new. Other works by Tiempo De Zafra do the same. 

Tiempo de Zafra, Monstruo Marino, 2019, entaglement of discard waste

Monstruo Marino, 2019 or "sea monster," is composed of object found on "El Malecon," unified into massive installations. They hang from the ceilings and take up space in the gallery, inviting you to walk around and under them. Somos Todas Estas Cosa, 2017-2020, which translates to "we are all these things," is a video installation that features found footage from protests, garbage dumps, and nightclubs. It has the viewer reflect upon the way they walk about the world, and what they leave behind. The works ask us, "What happens to the things we no longer need?"

Tiempo de Zafra, Somos Todas Estas Cosas, 2017-2020, video

~Jay Vargas-Garcia*

Final 

Sophia Heymans: "Everything Dancing" at Shrine Gallery NYC

Sophia Heymans: "Everything Dancing" at Shrine Gallery, NYC

Heymans' show "Everything Dancing" transforms the blank walls of Shrine into a lush world dominated by nature. She emphasizes the interconnectedness of humanity and the natural world, and how one does exist without the other. 

"Everything Dancing" is arranged so that the viewer is surrounded by the bright greens, yellows and blues of the works in the same way that the human figures in her paintings are embraced by foliage and landscape. There is pure and organic interconnectedness in the way the figures interact with the natural elements around them, like a celebration of living things in all of their forms, human and non-human. In fact, it is only when the viewer stands closer to the painting that the lines of bodies and faces begin to distinguish themselves. According to Shrine, the artist even combines natural elements like moss and seeds into the oil paints she uses to immerse herself further into her work and strengthen the her art's connection to nature. 

Commentary on how the modern human attitude toward nature has changed can be derived from Heymans' exhibition, as many pre-modern societies were built upon the worship of natural elements, as can be seen from the Hall of Bulls at Lascaux to ancient Mayan temples. Only in the last few centuries has colonialism and urban expansion begun to control, delineate from and destroy nature because of the idea that we are above it. Through dynamic figures interwoven and swaying among vibrant landscapes, "Everything Dancing" encourages us to remember our roots and celebrate our one-ness with the world around us.

-Emma Szabo

Sophia Heymans's "Everything Dancing"

   

  On exhibition at Shrine, Sophia Heymans's "Everything Dancing" is a series of visionary landscapes centered around human's relationship to nature. Heymans's work is vibrant, and joyful.  In the work itself, Heymans combines paint with twigs, seeds, and grass, creating not just texture, but a direct connection to the plant biodiversity she paints in the pieces. Though her works range in size, they are all rectangles, creating an effect we are peering out of a window onto the natural spiritual world. 

In "Everything is Dancing", Heymans creates a narrative in every piece. In her mystical depictions of earth, she highlights human interdependence with the natural world. Her paintings encapsulate the feeling of an epiphany of beauty in feeling free in nature, and as her spiritual figures dance in the landscapes, they beckon us to do the same. 

 Through her combination of storytelling, vibrant green tones, and dancing figures, I deeply appreciated Heymans paintings From her joyful storytelling, Heymans encouraged me and other viewers to take time to truly indulge in the beauty of earth. 

-Rachel Genito*