February 17, 2003
Yesterday
Yesterday brought a trip to the Guggenheim. They are installing the Matthew Barney 'Cremaster' exhibition, so the only show on view is Pierre Huyghe's Huge Boss Prize affair. Two works, one a 'light sculpture' and the other a large-scale video projection of a piece that premiered at the 2001 Venice Biennial. I'd been looking forward to the video since its premiere, and am glad to have seen it in person. For lack of a better description, it contains a model of two 1970s era French public housing towers whose windows, amid fog and snow, light up in a call-and-response manner. The whole thing is set to a soundtrack by Finnish electronic duo Pan Sonic, which is described as being set to a 'random program.' However, after five run-throughs, I didn't notice any variation. As a whole, the piece was a letdown. The other work, L'Expédition Scintillante, Act II: Untitled (light show)--and really, what an unnecessarily over-the-top title--works much better. The light show, set to Debussy's arrangement of Satie's Gymnopodies, is a dramatic backdrop for unseen performers. It is set out in the middle of the gallery, and by virtue of its placement, the viewers opposite you become the actors as you watch them watching the piece. I will say, however, that I'm glad I get free museum admission, because I would have been pretty disappointed had I paid full-price admission and that was all I could see.
The Matthew Barney preparations were interesting as well. The lower third of the rotunda is filled with photographs, the floor is carpeted royal blue, and the upper two-thirds are devoted to the sculptures. I didn't see where the films will be screened. A number of the props used in the Guggenheim scenes of Cremaster 3 are reintroduced to the physical space of the museum: hanging off the ramp's railings were the wall-climbing pegs the artist scaled at the end of the film, and pastel-colored maypole-style ribbons were hanging from the middle of the rotunda's glass ceiling. It should prove a fun affair.
After all that, I went to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and saw the uninspiring 'New Hotels for Global Nomads' exhibition. Twenty-eight minutes and I was back in the lobby, thankfully and surprisingly running into a handful of college friends. We went around the corner to Salon 94, a new gallery run out of the first floor of a recently renovated multimillion dollar townhouse. I buzzed the doorbell twice, and the six of us were let in.
It was quiet, and empty, and sort of dark inside. A woman--who I assume to be the housekeeper--came from the second floor down a few steps and called down that the owner of the house/gallery would be back in a few minutes. So we cooled our heels, feeling awkward and kind of laughing at the fact that we were standing on marble floors and looking out into a beautiful backyard and seeing thousands of dollars worth of art hanging on the walls with no supervision. When the owner came back, I was standing at the other end of the front entrance facing her. Her surprise was noticeable, and the increasing shock as each of my friends came into view, one by one by one by one by one, also registered on her face. Well, it turns out that the gallery isn't open on Sundays and she was surprised to see strangers standing in the middle of her house after returning home from errands. We were surprised also--to have been let in at all--and the ensuing one-minute conversation was quite awkward. I want to go back today, during open hours, to apologize and actually see the video. However, there is over a foot of snow on the ground. It was nice to see, however briefly, how 'the other half lives,' so to speak. As much as all of the expensive art and interior decorations were impressive, I was more impressed by the quiet. One can get a lot of thinking done in an Upper East Side townhouse.
But today I'm going to take a swan dive off my second-floor balcony into an eight foot pile of snow, get up, dust myself off, and climb onto the railing next to that pile and dive into the six foot pile on the sidewalk. Then I'm going to come back inside, change clothes, and try to warm up. I hope my landlord doesn't see me.