I visited galleries before heading into work. The first stop was to see Brent Green’s inventive and engaging installation To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given. I didn’t read the notes before going in and was initially confused, wondering why I couldn’t see the animation anywhere. Turns out unless you view the screen through one of the three polarized lens options his animated film is invisible. The hand-drawn film (about the women who sewed the spacesuit for Laika, the Russian Space dog) is narrated by a folksy soundtrack that meditates on progress and invention, peppered with lines like: I tried to picture a God who would be pleased by the Iraq War. It’s a really wonderful piece. Green has a cool website too.
Second stop was Loris Gréaud’s installation/production. Pretty much the opposite of Green’s handmade film and sculpture. Gréaud’s The Unplayed Notes is a production that clearly involved a crew of technicians and a big budget. Taking up three rooms it’s impressively colossal. A film projection of mutating, Rorschach test-like images of smoke billowing in water is especially mesmerizing. In the back room black veiled statues, suggesting a cross between Michelanglo’s slaves, Abu Ghraib, and a mystery cult, are assembled in front of two giant speakers. It gave me a feeling of dread. I don’t know what the show was about but it did create a sensation.
I ended my brief walk at the show “Intimate Scale the Art of Addie Herder”. This is really lovely collection of work, and my favorite show of the three. I got lost in these assemblages constructed from humble, overlooked materials. Each one is a theatrical little world unto itself, full of drama, surprises, twists and turns.