Rust Belt Tour Fall 2011!

Just a friendly reminder that the Gravity team is on a little tour right now, probably the last one for awhile!  Last night we (finally) had our Pennsylvania premier out in the rust belt of Pittsburgh and will continue on today to Columbus Ohio! More info is below, hope to see you at the show!

September 29- Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Pittsburgh, PA

September 30- Wexner Center, Columbus, OH

October 1- Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN

October 2- IU Cinema, Bloomington, IN

October 13- IFC Center, NYC

October 14- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

Mere de la Mer

Years ago I was sitting in a cubicle, distracting myself with the internet when I came across an article about a puppet performance taking place in a basement theater on the outskirts of Soho. At the same moment a friend e-mailed me an article about the same thing so tickets were purchased and plans were made! There wasn't much information about the show out there...just that it was called The Fortuneteller, it was a tale of the seven deadly sins and the few pictures of the actual puppets were dark, folky, textural beauties whose craft was far beyond your normal image of a puppet. The production was put on by the company Phantom Limb, with the creative minds of Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko at the helm. The set design (a giant house that overtook the small stage with sections that would protrude forward with lowered creakily-hinged front facades revealing different scenes), the characters, the music were all so enchanting...a strange & beautiful world indeed!

So when I found out Phantom Limb had a new production, this one based upon an ill-fated yet triumphant Antarctic journey of the explorer Ernest Shackleton I was very, very excited. A story that lends itself to so much vivid imagery imagined in the spooky artistic style I had seen before seemed like a perfect match! Even more lucky is the fact that we happen to be at EMPAC during a series of final dress rehearsals for this new show, titled  69° South.

I don't want to give too much away and, since this isn't the official premier, things might change but....impeccably edited & projected grainy black & white film of the Antarctic collaged with other images on all surfaces of the stage in an overwhelming looming eerieness (made by a duo whose video performance/ installation work I now covet!), coupled with the rising and falling of delicately glowing gigantic cloth glaciers, mixed with perfectly made puppets all set to a partly recorded soundtrack composed by Khronos Quartet & the ambient, texture of the live musicians (of the band Skeleton Key ) came togther to form a truely interesting vision! The puppets really inhabit and feel like a tiny microcosm unto themselves, the felty, neutral warmth of their costumes, the heft in their step, their facial expressions make the stilted puppeteers recede into the background- a perfect metaphor for our own strange earthly scale of control. This is most definitely a work in progress though with some bizarre modern dance components (pic of such from the video documentation room above) and a vagueness in terms of story, meaning and form but the shear artfulness of the show was a ghostly marvel that I suspect (and hope) will only solidify with time...I just keep thinking if there were intertitles, which would fit in with the near German expressionist theater/early silent film aesthetic that was midly present, the story and meaning could be made a bit more bold and captivating against this gorgeous setting.

Out of all of the elements of this show the heart of this piece (that I think the production I saw was searching for a way to more strongly say) is the real wonder that stands out: we must accept and survive for the good of mankind and nature, a message I am constantly looking for in art and am so relieved to have found (however clouded it is in it's current incarnation). This piece is set to travel over to Dartmouth, BAM and other places around the globe bringing this message of hope and understanding (and the bones of a potentially epic show! ) along with it! Now, like after any puppet show, who wants to make some puppets? Brent? Eh? PUPPETS!

Russian Premier?

Gravity is currently screening at the Message to Man International Documentary, Short Fiction and Animated Film Festival! Woohoo! It is pretty hard to find too much info about this fest in my native tongue but...the fest seems to want to bring a wide range of cinema to the people of St. Petersburg Russia, each year expanding into something bigger- this year with the inclusion of more experimental films!

If anyone knows Russian please let me know some more info! Especially the translation of the title, so far my favorite interpretation brought about through language has been the German one: The Force of Gravity Was On Everything At That Time.

Welding Is Pretty Much the Best!

After our seeming endless stay in New York City Brent and I trekked it home and them continued our journey, this time heading back up to Troy New York for continuing work on his residency at the otherwordly EMPAC! His piece is officially titled To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given and it is quickly coming together in an awesome way! Wooden phonograph horns, huge metal armatures, almost a dozen deconstructed LCD screens, a soundtrack that is bellowing into a beautiful comment on the state of the world and his rickety hand drawn animation are all pieces to this intricate sculpture that gets more and more exciting as each part is fashioned!

In the midst of all of this building Ryan Jenkins (a go to guy of not only EMPAC but, after hearing of his heroic post-hurricane flood rescueing,  a superhero of the greater Troy area in general- he is pictured below in some supreme welding gear!) taught me the basics of welding! Ever since the first time Brent decided to build with metal we've been entertaining a home welding set-up and opening a shop in the corner of the barn but it really just seemed like wizardry that we could never possess! But, after Ryan's tutorial, I have been pricing welding rigs and having the desire to build a car...! I always thought welding was like soldering, which I have done my share of at Nervousfilms, but the heat (which can reach temperatures hotter than the sun!), pressure and electrical current makes the whole experience a bit more akin to shooting a gun! I can't describe how utterly satisfying it is to have a solid, nearly unbreakable piece of bonded metal in your hands that you made that way! The possibilities are endless! And even the names of the blinding welding ailments you can get are the coolest, Arc Eye?! Who doesn't want that? And look at that welding helmet! Golden flames! Consider me a total welding convert! Now, can I weld for you? Please?

The Color and the Shape

Why does Art in Chelsea gotta be so pointless? I'm not gonna write about the pointless because that in itself is pointless but...c'mon Art! We've got tons of wars and government overthrows and ecological disasters and a spooky looming election and no real strong loud voice for change and what do you have? Shapes? Do shapes really cut it right about now Art world? And yes, shapes can represent other things but this time around the shape excuses (artist statements) were even lacking ("The artist had jet lag so he was interested in time." No joke???!!!) Well..there...I finally said something outwardly negative on this here internet platform (which is really like yelling into an open field anyway...sooooo....there's that.) But, I digress, let me at least talk about the non-pointless Art I saw!

After stopping by a friends opening in Chelsea this past Thursday I did a quick breeze around the galleries lead by Jem Cohen as a hesitant Brent dragged behind! While walking down 25th street I saw a crowd of people with cell phone cameras aloft so I got curious... Put on by The Pace Gallery, wedged in between two large, unassuming New York buildings I was confronted with a giant, inflatable globe! It's glowing presence pushed against metal girders in an abandoned lot while a pulsating drone engulfed the entire soundspace! It was absolutely flooring! Titled Tight Spot I should have known immediately that this piece belonged to the mind of the incredible David Byrne (speaking of which, did you know David Byrne made a feature film called True Stories in the 80s? And it is on Netflix streaming? Check it out! It is a fabulously weird musical about suburban sprawl, Texas and tabloids!). Byrne, once again, manages to simply, beautifully, poetically, comically comment on the state of the world- just plain wonderful! See Art, you CAN do it!

Another piece I saw that stuck with me in a different way was the video piece of Pawel Wojtasik showing over at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art. The piece is called Nine Gates and has something to do with a poem about sex written by the risque writer Guillame Apollinaire to his lover as he fought during WWI (the gallery was busy so I could not read the text and I can't seem to find a translation online! but) frankly, I found this aspect of the piece uneeded...The film was a stark exploration of the landscape and depths of the physical human body. At times pornographic and at other times softly sensuous this piece moved along bodies as if encountering an alien planet for the first time, showing things only a hi-def camera could (I don't know what was used but the camera seemed dense far beyond the detail of the human eye!) and in such close, tight proximity it was beyond intrusion. The sound was slightly destracting, not entirely captivating for a piece that could entrance so easily (but I think this might actually have been a tech problem more than anything) and the flourishes supporting the piece (the poem, the text on the wall, light boxes that I somehow missed?) all seemed to take away from the creepy, raw beauty that was on display. If anything, it made me want to see other images made by Pawel Wojtasik and see this one in a more optimal viewing situation...

Now, Art...what else was good? There were a lot of elements of things I really liked- a skate ramp shaped film screen at James Cohan, potent pictures of birth and the overlooked graphic nature of family by Elinor Carucci at Sasha Wolf Gallery, the gimmicky but entertaining elevators (a full scale remake of an elevator shaft positioned horizontally so that you can walk inside, a freestanding cube of a stuck elevator delving below the floor, others) at Sean Kelly but this is only a fraction of the things I saw. Art...sigh...I am buoyed by the good things but sometimes the empty shapes just really weigh me down...! Good Night Art! Sweet dreams (that should only be part of your inspiration)!

Fellow Traveler

 Entering the darkened corners of a Chelsea gallery, pulling aside the standard issue black curtains and trying to configure yourself in an art-film viewing space is such a tense, near nerve wracking experience. The anticipation of discerning where you are in a room full of strangers and the non-standard images and sounds you will be confronted with is a feeling I realize I love, the invisible contract you enter and share with the room and the art- I love it! It is like movie going compressed, edgier and overall with a much more risky chance of enjoyment! With this being said, Eve Sussman's new piece currently being screened at the Cristin Tierney Gallery in Chelsea New York was a stunning force to encounter behind one of these curtains, a force unlike any other I have ever seen, dialectically opposed to the compressed, brazen, shock value so much film art lends itself to and I absolutely love it!

The piece is called White on White and is described as an "algorithmicnoir." The story beautifully presents itelf as a tense cinematic expanse with a seeming narrative structure but this is just the beginning of this deceivingly simple introduction. White on White consists of 3,000 film clips, 80 narrative audio clips and 150 music clips all ranging in length. A programmed randomizer matches these segments up to endlessly create the project each viewer views, a film that can infinitely be reconfigured telling a version of the same idea forever. I can't begin to describe the intensity that one can watch this film with; looking for patterns, patterns emerging, the random seeming so selective, the deliberate, constant layering of ideas that had to occur in production for sense to be made- the thickness of actual construction is art alone, a new frontier in editing!

The narrative and imagery revolve around the story of a man's journey through his life as some kind of ecologist/spy/vessel evoking themes of Russian surveillance, natural disaster, exploitation, covert life and existences hidden on the edges of all areas of living. The story is framed in perspective with the addition of Eve's (blurrily pictured with Jim White, margaritas and maracas below!) collective company, The Rufus Corporation, as they write on their blog about their travels, trials and inspiration for filming as they voyaged alone, thrown out into the heart of the Asian Steppe, journeying toward something in the same (supposed) random manner life, and the project, progress. The lush cinematography and the barren landscapes of the locations the work was shot in are so unique in both content and style alone- a true, strong artistic vision!

White on White challenges art to be better, viewers to be more aware/engaged and pushes the boundaries of the cinematic and new-media mediums more so than any art I have ever seen. The film plays at Cristin Tierney (in a risered theater area that is comfortable enough to watch the piece for hours while a small monitor simultaneously runs the source code- and don't miss the back room which reveals photos inspired by the film work by both Eve  and the wonderful eye of Simon Lee) through Saturday October 22nd and I am sure it will have a long, long life after that! If you have any interest in the future of art and film do not miss this stunningly brilliant work!

Movie (and Magazine) Magic

 I haven't been to a multiplex theater in so long that immediately upon entering one this weekend I choked back on the smell of popcorn butter and was made dizzy by the busy carpet patterns and escalators and almost instantly regretted my decision to be there. But, I know some films should have the respect of being seen on a big screen and, unfortunately, a lot of those big screens are housed inside these horror show venues, melted chemical nacho cheese & all! The movie I ended up seeing was Drive. I knew it won something big over at Cannes and I remember really liking the style of the  other film I had seen by this director so I thought hell, why not? Drive is a basic hero thriller story cased inside a super stylized meta-shell. The main character drives stunt cars and fixes cars and drives getaway cars and eventually gets caught up in some pretty intense gangster action in the name of love. The music and production design were a near 80s aesthetic (think hot pink and synths) and the film quality itself had this glowing 70s vibe about it that made one think of Steve McQueen speeding away on the lonesome California streets.

The Hollywood story, complete with the cinematic tropes mentioned above, remind you that the film you are watching is just that, a film, making me think that this is why Drive, and the director in general, have gotten so much interest: they have decided that movie magic is a new medium unto itself. The serious(ly awesome) blood and gore, the car chases, the masks, the extended dramatic pauses, the ironic Hollywood qualities all blended together in search of what it means to be a new cinematic hero (and, in turn, a new hero identifying cinematic viewer), taking the audience along for the ride (pun most definitely intended). I hate when people say "I can't wait to see what he does next" disregarding the thing they just watched that the director has slaved over, seeing the potential for improvement but the obvious raw talent, but I left the theater with this exact thought...so close, but not quiet right...all the film-making skill but not the most perfect display of ideas? Maybe next time! (shrugs while holding enormous popcorn tub)

In the near opposite realm of the multiplex fiasco Brent and I headed to another spectacle in the form of a Triple Canopy (the best online culture magazine out there) new issue release party! Art events in loud bars (in this case a nice little, loud bar that felt like the living room of a NY five and dime baron tucked under the The Woolworth Building in the depths of lower Manhattan- chandelier pictured here) filled with the super stylish aren't really my thing nowadays but I was there to support the magazine more than anything else. I've read Triple Canopy from the very beginning mostly because it is constantly at the forefront of content, ideas and just plain interesting-ness across all disciplines. I will admit that sometimes things get a little jargony but...an article about a man who invented a card catalog of the world, another of a man who foresaw the future of technology predicting tablet life decades ago and a steady stream of cutting edge online contemporary art is more than enough to keep me reading! They are so on the cutting edge my computer no longer supports their reading platform so I can't link to articles directly... or even read them right now for that matter! Ha! Time for an upgrade! An upgrade in the name of Triple Canopy! Huzzah! (raises invisible glass to the air)

Kid Friendly

You know a way to get exhausted to the point of obliteration? Spend an entire day making crafts at a kid friendly neighborhood street fair with live music, tons of artist run crafty booths, dance performances and absolutely delicious food in a heavily trafficked area of New York City- whew I am beat! The Kitchen, an amazing performing arts space in Chelsea NY that has housed a bunch of Brent's live shows within their legendary walls, hosted it's annual Block Party this past Saturday and Brent & I had a grand old time leading kids in making Victorian optical illusion toys and some screen printed flags!

Thaumatropes (which I just learned actually means "turning marvel" or "wonder turner"), as they are called, are the classic animated picture disk. The most famous thaumatrope has a bird on one side with an upsidedown bird cage on the other which, when quickly spun, produces the little bird trapped inside of the cage. When one kid prompted me with "Why is the bird in the cage the most famous one?" I had no idea how to answer the inquiring little one...you never know what is going on in those tiny kid brains, sometimes I wish I could still see that clearly! I think that was my favorite part of this event, seeing all of the kid's minds hard at work trying to think of what to put on their disks, of what two separate things could magically combine to make one! Some of them included a rocketship with an opposing fiery lift off, a pair of eyes with a pair of glasses, an umbrella and rain, a toaster with a leaping piece of toast. Every kid had their own idea and each idea was incredible!  I also tried to make little flag banners that one could screen print their name on but the crowd was much younger than expected so only a few teens took me up on the offer, creating pennant flag chains emblazoned with words- a super sweet craft that left me with some pretty bad ass, multi-fonted alphabet screens if anybody wants anything monogrammed?!

The other artist lead booths had some great things too including the lovely Paul Sepuya & Timothy Hull taking Egyptian inspired/abstract/alternative dimensional portraits, my pal Bryan Zanisik & his pal John Ehrenberg making pirate/nautical flags, a booth where a woman painted tattoos out of edible ink and even the classic macaroni necklace (made sophisticated through gold spray paint for the stylish New York child!) and that is only a handful of the many tents full of glue sticks, pipe cleaners and paint spread throughout the closed off city block! It was overall a great experience that I think every kid should have, a creative free for all lead by some beautiful artistic minds that I hope will lead to creative sparks amongst the younger generations! Special thanks to Lumi the magnificent for helping to curate and execute such a huge event and another huge thanks to The Kitchen for providing such a great resource for families and for artists in general! Now, how do parents cope with kid exhaustion? Because, days later, I am still feeling the effects....zzzZZZzzzz

Art and Geese Season is Upon Us!

I tried to see art at New York's PS1 this past weekend when we were passing through town but....more than half of the museum was closed and there was a band sound checking in the courtyard the whole 15 minutes I could stand! I only bring it up because, in a conscious effort to support the arts, I paid the entire suggested donation price (a whooping $15 and, yes, o yes, they ARE one of the many clandestine suggested donation spots in NY!) only to be met with closed corridors and blockades of security guards. PS1 is sort of the kid sister of MoMA (MoMA which is not only a paid admission price but a recently raised $25 paid admission price!) perched out in Long Island City Queens housed inside of an old school in sort of a strange spot for a museum. I really don't get how drawing a huge crowd with their Warm Up Series (the cause of the soundchecking mentioned above/summer Saturday live events in their large, art & architecture ravaged courtyard) and then not having much art to see is a smart move? I know things need to be installed and openings need to be had but this is some seriously poor planning! Displacing a party for art, making art an inaccessible thing during a time when people who wouldn't normally go to this museum are there, it just seems really....jerky! I normally love PS1, it being the place I have been introduced to so many great contemporary artists (like the intensely brilliant paintings of John Lurie and the music making machines of David Ellis and the funeral ship of Matthew Day Jackson) but this experience really bummed me out. Also as a side note, I know that public funding is a necessary part of museums operating costs but $15-25 is a lot of money for a lot of people, especially for families. What normal family can pay $100 to see art? There has to be some kind of sliding scale solution? Or maybe, at the very least, less (seemingly unnecessary) expansion?

Another New York place that really introduced me to some artists early on in their careers (Kate Gilmore the great! Brian Dewan! Patrick Jacobs! Ati Maier!) is the Pierogi Gallery just over the bridge from PS1 in Williamsburg Brooklyn.  Friday night we went to the opening of the artist Tony Fitzpatrick's new show in this Brooklyn institution. His lithographs (one pictured at right) are small, intricate, collages of imagery pulling from old comic strips, vintage iconography and an almost art nouveau geometric style- they all had a very Chicago feel to me (a kind of yellowed, jazzy throwback to the towns heydays that a lot of art coming out of there tends to have) so learning Fitzpatrick is from Chicago was no surprise! Turns out he also does theater work, performing a one man show in conjunction with the exhibit at Pierogi's newer, larger space called The Boiler (which Brent and I saw during it's construction and whose high ceilings we lusted after being that we were embarking on Gravity at the time). The other exhibit opening at Pierogi was by Michael Schall and was composed of a bunch of silky, well executed graphite drawings  of rocks & nature and their collision with manmade & industrial looking forms all made with perfect chiariscuro that soothingly drew you into their sense of space...I think I need to see them at a less harried time than an opening to really enjoy their meditative beauty! At least some of New York let me see some art this weekend! And some city geese near the art! Look at those geese! And beautiful New York! (Geese picture by Brent Green)

We Were All At The Drive In

While hurriedly setting up a show in an abandoned drive-in movie theater trying to beat the quickly descending sun and a giant yellow schoolbus rolls up full of joyful, waving New Yorkers while you wave back with equal excitement and anticipation is the kind of memory that will always make me smile! Last night we performed at the Last Chance Picture Show in a shady little town north of New York City. Even as performers we were uninformed as to its whereabouts so we all met under the BQE and followed the directions handed out by our fearless leaders/organizers: Todd Chandler and Jeff Stark. The original concept for their Empire Drive In project consisted of banged up stacked cars, a screen made of salvaged materials and a radio broadcast that would pipe the sounds of the show around a structure that housed the whole experience! The project was part of the 01SJ Biennial last year (whose title was aptly "Build Your Own World"- a sentiment Gravity, oddly enough, promotes in those exact words!), an artistic exposition that encourages builders to augment the world for the better (a sentiment that I think all art should promote!).

This beautifully curated version of the project was a little different. After selecting a disused drive-in theater in upstate New York (and then choosing another after the original location was demolished a week before showtime!) the two set out to put on a screening of short films along with live musical accompaniment. We began the show with Todd Chandler on upright bass, Jamie Reeder on violin, Jim White on drums, Drew on harmonium and theramin, Brent on guitar and me on flute & foley all playing an eerie marching version of Brent's Weird Carolers  film, asking the audience to hum along to Beethoven's 9th behind us. The feeling was incredible as a whole crowd sung along to this haunting film in a forgotten space, bringing a weird life to everything all at once! After our set Todd and Jamie played a beautiful banjo and violin duo to a film by Maya Deren! I always have images of Deren's lush, spooky, grainy movements stuck in my head and the soundtrack they played is now the sound I will always hear when picturing! Beautiful!

Todd Griffin and Catherine McRae of The Quavers scored along some animation by Lotte Reiniger while George Graham and the Royal Garden Jess Band (a sweetly skilled brassy jazz ensemble) played along to such classics as Buster Keaton in a Keystone Cop film, some weird IBM animations and a silent short with femme fatales, early plane flight and crowds going wild!  There were also plenty of cutesy intermission shorts, an encore screening of the ever so twisted cult classic Wild Zero (Japanese punk band saves the world through sexuality and laser guitar weapons?) and some crowd members even dressed up like car hops hawking candy with a wink and a smile- the whole thing was so so enchanting!

A highlight of the event though was, by far, Jem Cohen. With a secret musical cast of Jim White and Guy Picciotto, both musicians whose depth of playing is something I can't quite wrap my ears around, scored a new film Jem just completed called Real Birds. The film was a beautiful meditation on nature, both of the natural world and that of man, the intersection of both hidden under bridges, in murals, in plastic streamers, in puddles, in food scraps, in the ways nature and man interact and react within a city.  Jem really is the quintessential New York filmmaker and the way he manages to capture the multi-faceted, ever changing New York existence is awe inspiring, the work of a real filmmaking genius!

On the eve of the anniversary of such a historically tragic day I can't help but be filled with almost a sense of pride, or maybe just happiness, knowing that this kind of event can bring people together in the polar opposite of the way tragedy can. Everytime artists conceive of something that puts wonder into the world they are chipping away at all of the horror that people can also create. I don't know the future of this drive-in project at all but I do hope it can become part of an annual NY tradition to balance out at least some of the memories. A special thanks goes out to Flux Factory for organizing the bus, Rooftop Films for the equipment and to any & all who helped make this event happen, including the local police who deemed our actions peaceful early on and let the show proceed without a hitch! What a wondeful world!

Stars, Sounds and Projectors

A screening at an abandoned drive-in movie theater on the outskirts of New York City featuring silent film classics, new film legends and amazing musicians (including a few secret ones) in this beautiful Fall weather? Yes please! RSVP at this link for the meet up location, it is about an hour drive out of the city and space is limited so RSVP wisely! Brent, Drew & I will be performing a few shorts as will many friends...! BYOP: Bring Your Own Popcorn, hope you can make it out!

On Art, Marriage and Opening Champagne With A Sword!

Whew! What a weekend! It all began with transporting styrofoam puzzle pieces to New York, moving tables and lighting an entire wedding in Connecticut and winding down from the wedding a few days later with a long trek home, including a stop off in an expansive upstate NY artspace! (Insert nap here!)

First, the puzzle pieces were for part of a brain storming session put on by an artist about what to do with this abandoned lot next door to her home in the East Village after it's current, semi-permanent art project disappears. The semi-permanent art project came about when the dilapidated space needed some help leading to the Guggenheim stepping in to use the area as a launch for a huge undertaking in the form of the BMW Guggenheim Lab (partly pictured above). This project seems utterly inspiring, an attempt to motivate community through workshops and discussions in the form of pop-up think tank structures traveling throughout the globe and on the web. Focusing on issues of urban living, environment and habitation, from NY to Berlin to Mumbai and beyond, this idea seems like a portable utopia taking up real important issues within the landscape it is effecting! So great! If only every dieing building could meet this type of end! I wonder what this space will become next?

Next, Brent, as the officiant of this past weekends wedding, gave the bride and groom the perfect welcome into the world as man and wife, Drew sang his sweet songs of love (pictured above), and I bench pressed a few hundred pounds worth of tables all to celebrate the union of our good friends! It was a wonderful event filled with hugs and surprises...some of which included an oversized Yoda statue lurking in the brush, a serious amateur sabrage event (pictured below), the dance floor induced crutches of an amazing filmmaker on a new dancefloor, an accordianist being arrested (the horror this induced in other accordianists as we tried to find a last minute replacement made me privy to an accordian code of ethics I knew nothing of!) and even commemorative wedding spoke cards for the many bike enthusiasts in the crowd! We all had such a wonderful time! I wish the happy couple (blurrily pictured below) the world!

On our drive home the weather was an eerie, car pounding rain so when we passed by the artspace Dia Beacon I forced Brent to stop for a bit and take in the minimalism! I don't really think he was too thrilled walking amongst the barren landscape of strings, colors and shapes but one cannot discount the massive beauty of Richard Serra after experiencing his pieces at Beacon. The light & shadow, the gradation of color (going from pale orange to pitch, swallowing black to every shade of brown), the curves of these massive, towering steel shipsides engulfing you into a feeling and space that I think all art should strive to match: it is downright transformative in an unrivaled way. A Joseph Beuys sculpture of shapely stacks of felt that dampened and expanded sound and space as you ducked between them also had a similar, physical reaction that I have come to really appreciate in art mostly due to my own experiences with building structures and learning about the complicated construction of tension. Apart from these pieces, being at Dia Beacon and seeing the scads of young art students wandering around made me a little wary about the future of art...

Art Rant continued after the jump!

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