MARK ROTHKO: THE LATE SERIES @ TATE Modern, London

MARK ROTHKO: THE LATE SERIES @ TATE Modern, London September 26th, 2008-February 1, 2009

Exhibition Includes: Four Darks in Red 1958, 8 of The Seagram Murals, The Black-Form Paintings, Untitled 1964, The Brown and Gray Paintings, The Black on Gray Paintings

The current Rothko exhibit at the TATE focuses mainly on his work in series (1903-1970) and is the first major collection of his work to be featured in the UK for the past 20 years. It is a rare chance to see some of these pieces united, hailing from diverse homes including the MoMa in New York City, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Kawamura Museum of Art in Japan. There is a large focus on the Seagram Murals, a series comissioned in 1958 for a dining room in The Four Seasons, there is a sort of mythos hovering around the paintings that Rothko later withdrew from the project, deeming a dining room an unsuitable place to display his work. The current display of the Seagram paintings has been meticulously put together by the TATE to be as close to the orginal wishes of the painter himself as possible, and is a long gallery with a lovely amount of breathing room between pieces.

There is something about Rothko that attacts me partiularly from a lighting design standpoint. His use of color and texture is a tangible (although not really, they arrest you for that sort of thing...) example of what we strive to do every day on the stage. Although this could be a metaphor from everything from text to design, it particularly resonates when discussing light. I first started looking at a lot of Rothko images when working with New York lighting designer, David Lander, who was usuing a painting as inspiration for his cyc in a production of King Lear. It has struck me ever since that Rothko has in fact laid out the groundwork for nearly perfect lighting designs. Seeing these peices in person is invaluable. I cannot stress enough that nothing but reality can do remote justice to Rothko technique-- it is imperative to see each available brush stroke. It is a brilliant example of the amount of work that goes into something that appears on a quick glance to be starkly plain-- As we in the theatre know, this is ever the hardest thing to accomplish! In Rothko, something that is black is actually seven shades of purple.

I spent maybe 5 minutes in the Black on Black room completely alone. (Lucky scenario at the TATE on a weekend!) It was incredible to sit quietly, with the paintings, no other person to put meaning or judgement on either them or myself. All art that challenges us and our perspective changes us, and hopefully as we change and deepen, so does our craft.

DRIFT '08 @ The River Thames, London

DRIFT '08
Illuminate Productions
London's First Annual Art Exhibition on The River Thames

Please see Iluminate Productions for information on all 7 contemporary art installations as a part of Drift '08.

Artist
Craig Walsh (Austrailia)

Title
Classification Pending

Medium
Hyper-Real Projection

Location
North Side of London Bridge looking towards the TATE Modern

"Witness a new life form living in the Thames. These mythical creatures will evolve to form a family unit during the course of DRIFT. Only appearing at dusk, they will develop into an apparition - like the creatures of folklore before them."

Maybe I have been feeling particularly lonely since moving to a new country two-odd weeks ago. Perhaps it's that time of the month and my uterus wants to be noticed. (They do that sometimes.) Or I could just be a sap. But the sight of baby sea monsters finding one another in the Thames River and learning to live in a family unit (nuzzling, playfully dodging waves and one another, all the while whiskers twitching) makes me want to do nothing more than take the artist home and cuddle. Would that be creepy? Probably. But the offer stands. Classification Pending is my favorite piece I have stumbled on during DRIFT '08. It tells the viewer a story of the place the art is set, the characters within it, and makes the audience care about all of the above. As a theater practitioner, I recognize this as no easy feat. The quality of the projections is lovely, although I look forward to 20 years from now when we find a way to eradicate the telling projection boxes of light that are a giveaway to the installation.

Artist
Andy Harper (United Kingdom)

Title
Feast of Skulls

Medium
Oil on Steel

Location
River Walkway by Shakespeare's Globe

"Weird and wonderful plant-like forms are painted directly onto a river buoy. The plants appear to be growing, morphing and climbing the buoy."

A smart piece with clean brushstrokes and joyful colors, this buoy holds a secret. Interwoven within a maze of fish, flowers and algae the viewer stumbles across the dark remains of several skulls floating amist the debris of human bones. I appreciated how much joy the artist brought to his macabre subject and found the bouy to vastly improve it's section of walkway along the river, in reality an unforunate locale for this piece. I would have liked to come across this on a piece of beach, washed ashore and thick with rust. As it was, the tourist and commuter traffic heavy locale distracted from it's fine mix of art realism.


Artist
Mariele Neudecker (Germany)

Title
Much Was Decided Before You Were Born (2)

Medium
Sound Installation

Location
Millennium Bridge

"A seaside soundscape disorientates passers-by, surrounding them with the sound of waves, seaside chatter and the cries of seagulls."

The soundscape on Millennium Bridge is, along with the Blackfriars ghost bridge, conceptually one of my favorite pieces. Unfortunately, like the Ghost Bridge, it seems a halfhearted effort. I did notice the crying gulls before I knew there was an installation here, but I long for a better thought out system, where you didn't only come across the one sound at the one point. Rather, why not explore a variety of sound at a variety of bridge locations? Sensorally, the piece works. There is something very comforting to me personally, as a childhood seaside veteran to the crashing of waves and crying of gulls. I only wish I could get more excited about it.

CILDO MEIRELES OPENING @ TATE Modern, London

CILDO MEIRELES @ TATE Modern, London
OPENING OCTOBER 13, 2008

October 14 2008-January 11 2009

Exhibit Includes: Eurka/Blindhotland 1970-5, Through 1983-9, Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals) 1987 (SEE TOP), Red Shift 1967-84 (SEE BOTTOM), Fontes 1992/2008, Babel 2001, Volatile 1980-94, Southern Cross 1969-70, Glovetrotter 1991, Money Tree 1969

I had the extraordinary luck to be allowed to tag along to the Opening of the first Cildo Meireles exhibit in the UK at TATE Modern on Monday night. The artist himself appeared a zen-seeming man with cheerful Buddha eyes. I can't imagine an experience closer to that of Christmas morning. A wonderfully curated, interactive experience, the exhibit includes one room of Cildo's early work including recycled Brazilian Coke bottles silk screened with almost unnoticeable dexterity with phrases including "Yankee Go Home!" There are also several examples of the "Zero Dollar" in both Brazilian and American currency (terrifyingly apt at the current moment) and "Liberty coins" that have "In God We Trust" on one side and a Coca Cola on the other. Important to note that these are not only pieces of art, but pieces of political unrest that made made their way onto the streets of mainstream Brazil.

While it is important to see the artistic climate that Cildo has emerged from, it is his (sometimes) less blatantly political installation work that makes the best impression at the TATE today. I could gush embarrassingly over the giddy joy that I felt getting to experience a hands on exploration of my personal favorites (Volatile, Red Shift, Through, How to Build Cathedrals, Fontes) but I nearly cringe at not letting you experience the work yourself. In brief- Volatile is a sensory explosion involving a very dark room, three people you've never met, and talc up to your knees. (Word of advice- Don't wear the boots! It is integral to feel this on your bare skin!) Red Shift allows seven people into a series of three gloriously vermilion rooms that tell a story as theatrical as any I have seen onstage (Be sure to look in the refrigerator!) Through has been "safe-guarded" with a layer of plexi over the satisfyingly shattered glass, but retains enough crunch to keep it's dark danger, while Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals) -both a tribute and a curse to the Jesuits who lost their lives in missions throughout Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay- seems untouched since the original installation. It is haunting, simple, and beautiful. I experienced the most joy exploring the clock and ruler maze of Fontes, and encourage everyone to find the center of the spiral before falling into the following UV version of Canal-street inspired installation, Babel.

This is an exhibit not to miss. I believe next stop is a tour to the permanent home of Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, USA.

DRIFT '08 'GHOST BRIDGE' @ The River Thames, London

DRIFT '08
Illuminate Productions
London's First Annual Art Exhibition on The River Thames

Artist
Keith Bowler (United Kingdom)

Title
Ghost Bridge

Medium
Light Installation

Location
Old Blackfriars Railway Bridge

"The bridge design is simulated on top of its original supporting posts using the latest lighting technology."

Please see Iluminate Productions for information on all 7 contemporary art installations as a part of Drift '08.

Tonight I caught a second part of the Drift '08 exhibition on my way to see the Cildo Miereles opening at The TATE Modern. Especially excited about the nature of the light installation on Blackfriars, I was slightly disappointed. The concept is there, in brilliant glory, but there's no reason that they could not have carried it out in more ghostly detail. The pin straight lines of the lasers across the old supports are beautiful, but they lack a clarity of meaning to one who is unaware of the project. I would prefer for the bridge to be there, not just send us a postcard.

FRANKFURT GOOD WOOD @ Hold & Freight, London

frankfurt good wood
Hold & Freight Gallery Space
With Art by: Anne Lina Billinger, Jorman Foth, Lena Henke, Hanna Hildebrand, Simone Junker, Andrei Koschmieder, Paul Wierbinski, Naneci Yurdagul

An art exchange project between students at Goldsmiths University in London and the Frankfurt Stadelschule Dancing Class, curated by second year Art Curation MAs. To my admittedly untrained eye, it felt a bit messy and "faux nouveau," (I mean, don't get me wrong, I decopaged magazine collages onto my bedroom door in highschool too...) with the exception of a glittery gem of a short film by Paul Wierbinski entitled Ivo Burkovic- The Life of the Fake Artist as a Young Business Model (2008). Paul details his creation of the perfect bohemian artist to market work he believes to be shitty, but marketable. An eastern name, a mall photo, some Chinamen to "paint and paint and paint and paint" for dirt cheap, a young artist auction to rich buyers, and I'll be damned if Ivo Burkovic isn't the hottest thing in town and turning a far from shabby profit to boot. I can't wait to revisit the Borat of Modern Art.

DRIFT '08 'SAVED FROM DROWNING' @ The River Thames, London

DRIFT '08
Illuminate Productions
London's First Annual Art Exhibition on The River Thames

Artist
Margaret Evangeline (United States of America)

Title
Saved From Drowning

Medium
Steel Painting

Location
River Thames Opposite the TATE Modern

"The mirrored surface of this large, interactive sculpture rises and falls with the tide, and captures the activities and audience on the surrounding riverscape."

Please see Iluminate Productions for information on all 7 contemporary art installations as a part of Drift '08.

I must confess. I was interviewed about this piece, along with my fellow American "drayma" student for Korean television before either of us had even realized we were standing in front of a piece of art. This piece, on first glance, reads as something practical (trash-strainer-thing?) floating on the Thames that is accidentally beautiful. And I love it all the more for that.

I (apparently) could talk circles about the site specificity of this piece long before reading it's title or blurb. They were pretentious circles, but they came from an instant gut reaction of joy to find this moving smashed and glorious mirror floating, reflecting the gray sky, my wan face, and the rippling water all in one distorting swoop. The truth is that it is a touching tribute to the drowned, bringing us down to their level by reflecting both what we see (St. Paul's on the one side, the TATE Modern on the other, and of course, ourselves on the shore) and the waves that encompass the dead.

I love this project. Has anyone else gone on a walk through the sites of Drift '08?