Watching “Complexions” at the Joyce Theater was a novel experience for me. I’ve watched dance performances probably a hundred times before but never one in a setting like this. The fact that everything in the theater was copyrighted reminded me right off the bat that this wasn’t one of my old dance recitals but a real professional debut.

The first act, I have to admit, was particularly boring for me. Perhaps it was because I was expecting something more exciting than what I was given. I understood the ferocity in the dancers’ faces and their movements but nothing really stood out. Eventually, I shamelessly dozed off until intermission.

The second act was my favorite one. Maybe it was because I had just woken up from a nice ten minute nap but I think it was mostly because of the specific part of the act where one of the dancers was engaged in shadow dancing. While another couple was in the middle dancing, this lone dancer was dancing against a white background. The lighting emphasized his shadow against the background and it created this really cool simulation. Suddenly, it felt like the dancer wasn’t on stage but that he was in the back doing his own thing. There was also another part where all of the dancers got up and close to the edge of the stage. They were so close to the audience that you could hear their deep breathing loud and clear and watch drops of sweat glide down their faces. It was kind of disturbing to see this because I’m used to the classical ballet dancer: the ones that are in sync and perfectly composed. I think the choreographer purposely put this in to ignite some kind of feeling in the audience.

The third act was, without a doubt, the liveliest. In fact, if they had thrown in some singing, it could’ve easily been a musical. Not that I’m complaining. I love dancing that follows beats and rhythms because that is my comfort zone. Unfortunately, while exciting, the act loses points for originality.

All in all, it was a very different experience watching this dance performance in relation to my old dance recitals. I wouldn’t exactly pay to see this again but I’m glad I did.

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Isa Genzken, a female German artist, recently had her work on display at a exhibit at the MoMa. Because of Professor Eversley’s membership (thanks!), Jeong Woo and I were able to view her work in private setting.

The title of the exhibition was called “Retrospective”. This is entirely reflective of Genzken’s work which largely dealt with the post-war urban environment. The sculpture above was one of the most notable ones for me because of its simplicity and its position. On the outset, it can easily be dismissed as a couple of frames on top of each other, but in an architecture perspective, it reminded me of the the foundation or framework of a building. It made me think of Genzken’s view of rebuilding Germany after the World War II. The position of the work is also interesting. Professor Eversley had mentioned that the work must’ve been purposely put under the skylight to direct attention to the buildings outside. This reminded me of photography class where we learned about leading lines. Lines provide direction to the viewer; guiding them toward where to look. This sculpture guided the viewer to the skylight, and where the sculpture was the beginning of the making of a building, it directed us to look at the prominent skyscrapers outside. It’s a bright outlook when emerging from troubling times.

Overall, I felt like the exhibit was very interesting. Genzken’s later works were, understandably, less of of war and more about color and dioramas. Personally, I’ve always gravitated toward works that depicted a specific time period. I’ve always felt that those works were always rich with culture and history that may no longer be around.

On Tuesday, September 10, we went to visit the International Center of Photography. Two displays stuck with me in particular. One of them being the blown up pictures of iPad scans by Andrea Longacre-White. She scanned iPads and the light from the scanner would produce heat making the iPad respond thinking it is human touch. Her pictures of the scans depict the iPad glitch and trying to decide what it wants to open up. Also visible were the many fingerprints from everyday use on the screen of the tablet. The fingerprints showed intimacy of the owner and the iPad and this showed our increasing dependence on our digital tools.

The next piece was the diorama map of New York by Sohei Nishino. There were 10,000 images used to create the map. Nishino photographed and collaged the whole thing by hand. His diorama creations are his way to reminds us that human imagination is needed to create meaning out of accumulations of visual information. In an age where everything is handed to us, for instance Google maps, we need to remember that we still have our own imagination and creativity to build on.
I remember spending a long time looking at the map trying to figure out where everything was and how different it was from an actual map. It was intriguing to see my own city depicted in a different way.

I didn’t really know what to make of it at first. It was very confusing initially because there was so much going on at once. The dancers would use the entire stage, sections doing different things. I guess the dances were supposed to compliment each other, but I found it hard to focus on the entire performance. Rather, I keyed into a specific part of the performance each time. For a portion of the performance I would look at the dancers on the right while taking quick glances at the ones on the left to see if something special was coming together. The first intermission gave me some time to collect myself and actually enjoy the performance. Throughout the first dance, I found myself trying to study how the performance was arranged and structured, but I couldn’t really make much out of it. There were different groups dancing in different places all around the stage. Thus, once the first intermission came by, I decided I was going to enjoy this performance.

The performances after the first intermission were much more pleasant experiences compared to the first. Yes, each performance was very different from one another, but I was more accustomed to the style of dance and stopped trying to decipher the dance with my limited, almost non-existent, knowledge of contemporary dance. I chose my favorite dancers and followed them more closely. My favorite part of the entire performance came at the end where the music was much more familiar to me. Whether it was Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson, it brought up a sense of familiarity, which was so distant to me during the other performances. Despite not knowing what to expect when entering the theater, I was pleasantly surprised and found it to be a very entertaining and enlightening experience. The dancing was spot on and eating afterwards was a blast too.

My favorite exhibition was the Poppy Fields one by Zhang Huan at Pace Gallery. It was his first solo exhibition in New York since 2010. The exhibit featured a series of large and vividly colored oil paintings. Against the white walls, the colors really popped out which made each painting stand out even more.

From afar, each work displays a mixture of colors ranging from black to candy-colored pink. Walking around the gallery gives the viewer a dizzying feeling. As one approaches each painting to find that upon further inspection, the big abstract painting is actually made up of tiny faces with big eyes and wild Cheshire grins.

As seen in the picture above, the whole linen canvas is covered in smiling faces and skulls. This one was my favorite of all of them because from a distance it just looked black and gloomy. However, when I looked at it from a closer point of view I saw a bunch of grinning faces staring at me. This made the whole gloomy feeling away even with the “boring” colors it was painted with.
Another interesting thing about these paintings is the impasto technique that Zhang Huan employs. The impasto technique is when the painter puts on the paint really thick on a canvas, and to the point where the strokes are visible. Along with an already visible Cheshire grinning face, there is a pop up effect that comes with it. It makes it look like all the faces are coming out at the viewer.

The MoMA is always a fun museum to visit because of its exhibitions and the most recent visit did not fail my expectations. The MoMA held a René Magritte exhibition and this was exciting because I finally discovered who this artist was. Having seen his works all over, for example the sky in the eye and the painting with the apple in front of the man, I was treated to a nice surprise when the exhibit I was going to was going to be about him. I was walking around with Professor Eversley and right as we entered the exhibit she started talking about alienation and the dismembered bodies. As I walked around the exhibit I saw more and more of this “alienation” that Professor Eversley was talking about. Magritte painted many pictures of body parts without the head and because there is no head, it shows a sense of being isolated. Another theme that I saw with his paintings were the words over images, the same print over and over again, and segmentation. The painting above, I thought, was a good “summary” painting of what was in the exhibit. It showed human flesh, segmentation, and all the different prints such as wooden planks, the sky, and the bells.

After this exhibit, I went down to the second floor to the Projects Gallery. I came across Mike Kelley’s Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #1. It was a film exploring the psychologically fraught relationship between two men. One of them was constantly subjugated by the owner of the house in which this was filmed. The other man tried to assert his dominance however, he failed many times. It was overall an interesting and slightly disturbing film.

Let me start off by saying that dance is some of the most intense stuff that I’ve ever seen. Literally everyone on that stage seemed like they were flexing every muscle in their body to keep a perfect form of movement consistently throughout the performance. I really enjoyed having a close seat, but I have a feeling that sitting in the balcony would’ve provided a great view all on its own because we would’ve seen the dancers’ full bodies from a higher angle. Seeing them sweat and hearing them breathe gave the evening a very personal and intimate aura, however, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The first two small performances were interesting, and that’s just about all I can say about them. I searched and searched for some sort of story line and meaning, but couldn’t find anything. Perhaps that’s because I’m not very creative, and our professor(s) came up with a plot that the performance followed. The music was certainly classical more than anything, and my second favorite instrument is the piano, so I found the melody to be captivating. I can overlook my inability to create a plot in my mind by focusing more on the movement and the effort that I watched all the dancers put forth in their performance, which in a personal sense I admired more than anything else.

But, of course, the last part of the performance was completely thunderous and incredible. Give me saxophone solos, jazzy love songs, and some Stevie Wonder audio, and I’m ready to get up on that stage with the dancers to make a fool of myself. Those melodies revitalized about half of the sleeping class (I was a member of the awake group) and gave the rest of the audience a jolt, leading to spontaneous applause and whistling and ubiquitous “wows” that were heard nearly every thirty seconds.

La Clairvoyance by Rene Magritte was, without a doubt, my favorite painting in the MoMA exhibition. I think the first thing that stuck out to me as I walked by was the majestic bird on the canvas, and that’s where my pondering began. Why would Magritte paint a self portrait in the act of painting a bird, when he could’ve just painted the bird itself and focused on all of its delicate details?

That’s when I looked down and saw the unhatched egg on the table.
Essentially Magritte is suggesting that when he paints, he perceives
everything about the future. He is so creative and innovative that all he needs
is square 1, and he will give you squares 2-infinity. Of course, the painting
need not be a realistic representation of how Magritte would actually paint a bird, rather a pretty clear suggestion that Magritte has the element of creativity
that makes him stand out as an artist.

Magritte may be promoting the idea of clairvoyant thought. Don’t settle for a small white egg on a table; take the egg and enhance what it merely is. Even go a step further: don’t settle for something that “is”. Make that something into a prospect or a potentially miraculous image. Some might mistake Magritte’s painting as a blatant sign of arrogance, but I believe it’s quite the contrary: it’s more of a message to the audience that’s going to be viewing and criticizing his work than it is a self-righteous display of his talent. And that makes it even more fascinating; Magritte is famously known as a surrealist, but here the only surreal aspect is the fact that he is seen painting something as opposed to presenting his painting as it is traditionally supposed to be: on canvas. Instead, the focus is not actually the bird (which it would be if it was a “normal” painting) and is, instead, Magritte’s keen ability to be creative.