Interview

RECLINING WOMAN ON A LEOPARD SKIN, 1927. COURTESY NEUE GALERIE

In the exhibition of work by Otto Dix that opened this week at Neue Galerie, themes of war and sexuality literally fill the air.

Memory of the Halls of Mirrors in Brussels (1920), a Dadaist painting of a leering officer and a prostitute, is suffused with Guerlain perfume and soundtracked to 1920s jazz. In the room containing Dix's etchings inspired by the first World War, there's a faint, loamy smell; for this, Neue's scent specialist sniffed out a special combination of grass and earth. Crickets chirp in the background.

These effects would be a gimmick elsewhere, but it works for Neue, a museum of early 20th Century Austrian and German art that is concerned with atmosphere almost as much as art itself. Example: the recreation of Viennese dining in the museum's Café Sabarsky, or reproductions of works by Josef Hoffman and Dagobert Peche textiles in the museum's design shop.

The presentation suits Dix as well, in the first solo museum show of his work in North America. Dix famously said that he had to experience war first-hand in order to depict it. If the added scents and sounds alone do not quite bring viewers to the front-lines, or  the collapsed geometry of the Federico de Vera-designed entryway-with its walls angling inward, bunker-like before opening into what exhibition organizer Olaf Peters calls "the war room"—they make the experience of viewing Dix's war portfolio that much richer, and unshakeable.


READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON ART IN AMERICA.
OTTO DIX IS OPEN THROUGH AUGUST 20. THE NEUE GALERIE IS LOCATED AT 1048 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.

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INSTALLATION VIEW COURTESY DAVID ZWIRNER

Diana Thater's latest film installation, Between Science and Magic, closing this Saturday, is a layered study of process in keeping with the artist's two-decade investigation into timeless dialectics: human and animal; culture and nature; and now science and magic. The looped 12-minute projection records a projection being done at a French Rococo film palace in Los Angeles. The frame captures the ornate proscenium and the screen it encloses, which features two figures on soundstages separated by a central, white-on-white seam.

The film starts just before curtain up. Once it's risen, the internal film begins: the left side of the screen shows an over-the-shoulder shot of a camera operator; the right, a head-on shot of a tuxedoed magician. While the camera operator records, the magician displays his tools (top hat, table, cloth) and recites the gestures that culminate in pulling a white rabbit out of his hat. He repeats the trick, and each time he begins anew, the orientation of the camera operator changes. Either side of the frame is a recording taken simultaneously from different angles. The right maintains its angle, fixed on the magician frontally, and the left orbits the scene, hitting 16 stations for the 16 repetitions of the performance. This choreography is not unlike the routes of planetary bodies. The motions are slow, certain, and difficult to grasp from a static vantage point.

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In the inaugural exhibition of Blue Box Gallery, temporarily set up in the Roger Smith hotel in Midtown, artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo thinks outside the box while picturing him inside one. Evidenced in the show, "Nobody Leaves, Everybody Goes," the Los Angeles-based artist mixes media to make his "video sculpture," which is meant to demonstrate both the immersive and composite effects of social media technologies like Facebook. Often, as in the six video-channel  Animal Chordata (2010), in which six types of people from various demographics are stuck inside glass bottles like tiny Truman Show-like experiments. Separation Anxiety (2010, pictured left, courtesy the artist) is a video self-portrait, framed by a refrigerator. Maybe the cold air is slowing his molecules down so that you can get a better look. But while these images might be trapped, they're not stagnant: "We will have a (surprise) interactive piece set up in the storefront, visible from the street," Blue Box co-proprietor Karen Bookatz says, warning, "This will serve as your entree to the show." For a gallery named for early hacking software, and a program that emphasizes "windows," we'll take that as a sign of big things to come.


NOBODY LEAVES, EVERYBODY GOES OPENS TONIGHT, 7–9 PM. THE ROGER SMITH HOTEL IS LOCATED AT 501 LEXINGTON AVENUE, NEW YORK.

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We're going to go out on a limb and say we like Marco Brambilla's Civilization, the Bosch-like video installation with the eery soundtrack in the elevators leading up the the 18th Floor at the Standard (cough: the Boom Boom Room). It sets a nice, disembodied tone for the bar's pink womb-with-a-view interior. With the bar set high (and puns running rampant), Creative Time has curated StandART, a selection of ten videos to play in-house at the hotel's New York, Miami, Hollywood and Downtown LA locations. Brambilla features again, this time in Wall of Death, featuring a hands free bicyclist on a Gravitron. Marilyn Minter's Green Pink Caviar sounds appetizing, but it's mostly goo and ultimately won't compete with the contents of your mini-fridge. But the service is free of charge, and during your stay might just compete with Pay Per View.

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