The Sky Above

James Turrell

Corporeality puts our feet on the ground and our head in the sky. The temporal, what we see at a particular moment is for that moment. Our consciousness and physical presence makes this possible.

This chronology begins with Jonathan Meese‘s performance “WAR ‘SAINT JUST (FIRST FLASH)'” at Bortolami on Friday, November 4, 2011 started at 6:30 pm and continued for two hours. The repetition of “metabolismus” was the foundation of Meese’s performance. In his understanding and practice, art is not about thinking, it is a metabolic process similar to eating, sleeping, and performing bodily functions, nothing more. Animalism. When and how this happens is something that a place or an event (performance art) can actually take us outside of ourselves.

Jonathan Meese's performance "WAR 'SAINT JUST (FIRST FLASH)'"

James Turrell’s Skyspace at the Live Oak Friends Meetinghouse in Houston can also accomplish this. In Turrell’s words it creates “a light that inhabits space, so that you feel light to be physically present.” It necessitates being physically present to be there and seated as the sky moves when all else appears to be static, in a state of repose.

Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim, New York

The opposite occurs in a walking state, although there is the Zen Buddhist practice of walking, kinhin that is akin to being seated under Turrell’s Skyspace where one stops thinking. Frank Lloyd Wright understood some things about Japan and also about walking when he designed the ramp for the Guggenheim in New York. Currently, the Maurizio Cattelan exhibition occupies the central core in the clever installation of his works that are suspended from the ceiling from a series of ropes and anchors. This is the only solution— to occupy the building so that the works of art are not peripheral to the space. Taking Pablo Picasso and all of the other works off of the ground and having them float below, above and at eye level is what makes the installation so successful. It not only relocates them, but it also makes it possible to see and consider them in thought again, anew.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 at 8:00 am. It is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.