An Architecture of Gaze
A silent figure stands with its back facing the viewer, poised motionless against the ebb and flow of the anonymous crowd, unsheltered and without a want. Standing in front of A Needle Woman, a performance/video work (1999–2009) by the acclaimed artist Kimsooja, we see a body that, without doing anything, becomes a measure of time and space. As the artist’s body weaves ceaselessly through the crowd, it shifts in and out of our field of vision. For a fleeting moment we experience our body transposed into hers, and through the borrowed gaze of the artist we confront our own impe...
Time and Form: The Whitney Museum of Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art’s reopening in its new Meatpacking District location signaled one of the biggest changes to New York’s cultural landscape in recent years. However, balancing the hype and excitement around its new $422 million Renzo Piano-designed building is the museum’s vacated former home in the Upper East Side. Marcel Breuer’s austere granite building stood silently as though without its soul, resounding with a sense of absence. With the downtown “new” standing against the backdrop of the uptown “old,” the Whitney’s rebirth seemed caught between a memory of its past and an expanding vision for its fut...
