Parallel Perceptions
© Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of Andries Stilte
A longtime proponent of emerging artists, New York City Opera highlights opera’s modern cultural relevance by pairing the work of six visual artists with the 2010-11 season. The images offer a fresh perspective on our interpretation of opera’s most archetypal characters and themes.
See these dynamic pieces of art at Parallel Perceptions, a contemporary art exhibition taking place during our fall and spring seasons. Curated by accomplished artist and photo editor Naomi Ben-Shahar, the exhibition also includes a series of additional paintings, sculptures, and photographs by Kehinde Wiley, Tina Barney, Charles Ray, Isaac Julian, Pipilotti Rist, and Dash Snow.
The spring exhibit will feature the six season images as well as additional works by Kehinde Wiley, Isaac Julian, Pipilotti Rist, and Dash Snow.
March 22 - May 1
Opening: Friday, March 18, 5:00 - 9:00 pm
Public Viewing: Tuesdays, 1:00 - 6:00pm; Sundays, 5:00 - 8:00pm
David H. Koch Theater
About the Artists
Kehinde Wiley has firmly situated himself within art history’s portrait painting tradition. Wiley’s larger-than-life figures are black and brown men found in the international urban landscapes of Harlem, Mumbai, Senegal, and Rio de Janeiro. They are dressed in everyday clothing representing Western ideals of style yet assume poses found in traditional paintings and sculptures, ranging from the French Rococo to contemporary urban street.
Isaac Julien is as equally acclaimed for his fluent, arresting films as his vibrant and inventive gallery installations. Julien’s photography and film installations speak to topics of race, class, culture, desire, and memory, either bringing people together or setting them apart, and demonstrating his ability to craft a project that can itself move deftly between the worlds of film and art.
Pipilotti Rist has developed a video aesthetic that takes its cues from television and advertising, as well as from a rich history of feminist video work. The results have been successful and influential; Rist has become one of the most recognizable names in contemporary video art, crafting a body of work that explores the intersection of sexuality, technology, and pop culture through playful and provocative remixes of fantasy and the everyday.
Largely self taught, Dash Snow created in a wide spectrum of media including photography, drawing, collage, installation, zines, grafitti, film, and video. Snow frequently focused on themes of sexuality, drug-taking, violence, art-world pretentiousness, and life’s fragility, all with an air of exuberant misbehavior that offered insight into the decadent lifestyle associated with young New York City artists and their social circles. Snow was a controversial and somewhat mythical figure in downtown art scene. He died of a drug overdose in 2009 in New York City at the age of 27.
The work of Charles Ray is often difficult to classify, with style, materials, subject, presence, and scale all being variable. In his seamlessly executed objects, Ray fixates on how and why things happen, and how such events might be remade as art. This and the level of art historical awareness behind his works has led many critics to call Ray a sculptor’s sculptor. Nevertheless, his sculptures of altered and refashioned familiar objects has managed to find a large audience, thanks in part to their often striking or beguiling nature.
Tina Barney has been redefining the photographic portrait for the past twenty-five years.Barney is best known for her ongoing documentation of the lifestyles and relationships of her family and close friends, many of whom belong to the social elite of New York and New England. Barney’s style is part candid, part tableau; her subject matter raises in equal measure issues of privilege and the interaction of family members.