Went to the Creative Time exhibit STRANGE POWERS this past weekend. The show includes pieces made to have a paranormal effect on the world, including spells, talismanic objects, and apparitions...all presented in a supposedly haunted building on the lower east side. (Boo!)
A very cool theme with some pretty interesting pieces...mixed in with some not so interesting. There's even a pitch black room supposedly inhabited by the spirit of one of the exhibiting artists. (What do you mean, did I go in?) The show's around until September 17th and definitely worth a look.
Christian Cummings
Sketches drawn using a ouiji board during a seance in which the artist channeled the spirits of Barnett Newman (d.1970),
Walter Elias Disney (d.1965) and others. Real, or is the psychic just good with a pencil?
Eva Rothschild
Old meets new in the form of a crystal ball placed next to a new world crystal orb (or something like that)...yawn.
Peter Coffin
A piece with an interactive element, in that if you asked one of the staff about it, they drew a circle around you where you asked. I did, and they did, and that's it in the blue. Interesting that many of the circles are near one another? Not really...just close to the staff desk.
Jonathan Monk
Missing Letters tells the story of an artist sending a series of letters to another artist, recently deceased. Only one of the entire batch of letters came back. Spooky? Or just par for the course for the post office...you be the judge.
Center for Tactical Magic
Wait...they did this one on Myth Busters. Audience-generated positive vibes for the plant doing well, while the twig gets the negative vibes...that, and half as much water (KIDDING).
Friedrich Jürgenson
This one was cool....Friedrich Jürgenson was a pioneer in the study of electronic voice phenomena. He believed spirits were communicating with us through sound recording technologies, and he set out to prove it. He told friends that after he died, he would attempt to communicate with them. The print on the wall is a photograph of an unplugged television set, taken in his home soon after he passed away...whoa.
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