Our HD 3-screen Oskar Fischinger installation at The Whitney Museum, Raumlichtkunst (Space Light Art) is reviewed in today's New York Times! And in J Hoberman's Movie Journal as well this week.
Ken Johnson, NYT, reviewed 2 shows at the Whitney, one is Oskar Fischinger - Space Light Art (Raumlichtkunst). It's in today's print edition. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/arts/design/signs-symbols-and-oskar-fischinger-at-whitney-museum.html You may need to be a subscriber to read, if you're not, the article first reviews the other show, Signs & Symbols (largely 1950s painting and sculpture) and then continues: In light of all this, it is lucky that a dazzling three-screen projection of all kinds of symbolic forms in syncopating action by the German-American filmmaker and painter Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) is on view in an adjacent gallery. “Space Light Art” is from a different time and place — Weimar-era Germany — and thanks partly to its restoration and digitization by the Center for Visual Music, it has a brightness and chromatic intensity you would expect to see in work from the psychedelic ’60s. Pulsating circles, flowing organic lines and blinking rectangles; a found film clip of a spinning globe; and the momentary cartoon apparition of a young girl in a hooded, fur-trimmed coat together create an exhilarating phantasmagoria of abstraction and metaphor. The psychic and formal exuberance of Fischinger’s film is in marked contrast to the generally dour mood of “Signs & Symbols.” This is understandable. In the 1950s painters and sculptors were running out of ways to keep their works new and responsive to a world seemingly on the brink of apocalypse. But for an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1920s, the possibilities of cinematic experimentation were terrifically exciting. When a similar spirit of technological euphoria reanimated American art in the ’60s, the metaphysical tragedians of the ’50s went into eclipse. Unlike Fischinger’s cinema, most of the work in “Signs & Symbols” looks dated, hostage to a style of brooding, quasi-religious consciousness that now feels claustrophobic. But that in itself is a poignant reminder of what a trying moment it was in American history. (Ken Johnson, NY Times) “Signs & Symbols” and “Oskar Fischinger: Space Light Art — A Film Environment” continue through Oct. 28 at the Whitney Museum of American Art; (212) 570-3600, whitney.org. --------------------(end review)----------------------- J Hoberman reviewed the exhibition in his Movie Journal at Artinfo.com: http://blogs.artinfo.com/moviejournal/2012/07/25/oskar-fischingers-film-of-the-future-1926/ --------------------(end)------------------------------- Our Fischinger installation is also currently on view at Tate Modern, London through May 2013, 5th Floor Collection Displays, "Structure and Clarity" section. Scheduled to open in Amsterdam at EYE Film Institute, December 2012. Raumlichtkunst is a re-creation, from newly restored nitrate film, of Fischinger's 1920s multiple projector cinema performances. Restoration and re-creation by Center for Visual Music. Film restoration supported by the Avant-Garde Masters Program, funded by The Film Foundation, administered by The National Film Preservation Foundation. Installation shots, info and links to the two current museum pages for the exhibition: www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Raumlichtkunst.html best regards, Cindy Keefer Curator/Archivist Center for Visual Music www.centerforvisualmusic.org PLEASE reply to cvmaccess at gmail dot com _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list [email protected] https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
