Christian Marclay transforms a Fourth of July celebration in exhibit at Paula Cooper Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Paula Cooper Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday – Friday through August 24, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Admission: free
212-255-1105
www.paulacoopergallery.com
For more than three decades, innovative multidisciplinary artist Christian Marclay has been creating visual and aural art that comes alive in unique and captivating ways. Through film, video, sound recording, photography, and site-specific installations, Marclay lays bare the artistic process, utilizing and transforming such objects as turntables, vinyl records, and, now, fragmented photographs in his shows. For the current “Fourth of July,” which has been extended at the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea through August 24, the New York-based artist and composer started with pictures he took of a marching band and crowd at a 2005 Independence Day parade in Hyde Park, blew up seven of the photos to large size, then tore them randomly and framed forty of the ripped pieces, creating a very different kind of musical event. The result is a fascinating new look at something old and familiar, a reexamination of the old red, white, and blue American spirit as seen by zeroing in on smaller, incomplete elements, focusing on a drum, a cymbal, or a body part that was not necessarily the central image of the original photograph. His jagged celebration has a sound and feeling all its own. The exhibition is running in conjunction with Marclay’s excellent “Festival” at the Whitney, which continues through September 26, with daily live performances of the artist’s unusual scores interpreted by a rotating group of outstanding experimental musicians through August 27.