Casey Kaplan
3 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now
Kevin Beasley at the Performa Biennial; John Tsombikos and Enno Tianen’s long-distance collaboration; Candy Chang and James A. Reeves’s memorial art.
KEVIN BEASLEY
Last Friday at 5 p.m. I joined a small crowd at the intersection of Orchard Street and Rivington on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to see “The Sound of Morning,” a piece by the sculptor and performance artist Kevin Beasley, commissioned by the Performa Biennial. (Though Beasley’s performance is over, it can be viewed at performa2021.org, and the rest of the festival’s shows, which continue through the end of the month, will also stream live.) Simply setting a piece outdoors charges the surroundings with an air of intention and expectation, even before the piece itself actually happens. I studied the fire escapes and tailor shops and restaurants down Orchard Street, or the bystander carrying a kendo practice sword, the way I might have studied a painting.
But then 10 men and women strolled into view, one idly tossing a basketball. As they spread out and interacted with objects found or prepared — ripped a paper bag, dragged a can across the asphalt, popped open a ChapStick, dismantled a fence — small body mics picked up their sounds and Beasley, standing by in an ad hoc DJ booth, live-mixed and broadcast them. As a John Cage-like trick for making us notice the texture of the city, it felt like a bit too much — the amps didn’t seem necessary. But as a metaphor for the violence to which Black and brown bodies are subjected in public space, it was powerful. Nearly everything the performers did reverberated, simply because of the context in which they were acting; and when the spectators brandished their iPhones and cameras, to me they looked like weapons.
WILL HEINRICH
To read the full article, visit The New York Times.
Image: Performers at Kevin Beasley’s “The Sound of Morning” (2021) at the Performa Biennial. From left, Wendell Gray II, Amadi Washington, Ley Gambucci, Raymond Pinto, Dwayne Brown, Gabriela Silva, Katrina Reid and Paul Hamilton. Credit Kevin Beasley and Performa; Paula Court