October 04, 2004
terminal.5
Checked out the opening_party for Terminal Five (beware the flash/sound) out at JFK on friday, a show curated by Rachel K. Ward, which is taking place in theFormer TWA terminal designed by Eero Saarinen.
In the curvaceous aesthetic shadow of that remarkable modernist-money-shot of a building, it was hard for the art work to make much of an impression. The open bar of grey goose & champers did not really help.
It was a surreal scene of hipsters, who shuttled by train, monorail (really), and town car to the far reaches of brooklyn (or is it queens?) to flirt, drink, dance and run about in the cavernous space. And on this night, sponsored by V magazine, it was clearly the attendee's (and their dress) who took center stage. A feeling reinforced/created by the fake paparazzi and red carpet who greeted guests as they entered the terminal. I think these photographers and the carpet where part of an artist's installation but without a decent check-list or catalogue it was impossible to tell if it was indeed an Artwork (in the capitalized sense) and if so, whom it was by.
In fact, that seemed to be the problem with the entire show, so far as my vodka addled brain could tell (and I am a functioning alcoholic after all). While some of the pieces seemed nice, in such an open-ended show (in terms of space (Saarinen's terminal) and thesis (travel, movement), a curator should have had a much better manner of presentation/documentation. Pieces were far removed from their wall tags and I could not find any sort of checklist to guide me.
With that said, just in terms of the use of the building, the show is in some ways a success or at least an achievement and a mightily hat tip goes to Ms. Ward.
Of the pieces that I did manage to interact with and absorb, I enjoyed the Tom Sachs (pictured above) even though he usually leaves me cold. The foreign language of the sign, combined with the stripping of the golden arches color served to infuse the modern structure we were housed in with all sorts of post-modern levels of meaning as to globalism, consumerism, culture and boarders. I feel like this piece would have been flat in a gallery or museum setting but came to life here.
The other piece that I enjoyed was a site specific space and sound instillation, spectra, by the japanese musician/artist Ryoji Ikeda. He infused one end of the buildings trademark hallway (which in days past leed from the main terminal to the hub where the planes parked) with a massive array of lights which served to obscure a crazy Parabolic Long-Throw Sound Beam(see pic at the top of the post) which projected an "ultra-frequency" (the artists words). In my words it was a crazy assed seemingly moving high pitched drone.
The piece was the only one that interacted in a critically meaningful way with the modernist temple that Saarinen created. Ikeda's work here not only mirrored the sense of flight and travel in the original space but seemed to work with and against it, as you moved the sound shifted and at times disappeared- problamizing the ideals of instant travel and collapsed time/space boundaries held up in the late fifties building design.
Whatever the case, the whole thing is a trip and _must_ be peeped. It is open until the end of the year and is worth it if only for the sense of adventure on the way out.
Update: According to artnet the Vanessa Beecroft piece which was supposed to be in the show was nixed by JetBlue... bummer. It actually looks like a VB piece that I would not hate on. Shout outs to Tyler Green for leading my eyes this way (third item).
Posted by thickeye at October 4, 2004 12:29 AM | TrackBack