Starting this week, the single-work, sound installation Bruce Nauman: Days will fill The Museum of Modern Art‘s Special Exhibition Gallery. A recent addition to the Museum’s collection, Nauman‘s Days (2009) was created for, and debuted at, the 2009 Venice Biennale, where the contemporary American artist represented the United States with the solo exhibition Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens. The installation is on display through August 23, 2010.

Days is a “sound sculpture” consisting of a continuous stream of seven voices reciting the days of the week in random order. Fourteen suspended speakers are installed in two rows with one voice emanating from each pair of speakers as the visitor passes between them. There are men’s voices and women’s voices, old and young. Some speak swiftly, others with pause, each with his or her own cadence. The collection of distinctive voices produces a chorus—at times cacophonous, at others, resonant—and creates a sonic cocoon that envelops the visitor. The work invokes both the banality and the profundity of the passing of each day, and invites reflection on how we measure, differentiate, and commemorate time. The installation is organized by Doryun Chong, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.

Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of the most innovative and provocative of America’s contemporary artists. He finds inspiration in the activities, speech, and materials of everyday life. Working in the diverse mediums of sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance, and installation, Nauman concentrates less on the development of a characteristic style and more on the way in which a process or activity – in and of itself – can transform or become a work of art.

Bruce Nauman: Days
Showing through August 23, 2010
Special Exhibition Gallery, third floor
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019

*above: Bruce Nauman (American, born 1941): Days. 2009. One audio source consisting of seven stereo audio files, fourteen speakers, two amplifiers, and additional equipment. Dimensions variable. Audio(fourteen channels). Continuous play. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase © 2010 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Installation view at The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photograph by Constance Mensh.

30-year-old Dutch designer Joris Laarman‘s aesthetic merges cutting-edge technology and the life-sciences to create works of unexpected beauty. For the past five years, Laarman’s dedicated himself to exploratory material research and translating science into functional objects of beauty. The resulting body of work – including a Chandelier that captures patterns inherent to flocks of birds, and a sustainable lamp made from living cells – expands on his core investigations, and will be on display beginning this week at New York’s Freidman Benda.

*Above, Laarman’s Bone Chair

*Above, Joris Laarman

In 2008, Laarman’s Bone Chair and Bone Chaise (his first two works since graduating from Eindhoven) were displayed in MoMA’s exhibition, “Design and the Elastic Mind.” This marked a major milestone in his career, and the chair subsequently was added to the museum’s permanent collection.

Laarman’s Bone Chair revolutionized the design process by using an algorithm to translate the complexity, proportion and functionality of human bone and tree growth into a chair form. In other words, he designed it according to the way bones develop; growing where strength is needed and shrinking where it is not. The algorithm, originally used by the German car industry, enabled him to reduce and strengthen his designs by optimizing material allocation, weight and stability, while minimizing material input. In Laarman’s words, he sculpted “using mother nature’s underlying codes.”

The show will be on view March 4 – April 10 at Friedman Benda, 515 West 26th Street, New York, NY.

*Images courtesy of Friedman Benda.

Since the late 1990s, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto has created interactive, immersive sculptural environments using translucent, stretchable fabrics. “Navedenga” (1998) – one of Neto’s early, quasi-architectural bodies – is on view now at the Museum of Modern Art through late April.

The enveloping sculptural environment invites the audience to participate in a work of art, as they enter the sculpture’s hollow chamber and engage it with their visual, tactile, and olfactory senses. Responsive to the touch, “Navedenga” was constructed from Lycra fabric, Styrofoam and sand, and embedded with aromatic cloves. Its soft, sensuous surface, and round, taut contours reference and evoke the human body.

The installation’s form and the title—a neologism created by the artist that recalls the Portuguese word “nave,” or “ship”—suggest both a fantastical spacecraft and a protective womb. It’s part of a series of “naves” by Neto, alluding to journeys both intimate and expansive, feminine and masculine.

For more information, visit MoMA.org.
All images courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art:
Ernesto Neto, “Navedenga.” 1998. Polyamide stretch fabric, sand, Styrofoam, cloves, cord, and ribbon. 144 x 180 x 252″ (365.8 x 457.2 x 640.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Donald L. Bryant, Jr. Installation photographed at The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Photo © 2010 Jason Mandella.

Created by American designer Felicia Ferrone, The Revolution Collection combines two glasses or bowls into one, so that contents inside appear to float, seemingly defying gravity. Handcrafted in the Czech Republic by master glassblowers, Ferrone first conceived of the Revolution Collection in 2001 while in Milan, where it was initially produced by Italian manufacturer Covo. In 2004, this gracefully simple set earned Ferrone a GOOD DESIGN award. Last year, it was inducted into the permanent design collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently on display in the inaugural Architecture and Design exhibition in the Modern Wing. They’re also available for sale through the Art Institute.

The current generation of the Revolution Collection includes the award winning Revolution wine and water glass, plus the new champagne flute, liqueur glass, carafe, large bowl, and small bowl. Formed from a pure extrusion of hand-blown borosilicate glass (a material that allows for a range of hot and cold applications), the collection is microwave, oven, freezer and dishwasher safe.

For more info, visit the recently relaunched fferronedesign.com.

A few days ago, I posted about the upcoming Tim Burton retrospective at MoMA. In other Tim Burton news, take a look at the new trailer for “Alice in Wonderland,” scheduled for release spring 2010. From Walt Disney, Burton teams up with some of his favorite players, including Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. A new face – 19-year-old Mia Wasikowska – plays Alice. Looking forward to seeing a classic retold with Burton’s twists and turns.

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993); Directed by Henry Selick; Shown: Sally, Jack Skellington; Credit:Touchstone/Photofest ©Touchstone Pictures

Beetlejuice (1988) aka Beetle Juice; Directed by Tim Burton Shown (center):Michael Keaton (as Beetlejuice); Credit:Warner Bros./Photofest; © Warner Bros.

Tim Burton. (American, b. 1958); Untitled (The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories); 1982–1984; Pen and ink, marker, and colored pencil on paper, 10 x 9\

Tim Burton; (American, b. 1958); Blue Girl with Wine. c. 1997; Oil on canvas, 28 x 22\

Throughout his career, Tim Burton has always pushed the cinematic envelope. This November, the Museum of Modern Art presents a major retrospective of his work. Tim Burton considers his evolution as both a director and concept artist for live-action and animated films, and as an artist, illustrator, photographer and writer. The show will trace Burton’s creative history, from his earliest childhood drawings through his mature work in film.

The exhibition will bring together over 700 examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, photographs, storyboards, moving-image works, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera, and include an extensive film series spanning Burton’s 27-year career. Artworks and objects will be drawn primarily from the artist’s personal archive, as well as studio archives and the private collections of Burton’s collaborators. His student films and early, nonprofessional films will also be on display. International and domestic posters from Burton’s films will be on display in the theater lobby galleries.

The show will also include little-known drawings, paintings, and sculptures created in the spirit of contemporary Pop Surrealism, as well as work generated during the conception and production of his films, such as original The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride puppets; Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Sleepy Hollow costumes; and even severed-head props from Mars Attacks!

In conjunction with Tim Burton, MoMA presents The Lurid Beauty of Monsters, a series of films that influenced, inspired, and intrigued Burton. Taking as its starting point a screening of
horror movies that Burton organized in Burbank in 1977, the series includes such films as Jason
and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963), Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920), The Pit and the Pendulum (Roger Corman, 1961), Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922), and Earthquake (Mark Robson, 1974), and will be screened from December 2, 2009 to April 26, 2010.

The show runs through April 2010.
Images courtesy of MoMA. For more info, visit www.moma.org

Installation view of Ron Arad: No Discipline at The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Jason Mandella.

Installation view of Ron Arad: No Discipline at The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Jason Mandella.

Sketch for Southern Hemisphere. 2007 N.d. Courtesy of Ron Arad Associates, London

Oh-Void 2. 2006 Acrylic; Edition by The Gallery Mourmans, The Netherlands Photo courtesy of Private Collection, U.S. Photo Erik and Petra Hesmerg

Creative Playboy:

Ron Arad may not be a familiar name to most of the population, but in the art and design world, he’s regarded as a bit of a bad-boy genius, known both for blending the worlds of design, art and architecture and a strong personality. On a recent July morning at MoMA, though, during a preview for “No Discipline,” the first major U.S. retrospective of Arad’s work running through October 19th, despite others’ best efforts to place the bad boy persona on center stage, Arad just let the work speak for itself.

First on the agenda was an exhibition walk-through. “No Discipline” presents a career’s worth of work organized by what Senior Curator of Design & Architecture Paola Antonelli calls “families:” related pieces sit on, within and outside a massive figure-eight structure that takes up most of the room, referencing the recurrence of the shape in Arad’s work. Screens throughout show video of Arad’s work, as well as a stop-motion video of the enormous figure eight’s installment. It was potent, and as I walked around, I was repeatedly asked to step out of the way for other hungry pressman eager to snap shots of – what?!- no curmudgeon, rather an agreeably posing Arad.

Next up: comments by MoMA Director Glenn Lowry and Paola Antonelli. Both made all the appropriate thank-yous, and Lowry put the exhibit in context: “This museum, as I think all of you know, really grew out of a deep commitment and belief in the fact that modern art expressed itself across many different media and disciplines…Ron stands out as one of the most influential designers of our time for his adventurous approach to form, structure, technology and materials, in work that spans the disciplines of industrial design, sculpture, architecture and mixed media installations…His relentless experimentation of materials of all kinds, as well as his radical reinterpretation of some of the most established archetypes in furniture that put him at the forefront of contemporary design. Ron, we’re so thrilled that you are with us today!”

(Applause.)

Then Paola Antonelli: “Ron Arad really did change design history – without really thinking about it – he doesn’t seem to care that much in general – but slowly but surely, one piece after another, and with his tremendous work at the Royal College of Art as head of the Design Products program for ten years….he really shaped – or unshaped and deconstructed – a new generation of designers…”

Speaking of Arad’s approach: “Push to the limit, materials, forms and people around you. It’s really important to push…Designers are those that make revolutions in technology and science and lifestyle, if you wish, come true, and transform them into objects you and I can use… I’d like to answer one question that I’ve had many times from many journalists, I’m going to say it here once and for all…as a very kind correspondent from the BBC very Britishly put it this morning: ‘Um, I have heard that Ron Arad is kind of – has a thing with being – strong willed. How did this exhibition go?’ It was truly a collaboration – it was his creative vision. Well, I was the discipline and he was the No. Blood was shed. It’s on the wall (pointing to the exhibition’s sign, which includes red paint splats, on the wall to her left); the result is fantastic. And we’re still friends. So, there you have it. Thank you!”

(Applause.)

And then the bad boy himself, Arad, dressed in a t-shirt, cap, sneakers and pants a cross between pajamas and hammer-pants, meandered to the podium. After a very quietly spoken thank you to another contributor, he quickly closed, saying, “All the rest is there, I have nothing to say. Enjoy it!”

No drama necessary. Guess we’ll just have to let badass work speak for itself.

For more information on MoMA, visit moma.org
For more information on Ron Arad, check out ronarad.com
Images courtesy of MoMA

Also, check out a great TED design talk by MoMA Senior Curator Paola Antonelli here: