Daily Archives: January 12, 2014

Yesterday I saw Chris Burden’s retrospective entitled “Extreme Measures” at The New Museum in New York. Highlights for me were “Tale of Two Cities”, an installation consisting of 5,000 toys, two miniature cities, sand, rocks, plants, amongst other objects that together create a mesmerizing aerial view of a contemporary city created with child-like imagination. I also enjoyed a film that shows dozens of commercial-building steel beams falling from the sky (dropped from an unseeable giant crane), and landing in a plotted area absorbing them, creating a massive, metal sculptural piece.

I visited Marlborougho Gallery in New York’s Lower East Side to see paintings by Wisconsin native John Riepenhoff, who exhibited works, both large and small, from a series of plein air paintings that he made under nightime skies in various locations (mostly in Wisconsin but also in Miami and other locals). The paint is thinly applied, and poured, to create an arresting, atmospheric effect reminiscent of Morris Louis’ abstract canvases.