This week in Newly Reviewed, Travis Diehl covers a show on Smell-O-Vision, Edward Burtynsky’s exurban cacophony, Catharine Czudej’s playful transactions and a group show with a maze of water bottles.
Germantown, N.Y
‘Trees Never End and Houses Never End’
Through Oct. 11 Main Street, Germantown, N.Y.; skyhighfarm.org/events.
I had every intention of skipping this summer’s upstate New York group shows, pitched toward the scene-addicted among the seasonal art world diaspora. But I don’t regret visiting this blowout benefit sale, put on an artist-run farm and food charity, in a brick warehouse in Germantown, N.Y.
The inaugural Sky High Farm biennial boasts a truckload of more than 50 artists, many of them blue chip, including Roni Horn, Mark Grotjahn and Banks Violette. A maze of water jugs, the signature exhibition design of the angst merchant Anne Imhof, carves the ground floor into galleries.
Upstairs, the wry minimalist Rudolf Stingel has covered the floor in mirrors (shoes off; dress accordingly). The curatorial vibe is badass on a family vacation. There’s “Puke,” a giant photograph of a skinny young person vomiting by Ryan McGinley, and “Heritage,” a mesmeric film of trees bobbing in a dinghy by Thiago Rocha Pitta.
The two small children in our party were enthralled by a grim animated music video from the “witch house” band Salem, in which an anthropomorphic pill cycles through euphoria, comedown and rock bottom. They also cracked up watching wrecking balls shaped like raindrops repeatedly smash a tiled European house in Michael Sailstorfer’s 2015 video “Tränen.”
In another piece by Sailstorfer, “Forst,” 2021, my favorite, a small tree fixed to a motor in the rafters, branches down, scrapes a rustling circle in the mirrored floor. This piece alone is worth the break from your cottage in the tick-ridden woods.
Chinatown
‘Her Scent of Mystery’
Through Sept. 20. Olfactory Art Keller, 25A Henry Street; [email protected].
Smell-O-Vision, powered by a “Smell Brain” developed by Hans Laube, pumped odors into just one movie, “Scent of Mystery,” 1960, directed by Jack Cardiff. (The plot hinges on two look-alike starlets, distinguished only by their perfume. One woman’s smells more expensive.)
Now, an exhibition at Olfactory Art Keller in Chinatown, organized by the scent historians Tammy Burnstock and Jas Brooks, recreates the movie’s forgotten fragrance. A souvenir bottle — possibly one of the last remaining — is on display, and available for sniffing, although the eau de cologne has oxidized into that familiar “old perfume” smell. You can also experience two scents — one saccharine, another whisky-like — used as substitutes in fan revivals of “Scent of Mystery.”
For this exhibition, the perfumer Marissa Zappas has resynthesized the beguiling “Scent of Mystery,” which I can only describe as “round” and “up.” On a more literal plane, you can sample three of the fragrances that accompanied a documentary that Burnstock made about Smell-O-Vision, including a reek of dust, sweat and manure.
Lower East Side
Edward Burtynsky
Through Sept. 28. The International Center of Photography, 84 Ludlow Street; 212-857-000, icp.org.
Edward Burtynsky has a problem: He makes destruction look sublime. For more than 40 years, the Canadian photographer has produced detailed, phantasmic pictures of the likes of pit mines, tire dumps and ship-breaking beaches. His images are bleak and magnificent. They’re not judgmental.
One of the first images in Burtynsky’s current retrospective at the International Center of Photography (ICP), depicts a forest of gas stations and fast food joints near an interchange in Breezewood, Pa.
You might recognize it: The picture has become a meme. One version substitutes Burtynsky’s calm portrait of exurban ugliness for the frothing vista in Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,” the poster child of German Romanticism.
Burtynsky came up in the 1980s. He is often compared to skeptics of the modern landscape, such as Stephen Shore or Robert Adams. At the ICP, earlier pieces show Burtynsky working in smaller formats, with friendly, off-kilter scenes, including candid portraits of factory workers and behind-the-curtain views of food processing plants.
“Polyfoam Resurrections Deer Bust,” 1982, portrays the underpinning of a taxidermy buck. The photos as a whole hint at a documentary tradition dedicated to the human face of abstract industries. Instead, Burtynsky dove into that abstraction.
Midtown
Catharine Czudej
Through Sept. 27. Meredith Rosen Gallery, 327 West 36th Street; meredithrosengallery.com.
Catharine Czudej’s show in this garment district gallery feels mercenary. There’s a “For Rent” sign on the building and a sewing shop on the same floor. In the building’s garage, a crowded storage area for food carts and delivery bikes, Czudej presents an adrenal three-channel video, 14 minutes long, titled “Don’t Stop Moving.”
The camera floats over the shoulder of a muscular man, à la “Grand Theft Auto,” as he heartlessly pummels other characters and takes their stuff, then dances like an avatar in the battle royale game “Fortnite.” The plastic acting, choppy voice-overs, and the “live chat” cascading in the corner of the screens, portrays the real world as a winner-takes-all slugfest.
Upstairs in the gallery proper, Czudej’s drippy black-and-white paintings on raw canvas take inspiration from QR codes. Stubbornly, they invoke “products” (and are products), but the chopped and collaged codes can’t be scanned. They’re dead links.
Another work is playfully transactional: Custom T-shirts on racks near the elevator can be bought, or else traded for the shirt on your back.
See the August gallery shows here.
The post What to See in Galleries in September appeared first on New York Times.
