NEW YORK CITY: THE ART OF SILENCE

New York City. The city that never sleeps. The dream for many. My adopted home. A city that I love. And for the last few months, an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. A pandemic that forced this bustling, colorful place to come to a screeching halt. Where noise was once omnipresent, only silence rules.

No-one can predict what kind of city will emerge on the other end but one thing is clear already: there is art in the silence. The forced pause emptied the streets, slowed down the pace and gave those who dared to venture out an entirely new, peaceful and captivating side of our city. Words feel superfluous, so come along for a visual walk with me instead. I am glad you can join me.

LINES, TRIANGLES AND SQUARES IN THE CANYONS OF MANHATTAN

When you no longer have to watch for the incoming traffic, moving out of the way of rushing pedestrians and weaving through the crowds to get to your destination quickly, you start paying attention. Noticing the details. Tilting your head upwards to admire the shapes, the lines, the angles that surround you at every step. And they captivate you.

SILENCED ICONS

The big pause has taken away most of the activities that I love and that used to fill up my days. Art galleries, concerts, theater performances are all out of reach for now. So, every now and then, one indulges in revisiting them at least from the outside…

ABOVE ALL, STAY HUMAN AND HOPEFUL

Throughout the early quarantine days, the city’s silence was punctuated by ambulance sirens (a heartbreaking sound) but also by the clapping and cheers for the medical and other essential workers, every night at 7pm. Hearing your invisible neighbors’ cheers and the occasional Frank Sinatra’s or Alicia Keys’ ode to the city that we all share is that other delightful surprise emerging out of the silence… a shared sense of human gratitude and hope. Stay human, my friends and we will come out of this stronger than before.

BUDAPEST CONTEMPORARY ART, PART DEUX

While I try to explore new art destinations, when I recently traveled to Budapest for the second time in under a year, I took it as an opportunity to drill a little deeper into the city’s contemporary art scene.

This time, I moved away from the city center to The Ludwig Museum. The museum holds Hungary’s collection of international contemporary art. Its current location in the nondescript Palace of Arts north of Rákóczi Bridge, focuses on temporary exhibitions in the space that stretches over three floors. A new building by the amazing SANAA architects is under construction and I can’t wait to see it when it’s done. Temporary space notwithstanding, the shows did not disappoint. The Family Album, showing the emotional stories of three families impacted by the Kosovo conflict, pulls at your heartstrings and Dead Web - The End show on the first floor will make you both laugh out loud and ponder what our lives could look like if the web just went away one day. Could we handle it?

My favorite, however, was The Imaginary Cameras show highlighting the work of Tamás Waliczky. Tamás, a media artist who started his work as a cartoonist, is a multitasker. Painter, illustrator, and a photographer who went digital in 1983 focusing on spatial representation of time, futuristic renderings of augmented reality, and the examination of optical distortions. The show, which represented Hungary at the 2019 Venice Biennale, examines mechanisms an designs that inventors could use to create new picture recording devices. The stunning black and white photographs and videos of fantasy machines (cameras, projectors and viewers) captured both the photography lover and the geek in me. I couldn’t get enough and I suspect you would enjoy them as well.

Well done, Budapest!

THE LATEST COOL ART DESTINATION IN NEW YORK

Fotografiska’s Wes Anderson’esque hallways

Most of my posts cover interesting art and design destinations around the world. That said, when a new art hotspot opened right in New York, backed by a great Stockholm gallery that I admired during my visit there, I had to write a few words to welcome the opening. That new hotspot is Fotografiska.

After a long-ish wait required to complete the full-blown renovation of the gallery’s landmarked Renaissance Revival–style building on lower Park Avenue, the contemporary photography gallery finally opened its doors in mid December and my wait was finally over. And I could not be happier to have this new museum just a cab ride away.

Much like its Swedish parent, Fotografiska is not a run-of-the-mill photography gallery. Spread over six floors of its historic building, it combines a cool, laid-back art opening lounge on the 6th floor, a fancy restaurant, Veronika, on the second floor, a cool Scandi cafe and book store on the ground floor and gallery rooms showcasing interesting photography everywhere else.

As a photo portrait lover, I was totally in my element in the original Stockholm gallery, and its New York offspring did not disappoint. In the top floor lounge area, I could admire Danny Clinch’s photographs, a virtual Who’s Who of the music world, including my favorite, Bruce Springsteen.

A few steps away, down the darkened industrial staircase decorated by large photo prints that lend them a Wes Anderson-like feel, on the fifth floor, the bold, loud, passionate world of Ellen Von Unwerth’s Devotion! awaits. You can wander the dark rooms, moving from “Passion” to “Lust” to at your own pace, admiring the bold imagery that comes at you in color as well as in black and white. It will pull you in, I guarantee it.

One of my favorite shows I found on the fourth floor. Tawney Chatmon’s ”Inheritance” tackles the difficult topic of racial challenges through unusually beautiful, ornate work that doesn’t deny its Klimt-esque inspiration. I liked it more than I ever imagined I would and I suspect you will, too.

Tawney Chatmon “Inheritance”

Two additional floors cover other gems from the world of contemporary photography and works by Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Adi Ness, and the powerful landscapes by Helene Schmitz.

On the ground floor, you can lose yourself among the many books, posters and other items that photo lovers young and mature will enjoy. I may have just found my favorite new gallery spot in NYC!