Walker Art Center features: ‘The Artist is Present’

Marina Abramovic’ is a “fearless seductress” who, according to the trailer released by the Walker Art Center, “has been redefining what art is for nearly 40 years.”

A cinematic journey is showing at the Walker, in Minneapolis, tomorrow and Saturday for three screenings at the Walker Cinema. Tickets are available online by logging into http://www.walker art.org/calendar/2012/.

Tickets are $9 each, or with membership, $7.

The two events are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and the matinee is at 3 p.m. Saturday.

Ambramovic’ does performance art pieces and made a statement at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where in 2010 she did a 730-hour performance as part of her monumental retrospective. She forces the audience to look at themselves through her.

MoMA’s curator, Klaus Biesenbach said “Abramovic’ is a charismatic woman who is never performing.”

He said her presentations offer a recent evolution into performance art: It’s relatively recent move into museum galleries, and Abramovic’s campaign to preserve a transient art form through live re-performances. Her screening is 106 minutes long.

One of the most compelling components of her stage/gallery presentation is the “stare.” In that, she invites people to sit in front of her and the people just look unto the other’s eyes and stare for a period of time. Some giggle, some, make faces trying to make her laugh, while others weep uncontrollably. She forces her stare partner to come to grips with his/her inner demons — quite the task.

She has included a number of nude situations in the film. These put her body into what might seem like a normal situation, where a clothed person has a “pretense” or “defense” of clothing, and makes herself vulnerable to that event. She shows how the unclothed human form is more truthful than a clothed one, and how we humans tend to ignore what we do not want to see, even if it’s there in front of our eyes.

In the screening there are “stills.” These are vignettes of compositions much as a painting might be composed. In those she may remain still or choose to move and create a “cause and effect” moment.

She uses her body as a vehicle, instead of paint, and creates a canvas or performance that challenges, shocks, and at times risking her life, she moves the audience to “feel” the experience she performs.

Like a visual artist’s installation, she calls on the audience to participate and at times alter an event. It’s atypical for theater and visual art. It is however, her melding of the forms and her way of taking a situation brought on by a deranged individual, and she makes it, let’s say, “tolerable” to deal with.

I would not recommend this event for children. It does include nudity and some language on an adult level.

It is art that you will not soon forget.

If anyone has an item for this column, please send to Sharon Cox, PO Box 1559, Jamestown, ND 58402-1559.

Tags: sharon cox, diversions