Phong Bui Brings Dance-Poetry Happening to “Bloodflames Revisited”

"Bloodflames Revisited" installation view.
Photo: Jeff Nefsky, Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery.
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“Bloodflames Revisited” installation view.
Photo: Jeff Nefsky, Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery.

As if “Bloodflames Revisted,” curator Phong Bui’s reinterpretation of Alexander Iolas’s historic 1947 Hugo Gallery exhibition “Bloodflames” (see artnet News report), couldn’t get any more outrageous and colorful, it will play host to a roving dance piece and poetry reading on the evening of Thursday July 17 at Paul Kasmin Gallery. The ambulatory happening will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the gallery’s Tenth Avenue space, with readings by Paolo Javier and Rachel Levitsky and a dance performance, who have written new poems inspired by the bold-hued, hay-carpeted exhibition.

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“Bloodflames Revisited” installation view.
Photo: Jeff Nefsky, Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery.

Attendees will then be led by the dancers over to the other half of “Bloodflames Revisited” at Kasmin’s 27th Street location. There, the dance’s second half will take place, followed by readings of a pair of two more new “Bloodflames”-inspired poems from Barry Schwabsky and Klara Pam Dick.

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“Bloodflames Revisited” installation view.
Photo: Jeff Nefsky, Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery.

The dance-poetry happening, appropriately titled “Ode to Summer,” is being billed as a Rail Curatorial Project organized in collaboration with Paul Kasmin. The show, which features a bevvy of summer-hued artworks including a sun-like red orb by Lynda Benglis, blood-red rose sculpture by Will Ryman, and a sculpture by Joseph Daniel Martinez that is automatically spray-painting one of the gallery walls crimson, in addition to many more heat-themed works, continues through August 15.


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