Photo: Courtesy the Creators Project.
Performa has added art darling Oscar Murillo, as well as Wyatt Kahn, Edgar Arceneaux, Ulla von Brandenburg, Erika Vogt, and Heather Phillipson to the roster for the upcoming performing arts biennial Performa 15, which will take place in New York City from November 1–22.
In July, Performa announced commissions from Robin Rhode, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Jerome Bel, Jesper Just, and Francesco Vezzoli.
“Since we work so closely with each Performa artist over an extensive period of time, and since each work has such a particular genesis and direction, each project feels like a one-person show,” said founding director RoseLee Goldberg in a press release. “Hence our approach to rolling out announcements of artists in the biennial, a small group at a time.”
Oscar Murillo, A Mercantile Novel installation view at David Zwirner.
Photo: Benjamin Sutton.
Murillo’s contribution will “explore concepts of production, migration, and the financial marketplace,” which sounds a lot like A Mercantile Novel, his critically panned 2014 installation that temporarily turned David Zwirner Gallery into a working chocolate factory. The performance will take place at a yet-unnamed historical site in downtown Manhattan.
For his first live performance, Los Angeles-based visual artist Arceneaux will enact Until, Until, Until…, which is based on the televised minstrel performance by Broadway legend Ben Vereen, who donned blackface as part of Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inaugural celebration. “I was hoping he would get embarrassed by it. The country should be embarrassed by it [but] proud that we came through it,” Vereen told Jet magazine in 1981.
New York-based painter Kahn will use his signature structural, jigsaw-like canvases to create a “theatrical puppet show that features his paintings as puppets and himself as the puppet master,” while von Brandenburg, Vogt, and Phillipson will show films as part of the “Performa Premieres” program.
No word on whether or not Performa will surprise us with even more announcements as November draws nearer, but the suspense surrounding the three week performing arts blowout is already killing us.
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