Continuing through July 15, 2017
On Friday June 9, New York artist Raphael Montanez Ortiz performed one of his "Piano Destruction Concerts." What remains of that ritual deconstruction is on view in the gallery space. The baby grand piano, surrounded by a salt ring, was methodically destroyed with an ax by the artist, who was formally dressed in a black suit. Ortiz has been performing such destructions since the 1960s, and is well known in New York for them.
In addition to the piano detritus, also scattered about the gallery floor are the remains of his "Humpty Dumpty Performance," where raw eggs were dropped from a ladder by Ortiz's wife as she recited the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme. Although the main room contains these relics, though sadly not a video of the performances, their presence still resonates. The exhibition also includes two wall-sized banners that explore Ortiz's fascination with symbolism and ritual, as well as a series of short films created between 1957 and 1993 in which Ortiz cuts and reassembles fragments of film footage — a different path into his destruction practice
