Maria, Maria — Abigail Levine

Restagings

Restagings is a body of works that reads modern and post-modern visual art works as scores for performance. Restagings work from an iconic cadre of 1960s artists—Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Carl Andre, and Walter de Maria—all of whom were closely associated with dance and performance artists of their era. Restagings decode the choreographic logic and somatic ideas built into visual art works.

Historically, minimalist and post-minimalist visual works were recognized for incorporating into the viewer’s experience the gallery site beyond the object’s spatial boundaries. Restagings do something similar for the objects' temporal boundaries: through performance they bring the work of making the work out of its occluded temporal ground and into the figure of the dancer in the gallery, unearthing the bodies and labor implicit in the objects, drawings, and texts and incorporating them into our experience of the original work. As dance is presented and historicized increasingly as visual art, Restagings responds by claiming these visual and conceptual works as dance.

Maria, Maria is a two-dancer, choreographic and sonic installation based on Walter de Maria’s 360° I Ching/ 64 Sculptures. Two dancers (the Marias) lay down the lines of de Maria’s sculpture, allowing the sculpture to be seen evolving incrementally though never complete. Highlighting de Maria’s work with trumpeter Don Cherry, the rods that compose the sculpture are turned into pitched instruments, which sound as they are dragged into position.

Photo: detail of Walter de Maria's 360° I Ching/ 64 Sculptures and choreographic diagram. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York. — Photo: detail of Walter de Maria's 360° I Ching/ 64 Sculptures and choreographic diagram. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York.