NYAB Event - Marina Abramović “Generator”

Marina Abramović “Generator”

Sean Kelly Gallery

This event has ended.

Sean Kelly presents Generator, a new installation by Marina Abramović, whom the gallery has represented since 1991. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York since her major retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 2010, and her first performative work in a gallery since The House with the Ocean View at Sean Kelly in 2002.

In Generator, Abramović will focus on “nothingness.” She will transform the main gallery into a space of sensory deprivation, an opportunity for forced introspection. In order to create an uninterrupted, quiet, physical and mental state, visitors will be required to leave their cellphones, watches, bags, etc. in a locker before entering the gallery. Assisted by trained facilitators, visitors will don noise canceling headphones and blindfolds. A maximum of sixty-eight people will be allowed in at a time.

Abramović will create what she has previously described as “full emptiness,” a term derived from Tibetan teachings of oneness. Dealing with both the meditative and the communal, Generator will be a unique environment for visitors to push the boundaries of their self-awareness and inner-consciousness, as they are confronted with nothing but themselves and the palpable energy in the room.

In recent years, Abramović’s work with the public has become increasingly immaterial. She has shifted the focus of her work from her own performances, to the audience and their particular experience. This is especially true of Generator, which builds on 512 Hours, her recent ten-week exhibition at The Serpentine Gallery in London, and The Artist is Present, her three-and-a-half-month long performance and exhibition at MoMA. As with these previous two exhibitions, visitors are no longer mere spectators, but an active and indeed crucial element of the exhibition.

As the title suggests, Generator is about creation - namely the production of energy and its transmission. As Thomas McEvilley explained in the catalogue for The House with the Ocean View: Abramović wanted to do a performance free of any artworks, objects, props, or scenarios that could “get between her and her ‘viewer.’ Instead, the viewers would be invited to enter into an ‘energy relationship.’” More than a decade later, in an even more radical form, this is precisely what Abramović intends to achieve in Generator.