SERGEI TCHEREPNIN – GAMES
2016-09-26The title of the exhibition is also the title of the life size photo sculptures on view in the gallery’s main space. In Games, a group of young men in futuristic basketball attire reach out at each other’s bodies and for a copper ball. The distinctive and theatrical poses are inspired by Vaslav Nijinsky’s ballet Jeux, as well as representations of athletes in social media, television, and advertising. Each of the photographs has an exterior “limb” that, when touched, triggers a stereo recording. The visitor moves through the game and has the power to activate infinite possibilities of sonic characters and shapes. Games sets the stage for another choreography and a queer body of sound.
Created in 1914 for the Ballets Russes, Jeux portrays a circuitous game of tennis between three dancers. It quickly reveals itself to be a game of desire and seduction between two women and a man. The ballet was radical for its time in its introduction of sport and modern sexuality, and its meshing of straight ballet with curious body configurations and mechanical maneuvers. Later it was discovered that Nijinsky intended the dancers to be three men, representing the homosexual relationships between himself, Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes, and a third male lover. The complicated composition and veiled narrative of Jeux, is a starting point from which Tcherepnin investigates the body’s potential to alter and to be altered through innumerable combinations of movement and sound.
Exhibition runs through to October 15th, 2016
Yossi Milo Gallery
245 Tenth Avenue (between 24th & 25th St.)
New York
NY
10001
