Pablo Bronstein. Enlightenment Discourse on the Origins of Architecture, 2014; Performance at REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Scott Groller.

Indeed they are. As I walk through the space (and yes, you can walk through this show, touching and interacting with the furniture), I notice the performer, who is clearly defined by black tights, black leather dance shoes, and a billowy white blouse. She (or he, depending on who is performing at the moment—there are two professional dancers sharing the same role) moves about the space, interacting with the furniture by unlocking and opening them up to reveal a completely different incarnation of form and space. The chairs’ legs shriek as they are dragged across the concrete floor. The two dressers are moved on their casters, positioned back-to-back, and then locked together by two tiny hooks. The tops open outward, creating a space within the two dressers about the size, depth, and volume of a hot tub. A large, red, utilitarian boom box is brought out and a harpsichord melody plays—reminiscent of music that might have been heard in a king’s court. The dancer climbs up on the dressers and begins to move in slow, preening motions. As the music builds in speed and intensity, so do the strange birdlike arm movements of the dancer as she moves around the rim of this box. The dancer makes it back to her original location, adopts a fifth position (imagine holding a beach ball above your head), and flops to the side in a false and histrionic death. The dancer then gets up as though nothing had happened, turns the boom box off, and returns the room to its original arrangement, never once acknowledging the audience.

Pablo Bronstein. Enlightenment Discourse on the Origins of Architecture, 2014; Performance at REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Scott Groller.

London-based artist Pablo Bronstein’s newly commissioned project for REDCAT is a “staged essay,” where the artist plays the role of choreographer and architect, constructing a space that is constantly in flux. The placement of the furniture and a series of architectural drawings on the wall at first mimic the layout of a traditional 18th-century room, and then, through the use of choreography, these pieces are moved and reconfigured to represent an idealized configuration of a city in traditional Renaissance painting. The drawings, entitled Primitive Façade Variations, are meticulous ink-and-watercolor works that depict fictional facades where the architecture is hyperbolically out of scale with human proportion. The drawings on the wall serve to emphasize the scale of the performer to the oversized, anthropomorphic furniture. The dancers appear to be kids opening cabinets, which serves to both cement and satirize the Enlightenment’s ideas of archeological permanence—the Neoclassical’s solid and historically dominant presence in art history.

Pablo Bronstein. Enlightenment Discourse on the Origins of Architecture, 2014; Performance at REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Scott Groller.

The space is perfect in that it only has three walls; the fictional “fourth wall” (the imagined wall at the front of the stage that allows the audience to see the action) is emphasized because the audience is at the same level and often only a few feet away from the performer. This “fourth wall” is further broken down by the audience’s ability to move freely throughout the space and view the performance from many vantage points. Baroque theater mimicked daily life. Life in court was not much different than what was depicted on stage. The dancers are illustrating this performance of daily life. At first, the contemporary realities of the boom box and the frosted tips of the dancer’s hair bothered me, but I quickly realized that they, too, were part of this set. Bronstein has created a play very specifically set in the time of the Enlightenment, but through misrepresentation and exaggeration of that time, we can see that it is really about our own. The  “performances” of architecture, art history, and daily life can be seen as just that: choreography laid down by someone before our time as we continue to churn through the motions.

Pablo Bronstein. Primitive Facade Variations, 2014; ink and watercolor on paper, 6 parts; each part: 45.2 x 78.7 (unframed). Courtesy of Herald St, London and Franco Noero, Turin.

REDCAT is a gallery where most of the audience comes for theater and dance. According to curator Ruth Estevez, the interest for the gallery is in performative art. This performance art recognizes and embraces its own history in relation to the theater, which is a breath of fresh air. It is also unique among performance art in that it is being performed daily—it is a living and breathing exhibition. It is an exciting space to be a part of, and I recommend getting out to see it.

Enlightenment Discourse on the Origins of Architecture is on view at REDCAT Gallery through March 15, 2014.

Mike Kelley's "Adaption: Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses" (1999/2010), photo by Alastair Muir, courtesy of Hayward Gallery

A life-size theatrical set with colorful objects ranging from a punching bag in the shape of a human form to a cylindrical bowl and a wire mesh are placed for visitors to play with. Titled Adaption: Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses (2010), artist Mike Kelley modeled the set after Harry Harlow’s primate laboratory, a psychologist who investigated the impact of bodily contact and isolation on aggression and affection in monkeys in the 1950s and 60s. The set is presented with two films, a black and white dance choreography by Anita Pace in the manner of Martha Graham’s mythological dance pieces, and a large color projection of a dance filmed in Kelley’s installation of the same work created in 1999, where dance movements were derived from the monkeys in the laboratory experiments, with violent movements evoking the films of psychologist Albert Bandura’s studies of the effect of televised violence of on children. Kelley’s practice is recognized for its engagement with popular culture by recontextualizing the subject of his work, in this case, the aura of psychological studies and its pervasive influence on contemporary culture. Coursing through the theatrical set of the film which was arranged to evoke Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural sets produced for Martha Graham, are four actors including performers wearing gorilla suits. The combination of the physical laboratory with a dance expressing ritualistic gestures, and the language of the lengthy title which contributes to a mythical allure, produce a rule system where art forms are related to each other through a common theme. Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1951, Kelley received a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and now resides in Los Angeles.

Pablo Bronstein's "Magnificent Triumphal Arch in Pompeian Colours" (2010), photo by Alastair Muir, courtesy of Hayward Gallery

Pablo Bronstein’s Magnificent Triumphal Arch in Pompeian Colours (2010) is a monumental arch set in the gallery and forms the setting for an visitor or a dancer at intervals during the day, whose everyday movements are transformed upon stepping through the arch, making a sprezzatura-inspired flourish.  Bronstein’s installations, performances and two-dimensional works explores notions of private and public, individual and collective, by combining the language of architecture and dance. The grandiose title of the neo-classicist styled work speaks to Bronstein’s interests in drawing on the ways in which the built environment exerts power and intervenes in our everyday behaviors and use of space. According to the guidelines in the exhibition, “while the dancer performs, visitors become bystanders and etiquette decrees that during that time, no one except the performer can set foot in the space”, and the way the visitors are guided to circulate is reminiscent of Bronstein’s earlier work, Concept for a Public Square (2005) where visitors could not step across, but had to skirt around a low wall demarcating an area of dead space. The imposition of the guidelines satirize the continuing nostalgia and reverence for architectural structures which exude a sense of authority and grandeur, and the ways the public or the ideal citizen conforms to these conventions. Bronstein was born in 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and attended the Slade School of Fine Art and Goldsmiths in London, where he now lives.

Christian Jankowski's "Rooftop Routine" (2007), photo by Alastair Muir, courtesy of Hayward Gallery

On entering the second level of the exhibition, one is drawn towards lively music from a film, Rooftop Routine (2007) by Christian Jankowski. The video is of Chua Suat Ling, of New York City’s Chinatown, hula-hooping and setting off a chain of hula hoopers across twenty-five rooftops in the area. It was a formal gesture to Trisha Brown’s 1973 Roof Piece which tested the impact of distance on improvised movements and involved dancers dressed in red across half a mile of rooftops in downtown New York. In similar fashion, Rooftop Routine played on the limitations of the camera in capturing the sequences of all the movements in one shot, and viewers of the film are left to imagine the communal experience and the visual rhythms of the hula hoopers with their circular movements against the grid-like views of the city. The participants’ prominence in Jankowski’s works are emblematic of his process, where he collaborates with people from all walks of life, from fortune tellers and magicians to street performers. In this case, it was a chance glimpse of Chua Suat Ling’s daily hula hoop routine, which provided Jankowski with the inspiration for the piece. Jankowski’s performance-based works continue the spirit of the improvised nature of the dance movement from the 1960s and 70s, from its concept and process through to its eventual performance. Hula hoops are placed in front of the video, for visitors to practice or to follow the instructions given by the red-suited Chua Suat Ling on the screen. Jankowski was born in 1968 in Göttingen, Germany and is now based in Berlin. His recent solo exhibition, The Perfect Gallery, was held at Pump House Gallery, London.