Abramovic’s Body Counts More than Once – By L.P. Streitfeld

It is a rare and marvelous event when a dedicated artist enters the popular culture as Marina Abramovic did with "The House with the Ocean View," a 12-day ritual fast in full view of a gallery audience.

Abramovic’s Body Counts More than Once

By L.P. Streitfeld

 

 

 

 

 

It is a rare and marvelous event when a dedicated artist enters the popular culture as Marina Abramovic did with "The House with the Ocean View," a 12-day ritual fast in full view of a gallery audience. This consciousness-raising feat set the stage for the final season of "Sex and the City" when it was re-enacted by an actress on the TV show in the Sean Kelly Gallery in Chelsea.

The University of Connecticut hosts the world premiere of "Count on Us," five large-scale photographs of a 2003 Belgrade performance produced with the assistance of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Artist-in-Residence Program. The program also brought the artist to Storrs for a one-day workshop and lecture that included the premiere of her groundbreaking video, "Student Body," based on her newly released book.

Curator Barry Rosenberg’s world class mounting in the Atrium Gallery creates a circular narrative highlighting the universal language Abramovic speaks by integrating archetypal symbols with a self-portrait in a remarkable economy of visual language. Four video monitors outside the gallery, containing a total of 25 hours of footage, track the performance artist’s 30-year development. This passage, from personal body to universal body, reveals why Abramovic is so influential in the world of performance art today.

The more sensational aspects of testing the limits of the body have often taken priority over the mystical components of her performances. Examples of these feats are readily available on the video monitors. "Count on Us" establishes a coherent, holistic evolution of body performance that engages the viewer by intertwining universal symbol with personal narrative, body process, collaboration, and the testing of physical limits anew.

The central symbols are essential to the contemporary mythology contained in the narrative: the skeleton, representing death and rebirth; the pentacle, an image for Venus; electric current signifying universal consciousness; and the body of the visionary artist as catalyst to the process of transformation. The passage begins with a reclining nude self-portrait of Abramovic shielded by a skeleton. Transformation of this life/death polarity comes with its projection into the center of a human star comprised of children’s bodies.

Next, the artist plays conductor to a children’s choir on a crumbling stage representing decay. Dressed in black, their open mouths forming a unity of spirit out of their separate states of mourning, there is hope arising from their collective body. Here the artist incorporates a dual role of conductor/trickster, and the abstraction appears like individual keys on a typewriter delivering a holistic message. Each piece stands on its own and works as part of an integrated whole.

The show at the University of Connecticut begins Marina Abramovic’s busy year (she will be showing elsewhere, including the Guggenheim in Rome). The low-key environment of the Atrium Gallery, located inside the Art Building,