Orensanz Descends Into The Abyss
On view at the Orensanz Foundation, New York, starting August 9, 2010
172 Norfolk Street, New York, N.Y.10002
For more information call 212-780-0175, orensanz(at)gmail(dot)com
The exhibition "Orensanz Descends Into The Abyss" opens on August 9, 2010. The groundbreaking compositions while submerged in water are artistic vision to comment on the tragic environmental crisis.
Right when the Gulf of Mexico was being emptied of workers, observers and controllers in view of the encircling hurricanes and tropical storms, Angel Orensanz entered, in a way, its inner chambers. He flew to Barcelona and built his own explorative operation. The Orensanz team picked one of the deepest falls of the Mediterranean coast and during three days surveyed and documented up close the psychological and physical impact of a seabed trashed by two thousand years of commercial and recreational seafaring.
The Gulf of Mexico is everywhere. With the difference that the U.S. South seaboard is not littered by the harmless debris of the Greeks, Romans, Arabs and the tourist ocean liners but by twenty thousand deep sea gas exploration towers.
Angel Orensanz is now back in New York with his findings. Starting August 9, two large galleries of the Angel Orensanz Foundation in Lower Manhattan will display a frightening sub universe of dread and displacement. Nobody knew that down there the mind and the environment float distorted and disembowel, and every seashore borders and harbors the entrance to hell. Now it is not Albert Camus musing about a stifling death but Freud and Nietzsche analyzing the Apocalypse.
On view are fifteen large aluminum murals with powerful narratives. The dedicated staff of the Angel Orensanz Foundation has processed the material and displayed it in two rooms. A catalogue book is in the making and a symposium by artists and art writers will discuss the show.
The exhibition "Angel Orensanz Descends Into the Abyss" will be on view at the Angel Orensanz Foundation from August 9 through November 9, 2010, daily (except weekends) from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, and is free and open to the public.
You are invited to join us for the exhibition opening on August 9, 2010 between 6:00 and 9:00 pm.
Angel Orensanz Foundation for Contemporary Art
172 Norfolk Street, New York, New York 10002
Tel: 212-780-0175, email contact: orensanz(at)gmail(dot)com
The Floating Sistine Chapel of Angel Orensanz
EXHIBIT Extended till August 12
On view at the Orensanz Foundation, New York
172 Norfolk Street, New York, N.Y.10002
For more information call 212-780-0175
Under the only replica of the Sistine Chapel in the world, here in Manhattan, sculptor Angel Orensanz replays his own version of the architectural experience with this new installation. Hundreds of vibrant colored yards float from wall to wall and cascade from the ceilings to the floor. Fabrics dance and bathe the imagination of the observer in a flight of transcendental desire to overcome the dimension of the space. The visitor is part of the experience of the architecture on a stream flowing from Michelangelo.
Orensanz has been intensely attracted by the magnetism of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in Rome. He has visited it endless occasions to see it from the floor as Goethe and Schinkel used to do in the first part of the 19th century.
In a turn of magic, in 1986 Orensanz became the owner of the building at Norfolk Street – a powerful, forgotten synagogue in the Lower East side about to be demolished for redevelopment. The building that today houses the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts in New York, turned out to be the very first synagogue in New York City, built by the German Jewish Reform Movement in 1848. The pioneers of progressiveness brought to New York a well-reputed architect from Germany, Alexander Saeltzer, a disciple of the master Schinkel to build a special building that would carry the dimensions of the Sistine Chapel: its soaring 60 feet high ceilings, its rows of windows, the color of its vaults, the identical dimension... an almost perfect match.
Sculptor Orensanz has developed in the past a number of installations in this historic temple including his "Burning universe" (2002) or his "Descent on Mars" (2008).
"The Floating Sistine Chapel" installation can be seen through various formats, including photographs and video pieces from June 15 till June 23, at the Orensanz Foundation in New York, 172 Norfolk Street.
We hope you can join us for the opening on Tuesday, June 15, between 6:00 and 9:00 pm.
