![]() ![]() One as a series of elements to be explored by the viewer individually, and two as the concise essential scene of the past captured in the mirror. The frame captures the usual retinue from Jonas’s early days-Organic Honey was her “erotic electronic seductress,” a sexily clad, ultra-feminine mystic who was the antithesis of the boyish, low-key attire of Joan’s everyday and the star of her early work. Its skewed angle captures a scene that includes drawings of Jonas’s dog Sappho, the green silk dress that Organic Honey wore, video cameras, monitors, and photographer’s lights. All of this makes for a constantly shifting pace, and dynamic, animated looking.Īs example, in “Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy” (1972), one small mirror, perhaps 8” x 10”, leans against the wall. And mirrors serve as the integral, binding element, turning the spectator into performer. Videos or tapes act as soundtracks to enliven the sculptural masses. Photographs, paintings, and drawings vie for attention on the walls. Props are clustered in groups of differing sizes, and at differing heights. ![]() Moving from work to work, each scene is guarded by heavy curtains. Each installation feels like an active event of today, not a relic from an untouchable, nostalgia-filled past. She designed the entire Queens installation and achieves, improbably, the vitality that must exist in live performance. Jonas considers her work to be an evolving project, and sees each installation as an organic re-contextualization of the first viewing state. In addition, more recent works-which are based around linear narratives (folk tales and poems)-are recreated as theatrical tableaux. Five Works (though in fact there are more) reunites some of the more familiar early videos with the props, costumes, mirrors, and sounds of the original performances. The Queens show aims to rectify this situation. 1 show, viewers are given only the video half of the experience, a record of an event that is simultaneously tantalizing and frustrating. The audience was confronted with a double reality of two simultaneous live performances, one in three dimensions and one in two. Sometimes previously made videos were shown frequently, a camera would capture the artist and relay the image on a monitor set on stage. In particular, she created staged performances where video was a defining element. It was a time when the strident divisions between disciplines were breaking down, and from the beginning Jonas’s work was a fusion of multiple mediums. In the early years, she danced with Judson and worked at the Green Gallery (where Oldenburg, Whitman, and Morris, among others showed), and generally befriended the downtown avant-garde scene. She came to New York in 1965 with a background in poetry, sculpture, and art history. Collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Joan Jonas, Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy Organic Honey's Vertical Roll, Installation, 1972/1994.
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