Angel Orensanz and Harry Smith - Two Alternative Visions and a Common Landscape

This Thursday, September 14, there will be a unique opportunity to review and enjoy simultaneously at the work of Harry Smith and Angel Orensanz and to see their continuities and differences.

The show presents an anthology of Harry Smith’s early work and Angel Orensanz’s first video pieces, before the “Orensanz Portfolio” entered the Film and Video Library of the Museum of Modern Art. Harry Smith is shown through a series of his pieces archived at the Paul Getty Museum, such as Early Abstractions, Mirror Animations, Heaven and Earth Magic and Late Superimposition. Among the works of Orensanz are “The Steppes of Mars, Burning Universe, In Nasa’s Lab and Spheroid Memories. Large screens and smaller projection areas will deliver to a swelling audience the parallel worlds of the two featured artists.

What unites this double body of work is the space, with 54 cathedral like ceilings with resonances of the syncretic, enigmatic world of both artists, drawing from their ancestries and their immediate American experiences.

The center of the exhibition space is occupied by an installation of work in metal of Orensanz; that he has reconstructed into an evocation of 9/11, a wound in American life that, no flashy architecture or development plans can ever sooth. Although Harry Smith is pre 9/11 and Angel Orensanz is post 9/11, in both visual discourses there is the anxiety and the tension of an ominous world: The world of Vietnam and Central America in the first case, and the post world of 9/11 in the case of Orensanz.

The curator of the show is Clayton Patterson, who, besides the concept of the show and its installation, has coordinated the catalogue and the information campaign. Clayton Patterson presents thirty years of his own art at 161 Essex Street, at the Outlaw Museum across from Norfolk St., from 5 to 7 PM. Henry Jones, a film and video artist as well, has selected, prepared and installed the complex work of Harry Smith, his mentor. DJ Free Simon will provide the sound for the exhibition.

The catalog carries texts by Lionel Ziprin, Bob Holman, Jessica Glass, Cindy Carr, Paul Miller and others is available for $4.00 as well as a very limited edition CD that includes pieces by Harry Smith and Angel Orensanz for $100.00, aimed at supporting members of the show. A contribution that is tax deductible. The admission to the show is $10.00. The show runs from 7 to 10:30 PM.

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