Featuring Video Works by Artists Lu Yang (December), Aron Sanchez-Baranda (January), and Nora Maité Nieves (February)
Lu Yang, Doku: Digital Reincarnation. Video still courtesy of the artist.
(NEW YORK, NY — November 21, 2023) — Times Square Arts, the largest public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts, is pleased to present their Midnight Moment Winter Season featuring digital works by multidisciplinary artists Lu Yang (December), Aron Sanchez-Baranda (January), and Nora Maité Nieves (February).
Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on over 92 electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight. The Winter 2023-2024 program showcases video works that employ the latest innovations in motion capture to populate Times Square with post-human dance party; reveal the otherworldly sensory splendor of a natural world in ecological decline; and explore the ornamentation encompassing Caribbean identity, belonging and myth-making through analog means.
FULL SCHEDULE
Lu Yang, Doku: Digital Reincarnation
December 1-30, 2023
Lu Yang, Doku: Digital Reincarnation. Video still courtesy of the artist.
Every night in December, artist Lu Yang takes over Times Square with a post-human dance party. Inspired by Lu Yang’s elaborately outfitted and eerily lifelike avatars in Doku: Digital Reincarnation are born out of the artist’s distinct and ongoing scientific and philosophical inquiries - an interdisciplinary blend of religion, neuroscience, psychology and modern technology.
The protagonist across this mesmerizing and hyper-saturated five-channel work is Doku, taken from the phrase “Dokusho Dokushi,” meaning “We are born alone, and we die alone.” While drawing from Lu Yang’s facial expressions and features, Doku embodies a truly androgynous form. Created in collaboration with a team of scientists, 3D animators, and digital technicians using the latest in motion capture technology, Doku’s movements are also derived from an amalgamation of dancers and musicians of varying genders. Through a multitude of digital incarnations, the artist is reborn as an ever-present avatar, endowed with talents surpassing physical limitations — uniting ancient concepts such as reincarnation with the latest technological innovations.
Aron Sanchez-Baranda: sessile board members
January 1-31, 2024
Aron Sanchez-Baranda, sessile board members (2022-2023). Video still courtesy of the artist.
In January, artist Aron Sanchez-Baranda brings the tactile splendor of the sea anemone to Times Square with sessile board members. A marine species affectionately referred to as the “flower of the sea”, these glistening, pulsing, vibrant-hued invertebrates are enlarged to monumental proportions every midnight in the new year.
Armed with a tide map and a mirrorless digital camera, Sanchez-Baranda has been documenting the creatures of the Californian coast with compulsive repetition for over decade. Waiting for the ocean’s ebb to reveal the anemone in their liminal, intertidal habitats, Sanchez-Baranda trains his lens on his subjects so closely that they become abstracted — allowing for a full sensory absorption that transcends biological classification and almost defies explanation. Manipulations with pacing and animation further direct our focus toward the subtle glacial and rhythmic movements of these mainly sedentary — sessile — lifeforms that preside over and feed upon their surroundings that are increasingly in environmental decline.
“Sea anemones are a constant in the marine environments in which I work. Their opportunistic and indiscriminate appetites are unflinching in the face of the ecological decline I've witnessed during more than a decade exploring the coast. They've become central to my art and inspiration — a soft, hungry, amorphous totem.”
— Aron Sanchez-Baranda
Nora Maité Nieves, Eyes of the Sea
Presented in partnership with the Norton Museum of Art
February 1-29, 2024
Nora Maité Nieves, Eyes of the Sea. Video still courtesy of the artist.
Bringing a playful analog sensibility to the digital landscape of Times Square every midnight in February, artist Nora Maité Nieves invites audiences on a journey through the symbols, textures and ornamental elements of her Caribbean roots. Part origin story, part fantasy, Eyes of the Sea is a mythological genesis tale told through color, shape, and movement.
Conjuring concrete breeze blocks, bright yellow squares with eye-shaped contours stack and multiply while swirling spirals of color flow like lava beneath them. The eyes begin to dance, transforming into fish swimming through rich blue waters and past landscapes of richly-painted marble, mosaics, and grids. After seeming to climb onto land and across a colonial tile floor, at the culmination of their voyage, the transmorphic fish converge, taking the shape of a rainbow-hued spinning flower.
“The blocks become eyes looking through a portal to the Caribbean sea, a way for me to look back at my home, Puerto Rico, and for home to look back at me.”
— Nora Maité Nieves
Using stop-motion animation to bring her painted and sculptural works to life, Nieves turns a thoughtful gaze on the textures of and devotion to a single, dynamic place, exploring themes of identity and belonging as well as the history of the Caribbean.
Eyes of the Sea is presented in collaboration with the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, in conjunction with Nieves’ solo exhibition Clouds in the Expanded Field, on view from December 23, 2023 to April 28, 2024.
ABOUT LU YANG
Lu Yang is a Shanghai-based artist who creates work exploring themes and formats, inspired by both traditional Chinese medicine and contemporary digital cultures. Through the medium of video, installation and performance, Lu Yang explores the fluidity of gender representation through 3D animated works inspired by Japanese manga and gaming subcultures. Led by a fascination with the human body and neurology, Lu Yang’s work bridges the scientific and the technological with aesthetics drawn from popular youth culture creating new visions of China in the face of modernity.
Born in 1986 in Shanghai where they are currently based, Lu Yang prefers to play with pronouns and insists she “lives on the internet” to further confuse fixed notions of identity. They attended the China Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou, BFA and MFA, under the tutelage of Zhang Peili, the godfather of Chinese video art. A 2019 winner of the BMW Art Journey award, she has shown internationally including the M Woods Museum in Beijing, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, and in many other shows, including the Asia Society Triennial in New York.
ABOUT ARON SANCHEZ-BARANDA
Aron Sanchez-Baranda documents wildlife and fungi found on the Californian coast. Expressed primarily in video and photography, his art explores sensory abstraction and unconscious response to natural forms. He has created works for musicians such as Arca and Kingston Family Singers as well as adverts for Apple computers. His recent solo exhibition, Membrana, was shown in Los Angeles and at the Venice Biennale in Italy.
ABOUT NORA MAITÉ NIEVES
Nora Maité Nieves (b. 1980 San Juan, Puerto Rico) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010, and her BFA from La Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2004. Recent solo exhibitions include: Temples of the Sea, Jason Haam, Seoul, Korea (2022); Deep Blue Day, Pink Bright Night, Embajada Foyer, Brooklyn, NY (2021); Full Room in the Sun Room, Fresh Window Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2019); Paisaje Lunar, Flyweight Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2019); and Tangible at Hidrante, San Juan, PR (2018). Recent Two Person exhibitions: Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea, Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Embajada, San Juan, PR (2021); Electric Hue, Nora Maité Nieves and Livia Ortiz, Proxyco Gallery, NewYork, NY (2021). Recent group exhibitions include: Entre Horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico, curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (2023); Interplay, Hollis Taggart Gallery, New York, NY (2023); Unspoken Identities, curated by Abdiel Segarra-Ríos, Ana Mas Projects, Barcelona, Spain (2023); Reimagined Landscapes, Calderón Gallery, New York, NY (2022); Intertwined, curated by Alex Allenchey, 1969 Gallery, New York, NY (2021); Surfacing at Ruiz-Healy Art, New York, NY curated by Carlos Rosales-Silva (2021); Contact Light at Survey Survey, New York, NY (2021); […]ENTREFORMAS, at El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR, curated by Abdiel Segarra (2021); Rubus Armeniacus (Himalayan Blackberry) at Jessica’s Apartment Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Jessica Kwok (2019); Nada Tropical, Miscelanea Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, curated by Ricardo Cabret and Maximilian Juliá (2019); Repatriation at El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR, curated by Bianca Ortiz (2019); and EDDYS Room at Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg, Sweden, curated by Austin Eddy (2018).
ABOUT THE NORTON MUSEUM OF ART
Founded in 1941 by Ralph Hubbard Norton and his wife Elizabeth Calhoun Norton, The Norton Museum of Art collects, preserves, and exhibits art, and engages the public through diverse special exhibitions, publications, and events. Programs, lectures, and workshops are held year-round, with an emphasis on activating works on view and inspiring the public through the power of art. The Museum is internationally known for its collection of more than 8,500 works of art in American Art, Chinese Art, Contemporary Art, European Art, and Photography.
In 2019, The Museum underwent a comprehensive expansion and renovation, designed by London-based architecture firm Foster + Partners, adding a building which includes over 12,000 square feet of new gallery space, an educational center, a store and restaurant, a sculpture garden, and a Great Hall, serving as the Museum’s “living room.” The new campus also features renovated, Museum-owned, 1920s-era cottages that house artists-in-residence.
Visit the Museum’s website www.norton.org or see them on Instagram, and Facebook.
ABOUT TIMES SQUARE ARTS
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators, such as Charles Gaines, Joan Jonas, Jeffrey Gibson, Pamela Council, Mel Chin and Kehinde Wiley, to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a cultural district and place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the arts program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity.
PRESS CONTACTS
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