On Friday, July 22nd, Michele Gerber Klein, Diane B and Helen Allen Smith hosted a hip after party at the Sara Nightingale Gallery for Parrish Museum’s Platform Artist, Jonah Bokaer’s Landscape Installation: The Disappearance Portraits.
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Jonah Bokaer. (Photo: Annie Watt) |
Guests, including Richard Anderman, Chef Marco Barila, Charles Renfro, Dana Buckley, Tiffany Dubin, Joanna Fisher, Claude Grunitzky, Barbara Hoffman, Anya Lesum, Rachel Libeskind, Paul McCann, Olivia Motch, Ursula Nueman, Larry Nueman, Michele Pesner, Steven Pesner, Sana Sabbagh, Fred Seegal, Linda Silverman, Helen Allen Smith, Terrie Sultan, Amanda Taylor, Spencer Tomkins, Lorraine and Olivier Vidal, Billy Wright and Evan Yee, nibbled on Insatiable Eats smoked salmon blinis, wild mushroom crostinis and more.
The hour long sold out performance, conceived for the Parrish’s Southern Meadow, encompassed the length of the museum, lined by a single row of built in benches, facing the Bacon Family South Meadow.
“You need metaphor and sensuality to address architecture like the Parrish,” Bokaer told Hamptons.com. “You can’t tackle architecture like that with reality. You have to tackle it with metaphor.”
For example: “The museum is a boat in this performance and I am coping with the boat, coping with the museum and the grounds, what’s off and on the boat, walking the plank.” Adding somewhat in jest, “I’m the captain of the boat and you all are the passengers.” Turning to Andrea Grover, Century Arts Foundation Curator of Special Projects, cited her Radical Seafaring multidisciplinary exhibition in the Parrish as a partial inspiration, saying, “There’s a nautical theme to this performance.”
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Linda Silverman and Olivier Vidal with the author. (Photo: Annie Watt) |
Art supporter Michele Gerber Klein drove out to host the beautifully done soiree. “Jonah Bokaer was the youngest dancer ever for Merce Cunningham,” she told us. “Since then, he has gone on to partner with a myriad of famous contemporary artists and create his own choreography.”
Bokaer is the first choreographer to be featured in the Museum’s Platform series, which invites one artist per year to utilize the Herzog & De Meuron designed museum for site specific art.
An interdisciplinary choreographer, whose collaboration with Pharrell Williams and artist Daniel Arkham will be presented at BAM on November 10th, Bokaer also counts Robert Wilson among his supporters. A Gala Dinner for 200 guests will follow BAM’s Rules of the Game premiere, to benefit Jonah’s dance company, Chez Bushwick, with a special honor to his longtime patron and collaborator Diana Widmaier Picasso.
