If you haven’t been down to the Frye to see The Puppet Show, it ends Sept. 13. To reassure anybody who is reasonably averse to the whimsical qualities of the genre, those aren’t the puppets in question.
Take, for instance,
Dennis Oppenheim’s Theme for a Major Hit (1974).
To
answer his own question – how to make performance art without being
there? – he created a cadre of his own mini-me’s. Dressed in hip suits,
they assume various unruffled positions till a timer goes off and they
dance.Puppets are rarely cool. They’re fall guys who are beat
on the head but rise again, bits of their stuffing clinging to the cudgel. Oppenheim’s make Andre Benjamin look awkward. They’re light on their feet, with a heavy-metal gleam in their gun-gray eyes. (more here)
Free admission.
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