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Uneasy Nostalgia At the heart of a massive William Kentridge exhibition lies a seven-minute film
vision
Like Peter Greenaway, William Kentridge is a multimedia artist in the truest sense. His work is an ever-evolving continuum that suffers if it's discussed in medium-specific parts rather than as a whole. It can be engaged with and viewed as political provocation, autobiography, medium-challenging formalist experiment, human-rights project, a corrective to how (and which) historical narratives get created by white men in the West, or all of the above.
Each theme is dauntingly weighty, yet Kentridge exposes their mutability, skillfully tracing their interrelationships and breaking them down through opera, sculpture, collage, printmaking, film, and charcoal drawings. An expansive new show at Marian Goodman Gallery,"Second-hand Reading," incorporates all of these mediums in varying degrees but to consistently Impressive effect.
Upon entering the gallery, you're greeted by a series of gargantuan kinetic sculptures: a deconstructed bicycle (gears, wheel, chain) mounted on a tripod causes a pair of silver megaphones to twist anxiously when the foot pedal is pressed; a row of black Singer treadle sewing machines trace circular patterns with attached megaphones...