The Beyond/In Western New York 2010: Alternating Currents art exhibition commences this Thursday with French performance artist Didier Pasquette confidently strutting across a high-wire walk in downtown Buffalo.
Didier's high-wire walk will take place across a steel cable strung between the two towers of the 23-story Liberty Building on Main St. The high-wire walk is the kickoff to a lineup of exhibitions and programs this fall.
The Beyond/In Western New York, a biennial multi-venue exhibition, will showcase the work of over 100 artists from Western New York, Southern Ontario and beyond. Additionally, a curatorial collaboration of 12 regional museums and galleries will feature the work of artists from outside the WNY region.
After more than two years of preparation, the exhibition, titled "Alternating Currents," hopes to blur the local and global reclamation of natural assets with visions of the future and past to depict the diverse demographic and social constructs of the region.
"There's a brilliant exchange of contemporary art dialogue among the regional and international artists," said Heather Pesanti, curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. "This high-rope walk represents the kickoff to it all."
This year, "Alternating Currents" plans to question art forms and revitalize Buffalo.
Didier Pasquette is the protégé of legendary French high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who gained recognition for his illegal high-wire walk across a steel cable strung between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1974. Petit's walk, considered the "artistic crime of the century," was documented in the 2008 film Man on Wire.
Pasquette received his diploma from the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in Chalons-en-Champagne in 1989 and has performed high-wire walks throughout Europe. His most notable events came in London, France, Copenhagen and Scotland.
The high-wire walk on Thursday is intended to display Pasquette's years of training and to celebrate the art that he has perfected.
"This is event is very capable [of gaining] people's attention and [forcing] them to re-interpret their notions of art," said Brooke LeBoeuf, coordinator of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery venue featured in the exhibition. "[Pasquette's] idea is painting a line in space and re-interpreting that line [as he walks] in the sky. I don't think people will look at the Liberty Building in the same way."
Even volunteers at the event are surprised at the amount of talent that Pasquette's act requires, as the high-wire walk will be a spectacle for many local residents.
"[Petit] is a top tier, world class performer displaying a performance art that I have never seen in Buffalo," said Jim Koenig, a volunteer who will setup Pasquette's wire at the Liberty Building. "The art form itself is very remarkable. [It looks like Petit] is walking on nothing and floating [in the] air gracefully."
Pasquette's high-wire act is the first of many artistic interpretations of the "Alternating Currents" theme of the exhibition.
The "Alternating Currents" title represents two turn-of-the-century events that occurred in Western New York: Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla's War of the Currents in the 1890s in Niagara Falls, and Kim Camp Gillette's utopian vision that Americans should live in a single city called Metropolis situated in Western New York and powered by Niagara Falls.
Additionally, LeBoeuf addressed the symbolism of the two replicas of the Statue of Liberty, the original being a gift to the United Sates from the people of France in 1886, atop the Liberty Building in Buffalo. Pasquette will give his own gift to the City of Buffalo as he performs his first high-wire walk in the United States.
Pasquette's high-wire walk event will begin at 6:30 p.m. atop the Liberty Building in Buffalo near the Main St. and Pearl St. intersection.
The Beyond/In WNY exhibits will be featured at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Big Orbit Gallery, Buffalo Arts Studio, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Carnegie Art Center, Castellani Art Museum, CEPA Gallery, El Museo, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Squeaky Wheel, UB Anderson Gallery, UB Art Gallery, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society and the Western New York Book Arts Center.
