Sculpture Center: Hidden Gem Is One of NYC's Coolest (and Scariest) Art Venues

I made one of my quarterly visits to Queens on Sunday, March 18, drawn primarily by the Henry Taylor show at PS1 (more on that in a later post), but I also swung by the Sculpture Center--one of my favorite exhibition spaces in the city.

Exterior view of the Sculpture Center

 If you don't like crowds or lines--indeed, if you like having art all to yourself--the Sculpture Center is for you. Down a side street about a 10-minute walk from PS1, the Center, housed in a former power-generation plant, rarely has more than a handful of visitors, and you're often the only one there.

I've been singing the Sculpture Center's praises for years, like in this post on Architectural Record's web site, a review of the "Happiness of Objects" which featured a 36-foot tall, 24-feet-wide, but just two-feet deep abode.

Interior view of the Sculpture Center

The main, upstairs space--with a soaring ceiling, brick walls and a column-free display area--consistently shows interesting work that tends to push the boundaries of sculpture. But what I really look forward to is the basement, whose exhibitions tend to conceptual extremes--and more important, it's probably the most unusual museum space in NYC.

I've only been truly scared in a museum twice, and both times were in this dungeon-like space: one of the unsettling shows featured a long corridor of locked doors and bright, white lights--very Shining like; the other involved walking through a pitch-black corridor, with odd drafts and disturbing sounds the only sensory experience.

The latest exhibition in the space, which just ended today ("You never look at me from the place from which I see you") was typically eclectic and heady. The best works took advantage of a pair of tunnels which veer off from the main corridors--they are creepy rooms, inevitably making me think of concentration-camp ovens whenever I see them.

Sculpture/installation by Takashi Hirosaki

In one of the tunnels: sculptural installations from Takashi Hirosaki, made of wire and scraps of construction debris. They looked like the sort of electric-colored spider webs you'd expect to see from the oversized, irradiated bugs you'd expect to live here.

Christine Rebet, installation view

The other tunnel: Sculptural maquettes of imaginary, unfinished monuments from Christine Rebet, work very close in concept and execution to objects by Iman Issa, currently on view at the New Museums 
"Ungovernables" Triennial.

Christine Rebet, installation view

The highlight of Rebet's work: a blue mask/face shield made out of what appears to have been a garbage can.

--Bryant Rousseau