The Power Plant

New York-based Ei Arakawa works at the slippery intersection of performance, painting and installation. Either solo or with the group Grand Openings (with collaborators Jutta Koether and Emily Sundblad), he has presented work throughout Europe and North America, appearing recently at the New Museum in New York and receiving a 2008 Altoids Award for emerging artists. Here Arakawa treats Scott Lyall’s exhibition as an arena for performance. Like Lyall, Arakawa accumulates gestures that remain unfinished or unresolved. Bodies, art objects and built constructions all contribute to a radically diffused mise-en-scène that respects no boundaries, on-stage or off, and directs the viewer’s attention elsewhere.