A special void in NYC

Between flights earlier today I had just about enough time to see one or two things in this most amazing of cities.

Left my stuff at the left luggage at JFK and dashed to my first stop. Given the amazing weather in the city, I was in no mood to spend my precious few hours indoors.I headed to the quintessential urban garden - the sculpture garden at the MoMA - a tiny landscaped oasis bang in the middle of what may easily be the densest sq km ever built by man.
Quiet strangely I hadn't explored this space properly on my previous visits to this amazing museum.
Very much in spirit with the architecture of the museum the garden too is elegantly laid out using a minimal language where the art work stands it's ground.
Since I was already here I also went for a quick round of the museum - revisiting some of my favorite paintings .. here a few images of those works and the great museum ...

9th Sharjah Biennial

Went to see the main galleries of the 9th Art Biennial in Sharjah.

Here's a few of the art works I found interesting:

Football Field, 2007-2009 Site-specific intervention

by Maider López (1975 San Sebastián, Spain; lives there)

Water Fountain , 2009 Site-specific intervention
also by Maider López
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Spells on Our Youth, 2009 Sculpture
by Diana Al Hadid (1981 Aleppo, Syria. Lives in Brooklyn, USA)
Her sculptures take 'towers' as their central theme, drawing together a wide variety of associations: power, wealth, technological and urban development, ideas of progress and globalism. They are also symbols of the problems of cultural difference and conflict. The design on display here takes form of an inverted Tower of Babel.
(check some of her work - HERE)
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Some place, 2005 Plumbing pipes, radio monologue
by Sheela Gowda (1957 Bhadravati, India. Lives in Bangalore, India)
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Halcyon Tarp, 2009 Installation using the Royal Bengal tiger as a motif to explore aspects of Bangladeshi history, society and politics.
by Firoz Mahmud (1974 Khulna, Bangladesh. Lives in Tokyo, Japan)
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Noor (Light), 2009Light, car sun protection film, plexiglas
by Giuseppe Moscatello (1979 Botrugno, Italy. Lives in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates)

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3D bodyscans of German women's football team FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling), Rapid Prototyping, Airbrush
by Karin Sander (1957 Bensberg, Germany. Lives in Berlin, Germany.)
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Under Standing Over Views, 2009 Installation composed of fallen paint fragments collected from the walls of different cities.
by Nadia Kaabi Linke (1978 Tunis, Tunisia. Lives in Berlin, Germany)
Below is another close-up image of the same

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KA, 2009 Installation 2 JCB 1CX hoe arms, buckets, hydraulics system
by Nida Sinnokrot (1971 Pennsylvania, USA. Grown up in Zeralda, Algeria. Lives in Madrid)

KA transposes the raised-arms symbol of an ancient Egyptian belief system into a contemporary 'sculpture' of mechanical bulldozer arms, creating both a physical and methaphysical allegory of power.

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Forced Labor (Red Sand), 2008Wooden shelf, red sand, figurine
by Liliana Liliana Porter (1941 Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lives in New York, USA)

Below is another close-up image of the same

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And my favourite work of the Biennial was

Inshallah, 2005 Neon

by Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen (1971 Aalborg, Denmark. Lives in Paris and London)

Insha Allah is an Arabic term evoked to indicate hope for an aforementioned event to occur in the future. The phrase translates into English as "God willing" or "If it is God's will". In Arabic speaking countries including UAE the term is used by members of all religions; meaning the term in and of itself does not denote a religion, but simply means "God willing."

More Porto blogging

Here's one more blog entry from Porto starting with some general photos of the city.

The city beautiful sits one a series of small hills on the northern bank of the Douro River.

A column in the middle of Rotunda da Boavista (below)

commemorates the victory of the Portuguese against the French troops that occupied Portugal during the Peninsular War (1808-1814). But to best appreciate the city's undulating terrain you have to see it from Vila Nova de Gaia, the city just across the river.

Wherever one goes in Portugal, azulejos are to be found inside and outside churches, ordinary houses and even train stations or subway stations. They constitute a major aspect of Portuguese architecture as they are applied on walls, floors and even ceilings. Here’s a few I found in Porto-

The food here has been exceptionally great especially the small sweets that I've been gorging along with the super cheap espressos.

Before I conclude from Porto here's a few other (ie not designed by the Masters) interesting projects I saw while here.

The Guindais funicular connecting the Douro river bank to the high town at the Batalha quarter designed by Adalberto Dias.

Transparent building by Manuel de Sola-Morales

And a nice housing project by a young Portuguese firm And lastly here’s ‘She changes’ a great wind sculpture by artist Janet Echelman.

check a youtube video about this project here