iMoMA PS1 · Long Island City, Queens
Masao Gozu: Windows and Bars
First US museum show of Masao Gozu: photographs from the 1970s to today, from his Windows series of tenement residents and the Harry's Bar series, with recent returns to the same sites.
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Preview: written before the show opened
From 1976 to 1981, Masao Gozu kept photographing the front window of Harry's Bar at 98 Bowery, taking a picture each time a customer gazed out of its left side. Twelve of those frames are here. When the bar closed, he asked to buy the window itself and was turned down. Plenty of New Yorkers pay extra rent for a window; he wanted to own one outright.
That refusal started his sculptures. Gozu arrived in the 1970s with no photography training and shot apartment windows from the street, mostly in immigrant neighbourhoods from Chinatown to Crown Heights, each squared up in the darkroom to face you flat. Over 40 works run from 1972 to now, and you see old frames beside his recent returns to the same addresses.
This is his first US museum show, and nobody has reviewed it yet. Entry is free, with tickets reservable online. It opens on 5 November, and the 7 November Open House includes a workshop, Looking Out / Looking In.
Look for
Harry's Bar, 98 Bowery
Twelve shots of the same bar window between 1976 and 1981, each taken the moment a customer gazed out of its left side.
The 25th Street window (1992)
A window salvaged from a torn-down facade on 25th Street, rebuilt at quarter scale from brick, lintel and frame Gozu cut down himself.
Sunset between the towers
Three large colour photographs of windows Gozu installed around New York and New Jersey, placed so the sun set between the World Trade Center towers.
Mott Street, then and now
Look for Chinatown's Mott Street windows shot in 1972, hung with Gozu's recent photographs of the same site.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Rainy Days
Also at MoMA PS1
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- Masao Gozu: Windows and BarsCourtesy the artist
- Anna Maria Maiolino. ANNA—And the Infinite LineCourtesy of Hauser & Wirth
- Common SenseCourtesy of Brooklyn Museum
- Luminous ColorCourtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum
- MoMA PS1Sashimi-b, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0