As part of Upstate Art Weekend, Hudson Hall presents Hudson Terminus, an interdisciplinary installation and performance work by choreographer, artist, and sound-maker Jon Kinzel. Running July 18 through August 17, the exhibition includes works on paper and a series of live performances this weekend in Hudson’s historic performance spaces.
Hudson Terminus is part of the ongoing artistic practice, Terminus Series, Kinzel began in 2016. The evolving body of work engages the architecture, acoustics, and social spaces of the Hudson Hall building itself.
A Guggenheim Fellow and Foundation for Contemporary Arts recipient, Kinzel is known for his rigorous yet intuitive practice across dance, drawing, and sound. His work in Hudson Terminus brings these disciplines into conversation, emphasizing physical process, many-colored visual constructions, and an attunement to space.
At the heart of the exhibition is what Kinzel calls “mark making”—a term that may sound academic but, for him, is fundamental. “Mark making is an elemental part of any visual form,” he explains. “You start with marks, and several marks arrive at, for example, a letter… the beginning of creating form and shape.”
These marks, drawn lines, smudges, heavy strokes, don't necessarily represent anything. Instead, they hover between abstraction and image, gesture and intention. “There’s a kind of impulsivity,” he says, “but also a measured-ness. I’m very deliberate about my marks, but there’s also lots of room for chance. That keeps me more interested. A lot of my work is examining or exploring the way marks come together that teeters around something ambiguous or something suggestive. They become non-representational semi-landscapes.” The size of the art works is limited by the alcove in his NYC apartment where they are created. Also, he uses mediums without smell, such as acrylic paint rather than oils, and collage.
This tension between control and spontaneity also underpins Kinzel’s movement practice. With decades of experience as a dancer and choreographer, he finds physicality entering his visual work, and vice versa. “The physical act of the painting is part of the process of making the painting,” he says. “It echoes my sensibility as an improviser.”
Kinzel continues, “In many respects I am working all the time, as I like to work on multiple things at once. The nature of working with objects versus the body does, for me, entail an allowance of cerebral and visceral activity. Similarly, when I prepare the body to move, to be energized, and to generate choreography and improvisation it is a deeply mindful and physical experience. That said, the basic fact that I can pick up and put down a drawing, to return to a seemingly unchanged artwork, is very different than looking at giving shape to, or possessing, a fleeting kinesthetic moment.”
In both media, Kinzel is attentive to space, both the physical environment and how bodies or images relate to its edges. “In painting and drawing, you have an edge,” he says. “In performance, you relate to the edge more conceptually. How do you bring the outside world into your work?”
For this site-specific performance, Kinzel will activate the 2nd floor in front of the stage allowing the audience to view the dance from three sides. And thankfully every seat will have a clear view of the performance. “I’ve decided to push the chairs way back and have as much space as possible,” he notes. “Just like the exhibition, I’ve chosen to feature a lot of space around each piece.”
Kinzel performs with Anne Iobst, of the notably manic DANCENOISE duo founded in 1983, and Brazilian circus arts, aerialist and contemporary dancer Fabio Tavares, in a choreographic structure that responds to the site and to time. As of midweek, Kinzel was still finalizing the sound composition. “I may use my own score, or existing recordings, or silence,” he says. “I often perform in silence. It has a way of meeting you - you and the audience - and letting the timing and movement arise on their own.”
Age and embodiment are also woven into the work. Now in midlife, Kinzel reflects on a shift from the athleticism of earlier years to a more nuanced engagement with the body. “We’re all subject to gravity, disease and emotional toll. We all have that memory, but we develop an understanding of the other possibilities of movement. What one might lose in range of motion, one can gain in understanding,” he says. “I’m not nostalgic. I’m just very fortunate I can still move.”
Whether on paper or in performance, Kinzel’s work resists easy categorization. “I’m not coming out of a specific genre,” he says. “For me, it’s about cultivating a studio practice and understanding your medium so you can generate original movement, or marks, or images, that are part of a larger conversation.”
Hudson Terminus opens July 18 at Hudson Hall, with performances this Saturday and Sunday. More information can be found at hudsonhall.org.
Catherine Tharin danced with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company touring nationally and internationally. She teaches dance studies and technique, is an independent dance and performance curator, choreographs, writes about dance for Side of Culture and Interlocutor, and is a reviewer for The Dance Enthusiast. She also writes for The Boston Globe. Catherine lives in Pine Plains, New York and New York City.
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