Creative Time

Creative Time GLENN KAINO FEATURING RYAN MAJESTIC
Honor Among Thieves (Chapter 1: The Tower and the Star)

PERFORMANCES TAKE PLACE AT 7PM AND 9PM ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH AT THE HISTORIC SLIPPER ROOM, 167 ORCHARD STREET, NEW YORK, NY, 10002.

TICKETS ARE $10 AND MAY BE PURCHASED ONLINE AT:
www.creativetime.org/kainotickets

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MAG...IC SHOW / PERFORMANCE ART HYBRID PROJECT WILL ASTOUND AUDIENCES

Creative Time is pleased to present a blend of performance art and magic as part of Performa09. In Honor Among Thieves (Chapter 1: The Tower and the Star), Los Angeles–based artist Glenn Kaino will collaborate with renowned magician Ryan Majestic in a stage show that is part performance art and part magic. The show will challenge basic perceptions of reality, calling into question the relationship between a performer and his audience, and reality and illusion. For the past year, Kaino has been training for acceptance into the highly exclusive and esteemed Magic Castle, the home of the Academy of Magical Arts and a professional guild for magicians. Ryan Majestic is a renowned professional magician.

The Tower is the sixteenth Major Arcana card in the traditional Tarot deck and often represents situations of monumental ruin, catastrophe, and epic change. The Star, the seventeenth Major Arcana, represents tranquility or hope. Kaino and Majestic use these metaphors as departure points for a spectacular magic performance.

The show will begin by evoking the experience of wonder at first seeing a magic trick performed. Then, slowly, through the performance art technique of repetition, the audience will become a part of the magician’s process of rehearsal and refinement, witnessing how the magician engages audience members in different ways. Before the audience, the trick moves from one of illusion to one of technique. The deconstruction of the trick forces a reevaluation not only of the specific trick, but the blurry terrain between art and magic. The performance will transform the Slipper Room into an experimental laboratory where ideas are worked out in real time—ultimately becoming a rumination on the relationship between a performer and his audience. The evening will end with seemingly impossible illusions performed by Kaino and Majestic.

Magicians, much like artists, make changes to one’s basic understanding of reality. Honor Among Thieves is an attempt, says Kaino, “to learn to believe and not believe at the same time.” It is the first of many ongoing experiments with art and magic that the artist will make as an interrogation of the social contract and a restructuring of systems of validation and meaning.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Glenn Kaino is a Japanese American artist born, raised, and currently working in Los Angeles, who has versatile skills as an art maker. As part of a decade long exploration into the role of the artist in society, Kaino has weaved in and out of contemporary and commercial art realms. Kaino was co-founder of Deep River Gallery in LA, was formerly the chief creative officer of Napster, and was recently commissioned to create a monumental sculpture for the city of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary. Kaino’s work has been shown at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. He is currently represented by DBA Christian Haye.

Whether on stage in a crowded Hollywood nightclub, among farmers in a remote West African village, or as a special guest at an intimate dinner party, Ryan Majestic uses a lifetime of training to create extraordinary moments of suspense, mystery, and laughter for everyone around. Over the last 13 years, Ryan has taken his act across the US and the world, entertaining audiences in 45 states, 16 countries, and 5 continents.

ABOUT CREATIVE TIME
Honor Among Thieves continues Creative Time’s tradition of animating and amplifying unique spaces in New York City’s urban landscape. Recent projects include Tribute in Light, which served as a gesture of hope and healing after 9/11, and Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers, a film projected on the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Creative Time has worked with over 1,400 of the world’s most dynamic artists in its 35-year history. Creative Time: The Book was published on the occasion of the institution’s 33rd birthday, exploring each of its projects presented since 1974.