JUSTIN PECK’S YEAR OF THE RABBIT

Fluorescent lighting, open window, magnets, tape, lighting gel #77. Considering that New York-based artist Rey Akdogan’s recent transformation of a second-floor room at MoMA PS1 was mainly the result of her placement of these pre-existing elements and others, some of the words that might be used to describe it—sculpture, or installation—suggest an exhibition betraying more evidence of the artist’s hand than the one visitors encountered. The visual obsolescence of the materials themselves within the space created an ideally neutral setting for the sums of their parts: the breeze from the open window plus the metallic fringe attached to a low-lying hospital privacy screen sparked a shimmering ballet in miniature, and the red film applied to part of a windowpane inspired a sunlit display of red and white forms that sharpened, blurred, and disappeared. The seemingly left-behind construction films and lighting gels played a more prominent role in the gallery than they do in the films and commercial photographs in which they aid in creating visual effects; at PS1, the viewer encountered them directly, right in the exhibition space. These displaced, unassuming materials were not only repurposed toward a less cinematic, more space-oriented experience; they were given a starring role. The result of their arrangement was a carefully balanced harmony between space, objects and, not incidentally, sunlight, the absence of which is key to the artist’s recently opened exhibition at Miguel Abreu Gallery on New York’s Lower East Side.

“Each new experience is the most beautiful at the moment,” says Cédric Charlier, the Belgian designer who first made his impact felt as the artistic director of Cacharel before being unceremoniously dropped last year after four seasons. Charlier’s new eponymous label was the breakout hit of the Paris Fall 2012 womenswear shows, with a confident selection of sleek clothes that riffed on technology and the bourgeoisie, proposing a modern breed of femme-bots that streamlined the iconography of science fiction into a unique new language. Patricia van der Vliet opening in a wool and fur trench with bronze buttons that matched her flattened metallic sunglasses served as the defining image of the collection.

In selecting architect David Adjaye for their first retail space, Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez were attempting to chisel their own progressive framework into Manhattan’s stiff Upper East Side. The outpost, they say, was meant to be “the antithesis of a slick, high-gloss Madison Avenue store,” and Adjaye, whose rise to fame is rooted firmly in the dissolution of cultural boundaries, was seen as the ideal mediator.

When Niki and the Dove first emerged from Stockholm, its chromatic charm already fully realized, efforts to categorize the band strained under its individuality. The duo behind the music, Malin Dahlström and Gustaf Karlöf, had merged sound and color to spark a conversation dense in syntactic variety—they were Europop, electronic, neo-goth, theatrical, pagan. All they were chasing, though, was a rush. “There’s something very intuitive and spontaneous and natural in the way we make music,” Dahlström, the group’s amiable vocalist, says. “That’s maybe why we were a little surprised when people put names on the music. We had no intention of going any one way.”

September finds New Yorkers reluctantly getting back down to business after three welcome months of sun and listless long weekends. But watching summer recede in the rearview mirror isn’t all bad: along with some breezy relief from the heat, the first week of September heralds the start of a new season of exhibitions at galleries all over the city. This year’s offerings run the gamut from heavy-hitting post-minimalist sculpture in Chelsea to a crop of notably good group shows downtown.

When the Brooklyn Academy of Music opened its new Richard B. Fisher Building earlier this month, guests at the première performance were greeted by a floating plane of light. The glowing grid, composed of thirty-six bare bulbs hung precisely from the darkened ceiling above, was the artist Anthony McCall’s visual design for choreographer Jonah Bokaer’s latest work, “Eclipse,” which, in addition to inaugurating the Fisher Building, also marked the opening of the thirtieth edition of BAM’s celebrated wide-ranging Next Wave Festival. It was additionally, in a pleasant bit of serendipity, Bokaer’s thirtieth work as a choreographer. “It just crept up on us,” he laughs, “and it’s been interesting to arrive at this series of occasions.”

The Last Magazine closed out New York Fashion Week with our traditional blow-out launch party celebrating the brand-new issue on Wednesday night. Even without our sorely-missed cover girl Lara Stone (visa troubles!), the night was a wild one, as celebrants closed out New York and geared up for London under the flashing lights of the […]