New York artist's Show Jump-starts CAC's Lobby

New York artists Show Jump-starts CACs Lobby
The lobby that architect Zaha Hadid designed for the new Contemporary Arts Center has soaring glass windows, a slinking staircase and a floor that curls up to form a wall.

But despite its architectural grandeur, the effect is antiseptic.

Linda Shearer, in her first full

season as director of the downtown museum, has a simple but effective plan for the lobby: Put some art in it.

The first of a series of shows designed to entice passersby into the lobby and then maybe on upstairs to the other galleries is Tony Oursler.

The New York City artist primarily worked as a video artist in the 1980s.

But this show, up through April 2006, displays his incorporation of various media.

Oursler's work has evolved into a combination of sculpture, performance art, installation, audio and, yes, still much video.

The four pieces in the lobby show, Shearer's first curatorial effort since coming to the CAC in 2004, range from a comic director giving out critical orders to a complaining doll, a woman who looks to have an exploding brain and a cloud form that talks and looks at you with three eyes.

Shearer said she finds the multiplicity of media Oursler uses in his work transcends much video art today.

"Rather than just sitting down in front of a TV monitor and having a single-channel piece, the fact that