Rivane Neuenschwander, A Day Like Any Other, 2008.

When I emerged from the New Museum on Thursday night, I had a wish around my wrist, pages of scribbled observations, and a moderate case of sensory overload.

I had just experienced vast collections of work by two artists: Rivane Neuenschwander and Bryon Gysin.  Although the two exhibits are light-years apart in mindset and in subject matter, both really hit home.

Neuenschwander is a Brazilian artist whose work is all over the place.  I learned right away that viewing her art is secondary to participating in it.  The lobby exhibit, “I Wish Your Wish,” invites you to choose a ribbon from the thousands hanging on the wall—each with a different wish printed on it—and to replace it with your own written wish.  You’re supposed to tie the ribbon around your wrist, and when it falls off, the wish you selected will come true.  Another installment, “First Love,” has a forensic sketch artist stationed to draw portraits based on people’s lengthy descriptions of their first loves.  The array of sketches pinned on the wall behind him is diverse and somewhat eerie.

These two pieces exemplify Neuenschwander’s art perfectly: it’s diverse yet unified, nostalgic but not hopeless.

Rivane Neuenschwander, Involuntary Sculptures (Speech Acts), 2001-10.

I especially enjoyed “Involuntary Sculptures,” displays of little “creations” made absentmindedly by people during conversations at restaurants.  It was so simple—bent straws, cherry pits on a napkin—but it just went to show that art is sometimes totally unintentional.  “Rain Rains,” an arrangement of buckets suspended from the ceiling that rhythmically leaked water into buckets below, was another surprising testimonial to simplicity’s effectiveness.  Listening to the water dripping at different tempos from all sides was oddly mesmerizing.

Can’t say the same for “The Tenant,” though.  A ten-minute surround-sound video of a soap bubble traveling through an empty house, this piece just didn’t do it for me.  Maybe Neuenschwander was trying to capture the serenity of solitude, or to provide a fresh perspective, but it was tiring after two minutes.  Another long video piece, “The Fall,” was similarly disappointing.

The videos were the only tedious part of an otherwise thoughtful and engaging survey of Neuenschwander’s work.  It was a jarring transition to move from her contemplative, open space to Gysin’s flashing lights and spurts of sound.

Gysin, who died in 1986, was an artist in every sense of the term.  He was a poet, painter, and calligrapher—and he took his art places nobody had ever imagined before.  The concept permeating his exhibit is his own Cut-Up Method, which involves rearranging words and phrases ad infinitum.  Using this method can give even the simplest sentence an entirely different set of meanings.

Gysin’s experiments with words were arranged in such a way that I didn’t lose interest.  There are some flat table displays of his preliminary drawings and typewritten work, and some of his poems framed on the walls.  There is a computer that spits out a sentence of text in every possible permutation, revealing that language can even be robotic.

A highlight of his work, and the title of the entire exhibition, is Gysin’s “Dreamachine” – a whirring sculpture of light.  Visitors sit on pillows surrounding the Dreamachine – which has its own dark little room.  They close their eyes and settle into the patterns of flashing light.  Ideally, the Dreamachine is supposed to inspire artistic visions.  That didn’t happen for me, but it was a hypnotizing experience nonetheless.

Some of Gysin’s work utilized multimedia technology.  One video display cut up pieces of everyday dialogue on video, mashing it all together at varying intervals and speeds.  The result was, well, a lot of sounds put together.  If I had had more patience for it, I might have gained more from sitting and watching the entire video. At the very least, it was an insight into the workings of Gysin’s mind.

The sounds of the video, as well as from another multimedia display of Gysin’s sound poetry, resonated throughout the entire exhibit.  The resulting cacophony was somewhat distracting, but it was also oddly fitting.  It showed, as Gysin strove to prove, that “poets don’t own words.”  Words can be read, but they can also bounce off the walls and become unintelligible in the process.

Between Gysin’s manipulation of language and Neuenschwander’s exploration of art, I had a lot to digest after my two hours of walking around.  While it was a bit overwhelming, it proved to be worth the time and energy.