CISTERN TO HOST UNDERGROUND ART
Buffalo Bayou space comes alive with ‘Rain’
Get ready for an even more magical experience at the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, the recently restored 1926 city reservoir that has become Houston’s coolest underground experience.
Starting Dec. 10, the dark space will come alive for about six months with “Rain: Magdalena Fernández at the Houston Cistern,” a unique art installation by a well-known Venezuelan artist.
The spectacle is presented by Buffalo Bayou Partnership and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which acquired Fernández’s installation for its permanent collection four years ago.
What the museum bought is the right to project Fernández’s “2iPM009,” a one-minute, 56-second abstract video-projection piece that evokes a rain-soaked night.
Fernández starts with a basic geometric image from the modern master Piet Mondrian’s 1917 “Composition in Line,” then multiplies it exponentially with a projection of light, sound and movement. Her soundtrack is a meticulously edited acoustic montage featuring members of the Slovenian choir Pertuum Jazzile, who snap their fingers, slap the palms of their hands against their legs, and stamp their heels on wood to evoke both the drumming and gentle patter of rain.
The museum recently showed “2iPM009” along four walls of a specially-built video gallery. Projected across the 87,500-square-foot cistern, which has a watery, reflective floor and more than 200 slender 25-foot-high concrete columns in its center, the experience will be something completely different, with an awesome echo.
“Rain” will be open to the public 3:30-7 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, and 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays, Dec. 10June 4. Admission will be $8$10, free on Thursdays. Timed admission tickets are on sale now at buffalobayou.org.