http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/arts/design/klara-liden-unveils-its-complicated.html 2014-11-27 23:36:01 Klara Liden Unveils ‘It’s Complicated’ Klara Liden’s show “It’s Complicated” continues her transformations of space, materials and social relationships. === “It’s Complicated,” Klara Liden’s most ambitious New York show to date, is well named. Continuing Ms. Liden’s inspired yet homey and often utilitarian transformations of space, materials and social relationships, it presents a video and improvised furniture on each of two adjacent floors. While not as flashy as her last show — which filled the gallery with discarded Christmas trees — this one compellingly mixes art and life, labor and relaxation, and various bodies and limbs, animate and not. Burly communal tables with benches dominate the gallery’s second-floor space, brightly lit for the occasion. Built from the wood planks and metal pipes of construction scaffolding, they form a rough-hewed biergarten waiting to happen. But the floor is covered with the delicate gray rubber designed to ease the rigors of working on your feet — for dancers, chefs and so forth. Floor and furniture are spray-painted with pink lines like those that appear on city pavements in advance of street repair crews. The tables and benches are sawed through along the lines, requiring additional pipe supports and creating a strange contrast of delicate and sturdy. On a small, ancient monitor, a short, murky video pans the downstairs space (recently vacated by a Chinese restaurant) as if looking for ghosts. In the darkened former restaurant, a large color video projection lords it over narrow, hand-built benches. It focuses on the boyish, athletic Ms. Liden as she struggles to follow a group of sleek, oblivious ballet dancers practicing at the barre. Her heavier arms and legs rarely sync up. Her mounting exhaustion stands out against the dancers’ grace and slightly robotic precision. But Ms. Liden stoically performs her outsiderness.