NEW YORK, NY.- This winter the New Museum will present ''New Commissions,'' two significant projects by Daria Martin and Mathias Poledna, two of the most interesting voices in contemporary art today. These commissions were undertaken as part of the Three M Project, an ongoing partnership of New Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, to jointly commission, exhibit, and acquire contemporary art by artists whose work has not yet received significant recognition in the United States. All three museums share a collaborative vision and entrepreneurial spirit, and the belief that ambitious art projects on a national scale can be produced through efficiently sharing knowledge and resources.

The partnership, now in its second cycle, presents works by San Francisco-born, London-based filmmaker Daria Martin; and Vienna-born, Los Angeles-based video and installation artist Mathias Poledna. Representing the great variety of contemporary art being produced worldwide, these projects strive to link contemporary art with the complexities of life experience, from intellectual and moral discourse to erotic pleasure, and from the natural world to urban chaos. ''New Commissions'' includes:

Daria Martin: Minotaur
January 28-March 8, 2009
Minotaur is a new film installation created by Daria Martin. It depicts a duet choreographed by the legendary dance and movement pioneer Anna Halprin based on the 1886 sculpture Minotaur by artist Auguste Rodin. Martin has carefully edited the film to juxtapose the movements of the two dancers with close-up views of Rodin's sculpture, images of the sculpture in a book, views of the wooded exterior of Halprin's Northern California studio where the dance takes place, and shots of Halprin herself. In doing so, Martin creates a complex and multilayered synthesis of various art forms--film, dance, and sculpture--while simultaneously meditating on the process through which art is made, and the shifting sexual dynamics between men and women as embodied in both the sculpture and Halprin's performative re-imagination of it. This project was curated by Dominic Molon, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and organized at the New Museum by Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator.

Mathias Poledna: Crystal Palace
January 28-March 8, 2009
Mathias Poledna's new work, Crystal Palace, is a 35mm film installation comprised of a small number of long, static shots of the montane rainforest landscape of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Using tightly framed medium-close to medium-wide shots, the film's carefully selected scenes focus on the complex patterns, textures, and the overall abstract qualities of this environment, seemingly without human presence. Only subtle changes in light and movement in foliage provide visual cues to the passage of time. The film is accompanied by a dense and highly edited soundtrack created from on-location and archival field recordings, oscillating between drone-like noise and distinct insect and bird sounds. Simultaneously engaging with as well as collapsing cinematic conventions of narrative development and closure, Poledna's film explores the ambiguities and constructed nature of historical representation. This project is curated by Russell Ferguson, Adjunct Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and organized at the New Museum by Jarrett Gregory, Curatorial Assistant. This exhibition is made possible, in part, with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.