This Week’s Must See Events: A Room Full of Petroleum Gel

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on April 14, 2014 · 1 comment Events

Jaimie Warren

Jaimie Warren

Thank god we’re (mostly) giving ourselves a break from political coverage this week with an art bingefest: art which is concerned primarily with cat food art, food’lberities, a room full of petroleum gel, and dicks. Back to the good ol’ classic dick blogging.

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Tue

33 West 14th Street, NYC (Basement)
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Arts & Labor General Meeting: Frieze NY Report Back

The Frieze Art Fair finally broke down and agreed to hire union workers, rather than outsourcing cheaper labor, to construct their humongous tent. Those results can be partially ascribed to Arts & Labor, who have protested and stood in solidarity with Teamsters Joint Council 16 and IATSE over the past few years. They’ll report back on their progress on Tuesday.

Wed

Brooklyn Museum

200 Eastern Parkway
6:30Website

Brooklyn Artists Ball

Remember that time Jennifer Rubell made guests carve their own rabbits, turkeys, pigs, and beef and beat down a 20-foot Andy Warhol head piñata filled with balloons and Hostess products including Snowballs and Twinkies? That was four years ago at the Brooklyn Artist Ball, and ever since then we’ve expected crazy galas from the Brooklyn Museum. This year Brooklyn artists transform tables in works of art. The museum is honoring art patrons Jane and David Walentas, and recognizing acclaimed artists Jenny Holzer, Kehinde Wiley, and Ai Weiwei. There will be an after party.

David Lewis Gallery

88 Eldridge Street, 5th Floor
8:30 pm Website

Habite de Tabletier: Viola Yeşiltaç, Oli Input

There’s no press release offering details on Viola Yeşiltac’s performance slated for this Wednesday, so we’ve got only a video from Yeşiltaç’s performance at Cooper Union two years ago as a possible guide. In it she describes performance as a “life event”, while backed by an electronic beat. Maybe this performance will have a similar structure?

Thu

Eyebeam

540 West 21st Street
12:00 PM to 6:00 PMWebsite

The New Romantics

Is 19th Century Romanticism relevant to art makers today? That’s the theory Nicholas O’Brien, Claudia Hart and Katie Torn stakes out in The New Romantics, an exhibition focusing on 22 digital art makers. Incidentally, it’s not the first time this theory has been tabled. Karen Archey curated “Haute Romantics”, an exhibition for Art F City at Verge Gallery in Sacremento back in 2010. That exhibition dealt more specifically with the idea of untamed landscape, aesthetic beauty, escapism, and youth; This one lays claim to representations of nature, poetic irony, and expressions of individuality as laid bare in the tech revolution.

Artists include: Mark Beasley, Tim Berrensheim, Alexandra Gorczynski, Ryan Whittier Hale, Claudia Hart, Jeremiah Johnson, Brookhart Jonquil, Sophie Kahn, Alex M. Lee, Sara Ludy, Shane Mechklenburger, Jonathan Monaghan, Mikey McParlane and Michael Mallis, Brenna Murphy, Nicholas O’Brien, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Jon Rafman, Nicolas Sassoon, Jasper Spicero, Kate Steciw, Katie Torn, Krist Wood

Performances by:

ATOM-r (Mark Jeffrey and Judd Morrissey), Zach Blas, Ann Hirsch, Miao Jiaxin, Mikey McParlane, and Vincent Tiley.

Fri

MAD Museum

2 Columbus Circle
6:00 PM
http://madmuseum.org/events/new-waveWebsite

New Wave

Take a walk down memory lane with this screening on New Wave. Promised, is a focus on 1980s bands such as Ballistic Kisses, Bush Tetras, the Go-Go’s, Human Sexual Response, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Offs, Our Daughters Wedding, Plastics, Pylon, Raybeats, Strange Party, and Suburbs.

Jack Hanley

327 Broome Street
6:00 PM to 8:00 PMWebsite

Marie Lorenz: The Valley of Dry Bon

Jack Hanley Gallery will be transformed into a collapsed pier and screening room this month. Marie Lorenz premiers Ezekia, a 5­channel video set in an imaginary future, that tells the story of a group of women exploring the shore of a lost city. What makes this piece are the extreme camera angles that Lorenz uses to intensify the feeling of floating.

We’ve been hearing lots of positive murmurs floating around about this piece. Recommended.

Storefront Ten Eyck

324 Ten Eyck Street
6:00 PM to 9:00 PMWebsite

René Smith, "Nude Dudes"

Get a load of some more dicks. “Nude dudes” is a show of paintings of naked guys, by René Smith, who wants to represent the female gaze.

The space will also contain a show of Yale MFA sculptors.

The Hole

312 Bowery Street
6:00 PM to 9:00 PMWebsite

Jaimie Warren: That's What Friends Are For

Warren, who recently build a giant butt for her performance at Art F City’s Roast, has a treasure trove of video memes transformed into GIFs waiting for your eyeballs. Also on view—totally looks like and food’lberities series and he show’s centerpiece, a five-channel remake of Fra Angelico’s High Altarpiece of San Domenico in Fiesole, here recreated panel by panel featuring 200 of her friends. Warren invited members of her family going back three generations to chose cultural influences for these panels, which include Betty Boop, Pink Floyd and Missy Elliot.  It looks amazing.

The Studio Museum in Harlem

144 West 125th Street
7:00 PM to 8:30 PMWebsite

When the Stars Begin to Fall Gallery Tour Led by Assistant Curator Thomas J. Lax with artist Lauren Kelley

Nobody’s happy with the “outsider” artist label, probably because of how it lumps together the majority of art. The show “When the Stars Begin to Fall” will question the category, in relation to black life and art. The show includes full insiders like David Hammons, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kara Walker and influential others who work on the periphery, like Theaster Gates and Noah Purifoy. On Friday, ten bucks gets you a tour with assistant curator Thomas J. Lax and artist Lauren Kelley.

Sat

MoMA

11 West 53rd Street
10:30 AM to 5:30 PMWebsite

Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010

Even though German artist Sigmar Polke made work that constantly avoided any one signature style, the art most readily available at art fairs over the last couple of years seems to be anything with a dot. Prepare to see a little more from Mr. Polke than that at this retrospective, which spans nearly fifty years of work. On view will be more than 250 pieces, in a diverse array of mediums; painting, photography film, drawing, prints and sculpture. Polke is known for his irreverent wit and virtuoso handling of materials.

Retrospective

727 Warren Street
Hudson , NY 12534
5:00 PM to 7:00 PMWebsite

Brian Belott, Joe Bradley: Cat Food

We can’t figure out what’s even going to be in this exhibition, let alone what it’s about. Based on the press release we think it has something to do with cat food, holding hands and how the New York Yankees were miniaturized and put into the drinking water? Whatever the case, we’ve been following the prolific careers of Belott and Bradley for many years. We recommend the show, admittedly knowing nothing about it. To quote the artists, “Big up to Water, Cat food Out”.

New Galerie

630 9th Avenue, Suite 308
6:00 PM to 8:00 PMWebsite

Sean Raspet: Untitled (Registration/PIN: G0009296/78GY76DM; G0009297/99ER43TB; G0009298/39ZL54SJ)

For years, Sean Raspet has been making art and filling plexiglass boxes with hair gel. Now, he will cover the surfaces of a gallery with synthetic DNA in a fluorescent petroleum gel, which is used in the security industry to track chemical data. This is different from traditional, passive viewership, because you’re tracking the gel around with you.

He’s going to cover a whole gallery with gel, and that’s gonna be cool. Curated by A.E. Benenson

Art in General

79 Walker Street
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Website

Lisi Raskin: Recuperative Tactics

Lisi Raskin went to Afghanistan on a Creative Time grant, and she will piece together the memory of that experience through objects at Art in General. I’ve grumbled about Creative Time’s international initiatives in the past (a lot), and maybe it’s time to revise those complaints. The show aims to present an unmitigated perspective, through an artist’s ability to express emotional complexity.  That’s not a perspective we’re typically presented of Afghanistan.

In addition to Raskin’s installation at Art in General, she will have a show of paintings at Churner and Churner.

Light Industry

155 Freeman Street
7:00 PMWebsite

Jean Vigo's Zero for Conduct + Abbas Kiarostami's Homework

Is an easygoing neoliberal education as off-base as a militant boarding school? Sam Lewitt wonders this in his press release for Saturday night’s double-feature: first of Jean Vigo’s 1933 anarchist film Zero for Conduct, about boarding school students revolting against their teachers; and the other, Homework, a 1989 film about Iranian children in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war.

Transfer Gallery

1030 Metropolitan Avenue
7:00 PM to 11:00 PMWebsite

Clement Valla: Surface Survey

Is there even a such thing as “images not meant for human consumption?” They’re promised at Transfer Gallery in Clement Valla’s “Surface Survey”, where he’ll be showing some of his recent work using images from the Metropolitan Museum’s art collection to print 3D fragments of artworks.

{ 1 comment }

Catherine Hex April 15, 2014 at 8:31 am

Very, very strange image to begin the post with, but I’m delighted to have this week’s schedule. Thank you!

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