Photo from NYC Pride 2010, courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan
After last week’s lull in art events, the Gods have once again descended from the clouds to bring mere mortals the gift of art. Let us revel in the joys of being inside an art gallery when the world is sweltering outside. Let us also pray that these galleries have air conditioning.
Thursday, June 21st
Lower East Side
Josh Faught: Longtime Companion. Lisa Cooley Gallery. (Photo courtesy of Lisa Cooley)
Lisa Cooley
Josh Faught: Longtime Companion
107 Norfolk St., 6 – 8 PM
Invisible Exports
Furniture: Christopher Chiappa, Paul Gabrielli, Joseph Kosuth, Gareth Long, Megan Marrin, Diana Shpungin, William Stone
14a Orchard St., 6 – 8 PM
At Lisa Cooley, a solo exhibition of Josh Faught’s messy tapestries will perk up the fabric wall-hanging genre. A few blocks away, Invisible Exports will play host to a high-end conceptual affair with a show about familiar objects made into sculpture. And that domestication of sculpture is something we’ve seen popping up in art recently. Also of note: Joseph Kosuth, the Grandfather of conceptual art, will have work in the show.
Chelsea
Christian Jankowski, Discourse News. Freidrich Petzel. (Photo courtesy of Freidrich Petzel Gallery)
Friedrich Petzel
Christian Jankowski: Discourse News
537 West 22nd St., 6 – 8 PM
We’re attending Christian Jankowski’s opening because it’s about art critics. Jankowski invited several dozens of art critics (Paddy Johnson included) to hand-write a review of his forthcoming exhibition and then stuff whatever they came up with into a bottle of their choosing. That bottle can never be opened, and once turned over to Jankowski, he’ll turn it into art. All these rules are bound to make some critics angry. We expect to see some expletives frothing out from beneath their seals.
Postmasters Gallery
Holly Zausner: A Small Criminal Enterprise
459 West 19th Street, 6 – 8 PM
Children stop carrying around security blankets and teddy bears at a young age; Holly Zausner has her own version of that beloved object she can’t put down. In her film Unseen, Zausner clings to a big, colorful sculpture of a woman as if it were her blankie. It’s a burden for her to carry around that hulk of a thing, but she does it anyway. At Postmasters, Zausner’s installation will consist of a photo collage of stills from this film.
Nicole Klagsbrun
Vision Quest
532 W. 24th Street, , 6 – 8 PM
I’ll be attending the opening of Vision Quest at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery because (yes) fellow RISD alum Sophie Stone is in it. But still, summer in the city is a lot more bearable with magic-themed group shows. This one promises a transcendentalist bent, substituting “brand” for “aura,” and “conceptualization” for “otherworldly glow.” Count me in! (Whitney Kimball)
Upper East Side
Sharon Hayes. In the Near Future, 2005–2009. (Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery)
The Whitney Museum of American Art
Sharon Hayes: There’s So Much I Want to Say to You
Open to the public: June 21
Sharon Hayes is a political artist whose performances and sculpture deal with protests, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Funny how it happens that buttoned-up museums, whose high-level staff rarely pays attention to the protests happening at their own museums, end up showing biting, political work.
Friday, June 22nd
New Museum
Get Weird: Graham Lambkin + C. Spencer Yeh
$10 New Museum Members; $12 General Public
7 PM
The New Museum puts musicians square in the center of their Get Weird performance series. Previous guests to the one-night events include musicians like Lil B who isn’t an artist, but has a large following on YouTube and members of Animal Collective, a band widely embraced by institutions. Friday’s guests, C. Spencer Yeh and Graham Lambkin are better known as improvisational musicians—their besottment with rabid, crackling noise reminds me of Captain Beefheart—but their CVs are littered with arty stuff. Yeh’s career highlights are too long to list here, but let’s just say there’s very few people in the world who have collaborated with Vito Acconci, Deerhoof, and Thurston Moore.
Saturday, June 23rd
grace_jones_04.gif. (Courtesy of Anthonyantonellis.com)
Bronx Art Space
#D
305 E 140th St #1A, Bronx, 7 – 10 PM
Hosts of the Itinerant performance festival now bring a net art show that includes a lot of artists we dig. Lorna Mills, Anthony Antonellis, and Rollin Leonard, to name a few will all participate. We’re expecting sculpture, 3D digital works (like GIFs), and icosahedronic pizza. Curator Giselle Zatonyl seems to know, like we do, that pizza is no longer a tribal outsider in contemporary art.
Sunday, June 24th
NYC Pride March
Begins at Fifth Ave and 36th St and proceeds south; ends at Christopher and Greenwich Streets, 12 PM
Props to the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art for participating in the city’s annual pride parade. To our knowledge, they’re the only museum that will be marching. And in the most perfect meeting of art and gay, the Leslie-Lohman Museum will take their pink 1973 Oldsmobile convertible out for a spin during the NYC Pride Parade. And they have reason to celebrate: this year, the organization became the state’s first officially recognized LGBTQ museum, which followed with the museum receiving $10.3 million in individual donations.
