This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Wikipedia Gets Edited, Artists Get (Pyramid) Schemed

With rents pushing artists and galleries outside of Bushwick’s borders, we’ve been wondering if and when Bed-Stuy (AFC’s offices are on the border of Bed-Stuy and Clinton Hill) would become the new go-to spot for galleries. Well, that moment begins now. American Medium is launching a new gallery and studio space, right off the Bedford-Nostrand G. To celebrate, the gallery’s hosting a night of music, performance, and installations. Woo hoo.

Featuring DJ sets and performances and installations by Body by Body, Sean Patrick Carney, and Clump TV, among others.

This should be good. It’s some of our favorite digital photographers and people who deal with images—by cutting, removing, collaging, and transforming images into digital and physical dimensions. All that’s enough for us to head out to the Upper East Side.

Curated by Katie Steciw, and featuring: Sara Cwynar, Alex Da Corte, Rachel de Joode, Ethan Greenbaum, Asha Schecter, Kate Steciw, Yannick Val Gesto, and Harm Van Den Dorpel

A 3D mime performance film by Steinar Haga Kristensen and erotic collages by Lizzi Bougatsos? Yes please!  “Dark botanical fictions,” from Urik Heltoft as well as a piece by Mike Kelley are also on hand in this show exploring the very goth-y themes of “darkness and isolation” (a.k.a. my teen years).

Featuring Artists: Michel Auder, Jeremy Blake, Jakob Boeskov, Lizzi Bougatsos, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Michelle Grabner, Ulrik Heltoft, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Mike Kelley, Steinar Haga Kristensen, Aleksandra Mir, Miljohn Ruperto, and Rirkrit Tirvanija

David Altmejd, everyone’s favorite crystals, owl-men, hairy creatures, and mirrors (so-many mirrors) artist, will debut new work this week at Andrea Rosen. No clue yet what it’ll look like, but we’re prepping for an Instagrammer’s heaven (and a darn long line like at Zwirner) because mirrors make for great photo-ops.

A weird and fun way to show a bunch of NYC artists, Pyramid Scheme borrows from the scheme’s socially networked, hierarchical structure to connect 62 artists in 10 “social groupings” (whatever that means?). Curators Tribble & Mancenido and Nat Ward each have invited five artists to participate in the exhibition, and those five artists have each invited five more. Paul McCarthy, Justin Lieberman and Beverly’s co-owner, Leah Dixon, are all participating, among others.

Featuring Artists:  Tribble & Mancenido, Nat Ward, Graham Hamilton, Alex Casso, Rob Rischer, Violet Dennison, Scott Keightley, Laura Miller, Matt Taber & Meryl Bennett, Elin Lennox, Armen Enikolopov, Scott Andrew, Constance Armellino, Garret Miller, Bryan Mcgovern Wilson, Dan Bainbridge, Raphaela Riepl, Winona Barton-Ballentine, Leah Beeferman. Leah Dixon, Sophie Parker, Alison Kuo, Kristof Wickman, Jamie Sneider, Joe Brittain, Phoenix Lindsay Hall, Peter Lapsley, Niv Rozenberg, Esther Ruiz, Katie Cercone, Isaac Aden, Jo-ey Tang, Thomas Fougeirol, Ana Ortiz, Allison Somers, G. William Webb, Carlos Reyes, Peter Scott, Michael Ashkin, David Baskin, Mathias Kessler, Justin Lieberman, Heidi Schlatter, Bradford Kessler, Raul De Nieves, Faina,Avery Noyes, Filip Olszewski, Paul McCarthy, Stefan Saffer, Angela Conant, Anthony Hawley, Victor Lui, Alfredo Travieso, Leah Foster, John Dombroski, Christopher Carroll, Michele Seippel,, Ben Pederson, Rachael Bohannon, and Phil Nesmith

Load up your backpacks and bookmark your tabs—it’s time to add to the Internet. For the first-ever Art and Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, Eyebeam and 16 other satellite locations, is hosting a space for you (and you, and you, and you) to change the facts that 1) 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are male and 2) entries on notable female subjects are lacking. We can cry to the heavens all we want, denouncing this as pure shitiness through and through, but that won’t fix anything; we need a more diverse crew of Wikipedians. Resources on how to be a Wikipedian will be provided in the gallery, and childcare, if you need that, will be given, too. (Just email in advance: artandfeminismwiki@gmail.com.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you prefer Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Museum’s hosting the same event, too (from 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM).

The Queens Museum, under the directorship of Tom Finkelpearl, has not shied away from socially engaged artwork. I was actually kind of shocked after reading the press release for their latest exhibition and residency, by the Los Angeles-based performance group the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), formed in 1985. They’re a group of activists, still active today, made up mostly of the homeless or the formerly homeless. There’s three parts to the Queens Museum exhibition, documentation of their early work, performances throughout the month, and they’re mentoring a Queens-based drug recovery group (When artists say they’re socially active, they rarely go this far. So, wow).