This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Carry Us?

by Whitney Kimball on May 13, 2013 · 1 comment Events

Mathieu Lefèvre, Monument to Indecision, 2008

We’re feeling pretty lazy after the fairs, so lucky for us, our art has come pre-bundled. This week: three fairs are still open, Eyebeam launches its video festival, and PS1 continues its Expo on ecology. On Saturday, we get to choose between Redhook and Bushwick. Now all we need is a piggy back.

Monday, May 13th

Art Fairs:
FriezeRandall’s Island 11AM- 6 PM
Cutlog107 Suffolk 10 AM – 6 PM
Seven191 North 14th Street, through June 9th. Open Thursdays – Sundays, 12-6 PM.

If you missed your chance to see the fairs this weekend, good news: Seven’s up all month, and Frieze and Cutlog are still open through the end of the day. Today, Douglas Crimp will be speaking at Frieze at 3:30 on his memoir, “ Before Pictures.” Run!


Party: Art Fair Therapy, Cafe Dancer
8-midnight, 96 Orchard Street

Don’t launder your NADA hotpants yet. We received a tip this morning that there will be an art fair blow-off party on the Lower East Side’s Cafe Dancer, with just this:

Burnt out? Exhausted?
We could give a fuck
Come cry one last confusing tear into your beer
as you let the Gagosian Industrial Complex
slowly release its grip from your soul…

Sign us up.

Tuesday, May 14th

Book Launch and Talk: (Im)practical (Im)possibilities, e-flux
6 – 8 PM, 311 East Broadway

If the art fairs have left you craving informed, practical political engagement, then look no further than e-flux’s launch panel on queer resistance in contemporary art. Just to cherry-pick a few speakers, we’ll hear from Gregg Bordowitz, whose “Fast Trip, Long Drop,” an autobiographical film about AIDs and ACT-UP, is now on view at the New Museum; Eileen Myles, the prolific poet, performer, and feminist thinker whose work includes a decade with the feminist post-punk performance/open mic group Sister Spit; and Carlos Motta, whose current project “Gender Talents” derives from in-depth documentation of political communities that are defined by gender. We’ll also hear from Pati Hertling, Malik Gaines, and Julieta Aranda.

John Anster Fitzgerald's "Titania and Bottom: A Scene from a Midsummer-Night’s Dream." Inspiration for Dan Colen's "The Spirits That I Called" at Oko Gallery

Wednesday, May 15th

Opening: The Spirits That Called, Oko
8-10PM, 220 East 10th Street

Dan Colen is making paintings inspired by fantastical landscapes from Fantasia and mid 19-century Fairy Painting. Yes, that Dan Colen. Our curiosity is piqued.

Thursday, May 16th

Festival: Video Dumbo, Eyebeam
$5. 7-11 PM, Eyebeam, 540 West 21st Street

Eyebeam opens its nine-day video festival, video_dumbo, with fourteen themed screening events. In addition to the opening, the programming looks good Saturday night, for those who don’t mind giving it up. At 7, “Tipping Point” screens a series of documentary films on politics and apathy, followed by “Space Shifters” at 9, which seems loosely themed around experiments in perception, from amusement parks to social networks.

Saturday, May 18th

Openings in Redhook:
PRIMETIME: 7-10 PM, 135 Huntington Street, Brooklyn
247365:131 Huntington
Know More Games: 561 Clinton Street

If you’re hoping to make the rounds in the new Donut District galleries 247365, Know More Games, and PRIMETIME, then Saturday is ideal. There isn’t much info on the openings, aside from the artists’ names; we know that PRIMETIME will be showing painter, performer, photographer Karen Azoulay, and 247365 will be showing sculptors Lukas Geronimas and painter Daniel Heidkamp.

Openings in Bushwick:
Regina Rex 6-10 PM, 1717 Troutman, #329 

Regina Rex opens a solo show of work by Mathieu Lefevre, who was a victim of a tragic bike accident in 2011. The title “The Stuff Things Are Made Of,” refers to his focus on materiality. I can’t think of anything that’s made so much hay and brought so little seed to the emerging scene, but I suspect Lefevre has something to say about that. His “paintings that say something about the world” is a rich, oil paint version of Barbara Kruger’s “YOU LOOK GREAT,” which seems like a sly nod to the unavoidability high-art aspirations, even in cheeky, self-referential work. Similarly, “Trash Can Disguised as Contemporary Art”– a painting stretched over a trashcan– feels particularly poignant.

Transfer7-11 PM (RSVP), 1030 Metropolitan Ave

We ride Transfer Gallery pretty hard around here, but, hey– if you’ve seen our USB drive, it’s pretty obvious that we think they have good taste. This week, Rick Silva’s releasing an e-book to coincide with his show, plein air digital landscape renderings.

Ongoing

Festival: Expo 1, PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave 
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, PS1 is holding a series of events which loosely address ecology and sustainability, and we think that’s great. Here are a few of this week’s highlights:

Thursday at 7PM: Screening of Public Hearing (2012), James N. Kienitz Wilkins’ word-for-word restaging of an actual Midwestern town meeting, debating replacing a Wal-Mart with a Super Wal-Mart

Friday at 2 PM: Sociologist Saskia Sassen, a leading thinker on globalization, will speak about her book Territory, Authority, Rights 

Saturday at 2PM: Screening of Cao Fei’s 2007 Second Life documentary, i.mirror.

{ 1 comment }

ohcomeoooooon May 17, 2013 at 3:36 pm

Colen’s paintings at Oko kind of sound like a return to form (the Candles, An Allegory of Faith)

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