This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Outside the Norm

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on June 10, 2013 Events

Scene from Bill Traylor, "Untitled", 1939-1947.

This week, we’ll be watching really rich people spend their money in Switzerland during Art Basel. It’s the world’s largest art fair, so if you like reading about champagne and fancy dinners this will be a great week for it. The rest of us will pass our time in New York, sweating and going to openings. That’s not so bad.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

American Folk Art Museum, 2 Lincoln Square
Museum hours: 12:00pm – 7:30pm

With hundreds of works by outsider artists now enjoying a showcase at the Venice Biennale, we’re hoping that the Folk Art Museum’s new show by self-taught artist Bill Traylor will enjoy a little extra exposure. His work looks promising.

Traylor was an octogenarian before he picked up the pen or brush; that doesn’t matter since it seems like he had an accomplished eye for rhythm, which lends his works a certain sense of music and whimsy. Drawings of men in top hats, cats, and waving ladies abound in this exhibition, which features over 60 paintings and drawings. In particular, we’re fans of this mysterious painting, pictured above, which may as well have been made by Edward Gorey.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Opening: La Bienal 2013
El Museo del Barrio, 1230 5th Avenue
Opening: 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Runs through January 04, 2014

Since 1999, El Museo del Barrio has hosted a biennale composed exclusively of emerging Latin American artists living in New York. Curators Rocío Aranda-Alvarado and Raúl Zamudio found 37 new faces to fill the galleries through 2014. We recognize very few of the artists on this list—Sarah Jimenez and Manual Vega among them—so for us, that’s a great reason to go.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Opening: The Cat Show
White Columns, 320 West 13th Street
Opening: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Runs through July 27, 2013

It’s summer, so time to bring out the light-hearted show concepts. This year, we’ve got Jew York and now, The Cat Show. (The show’s literally called just that). For the show, curator and writer Rhonda Lieberman promises combine a good cause with art puns. From the press release:

The centerpiece, ‘The Cats-in-Residence Program,’ will allow 10 cats from the Social Tees Animal Rescue in the East Village to lounge around and run amok in a pussy playground designed by Freecell with Gia Wolff, and hopefully even find purr-manent homes at the two adoption events that open and close the show. Every rescue cat adopted allows another one to be pulled from the city’s Department of Animal Control.

Recast as art objects/subjects as well as purr-formance artists, the rescue cats in the show have been all been anointed with art purr-sonas. “Meowrina Abramovic will be present,” says Lieberman. “as well as Bruce Meowman, Jeff Maine Coons, Claws Oldenburg, Alex Katz, Frida Kahlico and many others. ”

Kitties will be available for on-site adoption on June 14th and 15th, and July 19th and 20th.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Opening: 6<<<>>>6
Interstate Projects, 66 Knickerbocker Avenue
Opening: 6:00pm -10:00pm
Runs through June 30, 2013

This summer, Interstate’s inviting six curators to put on an exhibition of whatever they want in the gallery’s three spaces: the floor-level and basement galleries and the courtyard.  We’ve never seen anything installed in the courtyard before, so here’s hoping we’re seeing the last of June’s rain.

The first crop of curators in Interstate’s two-part exhibition (the next will happen in June) will include Brooklyn all-stars Cleopatra’s and NURTUREart’s Rachel Steinberg, and a new face, Dallas-based dealer Kevin Ruben Jacobs.

Here’s the line-up so far:

Skim Milk, curated by Kevin Ruben Jacobs
Artists: Morehshin Allahyari, Jesse Morgan Barnett, Michael Mazurek, Lana Paninchul, and Jeff Zilm

In Free Fall, curated by Rachel Steinberg
Artists: Leah Beeferman, Juan Cisneros, Maximilliano Ferro, Ryan Whittier Hale, MaryKate Maher, and Zach Nader

…all different: for I do, I suppose, partake of multitude, curated by Cleopatra’s
Artist: Kevin Beasley

Lecture: On the Necessity of Art’s Exit from Contemporary Art: 4. Institution; Suhail Malik, with responses from David Joselit and Tirdad Zolghadr
Artists Space, 55 Walker Street
Talk begins at 7:00pm, $5 donation

In the last of his series of talks on art versus contemporary art, Goldsmith MFA Co-Director Suhail Malik will explore how art institutions respond to change. We’re excited to hear about this from Malik, and others who are actively involved within the field like art historian David Joselit who often writes about how museums act like money-laundering operations. That’s a critique you don’t hear everyday. Tirdad Zolghar, who currently teaches in the Bard CCS program and curated the 2009 United Arab Emirates pavilion, should provide a global edge to Joselit’s economic one.

Friday, June 14, 2013 & Saturday, June 15, 2013

Opening and screening: 2013 Whitney ISP Exhibition
{TEMP}, 57 Walker Street
Closing reception on Friday from 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Saturday screening and potluck: 7:00pm

Sometimes individual art works can make exhibitions worth checking out. In the case of the Whitney ISP Exhibition that piece is Art Project 2023, a narrative installation by artists Joao Enxuto and Erica Love that describes an art-dystopian future where the Whitney Museum gets bought out by Google. Don’t miss this show.

Friday night, the gallery will hold a closing reception, and on Saturday, the gallery will hold a potluck and screening of The Filmballad of MAMADADA, a collaborative film about the life of marginalized Dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, directed by Cassandra Guan and Lily Benson.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Screening: Collected Film Works of M. Henry Jones
Microscope Gallery, 4 Charles Place
7:00pm – 8:00pm

M. Henry Jones made a name for himself in the 1970s as an animation whiz in the Lower East Side. On Saturday, Microscope will be screening several of his TV commercials, pre-MTV music videos, and newer digital animations. Jones will be in attendance to introduce the works.

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post: