This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Orgasmatron Lives!

When I first read about Alexis Gideon’s video opera—a 38-minute stop-motion animation video opera incorporating elements of Irish history—I tried to figure out if there’s anyone else who’s ever squashed together such topics into a video. I couldn’t. But Gideon exhibited earlier this year with stop-motion animation star William Kentridge at the New Museum, so that’s close enough an ally.

Performa, New York’s performance-only festival, hits the streets for its fifth iteration this fall. It’s come a long ways from its humble beginnings, and this year’s biennial will lay claim to be the most extravagant event so far, featuring International pavilions plopped throughout New York. Why is the world in such want for a temporary city filled with dancers, performers, and artists-as-performers? RoseLee Goldberg will discuss this, and fill audience members in on the history of performance at Hyperallergic’s ArtTalk.

How do designers end up making objects that can be used by everyone? For just an hour-and-a-half, panelists Jason McLennan (Living Building Challenge), Andrew Revkin (NY Times, Pace University), Linda Weintraub (Eco Art Writer and Practitioner), and Woody Tasch (Slow Money) will discuss this big ol’ question.

Rob Pruitt’s seen the ups-and-downs of the art world, so he’s bound to dish out some great advice for students at the IFA. For Tuesday’s talk, we’re hoping he’ll discuss his latest project, the third Rob Pruitt Art Awards; this time the event’s changes its partnership with the Guggenheim and White Columns and aligns itself with Art in America. That means no fancy physical awards ceremony.

Eyebeam’s Computational Fashion Fellow Carrie Mae Rose (and AFC roommate) will exhibit a new series of wearable sculptures that move about and light up in accordance with the unseen electrical forces of the human body. Nifty. In a time when nearly all newly designed objects tend to be interactive—take, for instance, Siri—this work seems quite timely.

We’re going to Joshua Abelow’s show because he’s an exceptionally crafty painter. His paintings are semi-autobiographical, full of cheekiness and vim about trying to make insert his own life into his work. He doesn’t play by the rulebook, and that’s good enough for us.

This one’s for the formalists. Two-time Turner Prize nominee Sean Scully’s known for his abstract masking-tape painting; he’s been churning out these geometric beauties since the 1970s. To get a sense of how Scully ended up with these large-scale works, the Drawing Center’s showing smaller drawings and prototypes for these pieces, all tapping into the same, taped-on repetition as the larger works.

Here’s some snob-free art. All these artists make cartoony paintings, but that doesn’t mean the work’s all lighthearted. Joyce Pensato’s streakily painted Mickey Mouses, Homer Simpsons, and Batmans are demented, the stuff out of childhood nightmares.

Arlene Shechet’s one artist who knows how to have fun with stuff. She’s of the same species as wacky-hybrid-object-sculptors like Virginia Overton and Dave Hardy whose creations seem wholly wacky, but wonderfully thoughtful. While Shechet hasn’t had a solo show in a few years—this one’s her first at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.—I’m curious to see if her extravagant ceramics-piled-on-stuff-plinths can command a room on their own. In group settings, she’s fine, but solo we’ll see.

Lasserre’s an up-and-coming “stuff sculptor.” Her works might be a little unstructured for joining the ranks of a Virginia Overton, but like Shechet, I’ll give her solo show a chance.

John O’Connor likes to ask questions. In this exhibition, you’ll get to see O’Connor put forth questions to robots and celebrities. For Cleverbot II, O’Connor asks a computer chatbot about the idea of a modern Robin Hood. In other works, he writes faux love letters to Beyonce.

We’ve profiled Rebecca Patek (another name familiar to the AFC household) before, and we’re doing it again because, as The New York Times wrote of her performance, “She knows when to fire.” And she’d better because in her new performance, “Forget yourself…,” commissioned by Triple Canopy for their new performance series, Patek will take on the roles of performer and director for a live filming session involving the audience. We’re not sure what this means, but Patek was recently brandishing a new bubble blower and an alarm clock that looks like it came straight from Target around the office, so we know we at least approve of her prop choices.

Nearly a century after the speed of a steel machine captured the Futurists, artists still take cars as a source of inspiration. In Loney Abrams’s exhibition—she’s Flux Factory’s first NEA curatorial fellow—she’s brought together four Internet-y artists who’ve made new works, including two vehicles, for the show.

There’s an artist supergroup out there that has nothing to do with art.  In 1998, artists Robert Longo, Jon Kessler, and actress Barbara Sukowa formed a country western cover band dedicated to country music’s first lady, Patsy Cline. But darker, blusier, and more electro. Eventually their repertoire expanded to include original songs, too. They’re reuniting for a show at the Kitchen, and inviting musicians Anthony Coleman, Knox Chandler, Jonathan Kane, and Ernie Brooks to fill out the band to create what’s surely an orchestral super-super group. This concert’s bound to be too strange to be missed.

Nor’easterners should check out this one-night-only exhibition to see how contemporary artists take over Harvard’s Natural History Museum. From GIFs to sound installations, artists are presenting installations concerning human-animal interactions, providing a more lively, and accurate alternative to how humans and animals interact than the museum’s  taxidermied animals inside vitrines.

We’re out at nearly every Transfer gallery opening, and Rollin Leonard’s upcoming solo show gives us yet another reason to go. Leonard’s work focuses on his own body, which he photographs, digitally manipulates and collages. Often GIFs and videos are involved in some way.  

For Trunks, Heads, and Stems, Leonard’s rolling faces flat as pancakes, spinning 360-degree portraits, and assembling his portraits into wall-based puzzle pieces. ANIMAL’s got a good preview of the show, too.

MoMA PS1’s pulling out all the stops for the museum’s Mike Kelley retrospective. With over 200 works taking up all the museum’s floors, it’ll surely rival the scope of the New Museum’s Chris Burden retrospective. We’ve been waiting for this show for ages; Kelley’s work has appealed to scores of undergrads seeking a rawer, punker critical alternative to what’s taught in school; long since our school days, his enigmatic performances, sculptures, and videos have stuck with us.

During Sunday’s day-time opening, PS1 has commissioned Mike Kelley’s 1989 dance piece Pansy Metal/Clovered Hoof which features dancers adorned in silk scarves made by Kelley, trotting around to Motörhead’s heavy metal standard, Orgasmatron.