This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Let’s Get Real

If the commercial art world has left you sick of big product, then look no further than the American Realness Festival’s smart, often low-budget performance, which runs through the 19th. The sweet little play “House of Dance” by Tina Satter, for one, is the kind of punk-ily thoughtful black-box theater that you used to expect from Performa, and it was a needed refresher on why I do this. It may be hard to score tickets to this one, but if it’s an indication of the overall spirit of the festival, then that’s a good thing.

Do we really care, in 2014, about what the Whitney has to say about social media? Based on the number of Facebook attendees, yes. Plus, participants include wisened new media folks like the Whitney’s new media curator Christiane Paul, artists Mendi + Keith Obadike, and Occupy’s Dan Phiffer. You’re encouraged to bring your laptop.

Light Industry screens Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio, a story of the artist’s climb to the top and bisexual affairs along the way (one with Tilda Swinton, in her first film role) and all told through a queer lens.

“I hear they’re really fun,” my roommate mentioned when I told him I was going to the Flux benefit auction this Wednesday. For parties, “fun” is a pretty good label to have. Like last year the benefit will be held at 79 Walker Street, and it’ll have all the lively attractions you’d come to expect: techie photo booth, tarot card readings, and something called “bathroom valet.” Bidding for artworks and items starts low, but you can always have one of the roaming knock-off artists draw you a cheaper version on the fly. Also for bidding: a studio visit or gallery tour with AFC’s Paddy Johnson. So go, especially since at $45 that’s super cheap for a benefit.

Here’s an interesting tactic to mix up the artist talk: Pick your speakers by the letters of their name. “Perchance” has been organized by Project Projects, P!, and Paper Monument, so we know there will be meat on this stick; this talk includes first-wave East Village gallerist Penny Pilkington (of P.P.O.W.), Professor Pizza (aka Rob Giampietro of Project Projects) and AFC’s go-to graphic designer Phillip Niemeyer. Based on those participants, we’re hoping that we’ll learn about a particular slice of the design world that’s blazed its own trail parallel to the art world. Those of you who can’t make it can livestream the talk here.

White Columns Annuals tend to reflect the sensibility of the person who’s curating, so Pati Hertling’s should be an anomaly. (In addition to curating contemporary conceptual art, she works part-time as a restitution lawyer, working with affected families to recover stolen World War II artworks.) From a quick glance, the artist list looks kind of hardcore; artists include Dawn Kasper, Gregg Bordowitz, Senga Negundi, Hannah Wilke, and K8 Hardy.

Eyebeam’s Annual Showcase is often full of surprises. It’s the big reveal for what the organization’s 10 – 15 resident artists (and curator) have been working on over the last few months.

Artists include: Addie Wagenknecht, Carrie Mae Rose, CHiKA, Claudia Hart, Ebru Kurbak and Irene Posch, Elisa Kreisinger, Greg Leuch, Joe McKay and Kristin Lucas, Jonathan Minard, Justin Blinder, Kaho Abe, Katie Torn, Keren Oxman, Laurel Ptak, Lauren McCarthy, Sascha Pohflepp and Chris Woebken, Wyatt Niehaus, WU Juehui, and Zach Blas.

Wade Guyton’s been busy on the exhibition and biennial circuit, so much so that it’s been seven years since he’s had a solo show at his own gallery. All we know about the show is that there’ll be new work large-scale printouts based on a file from 2007 and a sculpture based on the coat-check counter at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. So something old, something new, and something “desk.”

There’s no cream on the planet that glorifies skin blemishes quite like the infrared technique used by photographer Nir Arieli. His subjects (often Julliard dancers) tend to look like they’re made of liquid silver. (Needless to say, if we ever get a portrait done, we know what technology we’d like). Readers of MATTE Magazine will also recognize several of these images from the July 2013 issue.

There are very few people of African descent living in Russia. They are unicorns, if unicorns were subject to racism. Not much writing exists about the history of Africans and African-Americans living in Russia and the former Soviet Union, but artist Yevgeniy Fiks actually has a collection of over 200,000 images from the 1920s to 1980s on just such a rare topic. For the gallery show, Fiks asked artists and writers to produce work in response to images from this collection with artwork, writing, anything really.

For two nights you can chill out like you’re sitting at home to tunes from Mixed Media’s first release, an LP of artist-commissioned audio work from Martine Syms (Los Angeles) and Paul Cowan (Milwaukee). Syms is reciting a spoken-word piece and Cowan made an electro-based track with assistance from  producer Richard Galling. We’re all about experimentation—Cowan’s primarily a painter, so who knows what this’ll sound like, though that’s the most exciting part IMO. In keeping with the “do whatever” ethos of this event, ballerina Carolyn Lockhart has choreographed a new dance piece to go with Cowan’s music. Sounds just like what’d I’d expect from Cleopatra’s, where you’ll never know what you’ll get.

With a 6-hour-long opening reception, you’ll have plenty of time to putt about this show that celebrates all things pink, from the calm of an illuminated pink sunset to the sticky sweetness of fleshy pink gumminess. With so much variety one thing’s for certain: Pink is not a neutral color.

Artists include:

Michael Ashkin, Inna Babaeva, Noah Becker, Sarah Bednarek, Brian Belott, JoAnn Berman, Brent Birnbaum, Paul Brainard, Martin Bromirski, Melissa Brown, Eoin Burke/ Jim Dessicino, Caroline Chandler, Michael Cline, Jennifer Coates, Lisa Cobbe, Barnett Cohen, Pamela Council, Paul DeMuro, Raul de Nieves, Johannes DeYoung, Lindsey Dickson, Tiffany DiOrio, Leah Dixon, Michael Dotson, Erin Dunn, Austin Eddy, Kenneth Edward, Austin English, Evie Falci, Katrina Fimmel, Matthew Fischer, Dawn Frasch, Marlene Frontera, Linnéa Gad, Jill Galarneau, Kati Gegenheimer, Erik Gonzalez, Jesse A Greenberg, Adam Green, Anna Han, Charlotte Hallberg, MacGregor Harp, Shadi Harouni, Eric Hibit, Greg Hopkins, Miles Huston, Irena Jurek, Osamu Kobayashi, Maki Kitagawa, Hein Koh, Alison Kuo, Austin Lee, Kristina Lee, Kristy Leibowitz, Molly Lowe, Akemi Maegawa, Michael Mahalchick, Nikki Maloof, Steven Mayer, Chris McGee, Saira Mclaren, Eric Mistretta, Rebecca Morgan, S.E. Nash, Tin Nguyen, Annie Pearlman, Allie Pisarro-Grant, Jordan Rathus, Leigh Ruple, Carolyn Salas, Justin Samson, Chelsea Seltzer, Mark Sengbusch, Rachel Schmidhofer, Talia Shulze, Jocelyn Shipley, Timothy Simonds, Adam Parker Smith, Jason Stopa, Jennifer Sullivan, Stephen Truax, Keith Varadi, Jacques Louis Vidal, Molly Weiss, Natalie Westbrook, Kim Westfall, Birgit Wolfram, and Natalie Colette Wood