This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Pussy Riot Comes to Brooklyn, SculptureCenter Explores Time

by Anthony Hicks Corinna Kirsch Whitney Kimball on February 3, 2014 Events

Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina of Pussy Riot. Courtesy The New Yorker.

Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina of Pussy Riot. Courtesy The New Yorker.

Brave the cold just a little longer, for we have so much art to see this week. Talks abound, from B. Wurtz on the history of sculpture to Winkleman Gallery’s panel on African-Americans in Soviet culture. We have openings, like a feminist sound art retrospective at CUNY and Greenpoint’s winter open studios night. Round out Sunday with a Genesis Breyer P-Orridge film-screening and book launch at PS1 and we’ll call it a week. Just grin and bear it.

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Mon

Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School

55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
New York, NY
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM (Admission is free)Website

Subjective Histories of Sculpture: B. Wurtz

Are there secret, untold histories of sculpture? Well, of course. Like any history, we expect there to be plenty of stones left unturned. We’ll find out more on Monday as B. Wurtz, skilled sculptor of the ordinary, will talk about the medium’s forgotten moments in terms of what the event’s press release refers to as “alignment.” (Corinna Kirsch)

Tue

Steven Harris/Rees Roberts & Partners

120 Chambers Street
New York , NY
6:00 PM - 8:00 PMWebsite

David X Levine: Flower & Cop

Red Hook’s KNOWMOREGAMES is hosting a pop-up exhibition of David X Levine’s colored pencil drawings inside the downtown Manhattan offices of the architecture firm Steven Harris/Rees Roberts & Partners. The event promises cocktails, which we imagine the architects will be sticking around for, too. (Corinna Kirsch)

Wed

Winkleman Gallery

621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
6:30 PM - 8:30 PMWebsite

Panel: The Wayland Rudd Collection

Yevgeniy Fiks has collected over 200 images of Africans and African-Americans in Soviet culture—like the ex-patriot American actor Wayland Rudd—and then asked artists and academics to create responses to a selection. They’ll be speaking on a panel on Wednesday.

Panelists are: Maxim Matusevich, professor of global history and Eastern European studies; Raquel Greene, Russian language professor and researcher; Jonathan Shandell, theater historian; and Yelena Demikovsky, founder of Red Palette Pictures. (Whitney Kimball)

Barclays Center

620 Atlantic Ave (at the corner of Atlantic Ave and Flatbush Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
8:00 PM (Tickets run $35 and up)Website

Amnesty International: Bringing Human Rights Home Concert

Pussy Riot is coming to Brooklyn! No, they won’t be performing at Wednesday night’s concert, but they will be saying a few words (maybe). This one’s a difficult recommendation to make: We’re sure people will be talking about it the next day, but if you’re only going for Pussy Riot, that’s just a small percentage of the event. The concert will feature performances by Madonna, The Flaming Lips, Tegan and Sara, Lauryn Hill, Blondie, and Yoko Ono, among others.

 If you still wanna go, here’s the deets:

Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina, the two Pussy Riot members no longer in Russian prison, will give their first stateside talk during Amnesty International’s fundraising concert. They will be introduced by Madonna (of course!), and although we’re not exactly sure what their topic of choice will be, David Remnick of the New Yorker spoke to the two of them in advance of the concert. From his preview it seems likely the talk will lean in the direction of Sochi:

“For Putin, the Olympic Games are an attempt to inflate the inflatable duck of a national idea, as he sees it,” Tolokonnikova told me. “In Russia today, there are no real politics, no real discussion of views, and meanwhile the government tries to substitute for this with hollow forms of a national idea—with the Church, with sports and the Olympics.” (Corinna Kirsch)

Thu

Brooklyn Fire Proof

119 Ingraham Street
Brooklyn, NY 11237
5:00 PMWebsite

The Games People Play - Round 2

If you’ve ever wanted to touch the art, you’ll likely be excited to play with artist (and friend of AFC) Nicholas Cueva’s “interactive game sculptures.” We’re not sure exactly sure what’ll be there—maybe some board game-like sculptures—but we expect good things. Appropriately, these new works will debut at the Brooklyn Fire Proof bar and cafe where you can chat, drink, and figure out how to play the game with the artist himself. (Corinna Kirsch)

David Zwirner Gallery

537 West 20th Street
New York , NY 10011
6:00 PM - 8:00 PMWebsite

Doug Wheeler

Before the great Yayoi Kusama Instagram line of 2013, there was the unforgettably long Doug Wheeler line of 2012. Visitors to Wheeler’s seemingly endless light room waited to put on white booties in order to walk into his installation (and sometimes bump into the gallery walls). Zwirner knows when they’ve got a hit on their hands, so they’ve brought Wheeler back to install a new light installation for the gallery’s entire ground floor. All we’ve got to say is get there early, before the Instahounds make it hard to get in. (Corinna Kirsch)

The James Gallery at CUNY

365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
6:00 PM - 8:00 PMWebsite

Sexing Sound: Aural Archives and Feminist Scores

Expect an “animated peak” at sound art by women over last 20 years, but not a comprehensive survey.  This much, we know from the press release, which also promises historical references as far back as the 1960s, including audio, flyers, scores, and zines of women’s sound work. For those looking for a good introduction to sound art, this might be your bag.

Featuring  Artists: Johanna Fateman, Kathleen Hanna, Alison Knowles, Annea Lockwood, Marina Rosenfeld, Emma Hedditch, Ginger Brooks, and others.
(Anthony Hicks)

Fri

Fowler Arts Collective

67 West Street #216
Brooklyn, NY 11222
6:00 PM - 9:00 PMWebsite

Dead Ringer

Part of Greenpoint’s Gallery Night: Winter Edition, “Dead Ringer” looks like it might be one of the better bets for this event that’s central to the Greenpoint G. Fowler Project Space is hosting a show by San Francisco-based artists Seth Curcio, Bean Gilsdorf, and Julie Henson, all exploring historical images, from images of the Titanic to the Kennedys.

P.S. We like Bean Gilsdorf—her Tarot readings at the 2012 Flux Factory benefit were one of the event’s most popular attractions. (Corinna Kirsch)

Other participating galleries, studios, and other local spaces include: 106 Green, Brooklyn Artist Alliance, Brouwerij Lane, Bunker 259, Calico, Concrete Canvas @ Beloved, Dandelion Wine, Dose Projects, Fowler Project Space, Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, G-Spot at Coco66, Heliopolis, Java Studios Gallery, Theceeflat Gallery, Yashar Gallery, and Yes Gallery.

Sat

SculptureCenter

44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
11:00 AM - 6:00 PMWebsite

Chance Motives

There’s no perfect road out of the professional art-making model that we have today, but a few recent efforts suggest artists are trying. Shows like David Levine’s WOW (Work-In-Progress) and Garis & Hahn’s Suddenly, There: Discovery of the Find question the conventions of art production by treating art as a perpetual process, rather than a series of completed works. The SculptureCenter’s Chance Motives,  a group show of “time-based work,” seems to run along those lines.

According to the press release, the works employ “methods that can accommodate accident and error, in opposition to both algorithms of efficiency (devised for the hysterical demands of market production) and the pure chance operations of Fluxus.” Among other things, this means a three-day series of public “rehearsal sessions,” ending in a daylong performance on Saturday.

Artists include: Vanessa Anspaugh, Amber Bernak, Ben Thorp Brown, Ethan Philbrick, Conrad Ventur, Rachel Rose, Laura Vitale, Daniel Neumann, Essex Olivares, Pedro Neves Marques, Nick Paparone, Brendan Fernandes, Sahra Motalebi, and Hayley Aviva Silverman.
(Whitney Kimball)

Sun

MoMA PS1

22-25 Jackson Avenue
Long Island City, NY 11101
3:00pm-6:00pm (Tickets run $10 advance, $12 day of at 12:00pm)Website

Book launch for Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

The release of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s new biographical photo book promises to have fans frenzied. The launch will be a grand art party, featuring old films by Genesis, new films by Leigha Mason, a reading by artist and writer Jarrett Earnest, and a DJ set by Tamaryn. (Whitney Kimball)

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