This Week’s Must-See Art Events: The Not-in-Manhattan Edition

Over the last two months, art historian Lucy Hunter and artist R. Lyon have been putting on exhibitions in a shipping container gallery right outside the Knickerbocker M stop. For the final exhibition we’ll see “Puff Puff Pass,” a new installation by Siebren Versteeg that juxtaposes Snoop Dogg’s (now Snoop Lion) Instagram feed with algorithmic paintings based on those images. Can’t go? Watch the livestream.

And if you like the idea of art in a shipping container, you can follow that up with the new show at Juicy’s Gallery, which is located in Manhattan Mini Storage. This month they’re showing new paintings by Keith AllYn Spencer. By appointment only.

For those with a sweet tooth for video art history: Electronic Arts Intermix is teaming up with Anthology Film Archives to present some of early video art’s greatest hits by Douglas Davis and Paul Ryan. You’ll get to see works from TV as a Creative Medium—commonly referred to as the first video art exhibition—and the sexily titled “How to Make Love to Your Television Set,” among others.

It’s open studios time! LIC opens up its exhibition spaces and studios for a five-day festival, and will include talks by 5 Pointz graffiti artists—last fall their space was whitewashed, then shut down. Just take a look at the festival map, and you’ll see there’s a helluva lot to do out in LIC this week.

5 Pointz lecture: May 15, 8:00 -10:00 PM, Jeffrey Leder Gallery (21-37 45th Road)

Even when art looks abstract, it often points to objects in the real world. Here, with In the Beginning/ End-States, we’re presented with work that deals with the world out there—the cosmos. That’s maybe a run-of-the-mill curatorial statement, but we’re intrigued by this grouping of artists that pairs the digital work of Cory Arcangel with the minimal canvases of Ross Bleckner, for example. Other artists include Alice Aycock, Keith Sonnier, Aleksandra Mir, and Adam McEwen.

If you’re up for a whirlwind of bizarre visuals, we’ve got a choice film for you. Ralph Bashki’s 1977 cartoon masterpiece Wizards portrays a dark future where two wizards, one good, one a Nazi, battle for earth’s future. Excellent.

This will be the first year that Open Engagement, the international conference for socially-engaged art, takes place in New York. Hooray! Starting out with a keynote by artists Mierle Laderman Ukeles and J. Morgan Puett on the theme of Life/Work, this big series of talks and projects will run all weekend. The list of presenters is huge; looking at the site, there’s sure to be something for everyone. We’ve already come up with a list of the events we’re most looking forward to this weekend, like Friday’s talk on writing about socially engaged art (5:00 – 6:30 PM Queens Museum Theater).

You might know Ann Hirsch for her video and performance work, but she makes drawing, sculptures, and prints as well. We’ll get to know about Hirsch’s other feats this Friday at American Medium’s first exhibition at its new Bed-Stuy location. The theme: early adolescent sexuality.

For its last exhibition in the 1717 Troutman building—because the building’s landlord is kicking out all the art galleries—Harbor is putting on a show of tiny art. Why? Because, as they mention in their press release, there’s no better way to combat “the chaos that will be Bushwick Open Studios” with a show that requires you to slow down. Sounds like a good plan.