This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Liz Taylor and Yahoo! Finance

Garry Winogrand’s black-and-white street photographs might seem exceedingly traditional in comparison to today’s practitioners of break-all-the-rules photography. But at the time, his work radicalized the notion of documentary photography, opening it up to a less formal, quasi-snapshot aesthetic. Between this show at Pace/Macgill and the current Met retrospective, there are plenty of ways to revisit Winogrand’s now-iconic photographs of rodeos, protests, and balls.

In case you need an art reason to go to Fire Island: the nonprofit art camp BOFFO, which invites an artist to make public art, has been getting some strong talent out there this summer. The line-up makes for an easy endorsement, between musician Lawfawnduh, Raul de Nieves, Tony Cox, assume vivid astro focus, Malik Gaines and Alex Segade of “My Barbarian” and photographer David Benjamin Sherry. So now see what latest resident Daphne Fitzpatrick has been up to for the past month; she’ll speak about her work today at 4:30, followed by tea at the Blue Whale at 6 PM. Click here for directions.

This heady-sounding group show is sure to please those looking to get their fix of both 1960s conceptualism and contemporary art. Titled “Hypothesis for an Exhibition,” the show connects the work of ‘60s Italian artist Giulio Paolini with current New York artists, amongst them R. H. Quaytman, GuytonWalker, and Seth Price. Summer shows are normally lighter fare, so this show, which comes complete with an “extensive publication,” should be a perfect way to work your brain for a bit.

Painters, eat your hearts out. Keith Mayerson and Peter Saul together is like the Throbbing Gristle reunion concert of painting shows. Mayerson calls it a personal “dream come true” to show alongside Saul; Mayerson’s own groundbreaking work in comics and lovingly detailed painting likewise inspires crazy fandom. So excited.

When director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s, “Driver’s Seat” was released in 1974, it was seen as a confusing disappointment, and Liz Taylor’s frantic, diva delivery was seen as over the top, operatic, even old fashioned. Now, these traits are exactly what is getting this movie to be reconsidered as an influential cult-classic. A screening of “Driver’s Seat” introduced by Eric Banks (former editor in chief of Bookforum, former senior editor at Artforum, and current director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU) will show you just why this movie is important. Plus, it should be entertaining; in it, a mentally disturbed Liz Taylor runs around Rome in garish outfits in search of somebody to murder her. Oh also, there’s a brief cameo by Andy Warhol.

Everyone needs a breather from museum shows fuelled by spectacle and monumental scale. Jeff Koons, anyone? Head out to Midtown and you’ll find nearly 50 pint-sized photographs by contemporary photographers (Liz Nielsen, Yasumasa Morimura) and those already in the history books (August Sander, Robert Frank). Or you can just check out some non-classifiable artist-types like Dominic Episcopo who photographs raw meat and…well, he mostly photographs meat.

Artists include: Mauro Altamura, Will Brown, Larry Burrows, Harry Callahan, Luca Campigotto, Paul Caponigro, Dane Carder, Jacob Cartwright, Dominic Episcopo, Walker Evans, Dennis Farber, Robert Frank, David Graham, Fan Ho, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Dodo Jin Ming, Helen Levitt, Ray K. Metzker, Yasumasa Morimura, Liz Nielsen, Chris Rauschenberg, Willy Ronis, Simone Rosenbauer, August Sander, Toshio Shibata, Josef Sudek, Kazuo Sumida, George Tice, Jerry Uelsmann, Gerald van der Kaap, Edward Weston, Minor White, Bruce Wrighton, Xinhua News Agency & Nathalie Zaro

The Internet once more gets pedagogicized, with lectures on “what makes computers personal,” GIFs and fan fiction. What qualifies these lecturers? Well, they have some notches in their belts: Jason Eppink, who curated “The Reaction GIF” at the Museum of Moving Image; Laine Nooney, a PhD candidate and video game historian; and pop culture/video game writer Joe Bernardi. With themed drink specials!

What does this group show have to do with the organic restaurant trend of “farm to table”? The press-release, which is a list of phrases like “open with a joke” and “keep it simple, stupid,” doesn’t offer an answer. But we’re excited by Michael Bell-Smith as curator, who we interviewed way back in 2006. The inclusion of Sascha Braunig, who makes hyperreal mashups of op-art and figuration, and digital-media artist Petra Cortright mark this show to be promising.

Last August, Holland Cotter for the New York Times wrote up Martín Gutierrez’s breakout photography collection of the artist acting as life-size real dolls in domestic settings. In it, Cotter compared Gutierrez to Kalup Linzy, Jacolby Satterwhite and Ryan Trecartin, and wrote that “It will be interesting to see where [Gutierrez] lands and digs in over time.” Gutierrez, then, is a good choice for the debut of RLWindow, a new project by Ryan Lee Gallery in which performances, videos, and images will be shown on The High Line through a window display directly adjacent to the elevated park. In it, you’ll be sure to see some of Gutierrez’s high-fashion style fantasy videos. Seeing as the High Line collects the bulk of its 4.6 million visitors a year during these summer weeks, this should get Gutierrez some more time in the spotlight.

It’s summer, when blue-chip galleries loosen their collars and start showing art you’d never expect to see on the Upper East Side. Here, with Sunscreen, we get a handful of artists who’re clued in to digital culture; they’re also familiar faces on the NADA scene, like Regina Rexers Max Warsh and Siebren Versteeg. And just FYI, sunscreen is about digital screens, not the goopy white stuff—but it’s not just a digital art show. It’s hard to imagine what a discussion of contemporary art would look like without considering how our devices have ended up framing our flat, close-at-hand vision of the world. So we’re glad to see this is a topic that’s being explored in a context that’s not specifically about digital art, but painting, too.

Exhibition includes: Seth Adelsberger, Trudy Benson, Michael Dotson, Henry Gunderson, Eric Shaw, Russell Tyler, Siebren Versteeg, Max Warsh

Curated by Craig Monteith

If you’re around Northwest Connecticut this upcoming Friday, Artwell Gallery will be presenting their second installment of the In Camera series. In it, photographers from around the country submit their work, which is selected according to a common theme, and is then exhibited. This year, the works all have a similar daguerreotype-era look; there are blurry portraits of somber young women, images of what look like turn of the century medical tools, and shrouded figures pointing upwards in beams of light. Still, the subject matter of these images are often pretty modern American; there are lawn flamingos, and a turtlenecked girl with a septum piercing. Get ready for an eclectic mix of the super old and very new, and at the very least, a chance to spot some untested talent.

We’re fans of Claudie Maté here. Last year, Art F City printed out a football-field-sized tumblr of images by 36 artists on a huge roll of Tyvek and showed it at the Untitled Fair in Miami; that project, “Cloaque”, was conceived of by Claudia Maté and Carlos Sáez. (You may also remember Maté from GIF of the Day).
So we’re really excited for her new show “Sweet Finances” at Transfer Gallery: a show about finances, which comes with an essay by Reuters blogger Shane Ferro, “200 prawn stress balls”, a Bloombergesque installation and a number of web apps that will be released on DIS Magazine after the opening. This is going to be some fancy shit.