This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Yams is Back, and Klaus Totes Have Sold Out

Unless you’ve been living under a mossy, art-less rock these last few months, you’ve probably heard of HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?—they resigned from the 2014 Whitney Biennial over the exhibition’s lack of racial representation, specifically in regards to Joe Scanlan’s Donelle Woolford works. At P! the collective plans an architectural installation extending into the street modeled on theHouse Opera I Opera House, an art center in Detroit open to members of the community. While “in residence” at P!, HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN? will develop and launch thewayblackmachine.net (modeled on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine) to archive the digital conditions concerning issues like police brutality and military violence.

Singing paintings, a bludgeoned art critic, a depressed Mickey Mouse—Llyn Foulkes has a diverse, strange worldview and we love him for that. Llyn Foulkes One Man Band followed the artist around his home of Los Angeles from when he was 70-years old up until he was 77, tracking an upswing in his career from forgotten to refound (Within the last year, he has had shows at the New Museum and Andrea Rosen.)

Weekday screening on Tuesday, September 9 includes an introduction by Margot Norton, Assistant Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Special introductions by Raphael Rubinstein, Former Senior Managing Editor at Art in America, before the Saturday, September 13 screening and by Editor Maria Cataldo before the Sunday, September 14 screening.

Today, Viennese Actionism conjures up this 1970 image of a woman on a crucifix and raped in a bloody intestinal pool.
https://www.youtube.com/verify_controversy?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3Dns2p-FGF6qs%26bpctr%3D1410278655
How did the movement escalate to that level of extremism? Hopefully we’ll find out in “Rite of Passage: The Early Years of Vienna Actionism.”

Never heard of the internationally acclaimed Dutch artist Willem van Genk (1927-2005)? Us neither, but this retrospective looks like a pretty good reason to head out to the Folk Art Museum. Densely detailed panoramic collages of cityscapes “serve as sophisticated devices and scaffolds to map hidden forces, since the artist believed that all things were connected via both visible and invisible networks.” If you liked the show of architectural philosopher Lebbeus Woods at the Drawing Center earlier this year, then you this may be up your alley.

Cao Fei transitions from real life and Second Life simulacra to stop motion animation. From the trailer, it looks as though the film depicts a post-apocalyptic toy town—it has a Jennifer and Kevin McCoy maquette feel to it. It doesn’t tell us much, but we’re going because we liked the RBM City.

We don’t actually plan to attend the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition on high heels. Just pointing out that there has got to be a way to boost ticket sales without this level of pandering. The conceit is worse than “Punk: Chaos to Couture.” The bar for fashion shows has got to be raised.

Apparently, items are flying off the shelves at Jen Cattron and Paul Outlaw’s bus tour/souvenir shop that’s driving around Chelsea through this week. If you want to get your hands on such merch as Richard Serra “Dick” mugs and Vito Acconci lube– and we do– then hurry! From last week’s event listing:

Has Chelsea become such a spectacle of the rich that a bus tour and souvenir shop is needed? Abso-fucking-lutely. Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw are offering insider access to this mysterious world. They guarantee celebrity sightings and will be offering guest tour guides and experts from the art world to guide your Chelsea Experience. (AFC’s Paddy Johnson will be giving a tour—Saturday September 13th at 2 p.m..)

No Chelsea experience is complete without a souvenir. While the rich folk amongst us may simply take home a $200,000 painting, those of us working with a smaller budget may choose to visit Jen and Paul’s shop. In it, you can purchase such wonders as a Damien Hirst Shark approximation—a dead goldfish with a putty shark face and fin attached to its body; a Richard Serra mug adorned with his preferred nickname, Dick; and an I <3 Art t-shirt, with the head of PS1 Curator Klaus Beisenbach obscuring the <3. ←-UPDATE: These have sold out.

No prices for these objects on the website. Like a lot of art in Chelsea, you should arrive in person if you want a price list.

Jason Rhoades was the subject of much gossip after his untimely death in 2006. Already an art star, the 41 year old artist had a bad-boy reputation, and while the coroner’s office ruled the cause of death, a combination of “accidental drug intoxication” and heart disease, what drugs were accidentally caused intoxication were never released. Speculation has it, that his death was a simple overdose.

Needless to say, he’s now something of legend, so when the gallery says he hasn’t had an exhibition since 2007, there’s more to that statement than a mere sales pitch. There actually has been some anticipation for this show; Rhoades, before his death, was lauded as one of his generation’s most important artists.

We’re not overly familiar with the work, past his cummy hanging sculptures with neon lights, so we want to know more. A self-made recipe made from green peas, caviar, and foam, PeaRoeFoam is supposed to be a “brand new product and revolutionary new material” made for artistic and utilitarian use. When combined with glue, it’s basically a fast drying, hard material which he connected to sex. He packaged the stuff in Ivory Snow detergent boxes from 1972, which featured Marilyn Chambers, the star of the porn movie “Behind the Green Door”.

Look, we don’t know much about Agnieszka Kurant but the show does promise to, um, unleash human potential. “Living Currency” is a sculpture that converts human motion from gallery visitors into electrical energy. Another sculpture, “A.A.I.” consists of glittery, sandy, golden mounds made by “outsourced” by termites. And, there’s an animatronic soccer ball.

Rising stardom aside, Deanna Havas’s “Actual Person” is a poem for our times. The artist has strung together a seemingly endless list of one-line Whispers, Experience secrets, and Reddit comments, and into a ballad of things people wonder alone, together. Its title and cover suggests that “Actual Person” is more of a cold scientific view of forum culture, but moments like “I have CP and Aspergers. Feel free to ask any questions about me!” read like touching sonar pings in the ocean. Hear the entire piece when Havas reads it aloud at her book launch on Thursday. Beer has been promised.

Here’s a good opportunity for Philly noobs like us, to get familiar with the local flavor: on Friday The Galleries opens the Philadelphia version of “Do It”, the longest-running exhibition ever, conceived of by Hans Ulrich-Obrist and artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier. In each place “Do It” travels, local artists are invited to create artworks based on the instructions of famed artists like Cory Arcangel, Gilbert & George, and Tracey Emin. And if you’ve never seen a “Do It” you’ll be lucky enough to take some small part in the ***LONGEST RUNNING FARTHEST REACHING ART EXHIBITION EVER***.

Richard Jacobs makes abstract paintings. Ribbons, rainbow gradients, bubble gum gravel landscape. These are painters paintings, and thus, we expect to see Two Coats of Paint there.

Leah Tacha collages vessels with paper and glitter to achieve a craft-diva aesthetic. Why? Because she wants to. It’s hard not to appreciate this line from the press release:

She owns and exploits what’s happening in front of her, giving herself permission to make functional yet intuitive objects paired with exaggerated snapshots from nature to become their own weird autonomous beings. We hope that you’ll find something within these works that you can also celebrate: fighting for it, relaxing, freedom, finding home, loving, listening, making it perfect, realism, complaining, making your mark, calling bullshit, and finding joy.
It reminds me of Miley Cyrus’s artist statement, in all the best ways:

So, that’s how I started making art. I had a bunch of fucking junk and shit, and so instead of letting it be junk and shit, I turned it into something that made me happy.

We can get down with that.

Wash down a week of art viewing with some culture! “Dizzy World 2” should be a night of drag, in a venue with a rooftop and dancefloor. This party has everything: Vi Vacious from “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” performs alongside counter-culture performers like The Culture Whore and Tom Ass and xorzyzt from the Berlin-based collective UnReal. It’ll be something else.

The full performer list is:
Arthur Kosciuszko
Ash
BlackBlackGold (UnReaL, Berlin)
Buddha Funkenstein
Cher Noble
The Culture Whore
DeCrvnk
G H O U L S
Killer Wave
Lady Simon
Lucy Balls
Molly Rhinestones
Moni LaFemme
Pandy
Tom Ass (UnReaL, Berlin)
Untitled Queen
Vi Vacious (RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 6)
xorzyzt (UnReaL, Berlin)