This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Sculpture!

by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on September 29, 2014 Events

gober leg

If your preferred form of sculpture is a little weirder than the Richard Serra variety—you’re in luck. Odd sculpture abounds this week, from Robert Gober’s human-like sinks at MoMA to the SculptureCenter’s survey of work inspired, in part, by 20th century animations such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. That, and a screening of Rumstick Road, the opening of Brooklyn’s mini-biennial at the Brooklyn Museum, and a roundtable discussion of period styles in graphic design at Triple Canopy, and we’ll call it a week.

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Mon

Silent Barn

603 Bushwick Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11206
9:30 PM; $5.00 entry feeWebsite

The Wooster Group's RUMSTICK ROAD screening

Seems like Rumstick Road is on everyone’s to-watch list. Paddy Johnson thinks it’s required watching, and so does Silent Barn. From Johnson’s review:

Memory can be harsh. Everyone forgets the inconsequential, but we also forget some of the most painful memories we have. Some things are so emotionally wrought, you just can’t hold onto them. Other times, you can’t let them go and they obsess you.

All of this is explored in Elizabeth LeCompte & Ken Kobland’s reassembled video documentation of The Wooster Group’s 1977 production Rumstick Road by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte, shown last week at Anthology Film Archives. Built on taped interviews Gray conducted in his mid-twenties with his grandmothers and father on the subject of his mother Betty’s suicide in 1967, the play now seems especially morbid and ethereal. In 2004, Gray drowned, a suspected suicide after his long battles with depression.

Tue

The New Museum

235 Bowery Street
New York, NY
7:00 PM; $25 eachWebsite

Visionaries Series: Darren Aronofsky

We’ve done our fair share of complaining about museums pandering for big audiences (hello, Brooklyn Museum) and this event is no different. We’ll make an exception this one time, though, for a Darren Aronofsky talk. Yes, Requiem for a Dream was the worst movie ever. But who didn’t like The Wrestler and Black Swan? And The Fountain wasn’t terrible, either.

Thu

Life on Mars Gallery

56 Bogart Street
Brooklyn, NY 11206
6:00 - 9:00 PMWebsite

Arnold Mesches, Next In Line: The FBI Series

In a story straight out of a crime thriller, artist Arnold Mesches had been tracked by the FBI for nearly 30 years. (It was during the Cold War—even Picasso was under surveillance by the FBI.) He gained access to these documents in the 1990s. Out of the 760 pages from the official report, Mesches ended up turning the pages into “illuminated manuscripts,” which will be on view in the gallery.

Freight + Volume

530 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
6:00 - 8:00 PMWebsite

Ezra Johnson: It’s Under the Thingy

Ezra Johnson is perhaps best known for his animations, pieced together painting by painting to form a single piece. We’ll be getting some of that in his newest exhibition, which will include an animation of dots, dashes, and curves along with as many swear words as the artist remembers using in his life. Typically these animations face smoothly from one painted form to the next, so we’re looking forward to seeing the show. In addition he will show to-scale ceramics that look like kitchen sponges, and a six-foot-tall fiberglass version.

Triple Canopy

155 Freeman Street
Brooklyn, NY
7:00 PMWebsite

Period Styles with Eric Hu, Lisa Naftolin & Susan Sellers

Design nerds, your Avalon has arrived. This Thursday, listen to designers and creative directors Eric Hu, Lisa Naftolin, and Susan Sellers as they go beyond Helvetica to discuss historical precedents for popular styles in design and typography. In a nutshell, this is for those whose mouths water at the sight of a skillfully designed font. Now that we have access to virtually any of these fonts, though, the panel will also ask if period styles are a relic of the past. A quick look at the assembled fonts P! semi-regularly exhibits should answer that question with a resounding “no.”

Cristin Tierney

546 West 29th Street
New York, NY 10001
6:00 - 8:00 PMWebsite

Dear Mr. Thanatos: Modern and Contemporary Art from Latin America Regina José Galindo, Patrick Hamilton, Aníbal López, Teresa Margolles, Ana Mendieta, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, José Guadalupe Posada, and Jorge Tacla. Curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné

Terrible events such as war, death, and political violence all seen through the lens of modern and contemporary Latin American Art. Work in all mediums. And enough dread and desperation for us all.

Fri

Brooklyn Museum

200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11238
11:00 AM - 6:00 PM (Regular museum hours)Website

Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond

A working farm on the Brooklyn Museum grounds. A life-size equestrian statue made out of cork where visitors pin notes. A photographic series documenting the migratory paths of African-Americans past and present. For Crossing Brooklyn, curators Eugenie Tsai and Rujeko Hockley chose Brooklyn-based artists who “engage with the world”—so paintings will be low on the list of works you’ll find here.

Full list of artists:
Yuji Agematsu, Janine Antoni, Nobutaka Aozaki, Daniel Bejar, BFAMFAPhD (Julian Boilen, Susan Jahoda, Blair Murphy, Vicky Virgin, Lika Volkova, and Caroline Woolard), Linda Goode Bryant and Project EATS, Aisha Cousins , Cynthia Daignault, Elastic City (Todd Shalom), Zachary Fabri, Brendan Fernandes, Gordon Hall, Drew Hamilton, Heather Hart, Pablo Helguera, David Horvitz, Yoko Inoue, Steffani Jemison, Matthew Jensen, Nina Katchadourian, McKendree Key, William Lamson, Deana Lawson, Shaun Leonardo, Marie Lorenz, Miguel Luciano, Shantell Martin, Mary Mattingly, Kambui Olujimi, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Duke Riley, Lisa Sigal, Xaviera Simmons, Tatlo (Sara Jimenez, Michael Watson, Jade Yumang), and Bryan Zanisnik

Sat

MoMA

11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019
10:30 AM - 5:30 PMWebsite

Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor

We’ve counted our fingers, we’ve dug deep down in our brains, but we can’t think of a single person who doesn’t like Robert Gober. His Virgin Mary installation at Basel might just be the best artwork of the decade. While that work won’t be shown at MoMA—which is a shame of shames—we will be able to see his pop-inspired graphite drawings from the 1970s, room-size installations, and literally dozens of sink sculptures.

Sun

SculptureCenter

44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
12:00 - 5:00 PMWebsite

Puddle, pothole, portal

After taking home the Silver Lion prize in Venice for her exhaustive video that builds a creation myth out of the recontextualized internet images, any institution should be ecstatic to land Camille Henrot as a curator. This particular show departs from the familiar taxonomy of images we’re used to with her but a thread remains; she and Ruba Katrib find inspiration in the drawings of Saul Steinberg and 20th century animations such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? According to the press release this means a lot of work that transcends categories, which, whatever. Artist Camille Blatrix has created a singing mailbox, Allison Katz, a portal to another dimension. And let’s not forget Saul Steinberg (who seems to be experiencing something of a renaissance in this town). If nothing else, his buoyant vision of a rainbow reflected in an otherworldly landscape is worth making the trip over to see.

Artists include: Olga Balema, Joachim Bandau, Camille Blatrix, Teresa Burga, Antoine Catala, Abigail DeVille, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Judith Hopf, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Allison Katz, Mark Leckey, Maria Loboda, Win McCarthy, Danny McDonald, Marlie Mul, Mick Peter, Chadwick Rantanen, Lucie Stahl, Saul Steinberg, Keiichi Tanaami, Lina Viste Grønli, and Jordan Wolfson

Pierot The Fool

103 Mosco Street #3
New York, NY 10013
6:00 - 8:00 PMWebsite

THE IMAGE IS BESIDE THE POINT: Chris Martin, EJ Hauser, Gina Beavers, Josh Smith, and Joshua Abelow

So, usually we wouldn’t post about a show that sends out a press release exclusively in French, but we like the artists in the show, and how they all use paint in whimsical ways. The show’s title, The Image Is Beside the Point, does make for a nice description about these artists whose work is often just as much about materiality, paint, and painting as it is a particular image. We don’t know what will be included in the show, but given the roster of artists, we expect good things.

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