This Week’s Must-See Art Events: You’re in Luck if You Like Digital Art

For a tiny, but thoughtful exhibition, head over to BAM and get a glimpse of what made the Black Mountain school so particularly inventive as an art school. Expect documentary photos and original works by Anni Albers, Ray Johnson, and Joe Fiore, among others.

Let’s get real, here: It’s not always that interesting to watch someone talk about their own exhibition. Matt Keegan is different. As part of his current exhibition at Andrea Rosen 2, Keegan will Gordon Hall, founder of the Center for Experimental Lectures, in what’s being described as a collaborative approach to the talk. According to the release, this event will engage in a more enlivened talk—sometimes talking “to” or “with” the works. That’s not your your run-of-the-mill slide lecture.

Not everyone can count off accolades like Cookie Mueller did: she was an art critic, John Waters film star, and queen of the downtown New York scene. Get acquainted with her life, and how she charmed her way across the screen, when Dirty Looks founder Bradford Noreen leads a lecture of images and clips from Cookie’s film and video work. Cookie passed away in 1989.

How has Syria’s architectural landscape changed over the last few centuries, if not the last few months? Join CUNY professor Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis as she discusses Manar al-Athar, a free and open photo resource documenting historic sites in the Middle East, paying particular attention to Syria. This should make for one timely discussion given how the nation’s current conflict has permanently damaged museums, citadels, and various world heritage sites.

Hungarian artist Eszter Szabó has an eye for the strange: her watercolors of ordinary Hungarians give off a solemn air, no matter how ordinary the situation. Waiting in line becomes an existential crisis, no one smiles, and everyone appears weighed down by the burden of their shopping bags.

What a rarity! This week is heavy on digital art openings. Brenna Murphy, who you may have seen around the blog several times before, makes absolutely strikingly beautiful digital landscapes in print and sculpture. They’re often hypnotic, meditative. As such, it should come as no surprise that Murphy talks about graphics programs as her “spiritual tools” and the press release references Buddhism. No matter where you place Murphy’s works—spiritual, corporeal, or a digital hybrid—they’re just a pleasure to look at.

Rick Silva can transform the digital landscape into an utterly sleek, sublime experience. In his first exhibition at Transfer he showed digital landscapes sketched en plein air. For his second solo exhibition at Transfer, Silva has altered his approach slightly. Inspired by Tibetan funerary rituals where bodies were left on mountaintops, Silva selected ten artists for their own sky burials; Silva had camera drones drop their artwork hundreds of feet in the air and recorded the process. Looks like we’re getting a healthy dose of digital Buddhism this week.

A two-part screening curated by digital artist Gisele Zatonyl wherein each artist uses WebGL and 3D modeling programs to create a distorted, fragmented digitalverse.

Featuring videos by Eva Papamargariti, V5MT, A Bill Miller, Carrie Gates,Erik H Zepka,Mattie Hillock, Mark Pieterson, Faith Holland, Hector Llanquin, Morehshin Allahyari, Jenifer Juniper Stratford, Mattie Hillock, Jeremy Couillard, Johnny Woods, Erik H Zepka, Sabrina Ratté, Nicholas O’Brien, and Giselle Zatonyl

The Crusader’s Bible, showing scenes of the Old Testament set amid 13th century castles, shares a lot in common with our networked culture today. (It’s the Medieval version of all our Shakespearean plays that’re given a contemporary twist.) Originally the illuminated manuscript had no text, but after making its way across the Middle East and back to its home in France, inscriptions were added in Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian.

Look forward to the uneven landscape of an open studio event. We’re looking forward to seeing the architectural and design referenced work of AFC friend Noah Pollack. Also be on the look out for Blind Spot, a fantastic art photography magazine published twice yearly.

Panels! Workshops! Exhibitions! Park yourself at Pratt this Saturday for Upload. From talks on the posthuman to a workshop on how to code your own landscapes, there will be many a way to ramp up on digital art discourse. Keynote from Marisa Olson. Panels that include the likes of e-team, Ursula Endlicher, and Anthony Antonellis. We’ll have a lengthier preview later this week, but for now we’re just happy enough to tell you to come out.

P.S. We’re hosting the after party at The Emerson with a screening of our GIF of the Day selections assembled by Lorna Mills. The event will be deejayed by Alex Teplitzky.

When buying a small drone still costs anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, it still makes sense to go the DIY route. For $10, you can make your own balloon-and-camera drone and make high-res maps of your neck of the woods—or anything else—with a drone’s eyeview.

Heh heh heh. We love the bold press release for this exhibition that refutes art critic Jerry Saltz’s claim that Wade Guyton invented a “new paintbrush”: “No, Wade Guyton did not ‘invent a new paint brush,’ Anton Perich did in 1978, when Guyton was six.” Perich invented an electric painting machine that transforms TV and video signals into painterly gestures. And all this before inkjet printers were around. Also on view: Perich’s public-access reality TV series from the 1970s.

Interstate gets an award for the Accidental Halloween Exhibition; the lead painting in Oskar Nilsson’s exhibition features friendly ghosts saying “hi” to a boxer-brief-wearing guy in a coffin. Oddly enough, both of Interstate’s exhibitions seem to rely on a spooky theme. Beyond the Pale hosts “very wicked” art “recall[ing] the familial, the sexed, the undead”.

But really, you should go because it’ll be refreshing to see some narrative-driven, figurative painting instead of the usual abstract line and squiggle affairs fare seen everywhere else.

This Sunday you can try your hand at a new skill: painting with microbes in a petri dish. Hey, why not? You’ll need to RSVP to chamanyk@newschool.edu if you want to get in on this biological action. Finished petri dish paintings will be included in an installation opening October 21, 2014.