This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Good Reasons To Put Pants On

Indian Modernism is about to get a whole bunch more exposure. It all starts with NYU’s Grey Art Gallery opening this week, which will show the Indian Modernist art collection of Abby Weed Grey, the gallery’s founder. In the late sixties and early seventies, Grey made several trips to India, during which time she amassed the collection.

Following this, the Queens Museum will launch their exhibition “After Midnight: From Indian Modernism to Contemporary Art in India” in March. Grey Art Gallery should be a good primer for this larger show, so it’s worth the small trek to the West Village.

The gallery will also feature a show of Depression-era artworks.

Note the limited hours on their site (open Tues, Weds, Thurs).

The White Columns Annual is a look at the best under-the-radar art made in New York over the past year. The 2014 edition has been assembled by the curators of Cleopatra’s. Premature observations: it’s an older crowd than we’d expect from Cleopatra’s, who are themselves only in their early to mid thirties. Painting and sculpture loom large.

Artist list:

Dennis Adams, Etel Adnan, Sam Anderson, Polly Apfelbaum, BFFA3AE, Sarah Charlesworth, Mike Cloud, Anne Doran, Koji Enokura, Peter Fend, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Guy Goodwin, Sheila Hicks, Gordon Hall, Van Hanos, Annette Kelm, Josh Kline, Justine Kurland, Louise Lawler, Robert Longo, Jeanette Mundt, Sigmar Polke, Trevor Shimizu, Greg Parma Smith, Frances Stark, Keiichi Tanaami, Malick Sidibé, Lily van der Stokker, and Carrie Mae Weems (list in formation)

San Francisco readers, if you’re out there: Female net artists and curators continue making a collective effort to support our kind. The one-night-only screening/exhibition/conversation series “Chatrooms” continues, this time, with an all-female show of GIFs, videos, and images curated by Faith Holland and Nora O Murchú. Go to this if you’re sick of the same female celebrity roll.

The artist list:

Morehshin Allahyari, Claudia Bitran, Hannah Black, Gaby Cepeda and Adriana Minoliti, Jennifer Chan, Jennie Cole, Claire Evans, Dafna Ganani, Geraldine Juárez, Nicole Killian, Rachel Maclean, Claudia Maté, Jillian Mayer, Raquel Meyers, Lorna Mills, Eva Papamargariti, Sabrina Ratté, Erica Scourti, Tessa Siddle, V5MT, Giselle Zatonyl.

Children’s book author and illustrator Tomi Ungerer gets a retrospective of his drawings from books (like “The Three Robbers”), ads from the Village Voice and New York Times, and erotica and satire. I’m not expecting anything mind-blowing here but an unpretentious cartoon show sounds great right now.

Normally I don’t list talks, but exceptions can be made for a Performa curator and an extreme performance. To a soundtrack by musician Arto Lindsay, Mark Beasley lectures about “Looting”, a 2010 performance by Regina José Galindo. In this piece about colonialism, the artist had a dentist in Guatemala drill her molars and fill them with pure Guatemalan gold. Then she went to Germany and had them extracted. Ouch. “A numbing beverage will be served.”

This is a film about life and limits of human perspective, mainly from the perspective of a dog, and it’s incredible. It’s also impossible to sum up in a blurb—I wrote a review.

“Caustic wit” might be on the don’ts list of review clichés, but it does describe the work of Joe Amrhein, Rico Gatson, William Powhida, and Rita Valley. This group is mostly united by the fact that they don’t turn a blind eye to the obvious class hierarchy on which the art world runs. This makes them surprisingly unique.

If you’re like us, this picture of a clown on a stick will be an automatic draw. This comes with an obtuse, unparsable press release, which piles on references to Nelson’s work from the nineties, the film “Solaris”, philosopher Thomas Metzinger, and analyzes his work through structures of time and psychic forces. It’s a clown on a stick taken to absurd theoretical extremes. I’ll be there for the clown forms– I don’t expect to get this.

“Pattern” doesn’t make a particularly compelling show theme, but this list does: Louise Bourgeois, Daniel Buren, Tom Burr, Ryan Gander, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Dianna Molzan, Albert Oehlen, Sterling Ruby, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, Lucien Smith, Rosemarie Trockel, and Christopher Wool.

Fans of Sheila Hicks, Michelle Grabner, and Diana Molzen should check out Danielle Mysliwiec’s solo show at Novella Gallery. Woven paintings and systematic handmade patterning reflect nature and a personal touch. They fit squarely in the increasingly popular camp of soft abstraction.

Inspired by a recent trip to Foxwoods, Melissa Brown finds magic in gambling that only an artist could. From her press release:

I find it completely inspiring that money is valued by human perception instead of a stockpile of Gold. It means that human consciousness has the power to make the imaginary real. For this, it is worth peeling off a twenty and getting into the game.

This makes me want to go to Foxwoods.

Along with fantasy/abstract paintings by Melissa Brown, invited artists will wager their artwork in games of Texas Hold’Em, every Sunday night, throughout the show’s run. On the final day, Brown’s work will be replaced by those wagered works.

Big rec’s still up:

• Chris Ofili at the New Museum: Closes 1/25
• Backdrops and Costumes Celebrating 30 Years of the Armitage Foundation (Jeffrey Deitch’s show in Jersey City)
• A Hatchet to Kill Old Ugly, The Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia

Closing this week:

• Saturday: Chris Verene: Home Movies, Postmasters
• Sunday: Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor, MoMA
• Sunday: WINDOWS, Northern-Southern, Austin, TX
• Sunday: Power Structures: Leslie Hewitt, Karel Martens, Zia Haider Rahman, Project Projects