This Week’s Must-see Art Events: Talk Hard, Talk Dirty

Paula Crown, Michelle Grabner and Jose Lerma discuss how their relationship to Chicago and Aspen affects their art making and teaching practice. As it happens Grabner and Lerma both have strong ties to New York as well, (we know both personally) so there’s that to talk about as well. We expect, though, they’ll stay focused on Element 47 restaurant, which is located in Aspen and the focus of the talk. Apparently they have an art collection, and a newly released publication on said collection.

Nick Montfort, Associate Professor of Digital Media at MIT believes that everyone benefits from knowing how program. Much like learning how to read and play music improves our math and language skills, learning how to program can similarly improve our abilities to debate and build consensus. Montfort’s gonna talk about that, and presumably some of the literary generators and other computational art and poetry he’s produced over the years.

In the art world, the best indication that summer is near isn’t the weather, but the Met’s Roof Garden Commission. This year, the institution promises a new nineteen-minute video by Pierre Huyghe on the survival of mysterious creature after a natural and man-made disaster. This is quite a departure from the Koons dogs they displayed in 2008 or even last year’s  glass pavilion with grass by Dan Graham  and Günther Vogt.

“99 Objects” is a series of talks, each focusing on an individual artwork from the Whitney’s collection. This iteration addresses Matthew Barney’s multi-channel video installation Drawing Restraint 7. The piece will be presented by Catherine Taft, assistant curator at the museum. It’s free with museum admission and is a perfect excuse to check out the Whitney’s new Meatpacking District digs, if you haven’t already.

This exhibition revisits 2D work the late Lee Lozano created in the 1960s. Her brief but prolific career focused on precise abstractions evoking tension. Her dark canvases can sometimes read as tensile materials twisted, violent penetrations or breaks, or cool depictions of potential energy. This promises to be a rare look into the career of an enigmatic (Lozano staged her own departure from the art world in 1971) artist.

NADA’s provided zero details for the Brian Belott performance and we’re still listing this event. We’ve never met any artist as full of energy, enthusiasm for comics, music, collage, found sound and photography and pretty much any other medium you can think of. With Belott, more is more; prepare to be overwhelmed.

Beginning with a keynote address from architect Keller Easterling, Rhizome’s Forum on the Born-Digital Art Institution brings together critics, curators, and bloggers to discuss online art platforms. If a week of objects trading hands at art fairs has bummed you out, this might be the perfect Friday night antidote.

Is your studio in need of a little shaking up? Bruce High Quality Foundation University has got your back. This year at NADA, faculty, staff and students will participate in an interdisciplinary critique class session. Attend, take a few notes, and bring that critical brain back to the studio. You’ll be happy you did so.

Jacqueline Humphries’s large, immersive canvasses can read like a wall of static. It’s remarkable how many surprise hints of color and diversity of mark-making a seemingly all-over abstract composition can hide—from painterly gestures to hard-edged abstraction that seems to reference printmaking. This exhibition is the artist’s first solo show in New York since appearing in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

The feminist activists known as The Guerrilla Girls take over the Abrons Art Center with close to 100 Posters, stickers and billboards from 1985 to the present. We’re looking forward to this show—their work has shone a light on inequality issues that need addressing—but we’ll reserve judgement until we see the show. In the statement, the Guerrilla Girls promise a wall where anyone can complain about issues they care about and clips of “hotshot gallery owners making totally embarrassing statements.” The former could invite slander and the latter feels punitive. Let’s hope neither is the case.

#AskJerry promises to be exactly what one would expect: a chance for participants to get more of Jerry Saltz’s opinions on everything and a chance for Jerry Saltz to flex his bulging social media muscles…. But given his recent Facebook history, I’m not sure we’re allowed to use the words “Jerry Saltz”, “Social Media”, and “Bulging” in the same sentence.

Ever listen to David Salle talk about his own work or others? He’s, without a doubt, one of the most articulate artists working today. (Just read this short interview on artnet from 2011.) Which is to say, it’s worth heading out to see him speak with the American writer Francine Prose. Even if you don’t like Salle’s paintings, the conversation will almost certainly leave you with something to think about.

Leigh Ledare took nudie pictures of his mother for his first show in New York. Paul McCarthy is best known for his Santa butt plugs, flying inflatable turds and father-son goat fucking sculptures. They’re getting together to talk about breaking social taboos with Chrissie Iles. We’d say something juvenile here, but the conversation will likely be quite heady. There’s not a conceptual slouch in this crowd.