This Week’s Must-See Events: Collected Cum Shots and Love Children

The 2015 Whitney Independent Study Studio Program is generally regarded to be the most rigorous and selective conceptual program an artist can attend. This Tuesday students present their end of year show.
John Almanza, Emanuel Almborg, Harold Batista, Maura Brewer, Elaine Byrne, Davey Hawkins, Anastasia Hill, Jeremy Hutchison, Andy Robert,Margarita Sanchez Urdaneta, Effi ibok, Kenneth White, Marisa Williamson

Wendy White began the MFA Rutgers program one year after AFC’s Paddy Johnson graduated from the same program and thus has a special place in our hearts. Plus, it’s rare to see a painter develop quite as much White has over the years. Her sense of composition and paint handling in her abstract paintings that employ spray paint and text have improved tremendously. Hear her talk about how she got there.

In a world of ever more alternatives for gender pronouns, “Z” is an option that’s stuck around for a while, despite its somewhat unfortunate goofyness. Here, Robyn Hasty uses non-binary presentations of gender as a vehicle to subvert 19th-century portraiture. Hasty uses anachronistic photography techniques such as wet-plate collodion tintype and ambrotype developing processes to capture sitters who exist outside of the strict “male” and “female” roles assumed by the subjects of the historical photos being referenced. While the images are undeniably contemporary, they allude to a hypothetical, queer revision of history—retroactively documenting a demographic that lacked visibility for the majority of photography’s existence.

A think-y show from the point of view of a collector; this exhibition asks whether who owns a work changes art work or the perception of it. Half Gallery owner Bill Powers teases out the lineage of a few—an atypical camouflage painting by Joe Bradley that’s on loan from artist Michael Williams. A Jackson Pollock that’s been passed down from Mercedes Matter (a friend of Pollock’s) to Richard Prince. Most of the provenance is invisible, but if the press release is any indication, this isn’t so much about ownership as it is provenance as storytelling. And that’s where the intimacy of this show lies.

Artists (of which there are a sea of dudes) include: Jackson Pollock, Brian Calvin, Math Bass, Michael Williams, Dana Schutz, Josh Smith, Justin Adian, Dirk Bell, Joe Bradley, Genieve Figgis, Henry Taylor, Lucien Smith, George Condo, Sean Brian McDonald, Richard Pettibone, Rene Ricard, John Currin, and Jules de Balincourt

Oh, how the art world loves between states; this show explores the stage of art making after the conception of an art work and after its completion by showing a bunch of finished work. The concept is pretty dumb, but the show gets a recommendation from us regardless because a bunch of artists whose we like; Michael Bevilacqua, Matthew Ronay, Dean Sameshima, and Dani Tull. In particular we’re looking forward to seeing Dani Tull’s sci-fi new agey shell and totem sculptures as well as Matthew Ronay’s mini golf-course like sculptures made of MDF. These are some good looking sculptures.

Watch one of the most important documentaries made this century. In 2013 Director Laura Poitras shoots four days of interviews with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong and is present when he reveals his identity to the public and United States requests the Hong Kong government extradite Snowden. His crime? Revealing the United States’ mass illegal wiretapping program run by the NSA.

Regionalist pride as exhibition concept: Cris Dam & Leah Stuhltrager bring together artists they believe are forever associated with Williamsburg. See this show; you’ll wax nostalgic for the days Williamsburg wasn’t a 20 something lifestyle brand.

Artists include: Mark Andreas, Ken Butler, Cris Dam, Mark Esper, Anna Frants, Ruth Marshall, Loren J. Munk, Disney Nasa Borg, Randy Polumbo, William Powhida, Carol Salmanson, Jeff Schneider, Kathleen Vance, and Ryan W

More people need to know about the architecturally inspired paintings of Sara Jones; they build from memory and spacial perception and just generally tend to be gorgeous. The work on view will respond to the gallery space and the garment district its located within.

We never thought we’d see a show that included the hermaphrodite couple Eva and Adele and slick art stars Anna Gaskell and Douglas Gordon, so this show gets a nod just for that. It’s a showcase of work by artist couples.

They include: Eva and Adele, Anna Gaskell and Douglas Gordon, Nyeema Morgan and Mike Cloud, Rachel Debuque and Justin Plakas, Maria Walker and Jonathan Allmaier, Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe, Jennifer Coates and David Humphrey.

Faith Holland sees even the use of technology as erotic. Thus she spends a lot of time thinking about porn. For ‘TECHNOPHILIA’, she’s created a bunch of GIFs that look like orgasms and created an installation of abstract compositions composed of cum-shots composed from her porn collections and her own open call for submitted photographs. This exhibition appeals because cum is only represented here—it’s not an actual medium. Thankfully, we’re finally past the days of Dash Snow cum drawings.