This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Punk for Cyberpunks

Con Artist is an art collective that’s been running shared studio and exhibition space in the Lower East Side since 2010. For this exhibition, they’ve taken inspiration from the Bread and Puppet Theater quote “Art is food! You can’t eat it, but it feeds you. Art has to be cheap and available to everybody.” This means you’ll be able to pick up works of art from collective members for the low, low price of $20. This is a welcome change from the recent headline-grabbing news of sales totaling more than the GDP of some Sub-Saharan nations. Our advice: get there early. At events like this, there’s usually a few diamonds in the rough that go fast.

Alois Kronschlaeger, Jean Shin and Elise Ferguson will speak about the influence of architectural materials, processes, and concerns in the visual arts in a panel moderated by Jing Liu. It seems like many artists are somewhat obsessed with direct or stylistic references to the built environment—a trend that was especially noticeable when I (Michael) visited Boston last month.

This discussion is being followed by an exhibition curated by the architect Warren James at Cristin Tierney Gallery (540 West 28th Street) which opens the following night at the same time. The group show features work by Aziz + Cucher, Filip Dujardin, Elise Ferguson, Richard Galpin, Carmen Herrera, Barbara Kasten, Alois Kronschlaeger, Jennifer Marman + Daniel Borins, Jean Shin, Jorge Tacla, and Francisco Ugarte. This looks like a winner.

Curator Daniel Bauer attempts to grapple with the weight of art history in a contemporary cultural landscape characterized by artifice and irony. It’s easy to imagine this show turning out to be a lot drab construction materials making tongue-in-cheek references, but the press release is beautiful: “These are the dressings we use to renovate the museum’s ruins which by now are composed more of conjectural Bondo than any single solid meta-narrative. Yet why not teach a history of art history in a Home Depot while we shop for our supplies?” Are there hints of optimism on the horizon of the discourse? That remains to be seen, but this looks like it’s going to be a smart show. The exhibition will include works by Ilit Azoulay, Ronnie Bass, Assaf Evron, East River School Painters, Lilly Hern-Fondation, Sarah Hewitt, Gareth James, Anthony Romero and Josh Rios, and Jeff Whetstone.

P.P.O.W. has been on a roll. From Anton van Dalen’s impressively serious, though cartoon-y representations of East Village life to what looks like another showing of less-than straightforward, and eccentric presentations of identity, in all its guises, with Anthony Iacono’s solo exhibition. We’re given an image of a man (most likely) on all fours, with a potted plant hanging from one sagging nipple, and what look like purple breasts straddling a house vase with a lemon set in the corner. Curious to see more.

What the heck is happening at this all-weekend garage sale? Watch the trailer, and you’ll see some patriotic spin resulting in a little girl handing her pennies over for a shard of art. What we think this means is that there’ll be an art garage sale, with really cheap art for you to buy. There’s also a lemonade stand, run by Jade Townsend and William Powhida. Wacky.

New paintings, sculptures, and wall-reliefs from Conor Backman, an artist who has a keen sense of traditional materials and how they can stand-in for how we experience screens and other forms of mediated experience in our digital age. If that sounds a little heady and vague for you, you can always go and enjoy his works for what they are: sleek and eye-catching. Plus, we’re told that some of the paintings will be of rose bushes. Flowers—pretty much everyone likes them.

Get excited for an exhibition about death. Okay, it’s really an exhibition about “observ[ing]  mortality and death in relation to recording devices,” which is a topic we all deal with, artists and otherwise, with every new update to our software. In addition to the opening on July 10, bitforms will host an online exhibition along with gallery exhibition. The GIFs and videos that are already online look appealing, dealing with the affective loss through digital materials.

Daniel Canogar, exonemo, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sara Ludy, Sarah Rothberg, Angela Washko, Andrea Wolf

Curated by Chris Romero

All the books and zines by Bushwick’s best and other up-and-comers. Totally chill, and relaxed, unlike an Armory-type fair, and less balls-to-the-walls with net bros than the NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. New this year: a selection of independent publications and zines from Detroit. For real, it’s always a fun event.

PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE: ART VANDELAY, Birds, LLC, Bodega, BOMB Magazine, Cinders, COCAINE, Endless Editions, Hassla, Christopher Kardambikis, Christina Kelly, Aidan Koch, Miniature Garden, Mixed Media, MOSSLESS Magazine, NURTUREart Non-Profit, Packet Biweekly, Papercut Press, Pau Wau Publications, Peradam, PrimaryInformation, Nikholis Planck, Publication Studio Hudson, Secretary Press, Slow Youth, Small Editions, Sorry Archive, Stranger Than Bushwick, Matthew Thurber, TOTEM, Ugly Duckling Presse, VUU Studio

Ok, this technically isn’t an art opening, but we’re including it for several reasons. First, it’s a short walk from Bushwick Art Book and Zine Fest, and it’s the perfect afterparty for that event (this starts at 7:30, but it will probably be going strong long after the Franzia has run dry at galleries). Second, Desidencia Subversiva is playing and they are legends from the Mexican underground scene in the 80s. Mostly, though, Latino Punk Fest is awesome and should be an inspiration to the whole creative community—it’s an entirely DIY festival put on with no sponsors, investors, or promoters. It’s truly a labor of love from a group of volunteers and their friends who donate time and resources to make something great on a shoestring budget (without selling out). The main festival happens in August, but get a taste of the DIY awesomeness tonight with music from Flykills, Ezcasos Recursos, Gun Culture, and, of course, Desidencia Subversiva.

Andrea Crespo’s work reframes post-net art aesthetics with a feminist/queer perspective. Think cyborgs and avatars questioning the inherently arbitrary nature of their genders and identities. This solo exhibition at Hester was announced with a press release that’s just a link to a Vimeo file. There, text scrolls across a glitchy black background—recalling ICQ conversations or MS DOS—detailing the libidinal effects of a virus that could be of either the computer or organic variety. As the virus recodes its hosts, the narrative meanders into the poetic or ASCII images. I know we’re not supposed to use the term “cyberpunk as fuck” anymore, but damn.