This Week’s Must-see Art Events: We Hope You Aren’t Allergic to Latex

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on August 17, 2015 Events

James Thomas Marsh impact diamonds

Still from James Thomas Marsh’s “Impact Diamonds“. Marsh (along with a cadre of Bushwick’s best and brightest genre-pushing performers) is hosting a record release party at Secret Project Robot Friday night.

Breaking news: it’s still August in New York. That means many galleries on hiatus, a great exodus of the wealthy to summer homes, and a boring sticky time for the rest of us. Or does it? Apparently all the queers, weirdos, and feminists are back from P-Town and Fire Island and ready to bring you a week of events that may be sticky but promise to be anything but boring. From sex workers’ narratives and pop-up Marxist sex shops to gender-bending masks and DIY sex toys, New York City is getting kinky this week. Fittingly, this is also your last chance to see Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play at Artists Space. While the norms are away, the queers shall play. Seriously, we hope you aren’t allergic to latex.

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Mon

Guggenheim Museum

1071 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
5:45 p.m.-9:00 p.mWebsite

Gerard & Kelly: Timelining

Every Monday until September 7, performance duo Gerard & Kelly have been staging Timelining, a work first performed last year at the Kitchen that was promptly acquired by the Guggenheim for its permanent collection. (Holland Cotter was a huge fan.) As part of the current “Storylines” group exhibition showcasing recent contemporary acquisitions exploring narrative, the lobby-staged performance explores intimacy through the lens of queer time; each week, two performers — whether they be friends, ex-lovers or siblings — enact a loosely-choreographed, circular back-and-forth dwelling upon their shared personal history. Additionally, the Wright promises a happy hour selling over-priced, seasonally-flavoured champagne punch.

Anthology Film Archives

32 Second Avenue (at 2nd Street)
New York, NY
7:00 p.m.Website

Wanda

Barbara Loden’s Wanda was an anomaly when it was released in 1970: a neo-realist, hand-held 16mm portrait of a working class Pennsylvania wife (played by Loden) who abandons her family and restlessly drifts through a moribund Middle America filled with seedy bars and motels. Written and directed by Loden, the film won Loden the International Critics’ Award at the 1970 Venice Film Festival, but was neglected at the time by academics and even feminist film theorists. Despite it being a fascinating counterpoint to Five Easy Pieces, critics found the anti-heroine too unlikable by first wave feminist standards, and Loden — the wife of Elia Kazan, who stifled her career success — never followed up on her debut, dying ten years later at 48 from breast cancer. Cited by Jonathan Rosenbaum as one of the greatest 100 American Movies, the recent 35mm restoration of Wanda has brought renewed interest in a pioneering female filmmaker finally receiving her rightful due.

Tue

DROM

85 Avenue A (between 5th and 6th Street)
New York, NY
7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m.Website

Naked Hamilton at 2015 Fringe NYC

Almost ten years ago, Canadian playwright Sky Gilbert — a co-founder of the venerable Buddies in Bad Times Theatre company — moved from Toronto to Hamilton, a formerly gritty working class steel town. In that time, however, Hamilton has experienced a creative class takeover, with artists and tech start-ups taking advantage of cheap rents, and concerns about the gentrifying effects of “livable city” revitalization. Naked Hamilton — focused on the relationship between an aging sex worker and her ex-lover – is Gilbert’s meditation on this moment between old and new, and the issues of class that can emerge. Oh, and bonus: it’s conveniently set in a bar.

Wed

Eyebeam Seaport Cultural District

117 Beekman Street
New York, NY
7:00 p.m.- 9:00 p.m,Website

Adorn and Subvert: A Discussion on Wearable Resistance

Joanne McNeil moderates a panel discussion with artists/designers Lisa Kori Chung, Iltimas Doha and Adam Harvey on tech-based garments designed to protect the wearer from surveillance and harassment. Adam Harvey is the guy behind CV Dazzle, the anti-facial recognition makeup technique that’s a little like drag contouring in reverse. Familiarize yourself with it now—we predict it’s going to be the hot new look for Spring/Summer 2016, if past security culture flare-ups accompanying the election cycle’s National Conventions are any indication

Thu

Adorama

42 West 18th Street
New York, NY
6:00 p.m.- 8:00 p.m.Website

Orestes Gonzalez: Julio’s House

Following the death of his uncle Julio, the architect/photographer Orestes Gonzales assisted his family in sorting out his belongings and Miami home. The process revealed a whole new biography of the gay Cuban-American who lived through the tumultuous 1950s, the “coming out” of LGBTQ culture, and an extended family that kept him at a distance. This inspired a series of photographs documenting Julio’s flamboyant home—equally personal and forensic-like, the images attempt to memorialize and appreciate the life of a relative who remained in some ways a stranger.

Fri

Secret Project Robot Art Experiment

389 Melrose St
Brooklyn, NY
8:00 p.m.

James Thomas Marsh ´®®˙ Record Release Party

If you’ve never witnessed James Thomas Marsh live, you should. Past performances have included the nearly-nude artist flailing ecstatically in a creepy androgynous mask to his equally ecstatic electronic music and trippy video projections. For the full experience, one can even purchase a dildo cast from his penis that vibrates in synch to his music—an offer once made to audience members by a cheerful robot voice like the ones that tell you to stand back from train doors or announce airport arrivals.

As if that prospect isn’t enough to entice you out, Friday’s line-up is a great sampling of Bushwick artists who ignore the arbitrary distinctions between music, performance art, and dance:

Adam Endres, Ana Lieberman [Froggy Rivrrs], Buoy, Colin Self, Deanna Viva Garcia, Garret Edwards, Greem Jellyfish, The Human Carpet, Jake Dibeler, Monica Mirabile, James Thomas Marsh, Raul De Nieves, Rebecca FIN Simonetti, Robot Death, SADAF, Samuel Muglia, Sarah Kinlaw, Sean Benjamin, Shireen Ahmed, Sigrid Lauren, Sophia Park.

Sat

Recess

41 Grand Street
New York, NY
6 p.m.- 8 p.m.Website

Katherine Hubbard & Savannah Knoop: Small Town Sex Shop

Over the course of the next week, Katherine Hubbard and Savannah Knoop will be using Recess’s storefront as a hybrid design studio/retail space open to the public. Their inspiration? The sex store as a last vestige of intimate, inhibition-free space in an increasingly privatized world. The duo will construct a series of straps, garments, and other soft sculptures that interact with the body throughout the exhibition. From the artists: “Perverting streamlined techniques of traditional garment-making determined by functionality and profit, the artists will scramble logics of efficiency in favor of excess and pleasure.”

Sun

Artists Space

38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY
12:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.Website

Last Chance to See Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play

Artist Space’s Summer retrospective of Tom of Finland closes this Sunday. 1980s drawings of muscle-bound leather daddies? Check. But what’s really unique about The Pleasure of Play is the opportunity to see the famous queer erotica icon’s lesser-known fetishistic collages and subversive early work from the days when being gay was truly taboo. Check out gouache paintings of bashful men in business suits from the 1940s showing each other their junk. It’s pretty remarkable that anyone had the balls (cartoonishly-oversized, glistening balls) to produce images like that at a time when homosexuality was an imprisonable offense.

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