This Week’s Must-see Art Events: Back to School Guide

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Rea McNamara on September 9, 2015 Events

tumblr_inline_na88kaVv361rvg9klNow that we’re all back from our art-world summer vacation, looking at our schedules can be mildly panic-inducing. Have no fear, we have a syllabus to help you navigate one very hectic September week. Tonight, there are more openings in the Lower East Side than one can possibly see between the hours of six and eight. We recommend prioritizing Regina Rex and 247365, which will be opening a new exhibition space adjacent to their gallery at 57 Stanton. Thursday, head up to Chelsea for a new video installation by Christian Marclay at Paula Cooper, a solo show from Andrew Birk at Johannes Vogt, and a very-timely video piece about the alienation of migrant women by the multi-national artist Elektra KB at BravinLee programs. Friday night, there’s no one Manhattan neighborhood to call homeroom. Sprint from Printed Matter to White Columns to the BHQF’s Foundation University Gallery (FUG) for some new, up-close but not-too-personal in flagrante delicto scenes from the legendary Betty Tompkins.

Saturday afternoon, the must-see event is undoubtedly the Knockdown Center’s Internet Yami-Ichi, an informal marketplace for all things net-art related. AFC’s own Corinna Kirsch with Dylan Schenker will be releasing a zine encyclopedia of everything you need to know about the internet in 2015. Saturday night, there are openings all over Brooklyn, but we recommend heading to REVERSE for an evening of virtual reality escapism. Sunday, check out early drawings from queer filmmaker Barbara Hammer at Company Gallery, a thrift-store-themed show at Soloway, and a panel discussion on Snapchat featuring AFC alumn Matthew Leifheit at Signal. PHEW.

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Wed

247365

57 Stanton St
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Website

In Appearance of Order and Henry Gunderson: Two & Two

247365 is opening a new exhibition space below their existent gallery on Stanton St. The inaugural show, In Appearance of Order, features work by Carol Bove, Ajay Kurian, Nathaniel de Large and Jessie Stead. The older space is showing Two & Two, a solo exhibition from Henry Gunderson. We’ve never seen Gunderson’s sculptures, but his paintings are great. They’re skilled and a little humorous—somewhere between pop-surrealism and Photoshop collage memes. They’re trendy and witty without coming across as gimmicky, which is hard to pull-off.

Regina Rex

221 Madison Street
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.Website

Corey Escoto: Deep Trouble

Using instant analog photography and stencils, Corey Escoto spells out film’s cinematic tropes. From text pieces such as “HIGH SPEED CHASE” and “DEEP TROUBLE” to iconographic images, Hollywood cliches are flatly rendered in the familiar medium of photography through unfamiliar processes. Isn’t there something still so magical about the mysteries of emulsion?

Thu

Paula Cooper Gallery

534 W 21st St.
New York, NY
5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.Website

Christian Marclay

What comes after reassembled vinyl and The Clock? Turns out comic books. After the massive success of his literal 24-hour video collage of cinematic timepieces, Marclay shifts his sampling interests to vintage comic strip onomatopoeia — krak! blip! pow! — for Surround Sound, a large-scale video installation. The appropriated graphics are animated in such a way to visually represent their sound, but are silently projected across four walls in a darkened room — a comment on silence as a negative space. It’s unlikely this will be the masterpiece that The Clock was, and has the potential to be akin to a clever one liner repeatedly told; nonetheless, it should be a trip hearing a barrage of noises in your head

Johannes Vogt Gallery

526 W 26th St Rm 205
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.mWebsite

Andrew Birk: TRU AF

Looking at Andrew Birk’s work, it’s sometimes hard to tell where the spray paint ends and the MS Paint begins. And with a press release that consists solely of an all-caps litany of references ranging from “GERHARD RICHTER” to “SHIT BIG DIPPER CAVE AGE SHIT REAL TRU SHIT” we’re really not sure what to expect from this exhibition, the artist’s first in New York. That being said, we’re guessing it will be very Tumblr-friendly, but also sprinkled with unexpected moments of frank, personal details.

BravinLee programs

508-526 West 26th Street
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.Website

Elektra KB: The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless

Immigration is the hot-button issue of the summer—if not the decade. While Donald Trump has been proposing a wall along the Mexican border, Europe and the Middle East are in the midst of a refugee crisis. Disastrous policies designed to restrict the movement of people across seemingly arbitrary geo-political boundaries beg the question: why? Citizenship and fear of “the other” are truly bizarre—but widely accepted—constructs. Elektra KB’s biography is certainly proof that national identity is no longer a clear-cut reality: the Colombian artist was born in the Ukraine and lives between New York and Berlin. Her video piece “The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless” presents the migrant woman as a tragicomic amalgamation of otherness; topless save for a face-obscuring mask that’s somewhere between a balaclava and a shador, she cycles through motions evoking fascist military parades or terrorist training videos, all set against a backdrop of pre-columbian pyramids under UFO-filled skies. If that sounds absurd, it’s because the whole concept of labeling human beings as “aliens” certainly is.

Fri

Foundation University Gallery (FUG)

431 E 6th St. (Basement)
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.Website

Betty Tompkins: Real Ersatz

Since 1969, Betty Tompkins has been making tightly cropped, hard core grisaille canvases of money shots at a monumental scale. Rediscovered in 2002, Tompkins has experienced a much-covered second life for her work: she’s now in the collection of the Pompidou and was spotlighted at Art Brussels earlier this year. It’s been six years since her last solo in New York, and the new body of work is being touted as a shift: incorporating digital prints alongside the  softly airbrushed photorealistic paintings to meditate on the real and fake. Given that Tompkins’ body of work spans an era that’s gone from furry bushes to pierced, shaved pussies and perhaps even back again, it’s great to see Tompkins continue to reinvent and move forward at a time when she could easily rest on her laurels.

White Columns

320 West 13th Street
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.Website

Uman, Willa Nasatir, Matt Damhave, Silvianna Goldsmith

Four different solo shows all in one gallery. We’re pretty unfamiliar with all these artists, but based on the rusty clown happy face on cardboard by Willa Nasatir advertising all of these shows we’re interested.

Uman, Willa Nasatir, Matt Damhave and a collection of Silvianna Goldsmith works curated by Ryan Foerster

Printed Matter

195 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.Website

Jack Early’s Life Story in Just Under 20 Minutes

Nobody tells a story better than Jack Early. Here, Early will play his self-published record from a customized yellow Victrola. We’ll hear Early’s life story from beginning to now and see a slide show of handmade collage images—all drawn from his life. We’ve listened to the full track and it’s filled with funny, charming stories of Early’s early life and subsequent move to New York. Listen for a short segment about how the artist ran out onto the white house lawn. Very entertaining!

Sat

The Knockdown Center

52-19 Flushing Ave.
Queens, NY
12:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.Website

Internet Yami-Ichi

Remember a time when net.art artists refused to participate in the art market, and speed shows gleefully took over internet cafes? Japanese artist collectives Exonemo and IDPW.org brings for the first time to New York their Internet Yami-Ichi, an internet-themed flea market that has already taken place in Taichung, Seoul and Linz. If you’re looking to sell and trade affordable limited edition multiples with your favourite digital artists, this is the place. Expect to see items from over 120 vendors, like Sessa Englund’s Sad Mugs, Carla Gannis’s Garden of Emoji Delights stickers and even AFC alumn Corinna Kirsch. Kirsch has paired up with Dylan Schenker to produce a zine on internet trends called the “2015 Internet Encyclopedia”. The zine will include several commissions including, we’re told, an entry on anal accessories ranging from jeweled butt plugs to tail plugs. Can’t wait!

REVERSE

28 Frost St.
Brooklyn, NY
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.Website

Uncanny

Helena Acosta, director of REVERSE’s programming, curates a group show exploring 3D virtual environments. Part of the curatorial team behind French Project Super Art Modern Museum (SPAMM), Acosta focuses on works that are subtle, immersive interpretations of the hyperreal: augmented reality, futuristic fictions, VR headset escapism. Readers of our GIF of the Day series will be familiar with the video art of some of the participating artists: Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Giselle Zatonyl, Eva Papamargariti. The show is rounded out with a VR installation by Leo Castaneda and media-archaeological sculpture by Sebastien Schmieg.

Sun

Company Gallery

88 Eldridge Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.Website

Lesbian Whale: Early Drawings and Paintings

Experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer is primarily regarded as an iconoclast of queer cinema. Back in 1974, she made Dyketactics, an intimately-shot black and white short showing her and a friend having sex. It was groundbreaking: the first lesbian film made by a lesbian. Lesbian Whale focuses on this specific pre-Dyketactics moment, back when she was still married to her husband and teaching at a community college in Santa Rosa, California, and just after she came out at the age of 30 at a feminist consciousness raising group. The unseen works on paper look similar to the felt pen drawings Joni Mitchell did for some of her 1970s album covers, like Ladies of the Canyon. Further, Hammer has a new film animating these notebooks with voiceover commentary from friends and peers.  

SIGNAL

260 Johnson Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
7:00 p.m.Website

Panel: THIS IS IT/NOW

AFC alum Matthew Leifheit joins fellow writers, art historians, and curators Roksana Filipowska, Jeanne Dreskin, and Kyle Laidig on a panel moderated by Paul Paper and Max Marshall. They’ll be discussing THIS IS IT/NOW, a photography exhibition curated by Paper and Marshall that exists only on the ephemeral messaging app Snapchat. To view the work, add the Snapchat username THISISITNOWSHOW.

Soloway

348 South 4th Street
Brooklyn, NY
6:00 - 8:00Website

The Look of Things

Nancy Shaver has been photographing ordinary objects scavenged items for years, not to mention running Henry, a store that sells many of those strange findings. From the description of this show, her curation seems a natural extension of her pre-existing practice so we can’t wait to see it. We’re promised three handmade spoons by Oliver Strand and some backyard totems by Beka Goedde among other things. The press release describes the objects Shaver is drawn to as having an “unmistakable magnetism”. Having seen just a few of them, we can attest to the accuracy of this description. Don’t miss this show.

Participating artists: Jared Buckheister, Kenji Fujita, Beka Goedde, Sara Magenheimer, Joyce Robins, Nancy Shaver, Oliver Strand and Emi Winter

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