This Week’s Must See Events: Behold the Behemoth That is The New York Art Book Fair

It’s a big year for German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, who has a two-screen video installation up at the Metropolitan Museum, a solo show at the National Museum of Art in Osaka, and an exhibition opening at David Zwirner on Wednesday. For those who need a primer, the Kitchen is screening video work from 1987-2015, much of which has not been shown.

Yes, we’re putting Pablo Picasso on top of the art events this week, but believe it or not, it’s a still-underexplored facet of his work: his sculptures, which were not well known to the public until after his death in 1966. In a new show “Picasso Sculpture” MoMA revisits its 1967 “Sculpture of Picasso”; to this day, MoMA says, that “was the first and only exhibition on this continent to display a large number of the artist’s sculptures.”

Lower East Side gallerist, artist and scenester Eli Ping will show off a bunch of small bronze sculptures depicting membranes that have been interrupted by wrinkles and irregular stitches. The works resemble sutured skin, and sit somewhere between delicate and beautiful and kinda gross.

Do art consultants help artists who aren’t represented by galleries? We don’t know, but artists are invited for a “casual mixer” to hear about the profession with Lydia Kutko, owner of Lydia Kutko Art Consulting. Couldn’t hurt to find out.

A show with multiple components by Lisa Gwilliam & Ray Sweeten: a video constructed through grids of animated GIFs and prints that serve as data archives, somehow made accessible through QR codes. According to the press release these components pose the idea that language and communication are encrypted closed systems—in other words, this is life as seen through the lens of data. We saw a lot of this perspective at Internet Yami-Ichi this weekend and want to see more.

Massive double opening of German influence: Isa Genzken shows what sounds like a cavalcade of mannequins from her 2013 MoMA show next door from Wolfgang Tillmans, who’s having his first show at Zwirner since joining the gallery last year. Based on previous acclaim, it’s safe to assume that these will be big.

Fans of artmaking defined by the 60s and 70s should check out videos by Michel Auder, who spent those decades recording his surroundings– populated by people Alice Neel, Hannah Wilke, and characters from around the Factory– as well as fictional and autobiographical vignettes. Martos Gallery will be showing new work, which we got a taste of in the last Whitney Biennial. This includes re-edits of footage shot in the 60s and 90s.

I’m not crazy about medium as an organizing thesis for a show, but discussing works by these artists is always contingent upon talking about bleeds, soft textures, and a handmade feel:

El Anatsui

Mark Bradford

Kadar Brock

Cecily Brown

Sarah Crowner

Sam Gilliam

Sterling Ruby

Sean Scully

Ryan Sullivan

Lesley Vance

Rebecca Ward

Garth Weiser

The list seems to pick up where Michelle Grabner’s Whitney Biennial floor, with its themes of materiality and craftsmanship, left off.  

A show of think-y conceptual video art and photography. We’re promised a video that alternates between title cards proposing hypothetical situations and an actor that responds to those cues. There’s also double side photographs featuring images of women sourced from family photos, magazines, advertisements, movies, and television. These are supposed to express a “speaking motion” though, we’re not sure what that is. We’ll find out at the show.

There are plenty of reasons to go to this year’s New York Art Book Fair, but typically we point to the fair’s zine tent as the number one reason. For us, it’s the creative heart of the fair and also the most affordable. Most items can be purchased for under $100. This year, though, we’re also recommending you attend because the fair is curated by Shannon Michael Cane. We hadn’t been following his career prior to this, and a simple google image search has made us realize what a grave mistake this has been. He’s Cane in the best looking onesie you’ll ever see.

There’s a million and one talks and events associated with this event. Rather than list all the ones we want to go to, which would just be masochistic, we recommend taking a gander at the list and then showing up on the day with the most events you want to see.

Ten years ago the three person collective known as Paperrad had a near cult-like following on the Internet for their garish blinking GIFs and macabre online comics. That’s dissipated now that the group has disbanded, but the individual artists have since built careers and a body of work separate from the collective equally worth looking at. Jacob Ciocci, one of the three former members, will take over Interstate Projects two galleries to create an enormous installation reflecting on the apathy and empathy within American culture and the human psyche. As per usual, much of this will draw on material found online such as pop-up word ads and hashtag self-help lures.

Just a few blocks from the Book Fair, a group show makes a case for the uncanny valley as a way of understanding techno-anxieties. This includes painters like the fabulous Angela Dufresne and visual tricksters like Alexi Worth and Elizabeth King. Based on the artist list, we’re hoping for lots of weird hands, smooshy faces, and robotic marionettes.

Artists include: Holly Coulis, Jenny Dubnau, Angela Dufresne, David Fertig, Dennis Kardon, Elizabeth King, Elizabeth King & Richard Kizu-Blair, Matthew Miller, Sarah Peters, Rona Pondick, Alexi Worth