This Week’s Must See Events: A Weekend of Gowanus Open Studios

It’s hard to imagine a more timely exhibition than that of Walid Raad’s. His work explores the role of memory, narrative and conflict in the Middle East and the Middle East is currently in total fucking turmoil. The exhibition will focus on two of his long term projects: The Atlas Group (1989-2004) and Scratching on things I could disavow (2007-ongoing.) With the Atlas Group, Raad spent 15 years making f photographs, videotapes, notebooks, and lectures that related to real events in Lebanon and beyond. In his current work, he examines the emergence of art fair and biennial culture in the middle east, while looking at the unrest that defines many countries in this region.

Curated by Eva Respini with Katerina Stathopoulou

MoMA’s Senior Curator of Architecture and Design, Paola Antonelli will discuss the complicated relationship between art and architecture and landscape. We know Antonelli more for her work in the field of the new media, so it’ll be interesting to get a broader  perspective on her expertise.

Seminal video and installation artist Dara Birnbaum will discuss her work. Often, her videos would reconstruct television imagery using archetypal formats as quizzes, soap operas, and sports programmes and techniques such as the repetition of images and interruption of flow with text and music. Birnbaum is perhaps best known for her Wonder Women videos that challenged gendered biases of the 70’s, but she’ll be talking about recent work as well.

In our experience, Birnbaum takes great interest in discussing and critiquing her own work. That in and of itself should make the lecture one to attend.

How not to be a downer about death: Curate a bunch of work that’s about all the positive and powerful aspects of it. The artist list looks strong and diverse with stars like Sara Cwynar, Xaviera Simmons and Keith Haring.

Curated by: Arden Sherman and Javier Rivero.

Javier Castro, Justine Reyes, Abigail Deville, Sara Cwynar, Xaviera Simmons, Jillian Mayer, Keith Haring, Brad Kahlhamer, Geoffrey Farmer, Friedrich Kunath, Natasha Wheat, Jean Seestadt

Rachel Rossin digitizes unfinished paintings and compresses the shit out of them. We think. It’s a little difficult to glean exactly what Rossin does from the jargony press release, but we do know the show will include actual paintings and an Oculus Rift headset where you can manipulated versions of these paintings. And since we like viewing art through a headset, this show gets a recommendation.

Head out to Nars Foundation for a juried show of one: Elizabeth Hatke’s work was selected by SVA’s MFA Art Practice Chair for a solo show at the non-profit. The show will look at the past, present and future through medium alone: First Hatke will show pre-existing sculptures, installations and prints. That’s “Past”. Then she will perform throughout the show using these sculptures as props. That’s “Present”. And finally, the show will include printed documentation of the performance. That’s “deja vu”. 

Oh, I love me some Beat Night. Anyone who can go to this gallery crawl definitely should—it’s a great night, and for $10 bucks you can attend the after party.

I know this is gonna sound lazy, but the reason I like this event is that I don’t have to plan a thing. All I have to do is download the map and show up and everyone will be open and interested in chatting. It’s easy and we have organizer Jason Andrew of Norte Maar to thank for that.

On the gallery hit list:

The 9th Street Phenomenon, Brooklyn Glass, Dawn Hunter Gallery, Gowanus Swim Society @ Halyards Bar, Griffin Editions, Ground Floor Gallery, Interference Archive, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Site:Brooklyn, Trestle Gallery

Paper nerds unit! Combat Paper NJ will pulp and pull sheets of paper with their mobile paper making set-up. You can also work with Mobile Print Power, which uses an ice cream cart that’s been turned into a screen print studio. Awesome.

There’s some political zing to this project: both groups will ask “What does solidarity mean to you?” and “How can military veterans and immigrants (and immigrants who are vets) work together to improve their communities?” I’m guessing you’ll be able to screen print your answers. 

In the context of the recent mass studio evictions in Gowanus, this particular iteration of Open Studios couldn’t be more important. We’re not a developer’s front line gentrifier—we’re a vital part of the city, and more people need to know that. The more of us who come out to this event, the better it is for everyone. And you’ll see some good art too, so there’s all kinds of perks.

This sounds cool: Three artists who challenge the photographic medium were asked to make work for a slide projector. We expect the results to be pretty formalist in nature, which is fine by us. It’s the point of the show. Artists include: Eric Cahan, Elizabeth McAlpine, and Liz Nielsen with Carolina Wheat