This Week’s Must-See Art Events: It’s All About the Turtlenecks

If there’s anyone who needs a drink after this weekend, it’s the art handlers. Here, they’re gathering to discuss strategies for securing fair wages, job protection, benefits, and resource pooling. This event is open to anyone who’d like to join or observe the discussion and is a part of the programming series Just Cause : Bad Faith // Art Workers Activism and Organizing in NYC and Beyond.

Chicago’s mid-century design firm Goldsholl Design and Film Associates was once on par with the Eames and Saul Bass, but have largely been forgotten, which is shame, because they had quite the reputation for their commercials and industrial films. Headed by Morton and Millie Goldsholl—who trained under Lázló Moholy-Nagy at the Institute of Design— the firm not only worked on big national campaigns for corporations like Motorola and Coca-Cola, but were known for their progressive hiring practices and being a hub for experimental Chicago filmmakers. This program, curated by Amy Beste, highlights the stylized corporate work of the firm, as well as the experimental films of Wayne Boyer and Larry Janiak, both of whom were heads of Goldsholl’s film division. A program highlight includes Millie Goldsholl’s Up is Down, an education company-distributed film filled with hand-drawn animations and flash frame montage employed to explain to school children the then recent assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the riots that erupted in the city’s West Side.

MoMA is screening Ridley Scott’s 2015 film The Martian. We’re including a mainstream blockbuster about a stranded astronaut in this week’s art events because it’s the only interesting thing happening on Wednesday night, it’s in a museum, and it’s definitely a film to see on the big screen. Honestly, it’s one of the best movies I [Michael] have seen this year—it’s edge-of-the-seat suspenseful and feel-good while retaining a sense of humor and skirting schlock. Critics have applauded it for its accuracy in depicting science and its shifting demographics, politics, and ethics. Aesthetes will appreciate it’s cinematography and practical effects—which recall masterpieces like 2001 A Space Odyssey and Scott’s own Alien. Mostly, it’s a refreshingly optimistic piece that looks to space travel and solidarity between scientists as a catalyst for cooperation across cultural/political barriers.

Actually, Michael, this looks like another worthwhile Wednesday evening option, especially if you’re looking for something a little more low-key. Cynthia Daignault’s fall solo at Lisa Cooley has garnered good buzz for her intimate “Light Atlas”, a series of over 300 modest oil on canvas works that were created during an American road trip where Daignault stopped every 25 miles to paint the landscape. So this slide viewing of Robert Frank’s seminal The Americans accompanied by a panel of contemporary artists whose work diverge away from the mythic macho “road trip” narrative: Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa edits online photography project The Great Leap Sideways, and Justine Kurland has built a career photographing American West fringe communities like train-hoppers.

From Simon Denny’s reverse espionage on the NSA for New Zealand’s Venice Biennale pavilion to !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s tech-savvy co-opting of CCTV cameras and dark web sites, there’s a large body of work by contemporary digital artists mining our complicated relationship with Big Brother. Christiane Paul curates this group show exploring the limits of transparency and visualization by government agencies, and what we can know from data.
Featuring: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, James Bridle, Paolo Cirio, R. Luke DuBois, Trevor Paglen, Nancy Paterson, IXmaps project team (Andrew Clement, Colin McCann, Antonio Gamba, Jonathan Obar, David Mason and Dawn Walker), YoHa (Matsuko Yokokoji and Graham Harwood) and Matthew Fuller

If you haven’t checked out Printed Matter’s new, larger, more sea-level-rise-resistant home on 11th Avenue, this is the night to do it. Catharine Maloney will be launching the first volume of her spiral-bound photo book (the result of a five-year mission) inspired by her “interest in men, outer space, and play.” The photographer casts a series of men in strange sci-fi tableaus (in turtlenecks that recall old Star Trek bootlegs) against handmade backdrops or crudely Photoshopped environments. They are refreshingly un-sexy and endearingly awkward—evocative of childhood escapism and the antidote to sleek JJ Abrams reboots of 20th century sci fi franchises.

Maloney’s band Teen Men will also perform at the reception, and she’ll be photographing those who purchase the book in a turtleneck from her collection.

Playfully tongue-in-cheek humor underlies the collaborations between Kristin Lucas and Joe McKay. They first exhibited together for the project Electric Donut, which turned the New Museum’s Media Z lounge (this was back in 2001) into a cafe and video arcade with games like Audio Pong or Simulcast Vending Machine, which offered free take-home simulcast kits. All the works were exploring the ubiquitous ways technology has threaded into our environments, questioning whether it has truly signalled “progress” for our individual well-beings. For this duo exhibition of new works, the artists explore the much-vaunted “user experience”, but re-direct with works away from their “everyday prescriptive movements”. Along with individual works by the artists, there will also be “Tablet Tumbler” interactive sculptures produced during the duo’s recent Eyebeam residency that dismantles the swipes, pinches and taps of Android tablets.

This event sounds like the love child from a one-night-stand between a suburban holiday craft fair and NADA. Hot cider, snacks, and craft activities are promised. Mostly, it might be a good opportunity to pick up some handmade objects from emerging artists such as Elizabeth Ferry and Brent Owens. Perfect gifts for the family member who has everything but colorful, lumpy contemporary art.
Featuring: Andrea Bergart, Kate Blomquist, Alta Buden, Joy Starwars, fpoafm.com, Katy Fischer, Elizabeth Ferry, Alyssa Gorelick, Chris Held, Frank Haines, Max Heiges, Roxanne Jackson, Stephanie Knowles, Denise Kupferschmidt, Aimee Lusty, Christine Lee, Caitlin MacQueen, Wendy Mason, Alyssa Matthews, Anna Mikhailovskaia, Brent Owens, Melissa Scherrer Paré, uye surana, Clare Pierson, Pareesa Pourian, Adams Puryear, ARENAgal by Renée Riccardo, Aisling Roche, Nancy Soto, David Wolf

Want to save an artist’s older work from moldering in storage? Come out for this one-day-only East Village sale of over 45 artists’ work, all priced $50 or less. Co-hosted by artists Brie Ruals and Sophy Naess, with the Shandaken Project and Creative Time, Sherman’s .rtfd invite promises hot cider, friends, and the feel-good vibes you’ll get by purchasing affordable art for friends and helping artists make quick cash over the holidays. Everyone wins!

Featuring: Karen Azoulay, Guy Ben-Ari, Noah Breuer, Becky Brown, Christine Case, Esteban Cabeza de Baca, TM Davy, Jared Deery, Sonya Derman, Jonathan Durham, Ryan Foerster, Elise Gardella, Dylan Gauthier, Jesse Greenberg, MacGregor Harp, Terry Hempfling, Heidi Howard, Kristen Jensen, Jenni Knight, Ellie Krakow, Jennie Jieun Lee, Kristina Lee, Molly Lowe, So Yoon Lym, Abby Manock, Reuben Lorch-Miller, Rudy Loewe, R. Lyon, Laura Miller, Britt Mosely, Sophy Naess, Sophia Peer, Virginia Poundstone, Xiaoshi Vivian Vivian Qin, Marcie Revens, Brie Ruais, Gabriela Salazar, Bill Santen, Julia Sherman, Talia Shulze, Laura Splan, Will Stewart, Jennifer Sullivan, Kendra Sullivan, Molly Surno, Tarwuk, Katie Vida, Leah Wolff, and more.

This is definitely worth a trip to Red Hook. Pioneer Works is presenting 6 hours of programming in an attempt to stave off the social/creative hibernation so many artists enter during Winter. There’s too much going on to list—from discussions about digital art and open studios to live cumbia fusion music in the evening.

As far as visual arts, two series in the ground-floor galleries focused on Japanese artists reacting to nuclear disasters look to be a highlight. The Hiroshima Panels by artist couple Iri and Toshi Maruki were completed over the course of 32 years, documenting and responding to the United States’ use of devastating weapons of mass destruction against the eponymous Japanese city in World War II—a war crime that has never been prosecuted. They’re painted in a variety of styles and are arguably the unsung postwar equivalent of Picasso’s “Guernica.” Also on view, Eiko Otake and William Johnston’s photography series A Body in Fukushima captures the emotional turmoil immediately following Japan’s more recent nuclear disaster and the tsunami that preceded it.

Why is humanity still making radioactive shit? This, and other topics of conversation, might lift you out of your Winter social doldrums.

Artists with open studios: Carmen Bouyer, Louise Foo & Martha Skou, Molly Lowe, Lucia Kempkes, Cassie Tarakajian, Benjamin Torres, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Christy Gast