This Week’s Must See Events: Summer Art Party!

This Russian mini-series was a big hit in its home country back in 1985. It promises time travel, optically printed special effects and soviet-era retro future set design. The trailer has a wonderful seventies vibe despite it being from a later decade and it seems like this will be right up the alley of any fans of the brilliant “A Boy and His Dog.”

If you’re looking for an art PARTY this week, you could do no better than BHQFU’s Listening Club! AFC favorite Jaime Warren and Benjamin Santiago will be bringing their own demented brands of performance art. There’ll be tunes from experimental mixtape-meister DJ George Costanza. And Yanyi Luo will present some experimental poetry. Don’t miss.

This ambitious show at Station Independent Projects will attempt to explore what it means to be an American and the many issues that come along with that distinction. Issues like racism, police brutality, homophobia and income equality.

A juried selection of 59 photographers will be presented alongside a curated list of artists like the great Betty Thompkins and Alec Soth.

This recommendation comes to us from friend of the blog, Michelle Leftheris, a professor at SVA. It’s a large exhibition organized by several of her recent students. Considering that recent AFC interviewee, Nick Alciati, is also a former student of Leftheris, we’re inclined to trust her. The event page offers no explanation of what you’ll get but it’s an intriguing space and Genesis P-Orridge is always worth making the trip.

The aggregate Tumblr, Black Contemporary Art is celebrating its 5 year anniversary with an event at Signal gallery. The listing is light on details for what to expect but it seems safe to say there will be some contemporary art by or about people of African descent. We need more initiatives like BCA so show up to give support and as suggested by the organizers, check out Pronoun Island before you walk in the door.

Field Studies will present a number of artists working with elaborate methods to shine a light on alternate realities and invisible realms of knowledge. What does that mean, really? Well, Terry Adkins, for example, has made a video centered around a location in Gainesville, Florida that he believes would have been a good place to celebrate if the abolitionist, John Brown’s efforts had succeeded. Matthew Jensen has collected a series of photographs of overlooked places and found objects from his exploration of interstitial public lands.

All in all this sounds like it could have some thoughtful and challenging work.

This show bills itself as a satire of the ubiquitous power lists that magazines put together and social climbers desperately long to be included in. As far as the description goes it’s not clear where the satire will come in, but we’ll check it out to see. Regardless, there’s a long list of some talented artists like Mark Dorf and Dan Flanagan. We’re excited to check out this 56 Bogart space for the first time.

We’ve had our eye on Loney Abrams and Johnny Stanish’s collaborative work for a while. Their ongoing curatorial project hotel-art.us continues to use anonymous hotel rooms to mount exciting work and their series fashion lines and tattooed sculptures look like nothing else out there. This exhibition of new work promises to continue the artist’s use of commercial products and mix-&-match combines of natural and synthetic materials. Thematically, they’ll be tackling the political nature of ingredient listings as they apply to consumer choice in the art world as well as the commercial world. Plus, if you haven’t been to Knockdown Center yet, you can see what made Jerry Saltz positively wet himself with joy a few weeks ago.

We love Flux Factory’s brand of community-based art extravaganza.  Several resident artists from Flux have teamed up with The Aesthetic of Waste to present an installation/play that is centered around the adventures of Tilda Swinton’s lesser-known sister Tulsa. They’ve transformed the Flux white-box space into a labyrinth that will be filled with a Franzia wine fountain, chrysanthemum and tobacco ice cream as well as an armada of miniature trains that will guide visitors through a series of 20 backdrops. This one’s pretty much got everything and the kitchen sink.