This Week’s Must See Events: A Week of Historicization

Possibly the most anticipated show of the year. Why? In large part, the paintings themselves, whose complex compositions and figures narrate African American experience. But I also think Kerry James Marshall’s remarks at the opening of Met Brauer last spring made a big impact on the press, boasting our interest. There he spoke about how it was every artist’s dream to show at the Met, which was why it was so exciting to have the Brauer open and for him to be the first show. It may not sound like much, but it was such a human narrative, inside a thousand edited press release sound bites given to us during press time, that I left thinking I could not miss this show for the world.

Some nuts and bolts about the show: Kerry James Marshall’s retrospective will include nearly 80 works—72 paintings—made during the artist’s 32 year career. Kerry James Marshall: Mastry is co-curated by Ian Alteveer, Associate Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met; Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Dieter Roelstraete, former Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

In addition to the exhibition, a show of works from the Met’s permanent curated by the artist will be on view.

Nayland Blake can connect anything to art and that’s why you should attend this lecture. Whatever your definiton of art is, by the time you leave the lecture it will be more complicated and more interesting.

Blake’s own work addresses themes of desire, same-sex love, and racial and sexual bigotry. He works in sculpture, drawing, performance and video.

No press release for this exhibition, but given the subject perhaps one isn’t needed. This gets a recommendation because it includes genitalia, and that’s a subject we have a good deal of investment in over here at AFC. (See NSFW GIF of the Hump Day)

Elizabeth Berdann, Cynthia Plaster Caster, Jesse Chapman, Aura Rosenberg, Mira Schor, Aurel Schmidt, Betty Tompkins, Nicole Wittenberg

Australian artist Matthew Sleeth’s practice is tough to pin down. He’s released a book of photographs with Aperture which focuses on sequencing images to create narratives. He’s created signs that tell us how to behave.

The show gets a listing because making a sign that says “I want a pony” gleefully reminds us of Vermin Supreme’s promise to give everyone a pony during his bid for the democratic nomination. We do however, recommend this show with reservations. The press release tells us that his series of sculptures “question the dogma of a politically correct society”. While we all know the politically correct advocates can go overboard, there’s enough discriminatory garbage out there to keep a person busy for a life time.   Liberals who get angry at other liberals for not being liberal in the “right way” (whatever that means) are pedaling another form of intolerance.

Didn’t get enough of the Marilyn Minter show at the Brooklyn Museum? You’re in luck. A new show of her photo realist paintings launches at Salon 94 this week.

We’re particularly interested in this series as it’s drawn from a body of work she made for a Playboy commission in which she photographed model’s au natural pubic hair. Playboy rejected the photos, but she’s been running with the subject ever since. In this series, Minter re-photographed models from her Plush shoot using a steamy pane of glass as a veil between the model and the camera. From the press release, “Thus obscured, the colors of flushed, dewy skin are illuminated. In this way, her paintings reveal intimate moments that evince Minter’s ability to expose unseen flashes from women’s private lives. Here, Minter’s subjects pose frontally and self-confidently, as empowered objects of desire. An advocate for women’s reclamation of their own imagery and sexual agency, Minter says, ‘I think my paintings have less to do with so-called porn and more to do with freedom.'”

AFC’s going to have our work cut out for us. Rhizome promises to retell the history of artistic practice online by restaging 100 art works over the course of two years. We’ll be covering it all.

The first phase of Net Art Anthology kicks off this Thursday with a presentation and panel discussion and will focus on works recreated before 1999. The presentation will be led by Michael Connor, Rhizome’s artistic director; Aria Dean, assistant curator; and Dragan Espenschied, digital preservation director. Panelists include Olia Lialina (net artist and Geocities researcher/archivist), Martha Wilson (artist and founder of Franklin Furnace), Ricardo Dominguez (artist and founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater), and Mark Tribe (artist and founder of Rhizome).

Oooh, this show is going to be so good! The exhibition focuses on artists who challenge the conventions of cinema to create new experiences and includes some of our favorite works made over the last 10 years. From Lorna Mills “Ways of Something” to Hito Steyerl’s “Factory of the Sun”, this show will make sure you’re up to date on the best of new cinema. It will also get viewers up to date on immersive cinema from the 1905 on, so put your history hat on. It’s time to learn!

Curated by: Chrissie Iles.

Participating Artists: Trisha Baga, Ivana Bašić, Frances Bodomo, Dora Budor, Ian Cheng, Bruce Conner, Ben Coonley, Joseph Cornell, Andrea Crespo, François Curlet, Alex Da Corte, Oskar Fischinger, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Alex Israel, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem and Pierre Joseph, Aidan Koch, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Anthony McCall, Josiah McElheny, Syd Mead, Lorna Mills, Jayson Musson, Melik Ohanian, Philippe Parreno, Jenny Perlin, Mathias Poledna, Edwin S. Porter, Oskar Schlemmer, Hito Steyerl, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Stan VanDerBeek, Artie Vierkant, and Jud Yalkut, among others

Artist and Bad at Sports contributor Amanda Browder gets a bunch of community members together to donate and work with fabric she then uses to cover public buildings, sculptures etc. This show promises to celebrate nostalgic times with a metaphorical vintage photograph, saturated in color, nostalgia and awkwardness. She will also reimagine the work for the gallery setting and will replicate the “box-truck” form within the gallery.

Okay, this show looks like it has the potential to be an important historical look at the East Village Gallery scene in the 1980’s—and it will take place in a commercial gallery.

The bad news is, you have to travel up to Harlem to see it. The good news is, there’s 12,000 square feet worth of gallery space. To put that in perspective, all three of the New Museum’s main exhibition floors total the same amount of space.

Anyway, this is a kind of restaging of Anne Livet’s  original exhibition, Infotainment, which “argued for a generation of artists who adhered to neither Neo-expressionist painting nor the direct repurposing of images by the Pictures Generation, but instead imbued their content with social and philosophical resonance”. These artists were heavily influenced by television and thus worked increased stylization, transference of images, appropriation and subversion of authorship.

The exhibition includes 11 works from the original show, and an expanded artist list—it now includes 30 makers, an increase of 13 from the first 17 participants.