This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Constructing Paradise or the Devil Giving Birth to the Patriarchy?

Cindy Hinant mines the bowels of pop culture detritus for her series “Exercise Videos”. Namely, Kim Kardashian’s booty-sculpting workout tapes. Each of these—”Ultimate Butt Body Sculpt”, “Butt Blasting Cardio Step”, and “Amazing Abs Body Sculpt”—features Kim K. excitedly talking about her routines while the screen slowly fills with the dominant color from each tape’s packaging.

This reduces the content to color fields, referencing the graphic design of consumerism and “the construction of gendered identities and the aspirational aspects of celebrity culture.”

But has anyone made video art from the sex tape that started it all?

UPDATE: A friend of the artist has emailed us to point out that, yes, Hinant herself has made Kim Kardashian Sextape Art.

Curated by Dieter Buchhart and Mathias Kessler, this exhibition traces the invention of “exoticism” to 19th Century colonialism and reactionary thinking to Europe’s rapid industrialization. The show includes art historical names such as Paul Gauguin alongside contemporary artists who deal with the consequences of colonialism, such as Kara Walker and Mickalene Thomas.

We can’t gush enough about how much we love Peter Burr’s work. His immersive video installations and world-building semi-abstract, semi-narrative animations are hypnotic and wholly transporting.

In this talk, part of the New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium, expect talk of sci-fi dystopias and utopias, video games, and new approaches to cinema. This is a must-see for any digital art/moving-image fans.

Presented in conjunction with with the exhibition Inventing Downtown:Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965, on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, this screening night pays tribute to the artist-run Cinema 16 society. Founded by Amos Vogel in 1947, Cinema 16 attracted a variety of artists working in avant-garde film making at the midcentury.

Films:

Arne Sucksdorff, A Divided World (10 min.), Oskar Fischinger, Allegretto (3 min.), Kenneth Anger, Fireworks (15 min.), Weegee and Amos Vogel, Weegee’s New York (33 min). Stan Brakhage, Loving (6 min), Robert Breer, A Man and His Dog Out for Air (3 min). Selected and introduced by Scott MacDonald, visiting professor of Art History, Hamilton College.

Quito Ziegler and Kristen P. Lovell, founding members of the queer activist WRRQ Collective, will lead a discussion on the role of visual culture in resistance movements. This is a great opportunity for artists who are wondering how to make themselves useful in this fucked up era. Beyond the theoretical, community groups who need visual support will be there, so you can partner with cause there and then.

Mary Beth Edelson’s 1970s collages depict strange, invented feminist mythologies. In today’s political climate, where the women’s movement feels like it’s been set back about 4 decades, the goddess demons holding severed heads bring to mind the Frantz Fanon quote “Either one must remain terrified or become terrifying…”

But the scariest thing about this show is how timely it feels. Where’s a destruction goddess when you need one?

The doomsday clock is hastening. Never has the end of the world as we know it felt so viscerally within reach. Bea Fremderman’s press release discusses “the apocalypse” as a series of potentials, one that could mean the collapse of capitalism, or a more sinister and violent end brought about by corporate/military/quasi-governmental conspiracy.

We’re not sure what the work here will look like, but the sole image of a Blackberry reimagined as a laughably ineffective hatchet is a compelling one. “Obsolete” technology repurposed as a survival tool? Or illustrating the reality of weaponized communication? In an era where Tweets bring us ever closer to the precipice of disaster, either reading feels urgent.

This likely-heartbreaking exhibition includes video shot at the US/Mexico border by Richard Barnes alongside found objects accumulated as part of University of Michigan anthropologist Jason De León’s Undocumented Migration project. These include the personal affects (backpacks, clothing, etc…) of migrants during the difficult desert crossing. State of Exception, created by artist/photographer Richard Barnes, artist/curator Amanda Krugliak, and De León, also includes audio interviews with the undocumented people making the journey. Bring the tissues.

In this performance by Bailey Scieszka, we’ll meet “Old Put the Clown.” I don’t know what that entails exactly, but based on Scieszka’s video work I’ve seen, I’d expect it to be creepy and hilarious at the same time.

Ouchi (Japanese for “home”) is a DUMBO gallery in a domestic-feeling space, which for over 10 years has hosted the 100 exhibition series annually. The show brings together 100 artists from Japan, the United States, and beyond for a group show with works about one topic. Unfortunately, this is the last year. To celebrate, the theme for this 100 show is “home.”

Artists: Naoaki Funayama, KAYANO USHIYAMA, TOMOYA ONOUE, Shigeru K, Satsuki Omura, Ayako Okada, Masumi Yoshida, TAKASHI, Kumi Hirose, Lisa Kogawa, kyo→ko, Fumiko Watanab, YOSHIE HIRANO, Tetsuya Furuhara, Yoshi, sato, TOMO, Natsuki Wakita, Saida Shoko, HIRO, Wazen, MEIKO YAGINO, Narayama Furano, Jun Kawashima, Yuki Hemmi, TOYONOBU, Haru, Masashige Furuya, Ayako Bando, Takahiro KOYAMA, Juri Nakano, Hiro Ito, Mayumi Ikejiri, Takuro Hinokio, Yuri Sakai, Shoran, Masako Masukata, Emi Watanabe, Kazuya, Akiko Noda, Ushimaru Saeki, Fumiaki Asai, kaoru, Yoko Iogawa, nana, Keiko Nabila Yamazaki, Misato Takahashi, Tharanga Goonetilleke, Cherry Yiu, Henry MInata, Daisuke Yamada, Tsukamaiko, Takako Hida, MEGUMI OGAWA, Takayuki Nomura, ChIIkako Rosy, Silvia Aviles, chakory dey, Megumi Chiaya, Asami Tatuda, felicia van ham, felli, grace emery foster, gretchen robinette, Keith dragon mackie, laramie flick, lola jiblazee, nana sampongart, tornado byrne, abigail puritz, alex nowak, alexis men-ra, burnet griffin iv, wimpy af

David Diao’s paintings take their cues from modernist abstraction and data visualization—from personal narratives to the political histories that inform them. Namely, Diao’s turbulent childhood spent fleeing the mainland Chinese revolution, to chaotic Hong Kong before ultimately moving to New York City. These paintings can manifest as diagrams of his family’s home (no other photographs or documentation survive) to geopolitical maps.

Curated by Samuel Draxler, this group show features artists making work that somehow subverts mass-produced domestic environments. We hope to make it to the closing, as GaHee Park is one of favorite new painters. However she subverts mass-produced space, we expect it to include weird, weird nudity.

Lauren Bakst & Yuri Masnyj, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Mary-Ann Monforton, GaHee Park, Isaac Pool

The phrase THE TRANSITION OF POWER might bring to mind the recent, disastrous transfer of the Oval Office, but this exhibition is informed by an older socio-political tragedy (albeit one that undoubtedly shaped our troubled electoral maps). Jonathan Mildenberg’s sculptural works are inspired by “red lining”, the early-to-mid 20th Century policy of denying mortgages to ethnically diverse, high-density city neighborhoods. The practice essentially forced prospective homeowners to move to segregated suburbs, far more than choice on the “free market”. Here, Mildenberg reflects on the bank and the garden as two aesthetic environments related to the spatial politics of American housing injustice. Should be an interesting show.

A.K. Burns, the artist-in-residence through the Department of Education and Public Engagement’s Spring R&D Season, has organized a mini conference to prepare us for the battles ahead. Lawyers, activists, and organizers will discuss “the body under duress.” This topic includes environmental and immigration injustice as well as modes of civil disobedience and resistance.

Participants include representatives from Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

Session One 11:30 AM–2 PM
Civil Disobedience, Protest, and Healthcare

Session Two: 3–6:00 PM
Policing, Prisons, Immigration, and Environmental Contamination

RSVP to attend. We highly recommend this.