This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Bollywood Musicals, Music for Dogs, Zines at the Pool

by Michael Anthony Farley on May 16, 2017 Events


This might feel like a slow week, but you’ll need to plan wisely. This weekend is packed with big events that span all day or more.

Friday, celebrate NYCxDesign (and Tom Dixon’s first New York showroom) with Dezeen at a block party in SoHo. Then rush to Williamsburg for the opening night of the Brooklyn Art Book Fair. They have programming scheduled all day Saturday too. But you’ll probably want to spend Saturday visiting all the idiosyncratic locales Lenka Clayton and Jon Rubin’s …Circle Through New York intersects. Alternately, head to the other side of the city for open studios in Sunset Park, which run until 6 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.

There’s plenty more to do all over town this week, and even an excuse to catch the PATH to Journal Square if you’re local wanderlust can’t be sated by four boroughs of art events.

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Tue

Marlborough New York

40 West 57th Street
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.Website

Santiago Calatrava

Santiago Calatrava’s smaller sculptures often lack the sheer drama his buildings convey based on scale. Nevertheless, fans of the Spanish architect should check this show out. It’s always interesting to see how architects and designers work out ideas in other media (remember Zaha Hadid’s sci-fi-looking paintings at the Guggenheim?). Here we can likely look forward to Calatrava’s signature balance of organic and geometric forms, deployed and experimented with at a smaller scale than a bridge or metro station.

Wed

EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop

323 W 39th Street
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Website

Kenny Rivero: Hear My Dear

Kenny Rivero’s work has a sort-of dark comic/pop sensibility while remaining painterly. I’m curious to see how that translates to printmaking. Here, he’ll be showing recent monotypes and lithographs. If the image above (Black Panther logo?) is any indication, they’ll be as lovely as his paintings.

Thu

Asya Geisberg Gallery

537B West 23rd Street
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Website

Jasper de Beijer: The Brazilian Suitcase

Dutch artist Jasper de Beijer’s latest body of work is a fictionalized series of travelogues spanning nearly a century. The images are a mix of staged photography and computer simulations, imagining a series of anthropological expeditions to the Amazon and contact with isolated tribes. The series looks to be a biting commentary on colonialism, but it should be interesting to see how this is received. I wouldn’t be surprised if this became one of the most controversially-debated shows of the week.

yours mine & ours

54 Eldridge St.
New York, NY
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.Website

Esther Ruiz: Static Limit

The first time I saw Esther Ruiz’s work, I was blown away by her dreamy neon and mixed-media sculptures that feel world-building no matter their scale. In Static Limit, editions of her oddly-shaped neon-and-plexiglass black mirrors will orbit a freestanding sculpture in the center of the gallery, recalling the “static limit” at the edge of a black hole’s gravitational field. That sounds heady, but trust us, the result will be something beautiful and sleek that still feels playful and idiosyncratic.

Fri

Howard Street

New York, NY
5:00 p.m.Website

Dezeen & Tom Dixon's NYCxDesign Block Party

To celebrate the month-long NYCxDesign festival, Dezeen (one of our fav blogs) has partnered with British designer Tom Dixon and other retailers on SoHo’s Howard Street for a good ol’ fashioned block party.

This one will, naturally, have an emphasis on design, including an installation of Dixon’s light fixtures spilling out into the street. In a month jam-packed with design events, this might be the best to go rub shoulders.

Mccarren Pool

776 Lorimer St.
Brooklyn, NY
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.Website

Brooklyn Art Book Fair

The world has too many art fairs, but could never have enough art book fairs. That’s because the publications fair is the opposite of its stuffy distant cousin: accessibly priced, inherently democratic in nature, and generally just more fun.

This past month we’ve check out Open Space’s Publications and Multiples Fair and the Brown Paper Zine Fest (both in Baltimore) and are happy to report that many of the same names will be showing their wares in Brooklyn this week. The Brooklyn Art Book Fair, Hosted by BHQFU and Endless Editions, looks like it will be a blast (although, for logical reasons I have never heard of a book fair at a pool before) with performances and readings Friday night and Saturday afternoon. No running.

Vendors: 3 Dot Zine, Audrey Ryan, Belladonna*, Birds LLC, Black by Maria Silver, Mactaggart Jewelry, Brooklyn Arts Press, Brooklyn Poets, Carrier Pigeon Magazine, Christina Martinelli, Cory Siegler, Desert Island Comics, EOAGH, Elijah Wheat Showroom, EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr, Endless Editions, Eyelevel BQE, Inpatient Press, Leslie Lasiter, Lorelei Ramirez, Lost & Found: the CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, Memefrito, MFU: New York, Molly Soda, Monk Books, Nandi Loaf, Pegacorn Press, Potatoe Press, Press Press, Printed Matter, Quimby’s, Ruth Stone Foundation, Slow Youth, Small Editions, Soft City Printing, Sorry Archive, Third Man Books, Txt Books, Unity Press, UpSet Press, Wonder, Zebadiah Keneally

Sat

Various (Guggenheim Museum, et. al...)

1071 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Website

...Circle Through New York

What do music for dogs, a Felix Gonzalez Torres installation, a Punjabi television show, and an institution dedicated to ancient studies have in common? These are but some of the attractions in the sprawling circus known as …Circle Through New York from ringmaster artists Lenka Clayton and Jon Rubin.

The project, as its title suggests, involved the artists drawing an arbitrary circle that connected Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx (sounds like a Robert Moses freeway!). They identified points of interest along its route, from the Guggenheim Museum, to the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, a pet store in the Bronx, and various other locations such as churches.

All these venues will be collaborating on reinterpretating the so-called “oldest song in the world”, according to scholars at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. This old-ass song will be reborn as music for dogs in the Bronx, a Bollywood-style musical in Queens, and performances by church choirs in Harlem and Upper East Side museum staff. This should be extremely weird, and a great chance to take a day trip to lesser-travelled corners of the city.

Here’s a list of all locations

Loew's Jersey Theatre

54 Journal Square
Jersey City, NJ
8:40 p.m. - 10:15Website

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

The Jersey City Great Movie Sequels Weekend is such a good idea. The standout feature: Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. This is definitely the type of movie you should consider dressing up to go see. If my recent visit to art school was any indication, the post-apocalypse is trending hard with young artists right now, (and in the current political climate it’s easy to see why.)

At any rate, this film offers the most glamorous take on what Australia will be like whenever the insane leaders of the USA and DPRK, respectively, turn the Pacific Rim into a nuclear wasteland. So see it while it still feels like a fantasy!

Sun

Industry City Studios and Trestle Art Space

254 36th Street and 850 3rd Ave, Suite 411
Brooklyn, NY
12:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Website

Sunset Park Open Studios

This event begins on Saturday from noon to six, but we recommend heading out Sunset Park on Sunday so as not to compete with all the other stuff happening this weekend.

For now, Sunset Park is a hotspot of artist studios. That might change, given the Mayor’s ill-conceived economic development plans for the area. But before the “Made in NY” scheme displaces everyone, come see what’s been being Made in NY without the help of a megaproject, thank you very much.

Over 100 artists will open their doors at Industry City Studios, and a few blocks down 3rd ave at Trestle Art Space’s open studios, the following artists will be showing their goods:

Sara Brooks, Cynthia Brown, Melissa Capasso, Ronit Levin Delgado, Joan Di Lieto, Abigail Groff Hernandez, Kristen Haskell, Meredith Hoffheins, Lehna Huie, Rhia Hurt, Jessica Rose Jardinel, Richard Kessler, Myra Kooy, Taeko Kuraya, Younghoo Lee, Jessica Lipsky, Mary Malcolm, Sarah Malcolm, Dexter Miranda, Michela Muserra, Tony Mosca, Steve Nedboy, Jen Nista, Mari Renwick, Scott Robinson, Aima Saint Hunon, Rachel Scharly, Myla Seabrook, Carlos Torres-Machado, Annie Trincot, Koren Volk, Chris Weller, Gerry Wolk, Harold Wortsman, Heidi Yockey, Cindy Zaglin

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