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Events

This Week’s Must See Events: Fear and Loathing in the Art World

by Rhett Jones on July 25, 2016
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Politics, politics, politics. Practically every event we have this week has some sort of political edge. From a video art retrospective dedicated to the political conventions of 1972 to Martha Wilson invading the persona of Trump, the campaign season is infiltrating the exhibition space.

Take a break from being yelled at on Facebook by someone you’ve only met once and hit the gallery. People will surely be more open to a dialogue when they can’t just click unfollow. Right? Right???

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This Week’s Must See Events: Benefits, Boom Boxes and Bears

by Rhett Jones on July 18, 2016
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It’s a light week for galleries that’s heavy on screenings. That’s just life in the middle of July. But fear not, these screenings are good. We’ve got some demented digital video art from Jacob Ciocci and a MoMA retrospective that promises to shed some light on modern New York. Two excellent online galleries have joined forces to go IRL and there’s a boom box party at the Brooklyn Museum.

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This Week’s Must See Events: All Goth Timelines Lead to Brunch

by Rhett Jones on July 11, 2016
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This is a great week for some of the more obscure haunts around the city. Not only are the DIY venues bringing some good programming but we have a lot of stuff to check out at museums that don’t get as much attention as the big guys.

We start the week off with a cyborg sex lecture, move into what will probably be an excellent drawing show of found speaker screens and finish out with a mobile sound installation and zine fest. Mark your calendars, this is a good one.

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This Week’s Must See Events: Beach Blanket Bingo

by Rhett Jones on June 28, 2016
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It’s Fourth of July weekend! Or it will be at least. And that means all of the art events will peter out over the next few days. But before then, there are a ton of group shows opening up. We’ve pulled some of the most promising ones from all over the city.

Tonight, you have a rare chance to see some films by Lois Weber, a nearly forgotten female filmmaker from the dawn of Hollywood. Wednesday brings an ambitious program by the Hunter East Harlem Gallery that will address the myriad problems with female incarceration. Thursday, Zwirner will be letting the lunatics run the asylum with a massive staff group show. Friday has a Bushwick exhibition that will probably be (like most Bushwick exhibitions) hit or miss. Then … things will go quiet. But, we’ve pulled some art/beach opportunities so you can see some work while you enjoy the holiday.

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Summer in the City

by Michael Anthony Farley on June 21, 2016
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When I started compiling a list of art events for this week, I thought “this is going to be slim pickings.” There’s a stereotype that New York in the Summer sucks because everyone’s gone to the beach except tourists who stupidly vacation in Manhattan instead of also going to the beach. But that’s totally not true!

There’s plenty of cool stuff to do in New York this week, including a storefront installation from Jeff De Golier that opened today at FOUR A.M. Wendy White (pictured above) has a solo show of California-dreamin’ surf-inspired paintings (for those of you who are thinking longingly of the seashore) at Eric Firestone Loft. Wednesday, Xaviera Simmons unveils a new series of body-centric work at The Kitchen and Booth Gallery is (by happy coincidence) hosting a panel discussion on the future of figuration right afterwards. We’re looking at two group shows with big-name, smart artists at Team Gallery and Pace. Friday, The National Sculpture Conference kicks-off its three-day fest of all things sculpture, from figure sculpting classes to a supplies vendor fair on Saturday and 3D printing on Sunday. Friday night, take in a show all about children from Trevor Shimizu (there’s a Jessica Alba tribute!) and a group show at Lehmann Maupin featuring French-Algerian wunderkind Kader Attia alongside Tim Rollins & K.O.S. and Mickalene Thomas.

Saturday the Queens Museum promises to be “overrun by hoards of punks” for a celebration of all things Ramones, including a flea market. Then bounce down to Brooklyn for a group show at American Medium. But the real party happens Sunday, when a mysterious fest thrown by some very arty queers takes over a secret loft in Gowanus. If you’re not exhausted after that, be sure to check out Nancy Shaver’s solo show at Derek Eller—she makes diorama-like assemblages that make boxy grids fun again. And really, fun is the name of the game this week.

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This Week’s Must-See Events: Queer Power Edition

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on June 13, 2016
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Monday’s been a rough day for us here at AFC as I’m sure it has for many readers. We’re still processing the horrific news of Orlando’s mass killing Sunday morning and it’s made writing much of anything difficult. Is there anything that can be said on the subject of guns, prayers, Islam, hate crimes and ISIS that social media hasn’t covered?

Probably not, that doesn’t diminish our need to mourn. One way we’ve decided to do this is to  focus on queer events in this week’s must see events. It’s a small gesture to be sure—we’re not saving any lives. But it’s what we can do to say to the families, friends and lovers of those lost that, “you’re not alone.”  

So, let’s talk all things homo-tastic: Monday night, Neil Goldberg revisits the David Lynch classic ERASERHEAD with a queer perspective. Tuesday, the unsung godfather of glam illustration Antonio Lopez gets his long-overdue retrospective at El Museo del Barrio, and two events at BRIC and Mitchell Innes & Nash bring queer/feminist perspectives to the city’s affordability crisis. Wednesday night, dyke icon K8 Hardy opens a mysterious solo show at Stap-On Projects while Thursday offers a one-night-only performance/installation from Scottish duo Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi, who will be tackling sexuality, gender, and more at Bannerette. Friday night, head to Bushwick, where the Hot Summer Nights gallery crawl has some queer-tastic highlights in time for Pride month—be sure to catch Los Ojos’s all-LGBTQ group show and Vincent Tiley’s solo project at Christopher Stout Gallery. Also in Brooklyn Friday night: solo shows from AFC favs Björn Meyer-Ebrecht and Rachel Stern at Studio 10 and Black & White Projects, respectively, both located in the same building.

If you’re not politically/emotionally exhausted by the weekend, we recommend checking out the massive group show Of the people on Saturday at Smack Mellon. It’s all about the issues involved in this fucked, fucked election cycle. So when you’re feeling thoroughly anti-establishment, check out the Queens Museum’s Sunday panel on the visual legacy of punk.

It’s too late to wish everyone a happy Pride Month, but hopefully we can at least have a thoughtful one.

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SLIDESHOW: Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies; The Animated GIF as Place at GRIN

by Michael Anthony Farley on June 9, 2016
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Last week, GRIN Gallery in Providence opened the AFC-curated exhibition Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies: The Animated GIF as Place. It’s the IRL version of our online exhibition with Providence College—Galleries and will be installed until July 2nd. GRIN sent us these install shots, and it’s pretty remarkable how different and complimentary the physical show feels to the online component.

In the gallery, we installed GIFs included in the online exhibition from Hugo Moreno, Sara Ludy, Petra Cortright, Dina Kelberman, Ying Miao, Clement Valla, and Gizelle Zatonyl as well as different works from Nicolas Sassoon and Wickerham & Lomax. We also installed two pieces from Victoria Fu: the video projection “Velvet Peel 2” and animated neon sculpture “Pinch-Zoom.” These are all about the way bodies relate to screens and illusionistic space, so Fu was a perfect fit for an IRL exhibition about digital spaces.

We also screened all of the GIFs in the exhibition as well as longer video works from the artists and longer-form GIFs from Jacolby Satterwhite. GRIN (60 Valley Street, Unit 3
Providence, RI) is hosting another outdoor screening on June 25th from 8 – 10 p.m., so if you didn’t catch the opening, be sure to check it out! We have to say, even if we hadn’t curated this show, we’d be giving it a giant neon thumbs-up.

Check out the photos after the jump.

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Old School Survival

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on June 6, 2016
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Urban survival, whether it’s the cost of living in New York or even riding along Sag Habour in a self-sustaining houseboat, looms largely in this week’s events. Tonight’s lecture at the Morbid Anatomy Museum suggests that this dates back to Weimar Berlin’s era of anarchy and decadence, where fake fakirs — religious ascetics who live solely on alms — got by with their gnarly nails and pins piercing. Flash forward to Saturday’s MoMA opening of Nan Goldin’s famous 1986 visual diary “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, and those piercings became the battle scars of surviving the East Village’s punk bohemia. Today, we’re thankfully more practical in eking out our incomes: we look to the sun and its instruments (see this Thursday’s opening of the “Heliotropes” group show at Geary Contemporary) or envision terrible futures in our analogue pasts (“that old school dystopia” at Theodore:Art on Friday). But sustainability, if we quickly cut to the chase, really involves supporting each other, which is why this weekend’s workshops around the nuts and bolts of artist finances or even writing and editing an artist statement will get you ahead. No need for any physical scars.

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