This is a bit of a slow week in New York’s art world. That’s a good thing, because everyone will need their energy for our goth party next week.
Nevertheless, we managed to track down at least one art outing per day that looks promising. Tuesday, Wong Kit Yi is closing her show of Arctic-specific performance documentation at P [exclamation]. Karaoke is rumored to be involved. Wednesday, Hercules Art Studio Program is opening a show about painting and the body that couldn’t feel more relevant to contemporary discourse. Thursday, we found a subversive performance night at Ridgewood’s The Woods, and Friday we’re looking forward to checking out Adrián Villar Rojas’s rooftop installation at the Met. This weekend MoMA opens the must-see Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction, and the Queens Museum will host a Sunday book launch of election-woe poetry.
Remember: rest up. You’ll need that energy for dancing.
Bjarne Melgaard is going through a reinvention phase, which means he’s giving away his entire $500K wardrobe for free on Valentine’s Day at Red Bull Studios. Then he’s launching his new project: a streetwear line with an installation a department store at the same spot Thursday night. Then two painters offer unique takes on domesticity through still lives—Sydney Licht at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts and Crys Yin at Amy Li Projects.
Friday night, things get weirder with a dystopian video game from Jeremy Couillard at yours mine & ours, artwork lost in translation at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and a late-night performance from Actually Huizenga and one-time-AFC-contributor SSION (video above). The weekend brings two more all-women shows conceived in response to Trump’s sexism: BODY/HEAD Saturday night at Be Fluent NYC and BEAT at On Stellar Rays Sunday afternoon. Lookin’ good, NYC.
Within a 48 hour news cycle, Los Angeles-based band/romantic duo YACHT announced a private sex tape they made was leaked, then said they were going to take ownership and release the tape on their own website, and now it appears the whole situation was just an elaborate X-Files-esque alien sex hoax to promote their new music video. We have a lot of respect for singer Claire Evans — she contributed a great reading list to our Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies show — and the band has a history of trolling clickbait journalism. But given how prevalent revenge porn is online, was it gross for them to pose as victims and prey on our sympathies? Or was this fictionalized narrative no different from what’s seen on the Kardashians? [Pitchfork, Jezebel]
Last night’s results of Christie’s contemporary auction was a reassuring one for the New York art market. The sale totalled $318 million, with over 87% of the lots sold. Reserves were kept low, gaining praise from the auctioneer for being “tight, curated and profitable.” A highlight of the auction records set for artists like Mike Kelley and Agnes Martin was a Basquiat top lot (the 1982 work, “Untitled”) selling for $57.3 million (it was originally estimated at more than $40 million). [The Baer Faxt, The Art Newspaper]
The Trustees, Massachusetts’ conservation nonprofit, has announced a two-year public art initiative that will kick off this summer with commissioned outdoor installations by Jeppe Hein and Sam Durant. [Boston Globe]
Intersectional feminist dialogues went into overload over bell hook’s gripes with Beyonce’s Lemonade. There’s a smart critique in here about Beyonce’s visual album being a commodification of the black female experience. But that’s kind of a “well, duh” point, and I [Rea] can’t help but feel as if hook is kind of Camille Paglia in her second wave dismissal of pop culture, not to mention low-key transphobic in judging black femme feminists. [bell hooks institute, Janet Mock’s Facebook]
The New Museum will be expanding its Bowery footprint. The museum announced yesterday it has raised $43 million towards a $80 capital campaign to renovate it 231 Bowery neighbor and connect it to its current building at 235 Bowery. [New York Times]
Carolina A. Miranda thinks the new Eva Hesse documentary is the full-blown biography the ambitious artist has long deserved. [Los Angeles Times]
An art loving mechanic in France has scored a Renoir for $700. [artnet News]
On the occasion of their pop-up show of cheap multiples at Printed Matter, members of Colab reflect back on their groundbreaking artist-led projects from the 1980s, including the Times Square Show. [Hyperallergic]
We owe it to Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes for spearheading “A Day for Detroit” and provoking a veritable downpour of tweets and blog posts. Green urged fellow art bloggers to post their favorite works from the Detroit Institute of Arts and tweet with the hashtage #DayDetroit to raise awareness for the museum’s collection. Given the volume of activity, we spent the better part of our day summarizing what happened.
Good God we were busy yesterday. We spent the day posting images from the Detroit Institute of Arts’ collection as part of “A Day for Detroit”, a co-ordinated blog effort designed to raise awareness about what could be lost were the collection to be sold. This effort was spearheaded by Modern Art Notes’ Tyler Green and was done in collaboration with approximately 20 other art blogs, who did the same on their sites, as well as some of Detroit’s professional art community. We asked artists, curators and dealers who either once lived in Detroit or live there now to name their favorite works from the DIA and to share their stories.
Welcome to A Day for Detroit. For Art F City’s contribution to A Day for Detroit, we asked a robust swath of art worlders who have lived or are currently living in Detroit about their favorite works in the DIA’s collection. Their images and commentary will appear on the blog throughout the day.
IMG MGMT is an annual image-based artist essay series. Today's invited artist Deborah Kass is a Broadway baby whose paintings examine the intersection of art history, popular culture and the self.
Fiercely Independent. New York art news, reviews and culture commentary. Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director Michael Anthony Farley, Senior Editor Whitney Kimball, IMG MGMT Editor
Contact us at: paddyATartfcity.com
