ArtRx NYC

This week, a show by renowned Dutch-Californian conceptualist Bas Jan Ader lands in Chelsea, queer book arts get a show, Staten Island’s Lumen festival returns, and more.

 Bas Jan Ader

When: Opens Tuesday, June 21
Where: Metro Pictures (519 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

In 1975, Bas Jan Ader attempted to sail across the Atlantic from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Falmouth, Cornwall. The journey was to be part of a piece entitled “In Search of the Miraculous.” Ten months later, Ader’s boat was found floating 150 miles off the coast of Ireland. Was there some sort of accident, or had the artist committed suicide? Ader’s humorous and satirical strain of conceptualism has enjoyed a critical revival of late, perhaps partly due to the release of Here is Always Somewhere Else, the 2007 documentary that tells the story of Ader’s disappearance. Metro Pictures‘ latest show, a survey exhibition of Ader’s work, will include a series of test photographs for “Fall 1” and “Fall 2” — arguably the artist’s best known works — in which the artist staged and documented his own falls. —TM

 Make Music New York

When: Tuesday, June 21
Where: Various locations

Make Music New York is filling the longest day of the year with a cacophony of music happenings, from David Rothenberg playing his clarinet with the songbirds in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden at sunrise and sunset, to Philip Glass leading a performance of his complete Etudes on a pier in Riverside Park. Yet the most exuberant events will be enlivened by amateurs, as the Mass Appeal gatherings call for hordes of French horns, accordions, guitars, double-reeds, and other instruments in spots around the five boroughs, including Greenpoint’s Transmitter Park where you can bring your music box to join composer Angélica Negrón’s evening soundscape. —AM

 Simone Leigh: The Waiting Room

When: Thursday, June 23, 5–7pm (Free with admission)
Where: New Museum (235 Bowery, Bowery, Manhattan)

To celebrate the opening of Simone Leigh: The Waiting Room, curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray and guests will perform a cycle of black folk songs called the “Motherless Child Set.” Bumbray is a curator and choreographer who got her start at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and she has subsequently curated performances at The Kitchen, and for Creative Time. —SR

 Isabel Lewis

When: Friday, June 24, 6pm (Free. RSVP recommended)
Where: Dia: Chelsea (541 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

For her series of happenings, salons, performances, and parties, Occasions and other occurrences — occurring at Dia:Chelsea and Dia:Beacon through July 17 — Isabel Lewis creates evening-long experiences in response to each site, mood, and given group of attendees. For the series’ opening night, she has collaborated with the Norwegian scent scientist and smell researcher Sissel Tolaas to concoct an olfactory experience to match her DJ set of slow jams and sensuous songs. Come find out what romance smells like. —BS

 Clinton Street Fest

When: Friday, June 24, 4–7pm
Where: Clinton Street (Lower East Side, Manhattan)

Summer has officially started this week, so you should definitely be spending time outdoors. Get your equal doses of Vitamin D and culture at the Clinton Street festival, in its second year celebrating the neighborhood’s small businesses and community organizations. You’ll encounter artist interventions set in both active and vacant storefronts, music performances, poetry readings, and walking tours. Some highlights: a music and poetry popup shop; an interactive storytelling project set in a garden; and a “Cake Walk” by artist Erin Sweeny — which, per her previous staging, sounds like an event both lively and delicious. —CV

 Queering the Bibliobject

When: Ends Saturday, June 25
Where: The Center for Book Arts (28 West 27th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

In this exhibition, lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual artists expand the ways in which we conceive of the artist book. Gone are linear narratives, covers, and bindings: the book is no longer restricted to the page, but takes on the dimensions of video and sculpture. In claiming to consider “how the treatment of the book as an object is a particularly queer artistic strategy,” Queering the Bibliobject builds a library of unexpected and highly personal books. —EWA

 Lumen 2016

When: Saturday, June 25, 7pm–midnight ($10)
Where: Atlantic Salt Company (561 Richmond Terrace, New Brighton, Staten Island)

The mounds of salt unneeded for de-icing in these warm months will provide a surreal setting for this year’s Lumen festival, a one-night happening of light, video, and performance art. If it’s anything like the 2012 edition that had dancers in silhouette on the white salt hills and projections on the industrial buildings, it should be a beautiful spectacle, and an invitation for non-Staten Islanders to take the ferry over to these harbor-view shores. —AM

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With contributions by Elisa Wouk Almino, Allison Meier, Tiernan Morgan, Seph Rodney, Benjamin Sutton, and Claire Voon