Llyn Foulkes’s “Pop” (1985–90), a mixed media painting with its own soundtrack, installed in a shadowy corner of the New Museum (photo by the author)
As we head into September, summer exhibitions are winding down. This week is your last chance to see five of the big ones at museums around town, including the Llyn Foulkes survey at the New Museum and the complementary takes on the Civil War at the Metropolitan Museum. For those who want to start fresh, new shows are opening at the Kitchen and in Bushwick, while art salons of different types keep the creativity flowing. See you after Labor Day!
Tracking the Thrill
When: Opens Tuesday, August 27
Where: The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
The Kitchen is starting off its fall season early, with an exhibition devoted to Pictures Generation artist Gretchen Bender. Bender is an often overlooked film and video pioneer, and the Kitchen is hoping to resuscitate her legacy with Tracking the Thrill, a show that includes a selection of her art videos alongside music video and broadcast TV work. The latter category includes the title sequence for America’s Most Wanted, which, as critic Roberta Smith wrote in Bender’s obituary in 2004, “may have originated the rapid-fire hyperediting now pervasive in film, television and video art.”
Contemporary Collaboration
Lia Chavez meditating at Soapbox Gallery (via soapboxgallery.org)
When: Friday, August 30, 6–9 pm
Where: AOL (770 Broadway, 6th floor, East Village, Manhattan)
For a little over a week now, artist Lia Chavez has been sitting and meditating for 8 hours a day in the small storefront space of Soapbox Gallery. When she’s not there, artists Linnéa Spransy and Maggie Hazen have been creating drawings and installation environments in the space. The two-week exhibition/collaboration will end Friday night with a salon, which will feature the three artists discussing the practice of collaboration with Warhol Superstar Ultra Violet, Wall Street Journal art reporter Kelly Crow, and Jamie Lauren Zimmerman, a practitioner of meditation medicine.
End of the Line
When: Opens Friday, August 30, 7–10 pm
Where: Fuchs Projects (56 Bogart Street, #1E, Bushwick Brooklyn)
The Kitchen may be bringing in fall early, but Bushwick gallery Fuchs Projects is closing out summer late. This group show called City Limits features six artists, and the premise is:
6 artists throw a dart at the New York Subway map. Whichever line each of them hits means they must travel to either end of that line and then create artwork based on what they find.
Sounds like a good, arty way to bid farewell to another summer in the city.
Gurls
When: Friday, August 30, 7–11 pm
Where: Transfer Gallery (1030 Metropolitan Avenue, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
It may not be 2-for-1 drink specials at the club, but ladies, this Friday night at Transfer Gallery is for you. Zoë Salditch, Eyebeam’s communications director, is curating gURLs, a night of readings and performances exclusively by and for women. Artists and poets who focus on female identity in the age of the interwebz will be featured. Attendance is by invite only, but you can email directors@transfergallery.com if you’d like to go.
Last Chance: Llyn Foulkes
When: Closes Sunday, September 1
Where: New Museum (235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
The New Museum’s full-floor retrospective of the work of artist Llyn Foulkes is smart, creepy, and revelatory. Although Foulkes has enjoyed the attention and respect of the art establishment for a while, he’s never really been a household name. The work in this show goes some way toward explaining why — cross-dressing Mickey Mouse and lots of blood, for starters — but it also makes you wish the situation were otherwise. Foulkes’s art is unlike anything else out there.
Robert Irwin’s “Scrim veil—Black rectangle—Natural light” (1977) at the Whitney (photo by Flickr user pburka)
Last Chance: Robert Irwin
When: Closes Sunday, September 1
Where: Whitney Museum (TK Madison Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
In 1977, artist Robert Irwin created an installation titled “Scrim veil—Black rectangle—Natural light.” The work transformed the fourth floor of the Whitney Museum into a serene vision of light and space. The Whitney has reinstalled the piece for its first reprise since ’77, and likely its only one for a while, not least because the Whitney will move downtown in two years. Go take it in before it’s gone. (And while you’re there, catch David Hockney’s “The Jugglers, June 24th 2012” and permanent-collection show I, You, We, both of which close that same day.)
Last Chance: The Civil War
When: Closes Monday, September 2
Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
When we think of violent, bloody conflicts these days, we tend to think about the more recent ones — the American invasion of Iraq, the Second Congo War, and countless others. But the Civil War was the deadliest in American history, taking the lives of 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Met has mounted two landmark exhibitions that trace the history of the Civil War through visuals: the more gruesome one offers photographs, including haunting visions of battlefields, and the other, of paintings and other artistic responses, explores the war’s effect on the American psyche.
Last Chance: Expo 1
Pierre Huyghe’s “Zoodram 5” (2011) featuring a mask after Brancusi and Arrow crabs (photo by the author) (click to enlarge)
When: Closes Monday, September 2
Where: MoMA PS1 (TK, Long Island City, Queens)
You might have missed the Rain Room, but the rest of Expo 1 is going strong until Monday. If you haven’t yet seen the rooftop garden, the courtyard colony, or Adrian Villar Rojas’s massive clay amphitheater, now’s the time! And even if you have, they’ve probably all evolved considerably since that early visit. We’re curious how many of those Arrow crabs are still standing.
