Art Rx
Spring is finally here, and the doctor wants you to celebrate newness.
Spring is finally here! To celebrate, the doctor wants you to try some new things: a new performative dialogue series at the Jewish Museum, a poetry and art event at a relatively new apartment gallery in Bushwick, and the debut show of a new artist-run platform exploring and supporting contemporary photography.
But newness is nothing if you don’t think about the rest of the cycle of life. So, included in your prescription are some thoughtful reminders: a show of work by Chantal Akerman, who reads from a piece about her aging mother; a reading at the Whitney honoring black gay men writers who chronicled the AIDS crisis of the ’80s and ’90s; and an event at Family Business that lets you break ceramics, reminding you to think about the forces of chance and failure. The doctor always want you to look ahead, but without forgetting where it is you’ve come from.
Pixelated Politics
When: Tuesday, April 9, 6:30 pm
Where: CUNY Center for the Humanities (The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan)
Yes, it’s another event looking at the proliferation of images in today’s world, but this one has an interesting take: a group of panelists will discuss the way poor-quality and pixelated images influence our politics. How, for instance, did blurry YouTube videos affect the way we understood the Green Revolution in Iran or the Tahrir Square protests in Egypt? The panel features artist and writer Mariam Ghani; professors Lev Manovich, Nicholas Mirzoeff, and McKenzie Wark; and Whitney curator Christiane Paul.
A Mother’s Laugh
When: Opens Thursday, April 11, 6–8 pm
Where: The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
This week the Kitchen opens a show of work by Belgian artist and filmmaker Chantal Akerman titled, quite wonderfully, Maniac Shadows. At the opening on Thursday, Akerman will read from a new autobiographical piece, My Mother Laughs, which offers details of her aging mother’s daily life. Akerman will also spend time on the show’s opening day recording a video of herself reading that piece; once it’s added the rest of the show, which includes footage shot at her residences in different countries, it will create an evocative-sounding “psycho-geography for domestic settings.”
Performative Dialogue
When: Thursday, April 11, 7–8 pm
Where: The Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
Barbara Bloom’s excellent exhibition at the Jewish Museum, As it were … So to speak, includes a lot of cross-cultural dialogue — the text of artists and writers and thinkers laid side-by-side, an imagined conversation between Nefertiti, Emily Zola, Amy Winehouse, and Jesus. So the museum is also hosting a series of dialogues — ahem, “performative dialogues” — in which two speakers talk to the audience more than each other. This one features Hannah Hurtzig, founder of the Mobile Academy, which experiments with formats for the public transmission of knowledge, and Paul Pangaro, a cybernetician who studies the cognitive and social needs of humans in relation to technology.
The Signs Along the Road
When: Opens Friday April 12, 7–10 pm
Where: et al Projects (56 Bogart Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn)
Wessel Castle is an ongoing collaboration by Trey Burns and Alli Miller, in which the two photograph and explore public sign culture, along the way attempting to subvert marketing strategies with humor and wit. Et al projects opens an exhibition of their work, including photos that capture “the often anemic and neglected signscapes on the peripheries of American highways” and sculptures that attempt to bridge the gap between retail signage and art gallery.
Two Poets, Two Shows, One Gallery
When: Friday April 12, 8–10 pm
Where: Ferro Strouse Gallery (77 Pilling Street, #2, Bushwick, Brooklyn)
The title of this event says it all: Two Poets, One Gallery … and Two Shows! On Friday night, startup apartment gallery Ferro Strouse will host readings by poets Liz Dosta and Alex Hampshire, as well as photographs by Zachary Garlitos and paintings by Thompson Harris. We’re not too familiar with any of them, but the doctor always encourages trying new things. Plus, a little Googling confirms our suspicions that this should be good, particularly the art by Garlitos and Harris (we are, after all, an art blog).
Breaking Things
When: Saturday, April 13
Where: Family Business (520 West 21st Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
In its latest show, Family Business gallery is celebrating chance and failure in the process of art making. The specific focus is on ceramics, with various artists exhibiting works they consider flawed and perfect side-by-side. But on Saturday the real fun happens: those artists will bring in works for visitors to break, helped along by Kate Gilmore, she-of-smashing-and-breaking-things-and-looking-good-while-doing-it. Bring your anger and frustration!
Useful Pictures
When: Opens Saturday, April 13, 6–9 pm
Where: Michael Matthews Gallery (414 West 145th Street, basement, Sugar Hill, Manhattan)
On Being a Black Gay Man
When: Sunday, April 14, 2 pm
Where: Whitney Museum (945 Madison Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
Artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz will host this event at the Whitney, a tribute to gay, male, African-American writers and poets who captured the reality of life during the 1980s and ’90s AIDS crisis. Bordowitz, Glenn Ligon, Eileen Myles, and a host of others will read from the works of these writers, many of whom are now dead and their works collected in anthologies, including the groundbreaking book that lends its title to the event, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, from 1986.
