fee's LIST (through 5/11)

WEDNESDAY
* "Mind and Matter: Alternative Abstractions, 1940s to Now" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/V to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). In conjunction w/ MoMA's "Modern Women" publication, and perhaps to make up for lost time, a foray into the abstract printmaking and sculpture by a dozen international women artists (Louise Bourgeois, Mona Hatoum, Atsuku Tanaka) in the museum's collection — like 'hey, the museum has been representing women since the 1940s'. That's all well and good, but put more key pieces on the floor, and bring back that great Eva Hesse installation.

* Richard Phillips "Painting and Misappropriation" @ Swiss Institute / 495 Broadway, 3rd Fl. One of the finer contemporary figure painters in Gagosian's roster, Phillips reinterprets the late Swiss 'naive artist' Adolf Dietrich's nature scenes to lovingly psychedelic effect.

* Thomas Struth @ Marian Goodman Gallery / 24 W 57th St. Watch me geek out at Struth's gorg photo series on such tech-y spots as reactors in Gladbeck and Beverungen, a pharmaceutical lab in Buenos Aires, and Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

* Dan Friel @ Bruar Falls / 245 Grand St, WIlliamsburg / (L to Bedford), 8p/FREE. Wheezy electronic grooves from the operatic Parts & Labor frontman, for free! w/ Adult Themes.

THURSDAY
* Andy Goldsworthy "New York Dirt Water Light" @ Galerie Lelong / /528 W 26th St. Goldsworthy takes his usual discreet rural interventions to the big city, presenting time-lapse photography and the deceptively simple titular mediums that could be an alarm for us to slow down from the usual frenzy and take in the quiet beauty around us in this crazy crazy world.

* Uta Barth + Ian Kiaer @ Tanya Bonakdar Gallery / 521 W 21st St. I could see these two artists' respective strong suits playing quite well off one another: Barth's discreetly trippy, abstract photography and Kiaer's methodical, flotsam-strewn 'false landscapes'. A very cerebral art-outing, but that's a good thing.

* Edward Kienholz "Roxys" @ David Zwirner / 519 W 19th St. I am thrilled to experience one of my modern art hero's classic works in person. Kienholz takes us into a tableau, a life-size recreation of a Vegas brothel filled w/ disturbing figures and sensory overload.

* Osang Gwon @ Doosan Gallery / 533 W 25th St. Four key figurative works from Gwon's 'Deodorant Type' series, done in his signature 3D photo-sculptural style.

* "Fleurs" @ Benrimon Contemporary / 514 W 24th St 2nd Fl. When you think about it, in this super-packed group show (Marc Quinn, Marc Chagall, Pierre-August Renoir, Andy Warhol bien sur + more), aren't flowers cooler than skulls?

* Ghada Amer "Color Misbehavior" @ Cheim & Read / 547 W 25th St. Amer's riveting thread-embroidered watercolor and acrylic works, textural meditations on the female body, are incredible in person. Her knack of conveying with minimal linework is peerless.

* Alex Guofeng Cao @ STUX Gallery / 530 W 25th St. Digital photo-mosaics of classic celebrities and hauntingly familiar photojournalism, w/ all sorts of hidden, cheeky Easter eggs from the artist.

* Jisoo Lee "Light Encapsulated Space In-Between" @ Kips Gallery / 511 W 25th St 2nd Fl. Lee paints color-saturated canvases via her exploration of the nuances of light and shadow.

* Julian Faulhaber "Lowdensitypolyethylene" @ Hasted Hunt Kraeutler / 537 W 24th St. Intensely colored low shutter speed C-prints of artificial, ubiquitous urban spaces.

* "Now Through a Glass Darkly" @ Arario NY / 521 W 25th St. Cornell DeWitt organized this exhibition around the mirror, w/ a generally dark-moody cast of gallery artists and others, like Tallur LN (chaos installation), Dongwook Lee (shrunken human figures) and Glenn Ligon (coal-dust silkscreens).

* Amir Zaki "Relics" @ Perry Rubenstein Gallery / 527 W 23rd St. Zaki photographs lifeguard towers in Orange County, abstracting them into strange, brightly-colored structures devoid of sand or water.

* Aki Sasamoto "Strange Attractors" @ Whitney Museum (part of 2010 Whitney Biennial), 4p. I caught Sasamoto last year at Zach Feuer and I was hooked. I have this vision in my head about Joseph Beuys' chalkboard 'teaching' performances, and to me Sasamoto's stream-of-consciousness forays into the sociopolitical, the mathematical and the mundane (somehow she balances all this, coherently) is, to me, like a Beuys. Her lair @ the Whitney, astrewn w/ video cameras and hanging net bags containing microphones and water glasses, is the site of her shows, performed at 4p on dates incl the numerals '6' and '9' (so if you can't make this one you've other chances, like Sunday).

* Cake Shop's Five Year Anniversary @ Cake Shop / 152 Ludlow St (FV to 2nd Ave), 8p/$3. My favorite LES music venue, and quite possibly my favorite NY music venue, turns FIVE years old this month! This night, the "meet and greet", is particularly experimental and promises all sorts of goodies. Feat. Nonhorse (aka G. Lucas Crane, the tapes-wizard of Woods), Ela Orleans (looping guitar/violin) and a wild 'round robin' playoff b/w Philip Seymour Hoffman (the musician), Human Resources (also the musician) and Say No! to Architecture.

FRIDAY
* New York Gallery Week @ various locations, THRU MONDAY. Wait, I thought every week was "New York Gallery Week". But this is incredibly wicked, events, tours and artists every day. Check the site for the full schedule, and follow along (entries tagged NYGW) for my picks.

* "Pictures by Women" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/V to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). The museum, it seems, is making an effort to proclaim their extensive representation of women artists. This in conjunction with the abstraction show that opened Wednesday may be 'better late than never' but still a totally key exhibition. Feat. classics and contemporary stars, from Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman to Carrie May Weems and Roni Horn, w/ contributions from Yoko Ono's Fluxus work.

* Richard Prince "Tiffany Paintings" @ Gagosian / 980 Madison Ave. Prince's new suite are nearly monochromatic abstracts, paintings and collaged works, but bear references to the subject matter: Tiffany's adverts + "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Considering the journey from Marlboro Man and car-hoods to de Kooning and 'Nurses', does this spell a gauzier, more sensual Prince? What do you think, really.

* Roni Horn @ Hauser & Wirth / 32 E 69th St. Six new large-scale works on paper, like supersized fingerprints but overwhelming and enveloping, due to their respective sizes.

* Alison Elizabeth Taylor "Foreclosed" @ James Cohan Gallery / 533 W 26th St. You can't mess w/ Taylor's mastery of marquetry (intarsia wood inlay, circa the Court of Versailles). I mean, you can say 'all these paintings look the same' but can you really get tired of 'too much marquetry'? She won me over two years ago w/ the stuff, brilliant vistas and southwest U.S. settings, and her new body of work — on the gaping absences in foreclosed homes — should prove remarkable and relevant.

* Ryan Humphrey "Eary American" @ DCKT Contemporary / 195 Bowery. This sounds dope: a period room (like from the Met) redecorated w/ a hyperbolized pop-punk/X-Games touch.

* Dana Schutz book-signing @ Zach Feuer LFL / 530 W 24th St (part of NYGW), 5p. The glorious grotesque figurative works of Schutz, compiled into a proper Rizzoli monograph w/ contributions by Barry Schwabsky and Jonathan Safran Foer.

* Richard Galpin talk @ High Line / on the High Line at Chelsea Market Passage, 16th+17th St (ACE to 14th St, part of NYGW), 7:30p. The High Line is dope. You see Manhattan (and Jersey) from a unique viewpoint and the landscaping is fun. Galpin abstracts cityspaces in his photography, and he's customized that idea w/ "Viewing Station", an installation on the High Line at the Chelsea Market Passage. You peer through the viewfinder and, boom, the interior geometric elements abstract the cityspace for you. It's like being in one of his photographs! Hear it from the artist himself.

* Alex Bleeker & The Freaks + Big Troubles @ Cake Shop / 152 Ludlow St (FV to 2nd Ave), 8p/$8. I've got to stop referring to Ridgewood's Big Troubles as 'up-n-comers' b/c they've upped and came, and they're great. Beneath all that feedbacky reverb is some really quality pop. Bleeker & his band (mems. Real Estate w/ special guests) raises the bar on folksy twang.

* "Snake Eyes" (dir. Brian de Palma, 1998) midnight screening @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFV to W 4th St) — part of "Cage Heat" midnight series. Week Three of the retrospective of our 'national treasure' Nick Cage is a doozy: the split-screen cerebral "Rashomon"-echoing crime drama starring a particularly ostentatious Cage as a lurid cop. ALSO SAT @ Midnight

SATURDAY
* Anne Truitt "Sculpture 1962 2004" @ Matthew Marks Gallery / 522 W 22nd St. Sure to be a destination spot for you minimalists (looking at myself as I type this), yet ANOTHER instance of the 'should-be-in-a-museum' gallery exhibition. In this case: 16 of Truitt's iconic 'totem' sculptures spanning her full career, the most comprehensive of its kind in NY in over 20 years. Yes, the museums SHOULD be doing it, but thank goodness for MMarks and others for actually putting it together.

* Darren Almond "Sometimes Still" @ Matthew Marks Gallery / 523 W 24th St. The centerpiece of this exhibition of new works is Almond's six-screen film of a Tendai monk in Kyoto going through the rigorous Buddhist process Kaihogyo, in an attempt to reach Buddhahood.

* Roy Lichtenstein "Still Lifes" @ Gagosian / 555 W 24th St. Lots of hot shows opening tonight, what w/ Truitt's a few blocks away. And now this: Gagosian did a fine Lichtenstein sculpture show a few years ago. Now they one-up that w/ his still-life paintings spanning from '72 through the early '80s, plus related drawings.

* "Twenty-Five" @ Luhring Augustine / 531 W 24th St. The 25th Anniv. of this destination gallery (once in midtown, then Soho and now half a block from my flat) is full of favorites. Like: Pipilotti Rist and Christopher Wool, like Albert Oehlen, Rachel Whiteread and Yasumasa Morimura (plus some knockout non-roster surprises, like Michelangelo Pistoletto and Donald Judd — but I've written too much as it is).

* Cameron Jamie @ Gladstone Gallery / 515 W 24th St. Masks are a freaky, recurring theme in Jamie's multilinear work. His 1st solo show in NY centers around the installation 'Smiling Disease', which includes those found-object-composed masks alongside hallucinogenic layered-ink works on paper.

* Hans Op de Beeck "Silent Movie" @ Marianne Boesky Gallery / 509 W 24th St. The Belgian artist depicts depopulated spaces via large watercolors and sculpture, but he takes it even further w/ an installation, converting the main room of the gallery into the 'empty' setting of one of his works.

* Karla Black + Nate Lowman @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. A pairing for the (art) history books: the visceral installation Brit Black v. the equally subversive American Lowman.
+ "She Awoke with a Jerk", curated by Nigel Cooke. The UK-based artist, whose 'burnout characters' come off as hopeless yet oddly relatable, crafts a great group show around imagery of 'the fool', feat. George Grosz, Sean Landers, René Magritte, George Condo, Pablo Picasso and more.

* Thomas Eggerer "The Laws of the Fence" @ Friedrich Petzel Gallery / 535 W 22nd St. I really dug Eggerer's last gallery show, when he augmented his doomsday-ish acrylics w/ vintage collage. Let's see how much further he takes it.

* Jorge Pardo @ Friedrich Petzel Gallery / 537 W 22nd St. Pardo's seamless joining of silkscreened mixed media works w/ lighting installations and other arguably 'interior design-ish' elements work quite well as an all-inclusive experience.

* T.J. Wilcox @ Metro Pictures / 519 W 24th St. Wilcox's brilliant collaged screens, mounted in this exhibition as free-standing, Japanese-style screens, are augmented by three narrative short films interspersed w/in them.

* William Pope.L "landscape + object + animal" @ Mitchell-Innes & Nash / 534 W 26th St. A nearly two-decade span of the artist's provoking works, incl. mixed 'media' (like peanut butter, vegetable oil, Paul McCarthy-approved stuff) wall and floor works and the ongoing durational performance piece 'CUSP', which includes standing on a dirt mound, clad in a presidential mask, holding a cup brimming w/ green ink — all of which should insight a reaction.

* Mike Cloud "Quiltmaking & Overproduction of Opposites" @ Max Protetch / 511 W 22nd St. Cloud's past 'oil on clothes' works reminded me of mutant Elizabeth Murray canvases, and that's saying something. His new exhibition features sewn cloth again, this time in the form of two-sided collage quilts. incorporating elements of Annie Leibovitz's monograph "A Photographer's Life", amongst other elements.

* Josephine Meckseper @ Elizabeth Dee / 545 W 20th St. I am still digging Meckseper's chromed out treatise on U.S. consumerism and combat, courtesy of her "Mall of America" film in this year's Whitney Biennial. She expands on that w/ a showroom installation in the gallery, feat. imagery of the Iraqi occupation and the U.S. Supreme Court against mirrored display cases of luxury goods.

* Uta Barth artist talk @ Tanya Bonakdar Gallery / 521 W 21st St (part of NYGW), 10a/RSVP: info@tanyabonakdargallery.com. Independent Curators International host this conversation w/ the abstract photographer, whose new exhibition at the gallery relates w/ her new monograph, "The Long Now", published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.

* Thomas Struth book-signing @ Marian Goodman Gallery / 24 W 57th St (part of NYGW), 2p/RSVP: NYGW@mariangoodman.com. Read above (WED) to my glee at Struth's new body of work, contained in the new exhibition catalogue.

* My Teenage Stride + Moonmen on the Moon, Man @ Bruar Falls / 245 Grand St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/FREE. Technically, this is billed as a 'Prince Tribute Micro-show', w/ the bands present covering Prince songs ("Sign O The Times" maybe?) but the draw for me, honestly, is the dope talent present, like uber songwriter Jedediah Smith (and his band My Teenage Stride).

SUNDAY
* Andy Coolquitt "We Care About You" @ Lisa Cooley Fine Art / 34 Orchard St. This Austin-based artist (go alumni!) composes his figure-referencing abstract sculpture 'somebody mades', referencing the industrial backgrounds and uses of his primary mediums.

* Amy Yao "Come to my Opening!!!" @ Jack Hanley Gallery / 136 Watts St. Yao works with prefab materials to create these vertiginous installations that are a bit Gebi Sibony, only more Pop-driven and lighter in touch. But honestly, I'm going into this thing w/ an open mind.

* Martin Creed + Jonathan Horowitz @ Gavin Brown's Enterprise / 620 Greenwich St. The former's site-specific installation involves recreated the gallery floor in loads of arranged marbles and screening, in a separate space, a film of an erection. The latter recreates his politically-tinged 2002 show "Go Vegan!" in a meat locker. You've been warned, twice.

* Aki Sasamoto "Strange Attractors" @ Whitney Museum (part of 2010 Whitney Biennial), 4p. I caught Sasamoto last year at Zach Feuer and I was hooked. I have this vision in my head about Joseph Beuys' chalkboard 'teaching' performances, and to me Sasamoto's stream-of-consciousness forays into the sociopolitical, the mathematical and the mundane (somehow she balances all this, coherently) is, to me, like a Beuys. Her lair @ the Whitney, astrewn w/ video cameras and hanging net bags containing microphones and water glasses, is the site of her shows, performed at 4p on dates incl the numerals '6' and '9' (so if you can't make this one you've other chances).

* Amy Yao "Special Mothers Day Performance" @ Jack Hanley Gallery / 136 Watts St (part of NYGW), 4p. Preceding Yao's mixed media opening, she performs — should I say 'happens'? — in the gallery space w/ Brooklyn-based artist and peer Jacob Robichaux.

* Thomas Eggerer artist talk @ Friedrich Petzel Gallery / 535 W 22nd St (part of NYGW), 12:30p. The artist (whose new show opens Saturday, read above) in conversation w/ art historian David Joselit.

* Jorge Pardo panel discussion @ Friedrich Petzel Gallery / 537 W 22nd St (part of NYGW), 2:30p. Ah, this sounds neat: Pardo, the art/architecture blender, whose new exhibition just opened (see under SAT), in discussion w/ art critic Irving Sandler and architectural theorist and historian Nana Last.

TUESDAY
* "The Concours" Group Show: Barney Hodes' class @ Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery / 215 W 57th St, 2nd Fl (1 to Columbus Circle, RWQ to 57th St), 6-9p. The Art Students League of New York's annual exhibition series, feat. life-size sculpture and esp. feat. Sherwin Banfield's chimeric Wall Street broker/beast.

CURRENT SHOWS
* Claude Monet "Late Work" @ Gagosian / 522 W 21st St. The recurring discussions in art-writings on museum-quality exhibitions disguised as gallery shows has culminated w/ a big payoff: the elevating experience that is this fine collection of Monets. Gagosian has succeeded in converting the 21st St location into a serene, intimate space — akin to a special exhibitions wing of the Met — and filled it w/ 27 gorgeous canvases from the Expressionist master. Walk amid the alternately shimmering and soggy "Nymphéas" and fall into the autumnal light of the Japanese footbridges and the "L'Allée de Rosiers". Lose yourself for a bit and forget your in W. Chelsea, surrounded by several hundred bustling white-box galleries.

* Mark di Suvero @ Paula Cooper Gallery / 534 W 21st St. The classic 'Nova Albion' is my kind of massive sculpture, a teetering span of tethered logs and steel poles, like a Viking ship's mast, that blends rather elegantly with the ceiling and surroundings of the gallery space. di Suvero's bent-steel 'Totems' in the side gallery (one from just a few years ago) echo this artist's alchemical touch to the rigid medium.

* Kiki Smith "Lodestar" @ The Pace Gallery / 545 W 22nd St. Smith's new installation at the gallery — her 1st NY gallery exhibition in eight years — is a quiet stunner: some three dozen glass panels, tall and narrow like windows from an old house, upon which she painted figures denoting a woman's life-cycle. And while the array doesn't provide a tidy, Hollywood-style progression — though a birth factors in early on and the panes do end with a casket — the meandering walk itself, along and between the glass, is like moving through a lucid dream. You control how you progress through it, but the figures around you, the recurring young woman, the mother and the older matron, flit in and out in their own performance.

* Mamma Andersson + Jockum Nordstrom "Who is sleeping on my pillow" @ David Zwirner / 525-533 W 19th St. Swedish power couple — actually they're both contemporary artists — have been doing their accomplished (though low key) thing for quite awhile, but this is their 1st concurrent show, which besides their respective new works (gorgeous, deep watercolor and acrylic interiors by Andersson, subversively folksy collage by Nordstrom) include three collaborative pieces — which is to Nordstrom's benefit, in my opinion. His flattish composites are greatly aided by the lush depths of Andersson's backgrounds.

* Mark Ryden "The Gay 90's: Old Tyme Art Show" @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 293 10th Ave. You know that feeling when there is a particular idol-type character, an artist or musician, who is famous in an avant-garde sense (highly regarded, though) and is an absolute ANIMAL at their particular talent, and they tend to have knockout shows/performances at big cities (Tokyo, SoCal), yet though YOU live in a big city (NYC) you can't recall the last time this person showed/played there, and yet they finally do come, they have a new show and you cannot wait to see it and possibly meet them and when the exhibition opens and there's like a half-dozen Ryden paintings (gorgeous, naturally) and several related works on paper and...that's it...you're left, somewhat ashamedly, somewhat awkwardly, feeling disappointed.

* Shirazeh Houshiary "Light Darkness" @ Lehmann Maupin / 540 W 26th St. Houshiary's meticulous networks of screenlike colored-pencil lines, interwoven with washes of aquacryl, produce these shadowy optical effects like Will O' the Wisps or sunsets. And don't miss the two video works in the side gallery, which are excellent and further impart her methodology: stare at them long enough and reenter the main gallery, and the static works may well appear to be shimmering.

* Fernando Botero "Monumental Sculpture" @ Marlborough Chelsea / 545 W 25th St. I'm all for massive sculpture, when it works, but quite honestly I prefer Botero's sumptuous oil paintings of chubby characters (in both classical and timely situations) then these hefty, slightly scandalous bronzes.

LAST CHANCE
* Pablo Picasso "Celebrating the Muse" @ Marlborough NY / 40 W 57th St. Part two of the triumvirate Picasso shows descending on NYC, the others being the FIRST print-related delight at MoMA and the collection-related exhibition at the Met. This is a golden time for art-lovers and casual art-goers: if your working knowledge of the imminent artist is "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon" (and/or "Three Musicians"), these exhibitions, particularly, in my opinion, the gorgeous variety of printmaking, are a blessing. As it's billed, the Marlborough show — museum-worthy in all ways — is full of women, focusing on Picasso's many muses/lovers throughout his oeuvre. And while that's so, there's a lot of bleedover w/ the MoMA show (which necessarily has the muses in it as well), incl. the recurrence of bulls, Minotaurs and saltimbanques. As in: there's a fine "Minotauromachy" etching/grattoir here, just as there's an extensive look at "La Feeme qui pleure" (aka Dora Maar, abstracted). Unlike MoMA, this one contains a brilliant early-career etching "Tete de femme" and a haunting series of artists and muses in varying aquatints and other mediums, like "Femme assiste dans un fauteuil". See this one and MoMA's broader show in tandem — they're only so many blocks apart — and you'll have a fine grasp of Picasso's printmaking.

* Kim In Sook "Inside Out" @ Gana NY / 568 W 25th St. The astute art-goer surely remembers Kim's scintillating large C-print "Saturday Night" from the 2009 Armory Show, that jewel-toned voyeuristic look into the happenings at a hotel (incl the artist's self-portrait as a 'hanging victim'). That's on display here, in her 1st US solo show, plus a lot of her other signature outside-looking-in captures of metropolitan life.

* Jonathan Prince + Wang Tao @ Cynthia Reeves Gallery / 535 W 24th St 2nd Fl. Another deft pairing from the gallery, in Price's seductively rendered polished granite forms (think Jean Arp, but as huge sculpture) against Wang's vivid acrylics on antique Chinese paper.

* Eric White, Nicola Verlato, Fulvio di Piazza "Three-Handed" @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery / 529 W 20th St 9th Fl. Whoever said figurative oil painting was dead is an asshole. LeVine Gallery's 'Pop Surrealism' is the real deal, as is the case w/ these three talented painters. di Piazza's skews the most fantasy-like, wetly green living garden-sculpture beasts/landscapes in a near-future scenario. Verlato's tightly composed scenarios of race and cultural struggle are all-too-familiar surreal manifestations. White's broad monochrome crowds feel urgent and cinematic at the same time.

* Allyson Viera "Ozymandias" @ Laurel Gitlen (Small A Projects) / 261 Broome St. Vieira's plaster and concrete reliefs reminded me of the 'hands' in Jim Henson's "Labyrinth", but the knockout installation in the main gallery, "If I was a...but then again, no (1-18)", a series of adult-sized plinths that literally fill the space, echoes Rachel Whiteread in the coolest way.