fee's LIST (through 6/8)

WEDNESDAY
* Bruce Nauman "Days" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/V to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). Nauman's incredible sound installation debuted at the 2009 Venice Biennale and I am thrilled it was added to MoMA's collection. This suite of 14 speakers contain women's and men's voices speaking the days of the week. That's it, but apparently it emanates something magical, and if it's anything like Nauman's other golden forays we'll be tied to it like Odysseus' crew to the Sirens.

* Coasting + Sisters @ Death By Audio / 49 S 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$7. Nice one-two lineup here: album release party for (half-Kiwi) Coasting, whose all-girl fuzz-pop thump is countered by Brooklyn's Sisters, the all-boy duo who do that fuzz-pop thump thing too. w/ Big Troubles.

THURSDAY
* Samuel T. Adams "Delphic Affairs" @ Priska C. Juschka Fine Art / 547 W 27th St. Exhilaratingly abstract acrylic paintings, like oil slicks in suspended animation.

* Kyung Jeon "Belle Rascal" @ Tina Kim Gallery / 545 W 25th St 3rd Fl. I love getting lost in Jeon's incredible mural-sized works, when she transforms the gallery into a slightly creepy magical utopia. Her new works draw from Korean genre painting and Hieronymus Bosch, if that gives you any inkling what yr in store for. Plus: a few smaller-scale drawings for deeper contemplation.

* Leslie Shows "Five Grounds" @ Jack Hanley Gallery / 136 Watts St. Shows combines landscape painting w/ abstraction, to dazzling effect. She uses poured-paint technique w/ photorealism to create what I'm calling a nouveau Max Ernst style.

* "Natural Renditions" @ Marlborough Chelsea / 545 W 25th St. The mega Marlborough summer show is based around the natural world and includes a site-specific work by David Brooks (he of PS1's "Greater New York"'s 'petrified forest'), plus Valerie Hegarty, Amit Greenberg, Alexandra Mir, Will Ryman, Kon Trubkovich and more.

* Rudy Shepherd "Falling Together" @ Mixed Greens Gallery / 531 W 26th St. Shepherd furthers his meditation on portraiture, that of strangers from the news and his 'Healers', figures like Sun Ra and Fela Kuti.

* "Barakat: The Gift", curated by Gaia Serena Simionati @ STUX Gallery / 530 W 25th St. A group show w/ nine contemporary artists from the Middle East and Africa, working in diverse media but focusing on communication in art. Reza Derakshani (Iran), Malmouna (Senegal), and Nabil Nahas (Lebanon) are included.

* "The New Grand Tour" @ Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery / 505 W 24th St. The great journey, from Shanghai to Yunnnan Province, encapsulated in a summer group show and feat. Deanne Cheuk, Jose Parla, Rey Parla, Rostarr, and Davi Russo.

* Ye Nan "Phosphorous Red" @ Chambers Fine Art / 522 W 19th St. The show-title comes from the phosphorus liquid (which apparently is used in match-making) applied to handmade paper, which the artist then prints on or incises into vivid imagery.

* Tucker Nichols @ ZieherSmith / 516 W 20th St. Tableaux and mixed media works, bit tongue-in-cheek this lot, created while in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Ca.

* "Other As Animal" @ Danese / 535 W 24th St 6th Fl. The animal consciousness (compare/contrast w/ the Canada show on Friday), feat. a fab roster incl. Erick Swenson, Eric Fischli, Ross Bleckner, Simen Johan, Catherine Howe and more.

* Printed Matter "The Warehouse Sale" Benefit @ Paula Cooper Gallery / 521 W 21st St, 2nd Fl, 6p/$10. The dopest indie art journal/bookstore pulls out its archives (and DJs) for a three-day event, hosted by Paula Cooper Gallery. The sale itself runs through Saturday and is free, but the benefit includes the luxury of booze (Brooklyn Brewery) and music (DJs Alexis Georgopolous + Nick Relph) whilst you peruse the vintage ('70s-90s) artists' records, pamplets, videos etc. It's like a mini Art Book Fair, and you know how much I dig that.

* The Special Pillow + The Scene is Now @ Cake Shop / 152 Ludlow St (FV to 2nd Ave), 8p/$8. 'A summer serenade', aka a sometimes folksy, sometimes electrified but always psychedelic affair.

* W-H-I-T-E + Nonhorse @ Silent Barn / 915 Wyckoff Ave, Ridgewood (L to Halsey, M to Myrtle/Wyckoff), 8p/$7. Cali's Corey Hanson (aka W-H-I-T-E, aka White Horses in Technicolor Everywhere, srsly) is in town for a few nights, performing his atmospheric pop-inflected, organ-driven brand of electronic music (don't call it Animal Collective). This night, w/ cassette alchemist Nonhorse (aka G. Lucas Crane from Woods) should be so druggy you won't even need that baggie of 'srooms.

FRIDAY
* Movement Research Festival 2010 @ HARCORPS / 361 Manhattan Ave, Williamsburg (L/G to Lorimer), 7:30p/$10. An eclectic evening of performance and video work, incl. the new work-in-progress "SalzburggrubzlaS" by duo robbinschilds (catch them at "Greater New York" at MoMA PS1), performance by Yozmit (one of the re-performers from Marina Abramovic's recently closed exhibition at MoMA), and video by Jillian Pena & Christy Pessagno.

* Bushwick Open Studies 2010. HELLO! Can we say intense MAYJAHness, as Arts in Bushwick publishes its 4th iteration of loads (250+) of artist studios, group shows, events etc occurring in the area bordered by E. Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Ridgewood, aka Bushwick. It's not just absolutely dope music venues! BOS 2010 lasts through SUN, and there is a lot to do. Visit the site for the entire what's-what, and take the L/G/JM out and check it ouuuut.

* "Homunculi" @ Canada / 55 Chrystie St. I dig this summer show topic: the 'conscious part of the human brain', so to speak, feat. Allison Schulnik, Matt Greene, Ruby Neri and Matthew Ronay.

* Maya Bloch "Waiting Room" @ Thierry Goldberg Projects / 5 Rivington St. Absolutely haunting figurative paintings, people moving through like curtains of oily smoke while staring dead straight at you.

* "Get Him to the Greek" (dir. Nick Stoller, 2010) screenings, in wide release. What to do: I don't usually profile 'mainstream' cinema, but allow me to explain my excitement, nicely summarized in the following six words: Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean Combs. Dig?

* "Splice" (dir. Vincenzo Natali, 2010) screenings, in wide release. Ditto above, except 1) this genetic thriller looks super-duper dope and 2) the director is in talks for taking on a screen adaptation of William Gibson's "Neuromancer". Hello!!

SATURDAY
* Bushwick Open Studies 2010. HELLO! Can we say intense MAYJAHness, as Arts in Bushwick publishes its 4th iteration of loads (250+) of artist studios, group shows, events etc occurring in the area bordered by E. Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Ridgewood, aka Bushwick. It's not just absolutely dope music venues! BOS 2010 lasts through SUN, and there is a lot to do. Visit the site for the entire what's-what, and take the L/G/JM out and check it ouuuut.

* W-H-I-T-E + Say No! to Architecture @ Shea Stadium / 20 Meadow St, Williamsburg (L to Grand/G to Metropolitan), 6p/$5. This Showpaper benefit includes early BBQ and late W-H-I-T-E (Corey Hanson, see above), w/ Allen Roizman's solo noise-rock performance in-between, plus loads more (Orphans, Graffiti Monsters etc).

SUNDAY
* Bushwick Open Studies 2010. HELLO! Can we say intense MAYJAHness, as Arts in Bushwick publishes its 4th iteration of loads (250+) of artist studios, group shows, events etc occurring in the area bordered by E. Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Ridgewood, aka Bushwick. It's not just absolutely dope music venues! BOS 2010 lasts through SUN, and there is a lot to do. Visit the site for the entire what's-what, and take the L/G/JM out and check it ouuuut.

* Heliotropes @ Bruar Falls / 245 Grand St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p.Yum, dissonant rock straight out of the early '90s. Where have these girls been all my life?? A: in Brooklyn.

CURRENT SHOWS
* Ghada Amer "Color Misbehavior" @ Cheim & Read / 547 W 25th St. More like 'color exuberance', which doesn't quite have the same ring, though it rings true to Amer's fantastic 1st show at the gallery. Her signature embroidered and acrylic-wash renderings of female nudes, from cheeky juvenile posturing to straight out of a porno mag, take on richly patterned, Manala-like forms in such psychedelic works as "Waterfall" and "The Black Bang". A series of works on paper, showcasing both her deftness w/ just needle and thread and her unique take on watercolor, complete the exhibition. I dig her.

* David Salle "Some Pictures from the '80s" @ Mary Boone Gallery / 541 W 24th St. The innocuous exhibition title belies the gravity of this 'Pictures Generation' maestro, whose massive, multilayered 'nonrepresentational' canvases are like catapulting head first into a surrealist pre-Youtube-generation stew. If the imagery of "Gericault's Arm" and "His Brain" don't totally blow you away, you're lying.

* Anne Truitt "Sculpture 1962 2004" @ Matthew Marks Gallery / 522 W 22nd St. Dally about the 'forest' of Truitt totem sculptures — acrylic on wood all, except for the enameled earliest — and it's like being in your own constructed painting. The works (mixed unchronologically by date) do resemble human-sized oil pastels, but there's lots of little Easter eggs hidden in these seemingly minimalist pylons. Check the sharp white cap, like salty foam, atop "The Sea, The Sea" (2003) and the cool energy in "First Spring" (1981), which looks exactly THAT, like Truitt managed to capture the sky in sculpture. This is a beautiful retrospective and primer and a joy to visit.

* Mike Kelley "Arenas" @ Skarstedt Gallery / 20 E 79th St. Bring a hankie: Kelley's classic circa-1990 'Arenas', aka stuffed toys with blankets on the gallery floor, conjure powerful sensations of nostalgia, let alone transgressive anthropomorphizing. Seven of the eleven originals assembled here for the 1st time since their debut installation. Don't miss it.

* Hany Armanious "Birth of Venus" @ Foxy Production / 623 W 27th St. At the offset, Armanious' 2nd solo show at the gallery may seem quite a bit quieter (and smell better) than his alarming "Year oft the Pig Sty" installation in 2007, but his core practice of meticulous object-castings is in full form here. Don't miss checking everything from all angles, like the underside of the metaphysical "Effigy of an Effigy with Mirage" or the charmingly named "Party Pooper". Things, as they say, are NOT always what they appear.

* Sungmi Lee "Behind My Door" @ Gana NY / 568 W 25th St. Lee's 1st exhibition at the gallery is a meditation on her father's death, spanning sculpture and paintings created w/ resin and — shall we say — more tenuous mediums. The effect of "Crying For You", a life-size, mushroom-shaped (or I guess frozen fountain-shaped) whitish resin form, lengthened by dripping stalactites that formed the adjacent 'painting' "Painting By Sculpture" (which is fitted on plywood and looks like a tactile whirlpool), is major. Then she starts incorporating crushed automobile glass and blown incense smoke into dangerous pillow-shapes and Plexiglas boxes. She's got my attention.

* "A Vernacular of Violence" @ Invisible-Exports / 14A Orchard St. A fierce, tightly composed show that distills ubiquitous media imagery to throw us a bit off balance. Lisa Kirk and Walid Raad lead the fray w/ their charged emphasis on the banal, via her video and his printmaking. Other highlights include a hypnotic car-fire from the collective Claire Fontaine and Rita Sobral Campos' disturbing mechanical drawings.

* John Zurier, Jason Fox, Richard Allen Morris @ Peter Blum Chelsea / 526 W 29th St. An excellent interplay b/w these three artists, all ostensibly abstract. I loved Morris' most quickly, his straight-from-the-tube squeezes and spreads across certain delineated portions of otherwise pristine painted canvas. Zurier's room of subdued bluish-purplish-greens, striping massive canvases, slightly recalls the Rothko Chapel w/o the reverence (and somehow gloomier). And Fox's mostly monotone (reds) set echoes both artists, w/ his stripes (Zurier) and his carefully pared-down canvases (Morris).

* Martin Creed @ Gavin Brown's Enterprise / 620 Greenwich St. The Scottish conceptualist created a very tactile, very IDably beautiful installation this time, blanketing the floor of the gallery w/ marble planks in varying colors. That's essentially "it", but the work stretches beyond the perimeters of the public space, into the offices and further back, organically.
+ Jonathan Horowitz. The artist restages his notorious "Go Vegan!" installation at La Frieda Meats, at 601 Washington and just around the corner from Creed's show. His work, a combo of screenprinted cute animals, portraits of vegan celeb, and video of cows being bled in a slaughterhouse work brilliantly off the steel walls, hooks, and rubbery doors of the empty meat-market. I wonder, though, if it were like in a white-box space if it would have the same propulsion. Here, though, it's excellent (though I'm still carnivorous).

* Andy Coolquitt "We Care About You" @ Lisa Cooley Fine Art / 34 Orchard St. I hesitated when walking into the gallery, filled as it was w/ these fragilely composed, kooky assemblages — epoxied lighters, bent rods, lightbulbs, fabric — all w/ a heavy emphasis on 'found' objet. They're great, super-colorful and cheekily titled (the seat cushion on the wall is "A nice soft place for meeting people", while this double metal-and-lightbulb mechanism is "l___i", recalling the shape) and create a seamless installation. And for the naysayers, check the assemblages replete w/ little lewd-gesturing hands, and quit being so bloody snobbish.

LAST CHANCE
* Stuart Cumberland "Gone/There" @ Nicholas Robinson Gallery / 535 W 20th St. Some of my favorite 'painterly' elements, all in one place. Take Roy Lichtenstein's Ben Day dots and recontextualize those for today, filtered through a Keith Haring palette w/ bold black squiggles and washes from Christopher Wool's world.

* 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.

* Hans Op de Beeck "Silent Movie" @ Marianne Boesky Gallery / 509 W 24th St. It's a wonder what gray-painted walls, charcoal carpets and crown moulding will do, transforming Boesky gallery into the interior of one of the artist's sparse, creepy landscapes. His large grayscale watercolors are augmented by "A house by the sea", a diorama that reminds me, of all things, of the setting of Mario Bava's classic giallo film "The Whip and the Body". The general unrest in this dollhouse-sized work requires careful viewing.

* "Fleurs: 1880-2010" @ Benrimon Contemporary / 514 W 24th St 2nd Fl. You might not believe me when I say an exhibition on 130 years of flowers in art has something for everyone. The sweep here is vast, from gorgeous and representational (Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marc Quinn, Andre Derain) to Pop-inflected (Andy Warhol, Donald Baechler, Tom Wesselman) to wildly abstract (Vik Muniz, Natalia Goncharova, Niki de St Phalle). And for every delicate arrangement in a vase, there is a macho counterpart (Jim Dine, Ori Gerscht). And everything, these dozens of canvases lining the perimeter of the gallery, has equal footing. I mean, who hates flowers anyway? That's just cruel.

* Siobhan Liddell "Ordinary Magic" @ CRG Gallery / 535 W 22nd St. I sensed a kindred spirit in Liddell's delicate cut-paper objects to the intimate late-career works of Eva Hesse at Hauser & Wirth. There's a deliberateness to Liddell's works, whether the tautness of string augmenting a clay or paper work or extending through one of the artist's handmade tables, a plinth supporting the work plus an inherent link to the piece as a whole. Also: her choice in colors: gold-leaf folded paper with a royal blue underside, a textured acrylic- and cut-paper canvas like a shark's epidermis, nearly monochrome white w/ sneaky dabs and undersides in green.

* Osang Gwon @ Doosan Gallery / 533 W 25th St. A great four-piece show demonstrating Gwon's range and maturation in his 'Deodorant Type' series, striking 3D all-over photo-sculptures. The earliest work, "A statement of 540 pieces on twins", predates the glossy, slickened look of the later sculptures, like the semi-surreal "Garden" (2007), a woman buried under a pile of clothes, and the brand-new "Jangular", a hipster juggling overflowing bags of Whole Foods groceries, who I would say resembles me in activity if not appearance (the red jeans and patterned T are a 'no').

* "Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, curated by Jeff Koons" @ New Museum / 235 Bowery. The gorgeous simplicity of Koons' "One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank" from some 25 years ago, the sole Koons work on display and the impetus for Joannou's collection, is magnified by the visceral array that surrounds it on three floors of the museum + in the lobby. I always dug the idea of Joannou (a New Museum trustee) showing a selection of his exquisite, eyebrow-raising cache on American shores, and the choices here — gorg Chris Ofili and David Altmejd, disconcerting Andro Wekua and Kiki Smith, and generally disgusting Paul McCarthy and Tim Noble & Sue Webster (amid loads else) is a destination.