fee's LIST (through 11/01)

WEDNESDAY
NYC
* Carsten Höller "Experience" @ New Museum / 235 Bowery (F to 2nd Ave). In case you'd heard, THIS is the exhibition that features a visitor-participatory sensory deprivation pool ("bathing suit optional"). That's "Psycho Tank" (1999), one of many immersive, interactive works in the German artist's debut NY survey. Others include a corridor of flashing lights, a mirrored carousel, a 102-ft pneumatic slide (skip the lift!) and other experimental means of awesome disorientation. Take the plunge.

* "Die Like You Really Mean It" @ Allegra LaViola Gallery / 179 E Broadway. NYC totally does dynamic. Artists Paul Brainard and Frank Webster have culled over 20 local artists for a truly expressive encounter. This means many things: Hiroyuki Hamada's reliefs work in contrasty restraint while Doug Young's reversed paintings are like mid-'70s otherworldly. Ryan Schneider unveils a trippy-ass figurative pattern in oils while Oliver Warden, Kanishka Raja and Brainard explode and incise chromatic landscapes.

AUSTIN
* "Emotional Excess and the Politics of Hysteria" @ Women & Their Work / 1710 Lavaca, 7p. An evening of conversation between Margaret Meehan (her excellent exhibition "Hystronics and The Forgotten Arm" is still on view) and two local psychologist-psychoanalysts, Drs. Gemma Marangoli Ainsile and Marianna Adler. Hysteria's historical nuances and its current utility, plus the doctors' Freudian knowledge vs. Meehan's striking imagery — Victorian culture, thematic beauty, hypertrichosis — form the framework.

* "The Descendants" (dir. Alexander Payne, 2011) screening @ Paramount Theatre / 713 Congress Ave, 7p. Part of Austin Film Fest! Major Oscar buzz already on Payne's latest, shot a good long while after "Sideways" (remember that time?). I'm intrigued by where George Clooney takes this as the lead, in this dark and sometimes funny drama set in rural Hawaii.

* "Vampyres" (dir. Jose Larraz, 1975) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 10p. This scummy exercise in bad taste amps up the gore AND sexuality to one-up Hammer horror. Perhaps the pinnacle of lesbian vampire films, if that incites your interest.

THURSDAY
NYC
* Uta Barth + Jack Strange @ Tanya Bonakdar Gallery / 521 W 21st St. Barth consistently pushes the envelope on light and perception in photography. As I am totally missing her presence at the mostly awesome "Anxiety of Photography" exhibition (on now at Arthouse in Austin TX), I am super-stoked for her latest exhibition in NYC. Part of it draws from a body of work conceived for the Art Institute of Chicago, though Barth also includes a new series. Plus the indescribable British artist Jack Strange (who did enjoy at Arthouse exhibition this past summer), continues to enlighten us on the unexpected humor and depth within the everyday.

* Klara Kristalova "Sounds of Dogs and Youth" @ Lehmann Maupin / 540 W 26th St. The Czech artist treats her debut solo NY exhibition for atmosphere, immersing her dreamlike and subtly disturbing figurative ceramic and bronze sculptures with secondhand furniture and mood lighting.

* Llyn Foulkes @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. Wow. This incredible LA-based artist and musician (who came of age w/ John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha, plus played in a band w/ R. Crumb) is almost purposefully indescribable. His early contributions to assemblage and American Pop are as deep as his ever-changing oeuvre. This isn't his first time here, either, as Foulkes' meta-work w/in the Dec 2009 artist/curator group show "The Perpetual Dialogue" is still burned into my memory.

* Hiroshi Sugimoto "Surface of the Third Order: Objects and Sculpture" @ The Pace Gallery / 510 W 25th St. If your only point of reference for Sugimoto-san's transcendent oeuvre are his magical seascapes, you might be quite surprised by this exhibition: two bodies of conceptual 3D work, crystal pagodas inlaid w/ photographs and huge aluminum sculptures based on mathematical functions. It's of particular note that works from this series are displayed simultaneous at the sublime Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX, which just sounds perfect.

* Jacob Hashimoto "The End of Gravity" @ Mary Boone Gallery / 745 Fifth Ave. Hashimoto's previous solo exhibition at Mary Boone (the Chelsea location) was a sublime event, a vivid coupling of ethereal "woven" kite reliefs. He furthers their figurative potential in this new series, moving away from his kaleidoscopic cut-paper collage into mimicking graphic drawings.

* Halim Al Karim "Witness from Baghdad" @ STUX Gallery / 530 W 25th St. Halim's vivid lambda prints get under your skin, in the way he keeps the eyes crystal-clear and piercing, forcing us to "see" and meditate on the blurred figures within and their respective histories.

* "Burning, Bright: A Short History of the Light Bulb" @ The Pace Gallery / 545 W 22nd St. Goofy name aside (hey, I jest!), I am very stoked for this group exploration of a century's worth of artists working with the incandescent medium. Feat. Arman, Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys to Keith Sonnier, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Zhang Xiaogang.

* Matthew Brannon "Gentleman's Relish" @ Casey Kaplan Gallery / 525 W 21st St. In this tastily titled solo show, the NY-based artist fills all three gallery spaces w/ new silkscreen and letterpress prints, paintings, sculptures and a collaborative series w/ Carlo Brandelli, the latter based off an unpublished noir mystery narrative.

* Sarah Braman "Yours" @ Mitchell-Innes & Nash / 534 W 26th St. Few years back, Braman had a really dope dual exhibition at Andrea Rosen Gallery w/ Joel Shapiro — a tiny one in the side gallery, inspired by a dialogue b/w Rita Ackermann and Rosen. It wasn't my first Braman encounter but I felt it totally worked, her angular, intersecting planes of wood and glass against Shapiro's cascading blocks. I'm interested to see her debut w/ M-I&N, as she deconstructed an entire camper to incorporate it in the other works, mindful of Plexiglas (for light, volume, that pop of color) and cardboard (time, wear).

* "Exte: Hair Extensions" (dir. Sion Sono, 2007) screening @ Museum of Arts & Design / 2 Columbus Circle (AC/BD to 59th St/Columbus Circle), 7p. My first theatrical experience of a Sono film — it was during Japan Cuts and he was there! So badass… Thing with "Exte", he was mocking and hyperbolizing J-horror (ubiquitous, flowing black hair…now as a killing mechanism!) whilst doing one better for the genre. AND at the center is Sono's signature turn at the family drama, here w/ Chiaki Kuriyama as the good younger sister (to elder Tsugumi, flipping the script on her role in "Noriko's Dinner Table" to pure evil) with a troubled past. Plus, seeing the stalwart Ren Osugi in a wig and American flag shirt is too priceless.

* Boris w/ Asobi Seksu + Liturgy @ Irving Plaza / 17 Irving Plaza (NR/L/456 to Union Square), 7p/$21.50. Besides a My Bloody Valentine concert, never have I recommended earplugs (e.g. some form of ear protection) more than now. Brooklyn "transcendent black metal" dudes Liturgy will roast 'em good, then cutie-pie local shoegazers Asobi Seksu will scorch your synapses. And that's BEFORE Boris, aka Japanese stoner rockers penultimate, aka one of the consistently loudest, heaviest bands I've EVER experienced (I've seen 'em like 14 times live — plus I've seen MBV, Sleep, sunn o))), Merzbow, and two years of No Fun Fest), take the stage. Pure decibel delirium, girls and boys, but then again they're the best.

AUSTIN
* Fishbone (LA) @ Emo's / 603 Red River, 9p/$16. Original ska-punks, rejoice! LA rude boys Fishbone are back…and sure the lineup's changed since '79 but even original trumpeter "Dirty" Walter Kibby II performs tonight, supporting a spanking-new EP and ahead of a promised full-length. These dudes even cameoed in Keenen Ivory Wayans' blaxploitation spoof "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka"! w/ Subrosa Union

* Concrete Blonde (LA) @ Emo's East / 2015 E. Riverside Dr, 9p/$25. What up LA band reunions! I credit Rock Video Monthly (and MTV) for getting me into hard-rockers Concrete Blonde, specifically '93 album "Mexican Moon", awash w/ Johnette Napolitano's emotive croon. Their seminal, heavy LP "Bloodletting" enjoyed its 20th anniversary last year. w/ Adrian & the Sickness

* Wild Child @ The Parish / 214 E 6th St, 9p/$8. Austin's natty indie-folk outfit Wild Child just release their debut LP "Pillow Talk", and a celebration is in order! Get on down here, "y'all". w/ Little Lo and Shakey Graves

TOKYO
* Daisuke Kato @ INAX Gallery / 2F 3-6-18 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Yurakucho Station). Realistic life-sized sculptures of girls wearing animal masks, utilizing a technique traditionally employed in crafting Buddhist sculptures. That just sounds dope.

* Tokyo Dolores + BabyDoll Tokyo performance @ Shibuya PARCO / 14-5 Udagawacho, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station, Hachiko Exit), 6p/FREE. On the eve of Tokyo Dolores' Lucca, Italy tour and performances, they host a local bash in fashion central! Expect a stylized pole-dance from the girls AND a fashion show by GothLoli imprint BabyDoll Tokyo. w/ visuals by kokekakiki — a big teaser of what we're missing unless we follow them to Italy!

* The Milky Tangerine + Shojo Skip @ Fever / 1-1-14 Hanegi, Setagaya-ku (Odakyu Inokashira Line to Shindaita or Shimokitazawa Stations), 7p/2300 yen. Love love LOVE local indie-rock quartet the milky tangerine — to me they're like The Brilliant Green of 2011, sweetly strong female vox around lots of guitars. LIST recommended!

* Girls (Cali) @ DUO Music Exchange / 2-14-8 Dogenzaka, Shibuya-ku (JR lines to Shibuya Station), 7p/5000 yen. Despite my deep, unyielding love for Tokyo's indie-rock scene, there's no equivalent I know of to "Honey Bunny", my favorite track on the super-awesome 2nd LP by Cali's sun-dappled groovemeisters Girls.

FRIDAY
NYC
* Yoko Ono "Uncursed" @ Galerie Lelong / 528 W 26th St. The pivotal cross-media Conceptualist and Fluxus original reminds of our global interconnectivity and universality of human experience in a new installation of doorways, figurative transparent sculptures and more. You bet this evening's reception is a must-see.

* Rene Magritte "Dangerous Liaisons" @ Blain-DiDonna / 981 Madison Ave. Way to cast an inaugural exhibition, by showing a survey of the seminal Belgian surrealist — and incidentally one of my all-time favorite artists, ever — , w/ thirty of his major paintings, gouaches and drawings…the largest scale of Magritte works in NYC in nearly 15 years. Dive in.

* Rebecca Horn "Ravens Gold Rush" @ Sean Kelly Gallery / 528 W 29th St. I consider a Horn exhibition an EVENT, perhaps due to her kinetic, gestural ethos. That the show's title references her '86 NY exhibit "The Gold Rush" (which occurred during international financial uncertainty), plus contains a rarely-seen early sculpture alongside new poignant paintings and a large sculptural installation — plus! the N. American premiere of Horn's film "Moon Mirror Journey", playing at the Rubin Museum a few blocks away — means we're in for something very special. (for Rubin info, read on under SAT)

* Shane Hope "Transubstrational: As a Smartmatter of Nanofacture" @ Winkleman Gallery / 621 W 27th St. Lenticular-3D prints customized w/ open-source nanomolecular design software systems…this just sounds mind-alteringly dope. Plus a series involving "parent" and "child" printers, run by open-source/open-hardware. If I were still midway through university, I'd be doing backflips. But still, I am psyched to see Hope's scientific stylings in person.

* Richard Pousette-Dart "East River Studio" @ Luhring Augustine / 531 W 24th St. I usually gloss over press releases "to get the vibe", relying more on my instincts and history w/ the mentioned artist. But I'm glad I read this show's, as a crucial detail just blew my mind: Christopher Wool (the mighty, the Xerox-looking abstractor) organized this exhibition alongside Joanna Pousette-Dart. See, Wool studied w/ Richard, the youngest member of the Abstract Expressionists, in college! The body of work on view, pairing Pousette-Dart's paintings and wire sculptures, comes from the late 40s to 1951 and mostly hasn't been exhibited in NY again since its initial show at Betty Parsons Gallery in the '50s.

* "House/HAUSU" (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977) midnight screening @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). The now almost-monthly late-night screenings of this spastic art-house horror classic returns just in time for Halloween. Think black cats are the only harbingers of evil? You haven't met Auntie's Himalayan! With enough painted landscapes, in-camera FX, fight-sequence theme-songs and cute girls to overwhelm even the most discerning crowd. See it on the big screen, again! ALSO SAT

* The Beets @ Bruar Falls / 245 Grand St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, G to Lorimer), 8p/$10. Bruar Falls, the tiny Cake Shop-collaborating DIY Wsburg venue closes its doors at the end of the month. I am mega sad about this and share fond memories of many a sweaty show (a blessing in the winter, a loving torture in the summertime) in this place. But they're going all-out in style. Case in point: BIG fan of the new The Beets LP "Let the Poison Out" (feat. Velvet Underground-style drumming and coed vocal contributions from Chie Mori, a good match for Juan and Jose's nasally sing-alongs). Get rowdy. w/ Beachniks and a Misfits cover band

* Pterodactyl LP release party @ Secret Project Robot / 389 Melrose St, Bushwick (L to Jefferson), 9p. Brooklyn's fiercely indie thrash-rockers Pterodactyl kick off their two-month tour (culminating back home in mid-Dec) w/ a new LP "Spills Out", and if lead track "Nerds" is any indication — high melodiousness and percolating rhythm, plus an upped fuzz factor — it's gonna be DOPE. w/ the lovely Grooms + Dreebs

AUSTIN
* "Giorgio Moroder Presents: Metropolis" (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927/1984) @ Violet Crown Cinema / 434 W 2nd St. The Italian synth king and überproducer restored and "remixed" this dystopian silent-screen classic, colorizing it and coating it in mid-'80s sheen…complete w/ a current pop soundtrack (think Pat Benatar and Adam Ant!). Yeah, you bet it was controversial. It's also been out of print since its original '84 release, so this is a particular, limited-edition cinematic treat. ALSO SAT

* "The Exorcist" (dir. William Friedkin, 1973) midnight screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St, 11:45p. I remember, back when I was a kid I asked my father about horror films. He told me the two scariest he'd seen as a kid were "The Exorcist" and "The Omen". I thought by their 'simplistic' titles they weren't so bad. Ha. Moral of the story: my father has seen "The Exorcist" on the big screen. I (and probably YOU) never have. ALSO SAT

* "The Rum Diary" (dir. Bruce Robinson, 2011) @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St. Johnny Depp channels Paul Kemp in this filmic adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's debut novel, down and out in Eisenhower-era America and lolling about San Juan w/ Aaron "Sanderson" Eckhart and pretty fiancé Amber "Chenault" Heard.

* Pure X + Sleep Over @ Scoot Inn / 1308 E 4th St, 8p/$10. Much as I fiercely defend Brooklyn's handle of the lo-fi, woozy "chillwave" scene, I gotta give props to these two awesome Hill Country acts. Pure X (né "Pure Ecstasy") coat their slow-jams in hazy feedback and reverb, and their debut LP "Pleasure" is totally that (plus hearkens back to certain early-'80s UK greats). Stefanie Franciotti's aptly titled Sleep Over (despite the absurd infinity symbol inbetwixt) lulls but never bores, in her hypo-pop bliss. w/ their dreamily retrotastic kindred Silent Diane

TOKYO
* Thea Djordjadze @ Rat Hole Gallery / B1F 5-5-3 Minami-aoyama, Minato-ku (Chiyoda/Ginza/Hanzomon Lines to Omotesando Station, JR Yamanote Line to Harajuku Station). An installation of drawings and sculptures, in the Berlin-based Georgian artist's debut at the gallery…and in Japan!

* Brainfeeder 2 @ Eleven / B2F 1-10-11 Nishi-azabu, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station), 10p/4500 yen. The name of this fest rightly conjures LA-based experimental hip-hop guru and producer Flying Lotus, so expect some serious-ass bass and lots of fractured beats. Highlight for me is undoubtedly TOKiMONSTA: she's Korean, based in LA but hot in Japan. And her contorted dubstep programming is just killer. w/ Thundercat + Teebs

SATURDAY
NYC
* Nan Goldin "Scopophila" @ Matthew Marks Gallery / 522 W 22nd St. This is Goldin's first solo exhibition in NYC since 2007 (not counting, obvs, her dreamy/sinister contributions to "New Works" at this gallery last year), and it's a biggie. She unveils the titular slide installation — stay with me here! it's doper than it sounds! —, commissioned by the Louvre Museum last year, nearly a half-hour of over 400 photographs from Goldin's life intermingled w/ classic Louvre paintings and sculpture.

* "Masked Portrait Part II" @ Marianne Boesky Gallery / 509 W 24th St. Back in early 2008, Midori Nishizawa curated a fantastic grouping of Japanese avant-garde artists, from the Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Gutai Art Association) like Atsuko Tanaka and Jiro Yoshihara to realist photographers Daido Moriyama and Eikoh Hosoe and contemporary contributors (from Aya Takano to Yuichi Higashionna) — plus a related Atsuko Tanaka and Akira Kanayama dual exhibit at Paula Cooper Gallery. I REALLY dug the exhibition. Now we have part two.

* Jim Isermann @ Mary Boone Gallery / 541 W 24th St. The Palm Springs-based artist goes after the gallery's iconic trussed-roof ceiling and skylight, installing a modular drop-ceiling grid with tilting planes, transforming the entire space into a Op-Minimalist event throughout the day.

* Peter Hujar "Three Lives: Peter Hujar, Paul Thek & David Wojnarowicz" @ Matthew Marks Gallery / 523 W 24th St. Three decades of Hujar's photography, focusing on his most intimate self-portraits and portraits of lovers, artistic iconoclasts Thek and Wojnarowicz. This is a heavy downtown NYC show and highly recommended.

* Leslie Hewitt "Blue Skies, Warm Sunlight" @ D'Amelio Terras / 525 W 22nd St. Hewitt elicits a lot of emotion and meaning from her plainly displayed, subdued prints. Case in point w/ her inclusion in MoMA's new photography exhibition in 2009 and in "The Anxiety of Photography" (on view now at Arthouse in Austin TX). She focuses on the permeability of photos when time is a contributor, resting her prints against the walls and re-photographing ostensibly the same subject w/ minor (crucial!) alterations — in effect, "de-staticizing" it.

* "Moon Mirror Journey" (dir. Rebecca Horn, 2011) screening @ Rubin Museum of Art / 150 W 17th St (1 to 18th St, ACE to 14th St), 4p/$12. The first U.S. screening of international performance and installation artist Horn, a personal retrospective that premiered at the Berliner Festspiele in early 2011. Horn leads a Q&A w/ Rubin Museum's Chief Curator Jan Van Alphen after the screening. In conjunction w/ Horn's new exhibition "Ravens Gold Rush" at Sean Kelly Gallery (opens FRI, see above).

AUSTIN
* Bradney Evans @ Lora Reynolds Gallery / 360 Nueces St. Incredible trompe-l'oeil acrylic works on paper, which look like ripped brown shipping paper w/ rays of light piercing through the holes…only they're painted. Amazing. Plus Evans' video "Exposure", which expands upon the themes in the static works.

* Monster Show Six @ Domy Books / 913 E Cesar Chavez, 7-9p opening reception. The art bookstore and gallery's annual group show is a compendium of monster-related artwork, feat. local artists and more from the global scene. It's like they themed this just for me. W/ works by Tim Kerr, Miguel A. Aragon, Keenan Marshall Keller, Katy Horan, Dennis Hodges, Hiromi Ueyoshi and like literally 100 more.

* Zola Jesus (Cali) @ Mohawk / 912 Red River, 8p/$10. Zola Jesus (né Nika Roza Danilova) sings kinda like Siouxsie Sioux (though she had a childhood operatic background) and plays scintillating synth-rock that heavily echoes the late '80s. I honestly can't get enough of her. w/ Xanopticon

* Beirut (NM) @ Stubb's / 801 Red River, 7p/$35. Zach Condon and crew conjure musical odysseys. Beirut's new LP "The Rip Tide" continues their signature balkan-folk legacy, transporting us somewhere full of of wide-open spaces and brassy taglines ("Santa Fe"). and w/ Ramesh

* Wild Flag (OR/DC) @ La Zona Rosa / 612 W 4th St, 9p/$15. Indie supergroup Wild Flag is two-thirds of erstwhile Portland riot-grrrl legends Sleater-Kinney, and they inflect that garage-rock aesthetic w/ bluesy bliss. w/ Drew Grow and the Pastors' Wives

TOKYO
* Kae Higuchi @ Kido Press, Inc / 6F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Toei Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). The Sendai-based artist's second exhibition here, featuring soft-toned portraits in oil tempera and mixed media on canvas and paper.

* Kazumi Kurigami "Hi to Hone II" @ Taka Ishii Photography / 2F 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). Kurigami has some 4+ decades of independent, commercial photography behind him. This exhibition focuses on his Polaroid SX-70 and spans nearly his entire career, magnifying the emotive "unrealness" of the Polaroid.

* Plastic Girl in Closet + CAUCUS @ Koenji High / 4-30-1 Koenji-Minami, Suginami-ku (Chuo Line to Koenji Station), TKTK. A pairing of local indie awesomeness. Both dabble in dreampop, but PGIC lean closer to shoegaze while CAUCUS keep it peppy and punctuated, like best-of C86. LIST recommended!

* RECORIDE DJ set @ Nishi-azabu SPIN / B1F 1-12-5 Nishi-azabu (Hanzomon/Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station), 10p/1500 yen. I swear, the Karen O of Japanese electroclash, aka Tatta, fronts neon-streaked Tokyo outfit RECORIDE. Check their debut "Zekkyo Midare Rally Land". She's DJing this PARADE Halloween party w/ Mahiro Kazu (MIKU), Heigo Tani (Co-Fusion/WALLS) and more.

* NIGHTMARE Fetish Halloween @ Erebos / 2F 3-11-14 Akasaka, Minato-ku (Chiyoda Line to Akasaka Station), 9p/3500 yen (dresscode: 2500 yen). Tokyo might not boast a lot of Halloween-related decorations (jack o'lanterns, rubber bats, trick-or-treaters etc), but their adult parties are bar none awesome. As this is a fetish party, incorporating rubber/latex/leather into your nurse outfit is highly recommended, plus it's fun! feat. guest DJ's ME:CA (Torture Garden), Zil & more…and this is among the penultimate Erebos parties (the venue closes on 11/2).

* MONSTER! Halloween Bash 2011 @ ageHa / 2--2-10 Shin-Kiba, Koto-ku (JR/Tokyo Metro Yurakucho Line to Shin-Kiba Station), 9p/4000 yen (2000 yen in costume!). Mega major four-stage sexy blowout! Who said Tokyo doesn't do Halloween? They do it adult-style! I advise hanging at the main arena, which features DJs Taku Takahashi (m-flo), DEXPISTOLS and the ineffable AMIGA (of Electrical LOVERS), w/ entertainment by Cyberjapan Dancers. The Water stage hosts funky-ass electro and that sort of thing, incl. Naoki (who's been into hip-hop since he discovered the Wu back in 2000) and Kiraz (straight from Sweden). If Erebos's fetish party is too…edgy for your tastes (see above), this multilinear night might be just the thing.

SUNDAY
NYC
* Bianca Beck "Body" @ Rachel Uffner Gallery / 47 Orchard St. I've encountered this young NY-based artist's intriguing, very physical oeuvre (gestural, abraded abstract mixed-media paintings, small painted-wood sculpture) in group shows only, so I'm totally psyched to see a larger showing of it. In her solo debut here, she includes ripped canvases in "body colors" (makes me think of Ana Mendieta), small-scale sculpture and works that incorporate sculptural and 2D elements.

* Tommy Hartung "Anna" @ On Stellar Rays / 133 Orchard St. Bit of nostalgia here: my 1st (belated) gallery-viewing at On Stellar Rays (now one of my favorite LES spots) was Hartung's debut solo exhibition, the sublime and utterly beguiling "The Ascent of Man" video/installation, which recurred at MoMA PS1's "Greater NY". I've high expectations for Hartung, in this new stop-motion and historical verity video "Anna" (recalling Anna Karenina, naturally), with related and expanded sculptural and installation materials.

* DIVE + Darlings @ Bruar Falls / 245 Grand St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, G to Lorimer), 8p/$10. The final Bruar Falls show is stacked w/ new(ish) and stalwart local indie talent. Check LIST favorites, the jangle-pop songwriterly Darlings, and the psych-haze of DIVE (feat. Beach Fossils' lead guitarist Cole on frontman duties). w/ Shark? and Bright Lights

AUSTIN
* "Death Drug" (dir. Oscar Williams, 1986) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 7p. Never released on DVD (hell, never released in theaters!), the Philip Michael Thomas you never knew, but always wanted to know! The pre-"Miami Vice" Thomas, wigging out on PCP and hallucinating at home, in the streets, in the supermarket! With wraparound segments and a legit Philip Michael Thomas music video for the belated 1986 VHS release!

* CSS + MEN (Brooklyn) @ La Zona Rosa / 612 W 4th St, 8p/$20. I've been obsessed w/ Brazilian art-punk cuties CSS (and particularly fluorescent-bodysuited frontwoman Lovefoxxx) since…uh, 2005? Pairing them w/ Brooklyn art-punks MEN (aka Le Tigre's JD Samson et al) equals neon streamers, squiggly guitars and sociopolitical shout-alongs. w/ EMA

TOKYO
* about tess + 日の毬 @ Shinjuku Motion / 5F 2-45-2 Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit), 4p/2300 yen. I never thought I'd hear of a Tokyo band who creates bluesy space-rock like Manfred Man, yet that's totally what 日の毬 (Hi-no-Mari) do! They're backed by instrumentalists about tess (2x the guitars/bass/drums = 2x the awesome), mothercoat, LIST favorites Metro-Ongen + more.

MONDAY
NYC
* An Evening with Alejandro Jodorowsky @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave/53rd St, 6 to 51st St), 7p. Indecisive on Halloween? Allow me to suggest something dope: i.e. a discussion b/w visionary Chilean director Jodorowksy w/ Klaus Biesenbach (Director of MoMA PS1 and MoMA's chief curator-at-large) and Joshua Siegel (MoMA Dept of Film assoc. curator)…followed by Jodorowksy's classic "The Holy Mountain". Boys and girls, this trove of transgression is guaranteed to titillate and terrify you WAY MORE than the Village Halloween parade. And since it lets out before 10p, you'll still have time to head downtown. Costume optional.

* SBTRKT w/ AraabMUZIK @ Bowery Ballroom / 6 Delancey St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), 8p/SOLD OUT. Here's a Halloween bash for you: Providence-area DJ/producer araabMUZIK (whose debut studio LP "Electronic Dream" instills faith in original American-produced legit dance jams), followed by masked Brit wunderkind SBTRKT, maestro of dirty-ass minimalist basslines.

* Gary War + Noveller @ 285 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/TK. Electro-vox sensorial transcendants Prince Rama headline a night of higher sonic vibes. I strongly urge arriving early for Sarah "Noveller" Lipstate's guitar soundscapes, followed by Gary War's undersea garage-rock. w/ Amen Dunes

AUSTIN
* "Zombie" (dir. Lucio Fulci, 1979) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 7p. Straight outta Fantastic Fest 2011 is this revival screening of a flesh-eating Fulci classic, a gorgeous print that brings that eyeball splintering scene to even vivider life. What better way to begin your Halloween, Austin?

* "Monster Dog" (dir. Claudio Fragasso, 1984) @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 9:45p. This is my SECOND favorite Alice Cooper-starred horror film — a distant 2nd to John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" (ever seen somebody murder somebody with a broken bicycle?), but "Monster Dog" earns its stripes for its director (Claudio Fragasso, in his directorial debut, before the infamous "Troll 2") AND b/c Cooper sings in the film. Think "The Hound of the Baskervilles", with Alice Cooper….kinda.

TUESDAY
NYC
* Battles + Nisennenmondai (Tokyo) @ Webster Hall / 125 E 11th St (NRW/L/456 to Union Square), 8p/$25. Lemme tell you how hard this is going to rock, since I just saw 'em both in Austin. Battles as a trio have honed that multi-dimensional math-rock to expert (yet playful) precision. Stanier rocks hard as ever, and the lads threaded in a CHILDREN'S CHOIR in place of Tyondai's singsong on "Atlas". Major. Nisennenmondai hit you like a kraut-rock freight train, from Sayaka Himeno's piston drumming to the girls' guitar noise and funky bass throbs.

* SBTRKT @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/SOLD OUT. Here's a post-Halloween bash for you: Providence-area DJ/producer araabMUZIK (whose debut studio LP "Electronic Dream" instills faith in original American-produced legit dance jams), followed by masked Brit wunderkind SBTRKT, maestro of dirty-ass minimalist basslines. And dammit if you had tix to this AND the Bowery show last night.

* Nite Jewel (LA) @ Mercury Lounge / 217 E Houston St (F to 2nd Ave), 9:30p/$12. "Am I Real?" the simultaneously lullingly downtempo and liltingly sweet track (and 2010 EP title) by LA's Ramona Gonzalez, aka Nite Jewel, holds a special place in my heart. Quaff in her lo-fi disco and be charmed. Local duo Acrylics are a dreamy good opener.

AUSTIN
* "10 to Midnight" (dir. J. lee Thompson, 1983) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 9:45p. Main thing you need to know here: the good guy, the unstoppable, moustachioed force against a raving, nude maniac is Charles "No, you won't!" Bronson.

TOKYO
* SHE TALKS SILENCE + DJ Twee Grrrls Club @ Club Quattro / 5F 32-13 Udagawa-cho, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station, Hachiko Exit), 5:30p/2000 yen. Indie stalwart and singer-songwriter Minami Yamaguchi totally won me over as the dreamy outfit SHE TALKS SILENCe. Now a duo (w/ drummer Ami Kawai) w/ a fantastic, dense new EP "Some Small Gifts", they're better than ever. They play live tonight and contribute a DJ set alongside powerhouse riot-grrrl contingent Twee Grrrls Club.

* kiiiiiii + ザリガニ$ @ Fever / 1-1-14 Hanegi, Setagaya-ku (Odakyu Inokashira Line to Shindaita or Shimokitazawa Stations), 6p/2800 yen. Eri & Mizuki form chirpy bass-drum combo ザリガニ$ (uh…"crayfish dollar"?), and their new mini-album is called "AVOCADO". OK so we're definitely in Japan. They're joined by completely bonkers noisy art-rock duo kiiiiiii (UT the noisemaker and vocalist, Lakin the drummer and songwriter), and after a hiatus that began in late 2008 these girls are TOTALLY BACK. Plus thrashy dude duo 385 ("Sanhachigo")

CURRENT SHOWS
* El Anatsui "When I Last Wrote to You about Africa" @ Blanton Museum of Art / UT Austin campus, MLK at Congress. Anatsui is the first exhibition I attended at Blanton (hell, I'd been away from Austin for seven years — this place didn't even exist last time I was in town). To say I'd been looking forward to the Ghanaian-born artist's retrospective would be a grave understatement. His solo shows and group exhibitions in NYC (at Jack Shainman, plus his inclusion in international art fairs) tended to be show-stoppers, wowing everyone and usurping attention from any other artwork in the room. I mean…those intricate, shimmering tarps of thousands of discarded Nigerian liquor bottle tops… I dug Anatsui's retrospective on many levels, aesthetic being one of them, but to see his early relief carvings, drawings and paintings alongside his famed wall sculptures was a treat. Expansive floor sculptures like "Peak Project" (1999), a field of undulating Peak Milk lids, and "Akua's Surviving Children" (1996), an array of roughly hewn wood figures with ritually scorched "heads" that emulate Africans in the Danish slave trade and first shown in Copenhagen's African international exhibition in '96 — they're dope and they work well in concert w/ Anatsui's more fixated luminous wall sculptures, like the massive "Stressed World" (2011, bearing a large central "netted" section alongside panes of green, red, yellow and black) and the gold "Oasis" (2008). Earlier instances of this patterning are evident in carved and painted wood reliefs like "Coins on Grandma's Cloth" (1992, punctuated with painted striped diagonals); the almost Cubist "Club Windows" (2002); and the show's titular work "When I Last Wrote to You about Africa…" (1986), a scroll-like wood relief with ideogram 'Adinkras' carved into it. The exhibition itself is the largest number of Anatsui works ever assembled in the U.S.

* "Something Happened Here", curated by Jennie Lamensdorf @ Champion / 800 Brazos St. An inspired dialogue b/w two NY-based artists, Yadir Quintana and Matthew Schenning, who simultaneously make their Texas debuts in this exhibition. And if you've not seen 'em before, this is an incredible opportunity, and an expert pairing by Lamensdorf (Arthouse's Curatorial Assistant and Exhibitions Coordinator). Mark-making and durational qualities are in effect here, most immediately in Quintana's multipanel silver leaf "Portraits"(channelling Rudolf Stingel's studio floor works, yet Quintana's come off far more personal in their clever remnants of the "sitter"), which are left unsealed so the metal gets all wacky and patina'ed over the months and years. Though a closer look at Schenning's series "Some Things Will Fade" — painted walls either added to or manipulated on small-scale photographs of Porto, Portugal residences — finds an intriguing instance of aging in effect: the C-prints will degrade very differently from the layered acrylic paint, perhaps making what's real and what's Schenning's touch more apparent. For now, though, the tromp l'oeil on some of these is quite pronounced. Switching scales and disciplines, Quintana's much smaller "Yadir" set echo other works (quite a bit of his work comes from sculpture) in their surface residues, while Schenning's blow-ups of wheel-streaked walls under the Brooklyn Bridge remind of his background as a skateboarder. Verdict: must-see.

* Margaret Meehan "Hystrionics and The Forgotten Arm" @ Women & Their Work / 1710 Lavaca St. The Austin-based artist moves deftly between photography, sculpture, mixed-media drawing and installation (hell, even SOUND installation) — much like a boxer in the ring, which is just one of the themes of her stunning solo exhibition at the gallery. Another is the "other", blending the Circassian lass with the albino oddity and the hypertrichotic, bloodied and bruised in her whiter-than-white apparel as she feints, dodges and connects with the viewer. Some of this reminded me (on surface level) w/ Ellen Gallagher's maskings and media treatments of women, but the crushed glass glitter (from small-scale prints like "The Haymaker (Glitter)" to the five-row vintage cabinet cards of "The Barnburners"), at times like Glenn Ligon's use of coal-dust, feels very much Meehan's own. That aforementioned sound installation is "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Nina Simone)", a dreamy collab w/ Austin black metal duo Odessa (aka Mark Garcia and Landon O'Brien) that sneaks up on you as it cycles like every 10 minutes, filling the gallery with walls of guitars and a shouting voice (Meehan's?). It pairs well w/ the installation across from the speakers, "Glass Jaw", a punching bag enclosed within shimmering black glitter.

CLOSING SOON
* "An Invitation to the Delight in the Senses vol 2" @ MA2 Gallery / 3-3-8 Ebisu, Shibuya-ku (Yamanote Line to Ebisu Station). MA2 presents "The Quiet Room", featuring contemplative works and objects by Berndt Friberg, Tamotsu Fujii, Akihiro Higuchi, Yasuyoshi Botan, Nobuaki Onishi, Masaaki Kawaguchi, Fumiyuki Okubo and Eri Dewa. (ENDS FRI)

NYC
* Pieter Hugo "Permanent Error" @ Yossi Milo Gallery / 525 W 25th St. BIG Hugo fan here. If you've caught his previous photo exhibitions at the gallery (the acclaimed 2007 series "The Hyena & Other Men" and 2009's "Nollywood"), you know his moody, cinematic African settings grip you in. His latest focuses on a massive technological west dump on the outskirts of Ghana's capital, playing on the sad contrast that, rather than bridging the digital divide, this dystopian array of discarded electronics is actually physically harming the nearby residents.

* Melissa Meyer @ Lennon, Weinberg Inc / 514 W 25th St. I dig Meyer's style of lyrical abstraction, particularly when she allows wetly colorful bursts of color to either dominate the canvas or minimize their respective flows, permitting a bit of soft breathing room in all the visuals. Her "9th Avenue Quartet" miniseries looks particularly promising.

* Meredyth Sparks "Striped Bare, Even and Again" @ Elizabeth Dee / 545 W 20th St. The Brooklyn-based artist follows her exhibition at VeneKlasen/Werner in Berlin with more augmented digital prints on canvas, lacing them with stitching and patterned fabric, plus several sculptural works that comment on figures and events from the early 20th century.

* Zhang Enli @ Hauser & Wirth / 32 E 69th St. The gallery marks Zhang's debut solo exhibition in the U.S. with some 20 extraordinarily "ordinary" paintings, channeling a bit of Giorgio Morandi's spare still-lifes (and even Eva Hesse's particularly organic shapes) and then extinguishing some of the realism by leaving his orthogonal grids visible beneath the paint.

* Susan Rothenberg @ Sperone Westwater / 257 Bowery. Interesting point: Rothenberg's first solo exhibition was at the iconic 112 Greene St co-op back in 1975, and her large-scale, minimalist renderings of horses already assured her as a powerful artist of her generation. Now nearly 40 years have past, and she's still in top form, presenting 13 new paintings in this exhibition, revealing ravens, doves and ghostly heads.

* Agnes Martin "The '80s: Grey Paintings" @ The Pace Gallery / 534 W 25th St. Pace marks the centennial of the seminal southwest artist's birth with an important grouping of unusually tactile, nearly monochromatic grey paintings, a departure from her subtle color washes that represented the greater part of her career.

* Richard Aldrich "Once I Was" @ Bortolami Gallery / 520 W 20th St. Aldrich's mostly abstract, obliquely figurative paintings are…damningly challenging, but they keep you looking and earnestly unearthing just what he's accomplished. Like for instance his contribution to "Le Tableau", Joe Fyfe's curated surface abstraction exhibition at Cheim & Read in 2009, was "Untitled (Grey Corner Painting)", this ghostly white and faintly smeared taupe (blood?) painting accented by an early Brice Marden-styled gray wax triangle in one corner. Other works barely manifest faces, Paul Klee-like objects, and letters as he experiments.

* Tabaimo @ James Cohan Gallery / 533 W 26th St. I've been a major Tabaimo fan since I caught her debut "Hanabi-ra" video animation installation in her gallery debut back in…2005? She represented Japan at the 54th Venice Biennale this summer and returns to James Cohan in her third solo outing, presenting "BLOW" and "danDAN" (both of which premiered at Tabaimo's 2009 solo exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art). "BLOW" is particularly immersive, projecting its watery world as a curved ramp that you can walk through. Highly recommended!

TOKYO
* Hideki Kuwajima "TTL" @ Radium / 2-5-17 Bakurocho, Chuo-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Bakurocho Station). The Osaka-based artist eschews sculpture for camera obscura, presenting new works "Through The Lens" that focus on the time spent developing them and their transition from three dimensions to two. (ENDS SAT)

NYC
* Pamela Rosenkranz + Nicholas Gambaroff "This is Not My Color/The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" @ Swiss Institute / 18 Wooster St. An overdue NY exhibition for the cross-media artists, plus the inaugural show at this gallery space. I'm intrigued by Gambaroff's abstract paintings and "anti-collages" (so appropriately dubbed by Art Fag City, to Gambaroff's inclusion at this year's Independent Art Fair), and reviled — in a good way! — by Rosenkranz's skintone liquids and smeared acrylic on stretched, emergency blanket foil (second skin, anyone?).

AUSTIN
* "Pattern Plan" @ Grayduck Gallery / 608 W Monroe Dr. Our relationship with nature is the focus here, varyingly teased out with crafty mock-ups of molecules and what looked to me like Claes Oldenburg-sized Froot Loops (Dameon Lester, moulding these toruses from the Austin-American Statesman and neon-colored paper); renditions of undersea life and slime molds painted on cut and shaped canvas (L. Renee Nunez); and these awesomely intricate, subtle circles and crescents comprised of acrylic mixed with powdered mica, then layered like minuscule bubbles one by one onto the paper (Jessica McCambly). In particular, McCambly's rigorous process and sublime results clinches the exhibition's fusion — but you've got to spend some time with these delicate works and let them soak in. Likewise, there was an intriguing article in the NYTimes on Oct 3 entitled "Can Answers to Evolution Be Found in Slime?", i.e. slime molds, calling them "ancient, alien and sophisticated", and it's of note that Nunez singles them out as subject matter. (ENDS SUN)

* Mami Tanida @ INAX Gallery / 2F 3-6-18 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Yurakucho Station). A site-specific ceramic installation of a horizontal row of urns, ceramic boards, fragments and dirt coated with a blue glaze. (ENDS TUES)

fee's LIST (through 10/25)

This LIST is CMJ-heavy! Here's the "official" (if not totally complete) schedule.

WEDNESDAY
NYC
* MY CMJ PICK: Domino Records/Sterogum/Software Party @ 285 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$10. Pairing Brooklyn's entrancing Twin Sister, who mix disco, indie-folk and balladry like it's second nature, w/ Dirty Projectors' multi-instrumentalist/chanteuse Angel Deradoorian just literally SOUNDS sweet. Add hypnotic DJ sets by Geologist and Deakin (aka 1/2 of Animal Collective) and it's gonna be a heady night of sonic love. w/ Oneohtrix Point Never!!!

* CMJ: Secretly Canadian/Dead Oceans/Jagjaguawar Showcase @ Union Pool / 484 Union Ave, Williamsburg (L/G to Lorimer), 7:30p/$15. Advise you to show early for this powerhouse showcase, catching Manchester-channelling Brooklyn trip-pop duo EXITMUSIC. Stay for local noise-rock champs Parts & Labor, ushering in the first of a series of full-album performances, leading up to their 10th anniversary bash next Feb. They tackle 2008's "Receivers" tonight (check BJ's emotive "Nowheres Nigh"). w/ the epic NY-based rockers A Place to Bury Strangers headlining the whole thing.

* CMJ: Charlene Kaye & the Brilliant Eyes @ Rockwood Music Hall / 184 Allen St (F to 2nd Ave), 9p/FREE. This is ineffable local chanteuse/bandleader Charlene Kaye's ONLY CMJ show before she embarks on a nationwide tour, and she doesn't return for over a month (at the much much larger Irving Plaza). For those who like the intimacy of Rockwood, to be enveloped in Kaye's melodies, this one's unmissable.

* CMJ: M'Lady Records Showcase @ Death By Audio / 49 S 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 7p, $10. Women rock hard. Cue Talk Normal, the angular duo singlehandedly bringing No Wave to a new generation, plus W. Coast lo-fi rockers Grass Widow and the percussive one-two punch of Coasting.

* CMJ: Terror-Bird Showcase @ Cake Shop / 152 Ludlow St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), noon-7p/FREE. My advice? If you've got the time, begin at this noisy, free indie-rock showcase at Cake Shop, w/ Roanoke psych-punk darlings Eternal Summers, Cleveland frenzy Cloud Nothings, local charmers Widowspeak (a GREAT addition to lo-fi label Captured Tracks), Ghostly's producer Mux Mool and more.

* CMJ: Indigenous/Spaceland Showcase @ Cake Shop / 152 Ludlow St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), 8p/$12. And hell, you just might want to stick around Cake Shop, particularly when W. Coast noise-rockers Weekend unleash torrents of sweet, sweet sonics and chugalug rhythm. They're joined by LA rockers Bleached, aka the Clavin sisters of LA punks Mika Miko. w/ Fidlar (LA surf punks),

* CMJ: Oven Fresh Music/Tinderbox Arts/Jingle Punks showcase @ Littlefield / 622 Degraw St, Park Slope (D/NR to Union St), 7p/$6. feat. Miracles of Modern Science (chamber-rock done right), Zambri (local "apocalyptic pop"), Alyson Greenfield (singer/songwriter and founder of the Tinderbox Music Festival), Seryn (a creatively percussive Denton TX baroque-pop ensemble)…and open bar.

* CMJ: FatCat Showcase @ Mercury Lounge / 217 E Houston St (F to Houston), 6:30p/$12. Main draw for me is Nina Nastasia, the ineffable local singer-songwriter whose closing verse on "The Matter (Of Our Discussion)" on Boom Bip's LP "Blue Eyed in the Red Room" (back in 2005!) made me swoon, twice. Her latest LP "Outlaster" (produced by Steve Albini) is pretty special, too.

* CMJ: AM Only Showcase @ DROM / 85 Ave A (F to 2nd Ave, L to 1st Ave), 8p/$5. Maybe you want to dance?? Say no more: this showcase goes late, topped off by Providence-area DJ/producer araabMUZIK (whose debut studio LP "Electronic Dream" instills faith in original American-produced legit dance jams). Plus: Ghostly's Mux-Mool, Dublin indie electronic quartet Codes!

AUSTIN
* "Kill & Kill Again" (dir. Ivan Hall, 1979) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 9:45p. Number one reason you need to see this silly indie action film is it's the 1st live-action instance of "bullet-time" FX, created in-camera w/ no post effects. That and unstoppable Steve Chase kicking ass and delivering verbal zingers.

THURSDAY
NYC
* Calder: 1941 @ The Pace Gallery / 32 E 57th St. Fifteen mobiles and standing mobiles from the seminal kinetic sculptor (including the first public presentation of the monumental "Tree" since Calder's MoMA retrospective in 1943), which promises to be the first of a series of Pace-presented historical exhibitions on the artist.

* Rashaad Newsome "Herald" @ Marlborough Chelsea / 545 W 25th St. Newsome's debut solo exhibition at the gallery includes a new series of his meticulous, signature collages in customized antique frames, plus videos and a kingly installation. Check back for his gallery performance on NOV 2, in conjunction with Performa 11.

* Taylor Mead "Aphorisms, from 'On Amphetamine and In Europe'" @ Half Gallery / 208 Forsyth St. Mead is a living legend, harnessing Beat sensibility in cinema (Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman called him "the first underground movie star"), beloved by NYC's underground art scene, and a sharp Bowery Poetry Club performer. This exhibition takes highlights from his '68 stream-of-consciousness, short-form poetry text.

* Boo Ritson "All Aboard" @ BravinLee Programs / 526 W 26th St #211. Boo Ritson paints people — like actually paints them, in new-season Jil Sander, then photographs them, for this new exhibition. No really, check her interview in the debut issue of GARAGE.

* Bill Jacobson "Into the Loving Nowhere (1989 till now)" @ Julie Saul Gallery / 535 W 22nd St. As the title precludes, the gallery hosts a survey of Jacobson's soft-focus (yet always striking) oeuvre, from "Interim Portraits" created in the height of the NY AIDS crisis to "Some Planes"'s desert landscapes and the new "Place (Series)" of minimal still-lives.

* "Accidental Thoughts and Metaphors" @ Ana Cristea Gallery / 521 W 26th St. I quite like this gallery's take on group shows and anticipate this coupling of four Belgian artists and their divergent acts with traditional media (clay, canvas, paper). I'm particularly drawn to the youngest, Michiel Ceulers, and his process driven abstraction, though Ellen de Meutter's emotive, non-narrative paintings seem quite deep.

* "Soda Pop: Effervescence and Abstraction" @ Number 35 / 141 Attorney St. Cindy Rucker and Brad Silk co-curated this sparkling grouping of color, self vs. society and (as the title hints) "pop" culture. Feat. cross-medium works by Charles Dunn (OH), Nicole Poko (NJ), Brendan Smith (CT) and Jeremiah Teipen (IN).

* Trevor Guthrie "Another Sputnik Moment, Please" @ Claire Oliver / 513 W 26th St. Despite his near-ubiquity (at least on both coasts) Robert Longo does NOT claim full title to "hyper-realist charcoal drawings". Consider Guthrie, whose large-scale works totally echo b&w prints and focus on familiar historic and contemporary pop culture imagery.

* David Bates @ Betty Cuningham Gallery / 541 W 25th St. Pretty cool: this is Bates' debut w/ the gallery, feat. a mix of angularly figurative (self) portraits and still-lives, both in oils and dramatic mixed-media collages.

* Cibo Matto w/ Yu Sakai @ Japan Society / 333 E 47th St (E/M to Lexington/53rd St, 6 to 51st St), 8p/$25. CMJ what?? If you're just hankering for something beyond the supremely dope kinda indie (kinda not) music fest sweeping the boroughs, this double-dose of Japanese irreverence is just the ticket. That consummate NYC collage-rockers Cibo Matto have reunited for this special occasion is just…they're more NY to me than so many NY-based non-Japanese bands (check "Stereo Type A"). Guest-starring keyboardist/songwriter Yu Sakai, straight from Tokyo, whose melting-pot melodies prove a modish mashup match.

* MY CMJ PICK: SmartLounge @ Thompson LES / 190 Allen St (F to 2nd Ave), 1p/RSVP via app: http://www.purevolume.com/smartlounge. Yes indeed, your RSVP to this two-day event (actually began WED but I like today's lineup better) is via DLing an app (available on both iPhone and the Android Market). But after that bit of technology? Total awesomeness. W. Coast retro-rockers Dum Dum Girls perform an acoustic duet (Dee Dee and Jules), plus that Providence RI producer araabMUZIK (so hot right now), and DJ sets by uber-fierce Nancy Whang and the mighty Talib Kweli (maybe he'll throw in a verse or three?).

* CMJ: Tom Tom Magazine festival @ The Woods / 48 S 4th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 4p/$5. Fierce, skillful female drumming is a prereq for Tom Tom, and it's in full force at this loaded showcase. Think The Suzan, your ticket to the pop tropics via Tokyo and the LES. Add Coasting (aka guitarist/singer Madison Farmer, formerly of Dream Diary, and drummer/vocalist Fiona Campbell, also in Vivian Girls!) and Brooklyn's tough-as-nails Nard Nips, plus Pearl and the Beard and Satellite Sky (LA). Replenish at that patio taco truck in b/w sets.

* CMJ: Sub Pop/Hardly Art present Lamefest II: Eclectic Boogaloo @ Mercury Lounge / 217 E Houston St (F to 2nd Ave), 6:30p/SOLD OUT. Count yourselves lucky if you got in: W. Coast garage-rock lovelies Dum Dum Girls were the once-secret headliner to this very tight night of genre-pushing rock. Preceding them is J. Mascis (MR. Dinosaur Jr), Toronto dream-pop duo Memoryhouse, Floridian swamp-rockers Jacuzzi Boys and local lo-fi punks Xray Eyeballs!

* CMJ: WNYU showcase @ Littlefield / 622 Degraw St, Park Slope (D/NR to Union St), 7p/$10. This is (I think?) the superlative Frankie Rose's ONLY CMJ show…being enveloped in her dreamy voice and garage-rock sonics is a truly transcendent experience, so go! Plus, Sarah Lipstate's guitar-drone glory Noveller, No Wave duo Talk Normal, the Lynch-ian Widowspeak…hell, the entire lineup is dope.

* CMJ: S!CK showcase @ Saint Vitus / 1120 Manhattan Ave, Greenpoint (G to Greenpoint, 7 to Vernon Blvd), 10p/$15. Make this late-night cold tunes party your final destination. Reward: local coldwave duo White Ring elicit enchantment, as do their deep brethren Blissed Out. Plus more angular offerings from LA duo Tearist and the U.S. debut of Mexico City producer Ritualz.

* Knyfe Hyts @ Secret Project Robot / 389 Melrose St, Bushwick (L to Jefferson), 9p. Ahead of Brooklyn's awesome DIY A/V venue's inaugural bash at its new location is a fitting early show by stalwart local No Wavers Knyfe Hyts, and the 11-20's tape release party. This has nothing to do with CMJ…and that's OK!

AUSTIN
* "Martha Marcy May Marlene" (dir. Sean Durkin, 2011) screening @ Paramount Theatre / 713 Congress Ave, 9:45p. Part of Austin Film Fest! Durkin's debut in the four M's wowed Sundance in its potent psychological-thriller narrative, starring Elizabeth Olsen in "titular" role reunited with her family after fleeing a charismatic cult. My most anticipated film of the fall outside the genre spectrum. And it would totally ROCK if I can sneak into this screening, a full day ahead of its proper release in NYC.

* Planets + Foreign Mothers @ Beerland / 711 Red River, 9p. "Young. Primal. Feminine. Out of this world," sez the Austin Chronicle of local rawk quartet Planets. Check shout-along "IT'S NOT 1977" off their self-titled EP for evidence! The kickoff to their midwest tour begins here, supported tonight by awesome Austin riot-grrrls Foreign Mothers.

TOKYO
* Hystoic Vein @ LUSH / B1F 1-10-7 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku (JR Lines etc to Shibuya Station), 7p/2300 yen. All-girl post-punk/glam-rock quartet from Hyogo Pref, who rocked the skulls of 2011 SXSW'ers. They split an east-west Japan tour tonight w/ BLONDnewHALF and いったんぶ.

FRIDAY
NYC
* Vasily Kandinsky "Painting With White Border" @ Guggenheim / 1071 Fifth Ave (456 to 86th St). A tiny Kandinsky exhibition, whose centerpiece titular work was inspired by a trip he took to Moscow in fall 1912. Considering international trickster Maurizio Cattelan has an absolutely BONKERS "retrospective" descending from the rotunda in a few weeks, this focused suite of related works on paper and watercolors should be an essential visual palate cleanser.

* Jacob Feige "From the Bellona Museum of Natural History" @ Lombard-Freid Projects / 518 W 19th St. A new series of paintings, drawings and sound-sculptures (w/ a limited LP soundtrack release and performance w/ collaborator Keith Freund at the opening reception, seriously!) inspired by the murals of paleontological reconstruction artist Charles R. Knight and the '74 sci-fi best-seller "Dhalgren" by Samuel Delaney.

* "Martha Marcy May Marlene" (dir. Sean Durkin, 2011) @ Angelika NY / 18 W Houston St (BDFM to Broadway/Lafayette). Durkin's debut in the four M's wowed Sundance in its potent psychological-thriller narrative, starring Elizabeth Olsen in "titular" role reunited with her family after fleeing a charismatic cult. My most anticipated film of the fall outside the genre spectrum.

* "Strange Circus" (dir. Sion Sono, 2005) screening @ Museum of Arts & Design / 2 Columbus Circle (AC/BD to 59th St/Columbus Circle), 7p. Among Sono's most difficult family dramas, prominent in rape (and incest), suicide, murder and shocking Grand Guignol nightmares that bend everything we've just seen into fractured realities.

* CMJ; Dum Dum Girls + Crocodiles @ Bowery Ballroom / 6 Delancey St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), 7p/SOLD OUT. See my comments on Dum Dum Girls under THU (specifically "lucky"). I love 'em at Mercury Lounge and love 'em even more here, a much belated coupling w/ acclaimed W. Coast noise-rockers — feat. Dee Dee's husband Brandon Welchez — Crocodiles. W/ Woodsist signees Royal Baths (described as Velvet Underground down a rabbit hole) and Popstrangers

* MY CMJ PICK: BrooklynVegan official showcase @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 6p/$15. Take my word: you can trust you'll have a dope time at a BV CMJ showcase. Case in point here, headlined by Calgary's dreamy art-rock group BRAIDS (plus frontwoman Raphaelle Standell-Preston's gossamer side project Blue Hawaii) and W. Coast shoegazers Weekend! w/ Active Child

* CMJ: En Vogue @ B.B. King Blues Club / 237 W 42nd St (ACE/NR/123 to 42nd St/Times Square), 6p/$40. I try to mix up my CMJ showcases w/ baller (i.e. $15+/ticket) and budget (<$15 or FREE/ultra-indie stuff). But I gotta make exception here. This is the ORIGINAL En Vogue — Cindy, Dawn (DAMN!!!), Terry (DAMN!) and Maxine — reunited, and when these "Funky Divas" command the stage, you'll see AND hear what I mean. And on that Dawn Robinson thing…I loved Lucy Pearl, the circa '00 R&B supergroup feat. her, Raphael Saadiq and Ali from A Tribe Called Quest. Hot stuff.

* CMJ: Hardly Art/WUSB party @ Death By Audio / 49 S 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 7p/$10. I hope you like to sweat! This is the antithesis of the BV party (see above) but that's dope, different strokes and whatnot. You ask me, following up Jackson Heights' renegade garage-rockers The Beets w/ Floridian swamp punks Jacuzzi Boys is a recipe for stage-diving, psychedelic awesomeness. Maybe you'll get lucky tonight, too. w/, uh, Acid Baby Jesus (from Greece!) and Colleen Green (LA).

* CMJ: Sacred Bones presents @ Saint Vitus / 1120 Manhattan Ave, Greenpoint (G to Greenpoint, 7 to Vernon Blvd), 8p/$8. Local experimental rock trio Psychic Ills' LP release party ("Hazed Dream", heavy stuff!) on Sacred Bones Records, plus crackling electro outfit Led Er Est, submerged lo-fi rockers Gary War & Amen Dunes.

AUSTIN
* "The Rum Diary" (dir. Bruce Robinson, 2011) screening @ Paramount Theatre / 713 Congress Ave, 7p. Part of the Austin Film Fest! Johnny Depp channels Paul Kemp in this filmic adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's debut novel, down and out in Eisenhower-era America and lolling about San Juan w/ Aaron "Sanderson" Eckhart and pretty fiancé Amber "Chenault" Heard.

* Battles + Nisennenmondai @ Emo’s East / 2015 E. Riverside Dr, 9p/$20. I've been hotly anticipating this team-up for a good long while, a rhythmic square-off b/w Battles' man-machine John Stanier and Nisennenmondai's thrash goddess Sayaka Himeno. This is the latter's first U.S. showing in like SIX years: the ladies have honed their hypnotic math-rock sets to almost ESP precision — but Himeno keeps it kinetic and improvisational. Plus, this is my 1st Battles show post-Tyondai. Stoked!

* The Naked and Famous @ La Zona Rosa / 612 W 4th St, 8p/SOLD OUT. I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to miss these electro-pop Kiwi cuties in favor of Nisennenmondai (see above), but that's OK. Those of you lucky ticketholders, soak it up, sweat it out, and lose your minds when Alisa slays into "Punching in a Dream". w/ White Arrows

* Talib Kweli @ Mohawk / 912 Red River, 8p/$25. Brooklyn son and lithe lyricist Talib Kweli and his band. As much as I rep 3rd Coast hip-hop, you can't mess w/ the true classics, and case in point w/ this cerebral poet. I don't just mean his acclaimed duet w/ the mighty Mos Def as Black Star. I'm talking mid '90s w/ DJ Hi-Tek as Reflection Eternal (Spotify "2000 Season" and see what I mean). Austin get ready.

* Imperative Reaction (LA) + God Module (Seattle) @ Elysium / 705 Red River, 9p/$15. LA electro-bitey outfit Imperative Reaction instrumentalist Clint Carney w/ W. Coast spooky tech-dance band God Module. And I just found out "God Mod" have a new album, "Seance" (the interplay b/w coed vocalists on "Devil's Night" is pretty dope). w/ System Syn

TOKYO
* Kanako Ohya "Per Person" @ hpgrp Tokyo / B1F 5-1-15 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku (Chiyoda/Hanzomon/Ginza Lines to Omotesando Station). Ohya, recipient of the 2008 Gunma Youth Biennale Award, targets our emotions in vividly conceived figures, layered in warm colors and airbrush on paper.

* unkie @ Club Que / B2F 2-5-2 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku (Inokashira Line to Shimokitazawa Station), 7p/3000 yen. Night #1 of unkie's — this ferocious instrumental post-rock trio — third LP "Devil's Ride" release party, which accurately sums up an unkie set.

* "Shimokita Kitchen" showcase @ Shimokitazawa Basement Bar / B1F 5-18-1 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku (Inokashira Line to Shimokitazawa Station, South Exit), 7p/2500 yen. Hyogo Pref. post-punks BLONDnewHALF and Hystoic Vein continue their east-west tour tonight, in this dope Kita venue. w/ いったんぶ

SATURDAY
NYC
* Urs Fischer + Cassandra Macleod @ Gavin Brown's Enterprise / 620 Greenwich St. The Swiss cross-media trickster (that's Fischer) and American artist GF Macleod don't so much collaborate here as offer opposing, if lovingly complimentary, sides of their creative relationship. From Macleod, new canvases showing lyrical abstraction. From Fischer, tables covered in naughty photocollages. Yes.

* Josh Keyes + AJ Fosik @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery / 529 W 20th St, 9th Fl. Two VERY big deals here: this is the 2nd solo gallery exhibition by Portland-based Keyes, whose meditative paintings of animals and ecosystems in hybrid disarray grip you tight 'round the throat. The other is Fosik — who you might know for designing Atlanta avant-metal band Mastodon's latest eye-popping LP cover of a wood-carved elk hyper-morph. He uses exclusively locally-sourced, sustainably grown Oregonian lumber and USA-made parts in his incredible anthropomorphized sculptures.

* "Goodbye First Love" (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve, 2011) screening @ BAM / 30 Lafayette Ave, Ft Greene (23/45 to Nevins ST, C to Lafayette Ave), 3p. The latest from the talented (and young — like my age young) French director, a bittersweet tale of teenage love, caught my attention b/c the lead Lola Créton played the strong Marie-Catherine in Catherine Breillat's potent "Barbe Bleue". Also: this is a major sneak preview, as the film won't open here until DEC.

* "Sleeping Beauty" (dir. Julia Leigh, 2011) screening @ BAM / 30 Lafayette Ave, Ft Greene (23/45 to Nevins ST, C to Lafayette Ave), 9p. The Australian novelist's erotic debut feature reflects the titular fairytale in name only (though admittedly I'm more familiar w/ the Disney adaptation than the original Brothers Grimm…which could be totally sinister). In Leigh's, Emily Browning is a uni student who performs the role of "sleeping beauty" to old suitors. This is the film's U.S. debut after playing Cannes.

* CSS + MEN @ Webster Hall / 125 E 11th St (NR/L/456 to Union Square), 6p/$25. If you're a baller and you love electroclash, it's worth taking a (quick) breather from CMJ and hitting big-ass Webster Hall. I've been into Brazilian art-pop cuties CSS (and specifically frontwoman LOVEFOXXX) since…2003? JD Samson's Brooklyn-based art/performance collective MEN turn the temperature up. w/ EMA

* MY CMJ PICK: Duckdown vs. Blacksmith Showcase @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/$30. Legendary local hip-hop from start to finish! The opportunity to see lyricist Pharoahe Monch live (half venomous dictionary, half nailgun verseman) is crucial. Add to it Buckshot (1/3 of legendary NY group Black Moon — takes me back to '97!!), fiercest lyricist Jean Grae, seminal NY duo Smif N Wessun AND the mighty Brooklyn son Talib Kweli… That's some knowledge for you.

* CMJ: Gang Gang Dance + Zomby @ Bowery Ballroom / 6 Delancey St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), 7p/$20. You want to dance? Check it: local deconstructionist electro-rock ensemble ne plus ultra Gang Gang Dance AND UK dustup mystery-man Zomby (still incredibly new to these shores). Don't forget to hydrate.

* CMJ: Village Voice/Panache Showcase @ Cake Shop / 152 Ludlow St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), noon/FREE. An unmissable (and free, bonkers!) day show, ruled by Nashville punks Turbo Fruits and PUJOL (plus their kindred, ahem, Diarrhea Planet) and feat. ex-Mika Miko sisters Bleached. w/ LA's Colleen Green

* CMJ: Panache/Bruise Cruise Showcase @ Public Assembly / 70 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 7:30p/$12. A two-stage setup of perspiration-inducing punk rock. My course of action? Begin w/ the front room (Panache stage) for Bleached (Mika Miko's Clavin sisters) and Nashville country-rockers PUJOL, then dash to the smaller, sweatier back room (Bruise Cruise stage) for Jacuzzi Boys and Nashville charismatics Turbo Fruits, THEN back to the main stage for penultimate Japanese garage-rockers Shonen Knife!

* Altered Zones @ New Museum / 235 Bowery (F to 2nd Ave, BD to Grand St), 7:30p/$25. Presented by Pitchfork! Yeah, so here's the deal: Pitchfork did this CMJ-unrelated thing last year (#offline), which was at Brooklyn Bowl and pretty dope (hell, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart played a set!). So despite the awesome inundation of CMJ showcases, I've a good inclination this Pitchfork-presented bash is a good thing, too. They're taking on home-recorded sounds and the "underground" scene, but the big sonics erupting in the museum tonight might prove otherwise! Feat. Xeno & Oaklander (awesome local coldwave champs, w/ a dope brand-new album "Sets & Lights"), Providence's araabMUZIK (he's everywhere!), Atlas Sound (aka Bradford "Deerhunter" Cox…just added!), Teengirl Fantasy, Grimes, Light Asylum, Prince Rama annnnnd more!

AUSTIN
* "Queer State(s): A Symposium" @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity, Rm. 1.102, 9:30a-5p/FREE. UT Austin's Gender and Sexuality Center and The Queer Students Alliance co-present this daylong conference, intrinsically linked to the titular VAC exhibition and feat. speakers incl. Risa Puleo (Asst. Curator of Contemporary Art at Blanton Museum, on "The F Word: Queering Formalism"); Ixchel Rosal (Dir. of Gender and Sexuality Center, co-presenting "The State of LGBTQ Affairs at UT" w/ Ryan Miller); and Jonathan D. Katz (Dir. of Doctoral Program in Visual Studies at University of Buffalo and co-founder of Queer Nation, on "Dada's Mama: Richard Hamilton's Queer Art") and many more.
+ Plus! The symposium is followed by a reception and book signing by "Queer State(s)" artist Adam Schecter, behind the limited edition book "Last Men" (co-published by NY gallery Eleven Rivington and the VAC), held at Domy Books / 913 E Cesar Chavez, from 5:30-7:30p

* CATA-LAUNCH! @ 916 Springdale Road, 6-11p/RSVP. An invite-only launch party and benefit celebrating the 2011 East Austin Studio Tour (NOV 12-20), feat. a group show preview of next month's tour, plus Industry Screenprint "live screenprinting" and lotsa booze. How do you attend? Follow that RSVP link, donate 20$ and you're guaranteed the 2011 E.A.S.T. catalogue plus knowing that you are contributing toward the tour itself and the Austin art community.

* The Drums (Brooklyn) @ The Parish / 214 E 6th St, 8p/$16. These jitterbug Brooklyn indie-rockers are on a nationwide tour that stretches even to the Hill Country. Good thing: b/c Austin can handle their kinetic, New Wave-ish, Brit-rocking enthusiasm. w/ io Echo

* Pierced Arrows @ Emo's / 603 Red River, 9p/$10. THIS is rock 'n roll! Consider Fred Cole, four decades of bluesy licks culminating in some 20 years as Portland's Dead Moon, alongside his wife Toody. And when Dead Moon deliquesced in 2006, the Coles formed garage-rock trio Pierced Arrows, lean and mean and riff-ready. w/ Don't

TOKYO
* Naomi Okubo "It seems like a dream" @ Gallery MOMO / 2F 6-2-6 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Toei Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). In Okubo's third solo at MOMO, she reveals stunningly rendered acrylic and oil paintings of young women within gorgeous, patterned interiors.

* Kaoru Usukubo "Brightness falls from the air" @ Taimatz / 1-2-11 Higashi-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku (JR Sobu Line to Bakurocho Station, Toei-Shinjuku Line to Bakuro-Yokoyama Station). Brand spanking new gallery inaugurates its program w/ a suite of gorgeous, glossy figurative paintings by Usukubo. She's also participating in the 2011 Yokohama Triennale "Our Magic Hour".

* Akira Miyanaga "Strosphere - Reactivating Landscapes vol 5", curated by Mizuki Takahashi @ gallery aM / B1F 1-2-11 Higashi-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku (JR Yokosuka Line/Chuo Sobu Line to Bakurocho Station). A new video installation from the artist, "about the lights of land" and "Wondjina", plus a conversation b/w Miyanaga and Takahashi at the opening, from 4-5p.

* 「エイリアン・ビキニの侵略」 (dir. Oh Young-doo, 2011) @ Theater-N Shibuya / 2F 24-4 Sakuragaoka, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station, West Exit). Known in the West as "Invasion of Alien Bikini", Oh's no-budget 2nd feature that won top honor at the 2011 Yubari Film Festival! About a goody-goody-ish dude and a really, really hot babe — only she's infected by an alien! Their courtship is tentative and sweetly realistic, making the violent third act even more disturbing.

* "Smuggler" (dir. Katsuhito Ishii, 2011) @ Marunouchi Toei / 3-2-17 Ginza, CHuo-ku (JR Yurakucho Line to Yurakucho Station). Ishii's latest (original title is 「スマグラーおまえの未来を運べ」) brings him back to his gonzo Yakuza world of "Party 7" (think "Dick Tracy" on uppers); as in, it's just as colorful and off-kilter humorous, but it's also Ishii's darkest, most brutal work, too. The ensemble cast — good guy and suffering actor Kinuta (Satoshi Tsumabuki); weathered ex?-thug Jo (Ishii regular Masatoshi Nagase); razor-sharp cute Chiharu (Hikari Mitsushima); deranged Verebrae (Masanobu Ando) — are in top form.

* 「人喰猪、公民館襲撃！」 (dir. Shin Jung-won, 2010) @ Theater-N Shibuya / 2F 24-4 Sakuragaoka, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station, West Exit). I.e. "Chaw", among my favorites of the 2010 NY Asian Film Fest (then stupidly retitled in the West as "Chawz"), whose Japanese title translates as lit. "man-eating wild hog, attacking the civic center!" It's that perfectly Korean cocktail of monster movie, wacko comedy, and family drama, and as endearing as "The Host" (even w/o Bae Doona!).

* "Cowboys & Aliens" (dir. John Favreau, 2011) @ Marunouchi Picadilly / 2-5-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku (JR Yurakucho Line or Tokyo Metro Ginza Line to Yurakucho Station). Think about it: cowboys (incl. Daniel Craig as a believable one!, albeit w/ alien-produced wrist shackle, plus the superlative Harrison Ford) shooting rifles and whatnot at ALIENS. And Olivia Wilde disrobes at one point. Kinda neat, kinda silly, but w/ some moments (the firefight at twilight) that totally work.

* the milky tangerine @ SHELTER / B1 2-6-10 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku (Inokashira Line to Shimokitazawa, South Exit), noon/2300 yen. Love love LOVE local indie-rock quartet the milky tangerine — to me they're like The Brilliant Green of 2011, sweetly strong female vox around lots of guitars. LIST recommended!

* Makoto "Human Elements" @ Club Loop / B1 2-1-13 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station), 10p/2500 yen. The dynamic drum 'n bass-man's uplifting showcase party, Tokyo-style glittering beats, assisted by MCs CARDZ and KEY.

* Tokyo Pinsalocks + 花と散るらん @ Heaven's Door / 1-33-19 Sangen-jaya, Setagaya-ku (Den-en-toshi Line to Sangen-jaya Station), 7p/2100 yen. Tokyo style rock. That's the rub here, particularly in all-girl New Wave-ish trio Tokyo Pinsalocks. w/ RED SUN

* unkie (3rd album "Devil's Ride" release party night 2) @ Club Que / B2F 2-5-2 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku (Inokashira Line to Shimokitazawa Station), 7p/3000 yen. Night #2 of unkie's — this ferocious instrumental post-rock trio — third LP "Devil's Ride" release party, which accurately sums up an unkie set.

SUNDAY
NYC
* "Snowtown" (dir. Justin Kurzel, 2011) screening @ BAM / 30 Lafayette Ave, Ft Greene (23/45 to Nevins ST, C to Lafayette Ave), 9p. Straight outta 2011 Fantastic Fest comes to grueling psychological horror romp from Down Under, adapted from the true story of Australia's most notorious serial killer. Have fun?

* "Pina" (dir. Wim Wenders, 2011) screening @ BAM / 30 Lafayette Ave, Ft Greene (23/45 to Nevins ST, C to Lafayette Ave),6p/SOLD OUT. Wenders' singular tribute to the late, ineffable choreographer Pina Bausch, bringing her stunning Tanztheater Wuppertal performances to 3D brilliance. Good on you if you've got a ticket. Rest of us lot: "Pina" plays theatres during the holidays.

AUSTIN
* "Puss in Boots 3D" (dir. Chris Miller, 2011) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse S. Lamar / 1120 S. Lamar, 1:30p. Part of the Austin Film Fest! Good luck getting into THIS one! I have nothing to say on it, except my trusted film friend in NYC (who likes these kind of movies) dug it; Antonio Banderas does the cat's voice (I guess you'd know that from watching "Shrek"?) and the digital 3D is supposed to be gorgeous.

* "The Witch From Nepal" (dir. Ching Siu-Tung, 1985) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 10p. This would've been right at home w/ Subway Cinema maestro Grady Hendrix's gonzo Hong Kong showcases at Fantastic Fest. Picture it: Chow Yun-Fat playing an architect who's actually a shaman (according to the titular witch) and, aided by a necklace of glowing testicles fights an evil wizard.

TOKYO
* Keiji Haino trio @ UFO Club / B1F 1-11-6 Koenji-Minami, Suginami-ku (Marunouchi Subway Line to Higashi-Koenji Station), 7:30p/3000 yen. Pair sonic spectre and pioneer Haino with Chiyo Kamekawa (bassist of legendary psych-rockers Yura Yura Teikoku) and jazz drummer Shoshi Togo and you get magic.

* BLIP Festival Tokyo 2011 @ Koenji HIGH / 4-30-1 Koenji-Minami (Chuo Line to Koenji Station), 5p/3000 yen. International chiptune mania! I'm still trying to process Brooklyn NES-punks Anamanaguchi in Tokyo, but I think it totally works. Plus strong, soulful U.S. showing from nullsleep and Japanese acts Sexy Synthesizer, Omodaka and Cheapshot. Rawwk on!

MONDAY
AUSTIN
* "Zombie" (dir. Lucio Fulci, 1979) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 9:30p. Straight outta Fantastic Fest 2011 is this revival screening of a flesh-eating Fulci classic, a gorgeous print that brings that eyeball splintering scene to even vivider life.

TOKYO
* Yoshiaki Machino @ Span Art Gallery / 2-2-18 1F Ginza, Chuo-ku. (Yurakucho Line to Ginza-Itchome Station). "La Perle", almost sexless lithe figures amid Italian Renaissance-style opulent backdrops, which feature subtle traditional Japanese imagery.

* Miya Ando "elements" @ Galerie Sho Contemporary / B1F 3-2-9 Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku (Ginza/Tozai Lines to Nihonbashi Station). Really stoked about this. I've enjoyed Ando-san's weathered steel reliefs in her NY shows, and the Yale graduate delivers meditative "color-field"-like works, focusing on the four elements in her meditation on post-March 11 Japan.

TUESDAY
NYC
* Eija-Liisa Ahtila "The Annunciation" @ Marian Goodman Gallery / 24 W 57th St. The Helsinki-based video artist debuted this multiple-POV installation in the gallery's Paris venue this past winter. It was shot in southern Finland's Aulanko nature reserve the previous winter and features mostly attendees of the Helsinki Deaconess Institute for women's support services.

* The Field @ (le) poisson rouge / 158 Bleecker St (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St, 6 to Bleecker St), 10p/$15. CMJ is over and you need to literally chill out, decompress. I get it. The Field is just the ticket: aka Swedish producer Axel Willner, whose latest LP "Looping State of Mind" is just…perfect, organic minimal techno. Plus he doesn't play stateside too often. w/ Forma

AUSTIN
* "Night of the Demons 2" (dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1994) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 10p. No I haven't seen part one of this schlocky raunch-horror series (nor the sort-of sequel "Demon House"), but that it's by notorious exploitationeer Trenchard-Smith means it's probably NO PROBLEM to dive straight into the thick of vengeful nuns and supernatural slaughter.

CURRENT SHOWS
* "Something Happened Here", curated by Jennie Lamensdorf @ Champion / 800 Brazos St. An inspired dialogue b/w two NY-based artists, Yadir Quintana and Matthew Schenning, who simultaneously make their Texas debuts in this exhibition. And if you've not seen 'em before, this is an incredible opportunity, and an expert pairing by Lamensdorf (Arthouse's Curatorial Assistant and Exhibitions Coordinator). Mark-making and durational qualities are in effect here, most immediately in Quintana's multipanel silver leaf "Portraits"(channelling Rudolf Stingel's studio floor works, yet Quintana's come off far more personal in their clever remnants of the "sitter"), which are left unsealed so the metal gets all wacky and patina'ed over the months and years. Though a closer look at Schenning's series "Some Things Will Fade" — painted walls either added to or manipulated on small-scale photographs of Porto, Portugal residences — finds an intriguing instance of aging in effect: the C-prints will degrade very differently from the layered acrylic paint, perhaps making what's real and what's Schenning's touch more apparent. For now, though, the tromp l'oeil on some of these is quite pronounced. Switching scales and disciplines, Quintana's much smaller "Yadir" set echo other works (quite a bit of his work comes from sculpture) in their surface residues, while Schenning's blow-ups of wheel-streaked walls under the Brooklyn Bridge remind of his background as a skateboarder. Verdict: must-see.

* Margaret Meehan "Hystrionics and The Forgotten Arm" @ Women & Their Work / 1710 Lavaca St. The Austin-based artist moves deftly between photography, sculpture, mixed-media drawing and installation (hell, even SOUND installation) — much like a boxer in the ring, which is just one of the themes of her stunning solo exhibition at the gallery. Another is the "other", blending the Circassian lass with the albino oddity and the hypertrichotic, bloodied and bruised in her whiter-than-white apparel as she feints, dodges and connects with the viewer. Some of this reminded me (on surface level) w/ Ellen Gallagher's maskings and media treatments of women, but the crushed glass glitter (from small-scale prints like "The Haymaker (Glitter)" to the five-row vintage cabinet cards of "The Barnburners"), at times like Glenn Ligon's use of coal-dust, feels very much Meehan's own. That aforementioned sound installation is "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Nina Simone)", a dreamy collab w/ Austin black metal duo Odessa (aka Mark Garcia and Landon O'Brien) that sneaks up on you as it cycles like every 10 minutes, filling the gallery with walls of guitars and a shouting voice (Meehan's?). It pairs well w/ the installation across from the speakers, "Glass Jaw", a punching bag enclosed within shimmering black glitter.

CLOSING SOON
TOKYO
* Bill Viola "Transformations" closing party @ Gallery Koyanagi / 8F 1-7-5 Ginza, Chuo-ku (Tokyo Metro Ginza/Marunouchi/Hibiya Lines to Ginza Station), 6-8p. Seven mesmeric works encompassing rebirth and human emotion, plus the video art pioneer will be in attendance. (ENDS THU)

NYC
* Do Ho Suh "Home Within Home" @ Lehmann Maupin / 540 W 26th St. I was lucky to catch an earlier iteration of Suh's ongoing "Home Within Home" project at the exhibition "Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea" at MFAH in 2009. He explores themes of cultural displacement (studying at RISD in 1991 and Yale thereafter) and coexisting cultural identities in this multilinear exhibition. A must-see!

* Tris Vonna-Michell @ Metro Pictures / 519 W 24th St. The youngish, rakish Brit is a hell of a storyteller. He injects some of that layered installation-narrative into his debut at the gallery, via a new sound edit combining "hahn/huhn" (meandering since 2003) and "Leipzig Calendar Works" (since 2005, recalling the peaceful '89 demonstration of E. German citizens at Stasi district headquarters in Leipzig).

* Brian Jungen @ Casey Kaplan Gallery / 525 W 21st St. The Canadian artist moves from weaving to leather and furniture in his latest series, pairing mass-produced objects like plastic lawn chairs and takes on Mid-Century Modern chairs with animal skins and aluminum car parts.

* Matthew Barney "DJED" @ Gladstone Gallery / 530 W 21st St. I'll never forget when Barney rolled into town for "The Occidental Guest" at Gladstone, back in spring of 2006. The line for entry to the reception — I heard Bjork was there but I still don't know if that was true — was prohibitively, impossibly long, and I missed out, but still did OK w/ some girls and Tia Pol nearby. What I'm trying to say here is: this new exhibition of large-scale sculpture (from Barney's ongoing "Ancient Evenings" project, in their first NY exhibition)could well be a major to-do. So if you simply must see a monumental cast iron sculpture and other conceptual representations of the 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperial, queue up early.

* Leandro Erlich @ Sean Kelly Gallery / 528 W 29th St. The Argentine-born artist conjures an "Inception"-like suspension of reality in four major sculptures, each involving elevators in different ways (from doors opening into a filmed elevator in Tokyo, to a maze of elevator banks, to a shaft set on its side like a tunnel.

* Haim Steinbach "Creature" @ Tanya Bonakdar Gallery / 521 W 21st St. Objects in tasty, inspired couplings, arranged on shelves. Like shock-yellow Tonka toy trucks and a plastic/metal wring basket, or Fruit Loops boxes with blunt rubber dog chews. Steinbach inspires us to see beyond the obvious, in his debut solo show at the gallery (and his first NY exhibition since 2007).

* Jenny Saville "Continuum" @ Gagosian / 980 Madison Ave. A recent array of Saville's intensely physical figurative paintings and lyrical work drawings — her first NY exhibition since 2003.
+ Bob Dylan "The Asia Series". Gagosian's doing their thing, unfurling one awesome show after the next (Jenny Saville uptown, Andy Warhol's "Liz" series on 21st St, big, bad RICHARD SERRA on 24th!!), and they're keeping that intensity w/ the bard's debut NY exhibition! Because: why not? The show includes over a dozen drawings and paintings Dylan created while touring Asia in 2009-10.

* Andy Warhol "Liz" @ Gagosian Gallery / 522 W 21st St. Gagosian NY wheels out its blue-chip fall program in measured doses (two new Richard Serra sculptures on WED, a slew of Jenny Saville paintings THU), concluding w/ a familiar, thorough arc of Andy Warhol's oeuvre: Elizabeth Taylor. Expect an array of Warhol silkscreens and explosively colorful paintings featuring Liz throughout her career, from archival child-actress renditions to Cleopatra and silver-screen starlet.

* Johannes Kahrs @ Luhring Augustine / 531 W 24th St. The German painter's last solo exhibition here, "Eyes on his Body" from 2008, was unsettling as hell, a grouping of mostly blue-tinted, artfully blurred photorealistic scenes (and a few in garish saturated color). He continues that cropping, blurring and altering in these new paintings, creating a raw physicality and sombre dread amid his subjects.

* Lothar Hempel "Suedehead" @ Anton Kern Gallery / 532 W 20th St. Hempel constantly, if obliquely at times, references the show's title — those modish skinhead offshoots w/ their tailored suits and prickly demeanors — via photomontages and collages imbued with steel elements, Moroccan carpets, and cast concrete.

* Jane Hammond "Light Now" @ Galerie Lelong / 528 W 26th St. NY's fall gallery rush is a time to do BIG THINGS. Lelong goes for dazzle, literally, in Hammond's titular "dazzle paintings", combining photography w/ acrylic over Plexiglas, accented w/ shininess. What might sound like a contrived mechanism on paper is something else in person, as the layered gold, silver and palladium leaf shimmer from different vantage points and in concert w/ their respective light sources, converting Hammond's subjects into almost 3D interactivity.

* Nick Cave "Ever-After" @ Jack Shainman Gallery / 512 W 20th St. Cave OWNS the "soundsuit". If you've never seen 'em before, they're typically these flare-headed life-size human sculptures, decked in something organic (like last Armory Show's subtle bundles of tree limbs) or more fanciful, Bowie-esque, as it were. He goes for spectacle this time, coating them with shiny buttons like fashion chainmail and filling their insides with swirling upholstery ombres.

* Luis Gispert "Decepción" @ Mary Boone Gallery / 745 Fifth Ave. Car customization beyond the furthest stretches of the imagination. Unless you've spent time in the Dirty South amongst tricked out low-riders (or in LA, Florida, Harlem etc), you may have never seen shock-red upholstery matching a cherry-red paint job and chromed rims and instruments everywhere else. That same red with silver accents grazing the vehicle's owner, his baby girl — color coordination that treads the line b/w bonkers and inspiring. Gispert captures the culture in massive C-prints.

* Paul Winstanley @ Mitchell-Innes & Nash / 534 W 26th St. Really dreamy photorealist paintings (as if seen through sleep-blurred eyes), taken mostly from Winstanley's own photographs, that at once distance the artist from his subjects as we are drawn closer to the canvases.

* Andy Warhol "Paintings from the 1970's" @ Skarstedt Gallery / 20 E 79th St. Compare/contrast w/ the multi-decade "Liz" series closing this weekend at Gagosian. Actually, just compare/contrast the works in this show, as the '70's find Warhol at his most iconic and yet most blatantly abstract. Think Mao and his glammed up "Ladies and Gentlemen" series vs. his "Oxidations" and "Shadows".

AUSTIN
* Jamie Isenstein " " @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity. I really dug this three-part solo exhibition from Isenstein, and I urge you to take the whole thing w/ tongue held firmly in cheek, or you might not get what she's doing. For one, the ubiquitous sign-in book is part of the show, called "Book of the Dead" in case you signed it w/o checking the cover first. Don't worry. Her "installation Shots (axe, harp, log)" is pretty funny, too: three projectors on pedestals throwing images of what "should be" on those pedestals (i.e. the axe, harp and log)…considering the typical gallery-goer (and even the gullible critic!) to believe whatever's up on the pedestal is meant to be "the artwork". The best, IMO, is her dig at abstract sculpture, her "Dancing Pop-up Fishing Sculpture", a big glob of mixed fabrics and colors w/ the laughably obtuse media listing as "fabric, newspaper, glue, paint, "Worm in a Can" gag dinner mints, human leg, fishnet tights, tap shoe, or velvet curtain, human arm or velvet curtain, "Wishing I Was Fishing" or "Gone Fishing" life preservers, and pedestal" — most of which, if it even exists, is necessarily hidden inside the misshapen form.

TOKYO
* Makoto Saito "Like Nectar Attracting Bees" @ Tomio Koyama Gallery / 7F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Station). Some very sexy cropped images of female nudes, apparently photographed by Saito in the midst of coitus!

* Kumi Machida @ Kido Press, Inc / 6F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Toei Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). BIG fan of Machida's gorgeous, spare nihonga style, crafting the most unnerving representationally surrealist figures w/ just mineral pigments and layered ink brushstrokes. In this exhibition, she uses a needle in place of pencil to create her first series of copper etchings.

* Shoko Morita @ Waitingroom / 3F 2-8-11 Ebisu-nishi, Shibuya-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Ebisu Station). Gauzy figures drenched in a foggy landscape blurring reality and fantasy.

* "Two plus One/No Limit" @ Span Art Gallery / 2-2-18 1F Ginza, Chuo-ku. (Yurakucho Line to Ginza-Itchome Station). The gallery pairs Shinji Arai's photography w/ paintings by Kae Ando and Seiji Nakamura. (ENDS SAT)

NYC
* Sara Greenberger Rafferty "Remote" @ Rachel Uffner Gallery / 47 Orchard St. Rafferty recreates moving-image stills from iconic screen moments (film to Youtube uploads) via the blurred "waterlogging" technique developed in her 2009 exhibition, plus features larger works on acetate and Plexiglas.

* Zipora Fried "Salon Noir" @ On Stellar Rays / 133 Orchard St. Fried gets even more mysterious in her second solo exhibition at the gallery. In the past, she's modified furniture with knives and bottles, or coated them in knitting… or she wouldn't just "draw" something, she'd coat entire sheets of paper with shiny graphite, or modify a photograph w/ some disparate duplication. She continues that experimentation here, obscuring enlargements of her b&w childhood photos w/ clots of thread.

TOKYO
* Koseki Ono "Transplants" @ Art Front Gallery / Hillside Terrace A, 29-18 Sarugakucho, Shibuya-ku (JR Lines etc to Shibuya). Absolutely…miraculously detailed ink-lined works from Ono, consisting of multicolored dots of ink meticulously arranged in patterns on skulls, eggs and shaped reliefs, like taxidermy overtaken by rainbow-hued lichen only 1000% cooler. (ENDS SUN)

fee's LIST (through 10/18)

WEDNESDAY
NYC
* Georges Braque "Pioneer of Modernism" @ Acquavella Gallery / 18 E 79th St. Hell yes. And about time. Don't get me wrong: Picasso this and Picasso that is awesome. He was a romantic, an iconoclast, a legend. But when I think of Cubism, I think of his co-founder Braque, who went from leading the Fauvres w/ Henri Matisse and André Dérain to trailblazing the awesomeness of Cubism. This seminal retrospective of over 40 paintings and papiers collés, curated by Dieter Buchhart, is Braque's first major U.S. exhibition since the Guggenheim in '88.

AUSTIN
* "The Anxiety of Photography" talk w/ Andrea Mellard @ Arthouse / 700 Congress Ave, 6p. Mellard, the interim curator at AMOA, leads a discussion on the collaborating institutions' significant photography exhibition.

* Ezra Masch "Music of the Spheres" @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity, 8p. If you've visited the VAC, you might find UT MFA Studio student Masch's exhibition the subtlest of all: a wall "drawing" digitally printed on Tyvek and the titular installation of non-blinky electric lights and a glossy stage we're forbidden to step on. That changes tonight, as Masch pairs a modified Fender Rhodes piano wired to the colorful blinky-light matrix, initiating an enveloping (and enthralling?) A/V performance.

* "Jailbait Babysitter" (dir. John Hayes, 1977) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 10p. "Her friends call her jailbait…her clients call her anytime!" The one-liners begin w/ this sexy comedy's poster and continue into the credits. W/ Theresa Pare as the titular girl, dumping her sex-addled BF for a bunch of dirty hippies, then befriending a prostitute, then her BF again… I don't know, and a young John Goodman factors into this somehow. They don't dub it "Weird Wednesday" for nothing!

* Star Slinger (UK) + Shigeto @ Beauty Bar / 617 E 7th St, 10p. Beauty Bar?? Brian, you say, what the hell are you thinking man?? But check it: that bass? That's Shigeto of Ghostly International, on tour w/ UK "booty LSD" soothsayer Star Slinger. So sometimes I encourage you (e.g. myself) to travel outside the safezone of dive bars toward deep melodic epiphanies.

TOKYO
* James Blake @ Liquidroom / 3-16-6 Higashi, Shibuya-ku (JR Yamanote Line etc to Ebisu station), 7p/SOLD OUT. Yes! The young, rakish dubstep lord and nominee for the 2011 Mercury Prize sells out night one of his Japan Tour 2011. In Japanese I'd come back with "当たり前ね？" as in "OBVS". Bass in your face, soundscapes to soothe and unsettle simultaneous. Tokyo, I hope you're ready.

THURSDAY
NYC
* Kim Beck "Under Development" @ Mixed Greens / 531 W 26th St. Beck works in large-scale drawings (from architectural to charcoal and lush) and a site-specific installation in her exploration of desire, stability and economic security.

* Rebecca Campbell "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" @ Ameringer McEnery Yohe / 525 W 22nd St. I consider this a bit of a departure for the gallery, though a welcome one, as they switch from modernism abstract, Abstract Expressionist and installation artists (think Al Held, Morris Louis, Judy Pfaff) to a younger, figurative painter who imbues her works with gestural, though dreamily realist, touches.

* Martin Wittfooth "The Passions" @ Lyons Wier Gallery / 542 W 24th St. The debut NY solo exhibition for the Brooklyn-based painter, who explores sainthood, martyrdom and religiosity from a contemporary standpoint.

* Anton Kannemeyer "After the Barbarians" @ Jack Shainman Gallery / 512 W 20th St. The Cape Town-born artist turns his satire to contemporary instances of political correctness and xenophobic wrath, depicting genocide in Rwanda and post-apartheid S. Africa with biting sociopolitical wit and boldly conceived renderings.

* Katharine Kuharic "Pound of Flesh" @ PPOW / 535 W 22nd St, 3rd F. Kuharic put some seven years into her latest exhibition, collaging stock images from junk mail and other sources into hallucinogenic, ultra-colorful painterly landscapes.

* "Attack the Block" (dir. Joe Cornish, 2011) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave/53rd St, 6 to 51st St), 7p. Badass: the museum screens a true example of modern filmic art, in one of my favorites of this year and, IMO, one of the best sci-fi genre films in the past 10+ years. It's deep space vs. the hood, w/ wisecracking (and ultimately heroic) kids protecting the projects from these totally unique, mysteriously frightening aliens. As leader Moses (John Boyega) says "allow it!" Followed by a Q&A w/ director Joe Cornish!

* Yuck @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/$15. Night one of the UK-based indie-pop darlings latest visit. Used to be a stateside Yuck show was but a fleeting hope, as visa wrangling and whatnot prevented them from crossing the Atlantic. Luckily that's no longer the case. Get to "Holing Out" and bask in their melodic jams. w/ Porcelain Raft

* Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab/Monade) @ Mercury Lounge / 217 E Houston St, 9:30p/$12. Ah Seaya Sadier, so chic, so French! Whose nonchalance and honeyed vox in post-rock legends Stereolab had many a boy (and girl) falling in love. Plus she debuted an incredible solo effort last year, "The Trip". THis should be a magical night.

* The Crystal Ark + Light Asylum @ (le) poisson rouge / 158 Bleecker St (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St, 6 to Bleecker St), 11p/$10. Sometimes LPR throws these awesome late-night dance parties, which this would be solely by inclusion of Light Asylum, aka Shannon Funchess (and Bruno Coviello) and her nonstop punk-funk party. Add to it ensemble The Crystal Ark, helmed by producer Gavin Russom and diva Viva Ruiz, plus a combo of DFA renegades (Tyler Pope, Matt Thornley) and tropicalia-funk champs (Alberto Lopez, Sokhna Heather Mabyn) and this just even wilder.

* Yellow Fever (Austin) @ Death By Audio / 49 S 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$7. Hill Country indie stalwarts Yellow Fever remind NYC that the Lone Star State knows how to do psych-rock right. w/ local crooners Ava Luna

AUSTIN
* Pastelegram Issue No. 1 launch party @ Domy Books / 913 E Cesar Chavez, 6p. The debut print issue for local art periodical Pastelegram (already an online hub for historical and contemporary info conduits), w/ contributor Barry Stone in attendance.

* "The Thing" (dir. John Carpenter, 1982) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Village / 2700 W Anderson Ln, 9:50p. A week ahead of the shiny-new 2011 prequel/remake, revel in the peerless original, proof that cinematic foreboding and psychological dread win over gratuitous gore and blatant visuals if wielded by the master. And Carpenter is that master. Among the scariest, sickening horror films of its time and it's matchless even today. So yeah, it's about an alien unfrozen from Antarctic ice that shape-shifts into members of an isolated crew, converting them one by one unbeknownst to a bearded Kurt Russell et all…but it's so much more than that. Highly recommended!

TOKYO
* Anri Sala artist talk @ Institut Franco-Japonais de Tokyo / 15 Ichigaya-funagawara-machi, Shinjuku-ku (JR Sobu/Tokyo Metro Yurakucho Lines to Iidabashi Station), 3p/FREE (RSVP: 03-5206-2500). Ahead of his exhibition at Kaikai Kiki Gallery (see FRI), the French-educated, Berlin-based Sala leads a talk on his works. Plus, the institute hosts Sala's new sound/object installation "No Window, No Cry" (via Le Corbusier, Maison-atelier Lipschitz, Boulogne) for the duration of his Kaikai Kiki exhibition.

FRIDAY
NYC
* April Gornik @ Danese / 535 W 24th St 6th Fl. There is an innate vitality and wonder within Gornik's large-scale landscape paintings, which tread the line b/w realism and dreams, that inspires travel and discovery as they plunge us into their depths. Her depictions of recent trips to Namibia and Tanzania are particularly inspiring.

* Keith Mayerson "Horror Hospital Unplugged" @ Derek Eller Gallery / 615 W 27th St. The 225 original drawings comprising Mayerson's titular gonzo graphic novel, which was co-authored by Dennis Cooper!
+ Dominic McGill "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds", intricate drawings of phrases and collages reflecting the global economic crisis.

* "Texas Killing Fields" (dir. Ami Canaan Mann, 2011) @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). A dark crime thriller loosely based on true events about the murder of women picked up along I-45 in SE Texas, starring Chloe Grace Moretz?? Sign me up!

* "Noriko's Dinner Table" (dir. Sion Sono, 2006) screening @ Museum of Arts & Design / 2 Columbus Circle (AC/BD to 59th St/Columbus Circle), 7p. My absolutely favorite of Sono's oeuvre (and I've seen practically all of 'em), this multipart family drama and thriller resides within and after his cult classic "Suicide Club"…but for me "Noriko" is even more disturbing and emotive. Family disconnect, suicide, communication and loneliness are explored in full effect here, w/ awesome performances by Kazue Fukiishi and Yuriko Yoshitaka (not just a cute face!) as sisters, Tsugumi as the mysterious and appealing Kumiko/Ueno54 and screen legend Ken Mitsuishi as a father who's actually learning stuff. Highly recommended!

* "Almost Perfect" (dir. Bertha Bay-sa Pan, 2011) screening @ Japan Society / 333 E 47th St (E/M to 53rd/Lexington, 6 to 51st St), 7:30p. "A 30-something career woman tries to find the balance between her demanding family and her perfect new boyfriend"…blah blah blah, BUT: when the 30-something career woman is the ineffable Kelly Hu (hello!!) and the perfect new boyfriend is Edison Chen AND they're (apparently) attending this screening…get on it, son!

* "The Woman" (dir. Lucky McKee, 2011) @ AMC Loews 34th St / 312 W 34th St (ACE/123 to 34th St). Super-limited screenings of McKee's notorious, grueling thriller, of a good ol' country doctor and family attempting to "civilize" a feral woman. If you frequent genre film blogs like I do, then you're familiar w/ the 2011 Sundance "buzz".

* Yuck @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/$15. See my THURS comments on the awesomeness of Yuck. And see 'em twice if you can.

* Little Dragon @ Terminal 5 / 610 W 56th St (AC/BD/1 to Columbus Circle), 8p/$25. The Gothenburg lovelies return stateside, cloaking the huge-ass venue with Yukimi's smoky-cool Bristol-style R&B and her mates' electro-pop sheen. Added bonus: ?uestlove contributes a DJ set. w/ Javelin

* Beach Fossils + Minks + DIVE + Heavenly Beat @ 285 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$10. AKA a Beach Fossils-strong roster, incl. guitarist Cole's psych-kraut rock band DIVE and bassist John's outfit Heavenly Beat (plus Dustin et al's original surf-rock troupe)…and Captured Tracks' fiercest goth-pop lovelies Minks. Absolutely unmissable show, and perfect for the transition into autumn.

* Those Darlins + The Beets @ Bell House / 149 7th St, Gowanus (F/G to Smith/9th St), 8p/$15. Tennessee brings us retro-minded jangle-rockers Those Darlins and new LP "Screws Get Loose", Southern attitude in all the right degrees. They join Jackson Heights' finest garage-rockers The Beets for the singalong.

AUSTIN
* "Something Happened Here", curated by Jennie Lamensdorf @ Champion / 800 Brazos St. Lamensdorf (who's based locally now but used to work at NYC's Leslie Tonkonow Artwork + Projects) pairs two NY-area artists in an exhibition spanning mediums though emphasizing mark-making, materiality and chance. Yadir Quintana presents "Portraits" (which reminds me, in essence anyway, of Rudolf Stingel's more experimental stuff) while Matthew Schenning exerts double-takes in his "Wall Rides" large-scale photography.

* "The Thing" (dir. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr, 2011) @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St. By now lovers of genre cinema have drawn a sharp line in the ground on this prelude to John Carpenter's singular '82 classic. Either you hate the new "The Thing", with its claims of practical FX but teaser trailers awash in CGI, with its boneheaded obviousness and the profusion of English-speakers despite it being a purportedly Norwegian team; or you're willing to give it a chance, possibly b/c Mary Elizabeth Winstead's in it and most definitely b/c you loved Carpenter's "The Thing" so much, that even though you KNOW the new one won't hold a candle to the original, it still might be pretty damn good.

* "El Bulli: Cooking in Progress" (dir. Gereon Wetzel, 2011) @ Violet Crown Cinema / 434 W 2nd St. Didn't make it into this Catalonian marvel, Ferran Adria's hub for molecular gastronomy and haute cuisine of the "hautest" level on the planet? You never will, as elBulli will reopen as a creativity center in a few years, bidding its half-year seasons adieu as of summer 2011. So this observational documentary will have to do, tracing goings-on in the laboratory kitchen…and never before have I wished for "smellovision" like now.

TOKYO
* Anri Sala @ Kaikai Kiki Gallery / B1 2-3-30 Moto-azabu, Minato-ku (Hibiya Line to Hiroo Station). Three new video pieces and an immersive environmental work from the time-based Albanian artist, restructuring our sensations of everyday life.

* "L'Heure Verte" @ Superdeluxe / B1F 3-1-25 Nishi-azabu, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Oedo Line to Roppongi Station), 10p/3500 yen (2500 yen, women). Check it: an absinthe-themed early Halloween party, w/ DJs Arata Nakamura (TO GOTHICS) and MaRIA on decks and tokyoDOLORES pole-dancing as green fairies? MAYJAH.

* INNOCENCE w/ Kaito @ Module / B2 34-6 Udagawa-cho, Shibuya-ku (JR Lines etc to Shibuya Station), 10p/2500 yen. Hiroshi Watanabe, aka Kaito, the sole Japanese artist (I think?) on seminal German experimental techno label Kompact, unleashes very deep, very sexy tech-house for the costumed masses (yes, it's an early Halloween party!). Plus a special pole-dance between Ruka and Itsuka.

* Peter Brotzmann Festival 2011: Keiji Haino + Yoshihide Otomo etc @ Pit Inn / B1 2-12-4 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit), 7:30p/5000 yen. I'm getting a "The Stone" vibe for Shinjuku avant-jazz joint Pit Inn, as in John Zorn's NYC Ave C hub for nightly creative impresarios. In this celebration of European free-jazz master Brotzmann's 70th anniversary, he gathered a bunch of beloved friends to join the party. Namely tonight: sonic pioneers Yoshihide Otomo and Keiji Haino!

SATURDAY
NYC
* "Into a Dream" (dir. Sion Sono, 2005) screening @ Museum of Arts & Design / 2 Columbus Circle (AC/BD to 59th St/Columbus Circle), 3p. While Sono was creating his family-drama opus "Noriko's Dinner Table" as accompaniment and sequel to his celebrated and notorious "Suicide Club", he released this psychedelic little film. Only Sono's dreamworld isn't so pleasant: esp. if you're a guy suffering an STD and losing his grip on reality, though the whole journey to self-discovery is fine Sono-style filmmaking.

* Mary Halvorson + Jessica Pavone @ The Stone / 16 Ave C (F to 2nd Ave), 8p/$10. The clandestine pairings of Brooklyn-based string impresarios Halvorson (guitar) and Pavone (viola) equal next-level folk and lots of magic. This is the LP release party for their new duet "Departure of Reason".

* Personal Heat @ The Stone / 16 Ave C (F to 2nd Ave), 10p/$10. Experimental violist Jessica Pavone follows her duet w/ Mary Halvorson w/ a walk on the tripped-out side as Personal Heat, pairing processed vocals and her viola w/ Amnon Freidlin's guitar-playing and electronics.

AUSTIN
* "The Shining" (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 11:30p. When I learned via Badass Digest that Kubrick had purposefully made the Overlook Hotel — still the creepiest residential setting among modern horror films — spatially impossible and phantasmagorically mazelike, it tuned my own emotional response to an already loved film even higher. Enjoy the illusionary awesomeness on the big screen, with manic Jack Nicholson, precocious Danny Lloyd, awesome Scatman Crothers and (frankly) spectrelike Shelley Duvall in the ideal pre-Halloween thriller.

TOKYO
* 「一命」/"Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai" (dir. Takashi Milke, 2011) in wide release. A contemporary 3D imagining of Masaki Kobayashi's period classic via Japan's perhaps most prolific and controversial modern director could signal a film high on shock-value and blood-spray… Only, this is Miike at his most subtle and metaphysical, harbingered by his solid triumph "13 Assassins". Its competition premiere at 2011 Cannes (the first 3D film to do so) is but the iceberg's tip for Miike's mature directorial achievement.

* "Karate-Robo Zaborgar" (dir. Noboru Iguchi, 2011) @ Shinjuku Wald9 / 3-1-26 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku (JR line etc to Shinjuku Station, South Exit). Zaborgar! Go! Iguchi circumvents expectations of usual sexual deviance and gore in his revamp of the '70s children's TV classic, of super-sleuth Daimon and his buddy Zaborgar, the karate-fighting cyborg who changes into a motorcycle! Easily Sushi Typhoon's most "family friendly" offering yet, it's a thrill to watch.

* "Captain America: The First Avenger" (dir. Joe Johnston, 2011) @ Marunouchi Louvre / 2-5-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku (JR Yurakucho or Tokyo Metro Ginza Line to Yurakucho Station). I had low expectations for "Captain America", but my relocation to Austin did wonders for my filmic fanboy-ism. In effect: as the summer proceeded, I became more and more stoked for skinny-ass (computer-manipulated) Chris Evans' morphing into rippling (normal) Chris Evans, kicking Nazi ass and squaring off against Hugo Weaving/Red Skull, 'til late July when I was cheering front and center for one of my favorite Marvel-derived action films in recent memory. Yes, it's that good.

* Azarashi + Akiko Hodaka @ Shinjuku Motion / 5F 2-45-2 Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit), 5:30p/1800 yen. "Mourning noise can be heard: 2nd Night"? Feat. visual-kei screamers Azarashi, Akiko Hodaka's piano serenade, drummer Koji Ishikawa and more.

* Guitar Wolf + TsushiMaMire @ Unit / 1-34-17 Ebisu-nishi, Shibuya-ku (Tokyu-Toyoko Line to Daikanyama Station, JR Yamanote/Hibiya Line to Ebisu Station), 5:30p/2500 yen. Classic Nagasaki dude punks plus noisy Tokyo riot-grrrls? Count me in! w/ Dr. Downer

* Tokyo Dark Castle Halloween Special @ Marz / B1F 2-45-1 Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit), midnight/3500 yen. After you've had your fill of spooky sonics (see: Azarashi etc at Motion, above), head like literally next door for Marz's midnight Halloween bash, feat. bands Royal Cabaret, DESTRUCT SYSTEM and highfashionparalyze (awesome, non?), DJs and fashion presentations by RITUALS and PureOne Corset Works (if you've seen pole-dance troupe Tokyo Dolores, you know what I mean).

SUNDAY
NYC
* Dances of Vice: Tokyo Blade Runner @ (le) poisson rouge / 158 Bleecker St (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St, 6 to Bleecker St), 9p/$20. A dance-party tribute to retro-futuristic Tokyo a la "Blade Runner" just sounds dope. Feat. Xris SMack (founder of STIMULATE monthly cyberpunk/S&M parties) on decks, a live set from NY electro-rock trio Eva and Her Virgins, and Renee Masoomian's latex fashion show.

TOKYO
* DODDODO @ Fever / 1-1-14 Hanegi, Setagaya-ku (Odakyu Inokashira Line to Shindaita or Shimokitazawa Stations), 6p/3800 yen. Glitch-happy DODDODO (né Namin Haku, of Osaka) has more creative explosively in her left pinkie than most experimental electronic artists have in their entire gear setups. Check her perched over her sampler and Casio, rapping off-the-cuff whilst launching into noisy bursts in a Whitehouse waltz. w/ more Osaka awesomeness, like the jazz-rock fusion duo Ego-Wrappin', electronic duo AUTORA (incl. Akio Yamamoto, aka TANZMUZIK) and more!

* Psysalia Psysalis Psyche + TADZIO @ Womb / 2-16 Maruyama-cho, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station, Hachiko Exit), 3p/3000 yen. The release party for expansive jangle-rock quintet Psysalia Psysalis Psyche's 「不良のモーニングコーヒー」(uh, "juvenile delinquent's morning coffee"?), a thoroughly engrossing all-day affair. I encourage you to check their Love Hotel-styled website (http://psysaliapsysalispsyche.com/), as each "room" leads to a themed earlier EP, like the manga-porn one or the Rammstein-ish mouth-gag one, or the hand-drawn lemon interior one… They're joined by my favorite Sendai noise-rock grrrls TADZIO, plus Osaka's mu-neujohn, Nagoya's 63y3s, and a bunch of DJs (incl. Acid psycho killer from Psysalia… and Twee Grrrrls Club!).

* Case of Telegraph 2011 showcase @ High / 4-30-1 Koenji-minami, Suginami-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Koenji Station), 5:30p/3500 yen. This is MAJOR!!! I stumbled across this vaguely named Japanese band called GREEN FLAMES, but when I checked the trio's members I flipped my lid. Oh it's "only" Munehiro Narita and Yuro Ujiie (guitarist and former drummer, respectively, for High Rise!!!) and Mitsuru Tabata (bassist for Zeni Geva and Acid Mothers Temple, and its many iterations). Add to that WECH-UNIT, comprised of '80s post-punks Sadie Sads, Nubile and Sarasvati, and prepare for decidedly non-mainstream rock awesomeness.

MONDAY
AUSTIN
* Art in Practice: Sterling Allen @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity, 6:30p. Allen, founder and co-director of Okay Mountain — and an awesome dude, let me tell you — presents his work in conjunction w/ the course "Performing Critique" (Risa Puleo, Asst. Curator of Contemporary Art at the Blanton), then leads a Q&A.

TOKYO
* "Two plus One/No Limit" @ Span Art Gallery / 2-2-18 1F Ginza, Chuo-ku. (Yurakucho Line to Ginza-Itchome Station). The gallery pairs Shinji Arai's photography w/ paintings by Kae Ando and Seiji Nakamura.

TUESDAY
NYC
* CMJ: Afro-punk presents "DEATH to HIPHOP" Showcase @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/$12. The yearly Afro-punk festival (and many other dope outdoor festivals of its ilk) was rained out. In its wake, and in a creative reconfiguring from the original lineup, is a ferocious roster headlined by seminal all-Black Detroit punks DEATH!!! w/ Cerebral Ballzy and Ninjasonik

* CMJ: Deli Magazine showcase @ The Delancey / 168 Delancey St (F/JMZ to Essex/Delancey), 7p/FREE! Confession: I've only been to burlesque shows at The Delancey. But they're hosting a pretty dope (and free) psych-pop CMJ show tonight, w/ Brooklyn's tropic-psych-pop quartet Caged Animals, the groovily retro-tinged Computer Magic, Psychobuildings, Tiny Victories and more.

AUSTIN
* "Anguish" (dir. Bibas Luna, 1987) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E 6th St, 10p. The less we know about this hypnotically gruesome, possibly headache-inducing Spanish produced horror film, the better! Consider the facts: Zelda Rubinstein (the eccentric, unforgettable medium in "Poltergeist") is the psychotic AND psionic lead, in this ultra-meta bending of multiple realities. I am scared and excited, simultaneously!

* "The Music Lovers" (dir. Ken Russell, 1970) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse S. Lamar / 1120 S. Lamar, 7p. Perhaps less infamous than Russell's psychedelic rock-opera "Lisztomania" (starring Roger Daltrey of The Who as Liszt and Ringo Starr as the Pope!) yet no less dramatic, is this idiosyncratic imagining of Tchaikovsky's life and career, blanketed by fantasy sequences set to the great Russian composer's own music! Co-presented by the Austin Film Society.

* "The Red Black and Blonde" (dir. Dan Jimenez, 2011) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse S. Lamar / 1120 S. Lamar, 7:30p. The Austin premiere of this Austin-shot film, of four fierce Texas women on the lam! With props to "Reservoir Dogs" and "The Good The Bad and the Ugly", but more attractive and less nonsense.

TOKYO
* PLASTIC GIRL IN CLOSET + Shojo Skip @ Club Que / B2F 2-5-2 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku (Inokashira Line to Shimokitazawa Station), 6:30p/2500 yen. Some of Tokyo's best shoegazers from the indie scene play tonight, incl. personal faves PLASTIC GIRL IN CLOSET (despite the name, they're dope! Check LP "Cocoro") and the entrancing coeds Shojo Skip! w/ DEEP BLUE

CURRENT SHOWS
* Margaret Meehan "Hystrionics and The Forgotten Arm" @ Women & Their Work / 1710 Lavaca St. The Austin-based artist moves deftly between photography, sculpture, mixed-media drawing and installation (hell, even SOUND installation) — much like a boxer in the ring, which is just one of the themes of her stunning solo exhibition at the gallery. Another is the "other", blending the Circassian lass with the albino oddity and the hypertrichotic, bloodied and bruised in her whiter-than-white apparel as she feints, dodges and connects with the viewer. Some of this reminded me (on surface level) w/ Ellen Gallagher's maskings and media treatments of women, but the crushed glass glitter (from small-scale prints like "The Haymaker (Glitter)" to the five-row vintage cabinet cards of "The Barnburners"), at times like Glenn Ligon's use of coal-dust, feels very much Meehan's own. That aforementioned sound installation is "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Nina Simone)", a dreamy collab w/ Austin black metal duo Odessa (aka Mark Garcia and Landon O'Brien) that sneaks up on you as it cycles like every 10 minutes, filling the gallery with walls of guitars and a shouting voice (Meehan's?). It pairs well w/ the installation across from the speakers, "Glass Jaw", a punching bag enclosed within shimmering black glitter.

* El Anatsui "When I Last Wrote to You about Africa" @ Blanton Museum of Art / UT Austin campus, MLK at Congress. Anatsui is the first exhibition I attended at Blanton (hell, I'd been away from Austin for seven years — this place didn't even exist last time I was in town). To say I'd been looking forward to the Ghanaian-born artist's retrospective would be a grave understatement. His solo shows and group exhibitions in NYC (at Jack Shainman, plus his inclusion in international art fairs) tended to be show-stoppers, wowing everyone and usurping attention from any other artwork in the room. I mean…those intricate, shimmering tarps of thousands of discarded Nigerian liquor bottle tops… I dug Anatsui's retrospective on many levels, aesthetic being one of them, but to see his early relief carvings, drawings and paintings alongside his famed wall sculptures was a treat. Expansive floor sculptures like "Peak Project" (1999), a field of undulating Peak Milk lids, and "Akua's Surviving Children" (1996), an array of roughly hewn wood figures with ritually scorched "heads" that emulate Africans in the Danish slave trade and first shown in Copenhagen's African international exhibition in '96 — they're dope and they work well in concert w/ Anatsui's more fixated luminous wall sculptures, like the massive "Stressed World" (2011, bearing a large central "netted" section alongside panes of green, red, yellow and black) and the gold "Oasis" (2008). Earlier instances of this patterning are evident in carved and painted wood reliefs like "Coins on Grandma's Cloth" (1992, punctuated with painted striped diagonals); the almost Cubist "Club Windows" (2002); and the show's titular work "When I Last Wrote to You about Africa…" (1986), a scroll-like wood relief with ideogram 'Adinkras' carved into it. The exhibition itself is the largest number of Anatsui works ever assembled in the U.S.

* "Pattern Plan" @ Grayduck Gallery / 608 W Monroe Dr. Our relationship with nature is the focus here, varyingly teased out with crafty mock-ups of molecules and what looked to me like Claes Oldenburg-sized Froot Loops (Dameon Lester, moulding these toruses from the Austin-American Statesman and neon-colored paper); renditions of undersea life and slime molds painted on cut and shaped canvas (L. Renee Nunez); and these awesomely intricate, subtle circles and crescents comprised of acrylic mixed with powdered mica, then layered like minuscule bubbles one by one onto the paper (Jessica McCambly). In particular, McCambly's rigorous process and sublime results clinches the exhibition's fusion — but you've got to spend some time with these delicate works and let them soak in. Likewise, there was an intriguing article in the NYTimes on Oct 3 entitled "Can Answers to Evolution Be Found in Slime?", i.e. slime molds, calling them "ancient, alien and sophisticated", and it's of note that Nunez singles them out as subject matter.

* Mika Tajima "The Architect's Garden" @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity. Tajima's the artist-in-residence this fall, and she adapts her modular chromatic chaos to fill and cover the VAC's Vaulted Gallery. She pairs a grid of candy-colored spray-painted acrylic frames, her "Furniture Art" (after Erik Satie's "Musique d'ameublement"), on one gallery wall, flat-boards "The Roundabout" covered in paint and tacked-on adverts, and wheeled scaffolds lined w/ geometric silkscreens and huge letters, "Detour (1-7)" and "Untitled (Go)". You can imagine the installation reconfiguring itself, by Tajima's instruction, throughout its three-month span.
+ Jamie Isenstein " ". I really dug this three-part solo exhibition from Isenstein, and I urge you to take the whole thing w/ tongue held firmly in cheek, or you might not get what she's doing. For one, the ubiquitous sign-in book is part of the show, called "Book of the Dead" in case you signed it w/o checking the cover first. Don't worry. Her "installation Shots (axe, harp, log)" is pretty funny, too: three projectors on pedestals throwing images of what "should be" on those pedestals (i.e. the axe, harp and log)…considering the typical gallery-goer (and even the gullible critic!) to believe whatever's up on the pedestal is meant to be "the artwork". The best, IMO, is her dig at abstract sculpture, her "Dancing Pop-up Fishing Sculpture", a big glob of mixed fabrics and colors w/ the laughably obtuse media listing as "fabric, newspaper, glue, paint, "Worm in a Can" gag dinner mints, human leg, fishnet tights, tap shoe, or velvet curtain, human arm or velvet curtain, "Wishing I Was Fishing" or "Gone Fishing" life preservers, and pedestal" — most of which, if it even exists, is necessarily hidden inside the misshapen form.

CLOSING SOON
NYC
* Katie Armstrong "Once More Once More" @ BravinLee Programs / 526 W 26th St #211. Check out Armstrong's Vimeo clip on the gallery website, hinting at her animated drawings (with vocals! pretty decent folk-ish vocals, sung by the artist) steeped in big-city culture. She's young — a recent BFA from SVA last year — but her knack for eliciting emotion via whimsical, handmade vignettes is totally undeniable.

* Vik Muniz @ Sikkema, Jenkins & Co / 530 W 22nd St. Muniz's latest exhibition is definitely high up on my must-see list this fall. If you caught his recent Academy Award-nominated documentary "Waste Land", you should be familiar w/ Muniz's famous "Pictures of Garbage" series: forming massive riffs on classical art via carefully ordered rubbish in the world's largest dump, outside Rio de Janeiro. His large-scale color photography in this show eschews rust and rubbish for gaudy colors, as he uses images and text torn from magazines to craft detailed duplicates of iconic artworks.

* Kristopher Bendict "Remake" @ Sue Scott Gallery / 1 Rivington St. Revisions of images that are revisions of something else, like a scene from "Vanilla Sky" (formerly "Abre los Ojos"), reinterpreted as an Impressionist painting; Nicholas Cage's foreclosed Hollywood mansion enlarged from a small Google image, etc. In Benedict's unique vocabulary, we are forced to re-look (and re-re-look) at what we've already seen.

* Greg Drasler @ Betty Cuningham Gallery / 541 W 25th St. In Drasler's 2008 show, he represented automobiles and empty interiors w/ a polished 1940's nostalgia. He revisits some of that, plus ski lifts, trailers and tents, devoid of human contact and overlaid by patterns and shadows. They're still as gorgeous as ever.

* Vincent Desiderio @ Marlborough Chelsea / 545 W 25th St. My first up-close encounter w/ Desiderio's grand-sized "new history" style paintings came in late 2008 and left me fumbling for vocabulary. His latest explores the emotional impact of paint and scale, echoing José Clement Orozco in one and an overall period-unspecific virtuosity and menace throughout.

* Sterling Ruby + Lucio Fontana @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. Another provoking pairing by the gallery: Fontana, the Italian-Argentinian founder of Spatialism and member of Arte Povera — i.e. the guy who slashed monochrome canvases w/ a blade — and Ruby, some 80 years his junior, as renowned for his gigantic installations as his penchant for urethane, spraypaint and heavy metal. Yet in the intersection of this Venn Diagram is biomorphic glazed ceramics, one of perhaps many surprising commonalities b/w these two outlying artists.

* Ad Reinhardt "Works from 1935-1945" @ The Pace Gallery / 32 E 57th St. The gallery focuses on the iconic abstract artist's early works, including some 50 geometric paintings and works on paper that bear Cubism's influence through American eyes. Reinhardt's own reductionism — specifically his famed "black" paintings of the '60s — would follow this important period.

* Eko Nugroho "Snobs Behind Ketchup" @ Lombard-Freid Projects / 518 W 19th St. The Indonesian artist's debut solo exhibition in the city, encompassing his large-scale mixed-media portraits and sculpture, revealing his metamorphosed cultural figures. His gorgeous, vibrantly colorful embroidered "paintings" from last summer's "Heat Wave" group show is all the convincing I need that this exhibition is a must-see.

* Shai Kremer "Fallen Empires" @ Julie Saul Gallery / 535 W 22nd St. Kremer's second solo at the gallery expands on his focus into Israel's political landscape, traveling back to antiquity and the crusades via vivid C-prints, then snapping up back to Palestinian conflicts and contemporary issues.

* Andy Denzler "Dissonance and Contemplation" @ Claire Oliver / 513 W 26th St. Denzler's wet-on-wet painterly technique mixes abstraction and photorealism in his figures set against landscapes — the end effect is a bit like a faulty TV set.

AUSTIN
* Jim Torok "Walton" @ Lora Reynolds Gallery / 360 Nueces St. Torok's super small-scale portraits of upstate NY residents exist as fixed moments in time — yet their incredible photorealism (though still painterly finesse, belying their intimate scales) reminds us of the time Torok spent w/ his neighbors and his laborious effort in painting them. Their figures' respective histories, and Torok's delicate layers of paint and gloss, are as durational as a point in time as Colby Bird's changing works (still on view in the main gallery) will become.

TOKYO
* Ayako Okuda @ Gallery MOMO / 2F 6-2-6 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Toei Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). Over a dozen of Okuda's large, sparsely populated landscape paintings, which she previously exhibited in Osaka.

* Hideki Koh "A Boy's Portrait" @ Span Art Gallery / 2-2-18 1F Ginza, Chuo-ku. (Yurakucho Line to Ginza-Itchome Station). Koh has been a celebrated Japanese illustrator for decades, but it was only around '98 that he developed perhaps his signature style, delicate drawings and paintings of kimono-clad young men, solo and coupling. (ENDS SAT)

NYC
* Carrie Moyer "Canonical" @ Canada / 55 Chrystie St. Moyer pushes her painterly technique w/ masking and transparency, bolder lifework beyond her work drawings, and a freedom of color. As Wallace Whitney writes, Moyer's paintings "lightly walk a line between Saturday morning cartoons and the fourth floor of MoMA." There you go.

TOKYO
* Tamaki Shindo 「蒔いた種を探す」@ hpgrp Tokyo / B1F 5-1-15 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku (Chiyoda/Hanzomon/Ginza Lines to Omotesando Station). Shindo blurs painting and photography by cutting up prints of flowers, painting over them, then making multiple color copies and continuing her manipulation. (ENDS SUN)