WEDNESDAY
NYC
* Yang Fudong @ Marian Goodman Gallery / 24 W 57th St. SO: in addition to the gallery's marvelous Francesca Woodman show "The Blueprints" (concurrent w/ her too-brief career retrospective at the Guggenheim), the gallery stages a third exhibition on Yang, who presents two new video works exploring themes of historical fantasies, theatricality and the conflation of fiction and reality, plus a photography series.
* Nir Hod "Mother" @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 515 W 27th St. The Tel Aviv-born, NYC-based artist turns his focus to the Warsaw Ghetto, specifically the anonymous mother in Nazi Franz Konrad's iconic "Boy from Warsaw" photograph taken during the Holocaust.
AUSTIN
* "Mulholland Drive" (dir. David Lynch, 2001) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St, 7p. Lynch's circuitous dive into Hollywood kink snorts a suitably outrageous line of glamourous nose-candy this evening, courtesy Rebecca Havemeyer's Celluloid Handbag act. That whole Club Silencio scene is gonna feel even eerier, kittens.
THURSDAY
NYC
* Nari Ward "Liberty and Orders" @ Lehmann Maupin / 201 Chrystie St. Ward's solo debut at the gallery in 2010, as "LIVESupport", was nothing short of elevating. He commands the LES space this time, taking NYPD's "stop-and-frisk report" to task, plus reconfigures a tactical police tower as a symbol of control in a new and undoubtedly riveting installation. Don't sleep.
* Henning Bohl "Namenloses Grauen" @ Casey Kaplan Gallery / 525 W 21st St. Massive Bohl fan here, considering his discreetly engaging solo "Psyc Holo G yHe Ute" at the gallery in 2009 and Bohl's recent architectural installation at Johann König in Berlin. Here, he screws with monochromatic paintings—sorry: "conceptualizes" them—with Japanese tape dispensers shaped like doughnuts, and other things.
* Rudy Shepherd "Psychic Death" @ Mixed Greens / 531 W 26th St. Shepherd ties his earlier "Black Rock Negative Energy Absorber" sculptures into a new video feat. a transdimensional, ambivalent Healer, plus new sculptural "relics" and paintings that incorporate imagery from the media.
* Jacqueline Humphries @ Greene Naftali Gallery / 508 W 26th St 8th Fl. Some of the most…damn gorgeous kinetic abstract paintings you've ever seen, washes of oil paint, drips of enamel, sometimes silver and glitter for multiple-POV effect. Humphries hasn't had a solo stateside since 2009, and she's pretty prolific, so I'm stoked about this new body of work.
* Caio Fonseca @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 293 10th Ave. Embellishments and extraneous elements have evaporated in Fonseca's latest series of large- and intimately-scaled paintings, which remain refreshing in their bold, reductive forms.
* Ron Gorchov @ Cheim & Read / 547 W 25th St. A recent selection of concave and convex shaped paintings by this "perennially emerging artist" (so writes Robert Storr in a 1990 catalogue essay). The curved works' innate sensuality and pleasing color combinations are traits of Gorchov's signature awesomeness.
* eMediaLoft Projects presents "Berlin Videos in NY" (dir. Barbara Rosenthal, 2009-12) + "80th Birthday Tribute of Super-8 films and Video History Videos by Bill Creston" @ Westbeth Artists Complex / 55 Bethune St, 6th Fl, A-629 (ACE/L to 14th St/8th Ave), 8p/FREE. Rosenthal dialogues with the audience in a presentation of her latest series of performance- and text-based conceptual video shorts. Program two feat. seminal video artist Creston and some of his classic works.
* Ducktails @ 285 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$8. NJ surf-rockers Real Estate have buoyed their awesome band w/ some pretty significant side projects for years, and my all-time favorite of the lot is guitarist Matt Mondanile's looping atmospherics outfit Ducktails. He's joined by NJ power-pop band Home Blitz and What Next (mems. Cause Co-Motion!—those legendary NYC garage-rockers—and German Measles).
TOKYO
* "Diversity in Photography" @ Galerie Sho Contemporary / B1F 3-2-9 Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku (Ginza/Tozai Lines to Nihonbashi Station). Some 15 international photographers draw from diverse sources—fashion, hard realism, abstraction—and mediums—gelatin silver prints to lambda and digital—to present the open-endedness of photography through the 20th century and today. Feat. Guy Bourdin, Mimmo Jodice, Sheila Metzner, Herb Ritts and more.
FRIDAY
NYC
* E.V. Day & Kembra Pfahler "GIVERNY" @ The Hole / 312 Bowery. So beyond the gorgeous photographs by Day (taken at an artist residency at Giverny) feat. Pfahler in her Karen Black getup posing amid waterlilies and Japanese foot-bridges is the artworks' surrounding installation: a recreation of Monet's Giverny garden, replete w/ aforementioned waterlilies and Japanese foot-bridge. Damn awesome.
* Andy Coolquitt "chair w/ paintings" @ Lisa Cooley / 107 Norfolk St. Even in Lisa Cooley's new gallery space, Coolquitt's assemblage-style sculpture is guaranteed dense and intense, as his discarded and chosen-object groupings gravitate to and play off one another.
* Sarah Raha & Mauricio Ancalmo "Not a Particle or a Place but an Action" @ James Cohan Gallery / 533 W 26th St. The California-based artists open their NY gallery debut with solo output and a unique juxtaposition. Rara shows her hour-long film "A Ray Array" (2011) while Alcalmo presents his installation "Dualing Pianos: Agapé Agape in D Minor" (2011) from the 6th edition of "Bay Area Now". Finally, Ancalmo's photograms from the "Dualing Pianos" series play against Rara's prints from "A Ray Array".
* "The Crystal Chain" @ Invisible-Exports / 14A Orchard St. Matthew Porter and Hannah Whitaker co-curate this photography group exhibition, coinciding w/ Blind Spot magazine's issue 45. Feat. several historical photographers (Eliot Porter, Ellen Auerbach, Josef Breitenbach) plus more recent works by Matthew Brandt, Kate Costello, Boru O'Brien O'Connell, Erin Shirreff and others.
* Nigel Cooke @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. Cooke's spare, overpainted canvases of burnout figures roaming squalid landscapes take on a blissfully brushy inclination now, like being trapped in a tropical carwash of psychedelic awesomeness.
* "Prince of Darkness" (dir. John Carpenter, 1987) midnight screening @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Carpenter's coupling of sci-fi and Satan not only stars Alice Cooper as a possessed hobo, it still scares the hell outta me. ALSO SAT
* Sonic Boom + Crystal Stilts @ Knitting Factory / 361 Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, G to Lorimer), 8p/$15. I was actually remarking recently "where have Crystal Stilts"—those moody neo-Velvet Underground dudes—"gone off to?" A: supporting Spaceman 3's Pete Kember (as Sonic Boom) in an extra-fuzzy night of pop noise.
AUSTIN
* "Traditional Family Values" @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity. Austin-based artists Arturo Aguero, Sarah Holman, and Marcella Mendez explore different circles of connections, including immigrants, queerness, non-normative and non-nuclear families. The exhibition features a "home" installation with individual gallery spaces.
+ "Finale": 2012 Senior Art Exhibition. Go 2012 Studio Art and Visual Art Studies graduates!
* "The Raid" (dir. Gareth Evans, 2011) @ Alamo Drafthouse S. Lamar / 1120 S. Lamar. HELL YES, and about damn time. Oh I've had a rough dozen months waiting for Evans' broken-boned bonkers action followup to "Merentau", and when this opened last week seemingly everywhere BUT Austin, I was cursing the sky gods for forsaking me. But finally, finally, it's here: Iko Uwais and his handful of SWAT vs. a high-rise full of mixed martial arts bad guys. Stoked to the nth.
* "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" (dir. Lasse Hallström, 2011) @ Violet Crown Cinema / 434 W 2nd St. What's a bigger challenge w/ an even bigger feel-good payoff: actualizing a sheikh's (Amr Waked) goal to bring fly-fishing to the desert, or the two Brits in charge of making it happen, a consultant (Emily Blunt) and a fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) gettin' it on?
* "Wrath of the Titans 3D" (dir. Jonathan Liebesman, 2012) @ Alamo Drafthouse Village / 2700 W Anderson Ln. Full disclosure: I saw "Clash of the Titans" in theaters. I saw it for that whole Ralph Fiennes "release the Kraken!!" bit, which was admittedly dope, but beyond that I wanted to burn my eyes out. Yet…I am oddly compelled to see "Wrath of the Titans". More monsters? Hell yeah! I mean, that whole clip where Sam Worthington as Perseus goes head-to-heads w/ a chimera? This is action cinema, man!
* "Blue Velvet" (dir. David Lynch, 1986) midnight screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St. Pabst Blue Ribbon!!! Credit Dennis Hopper for one of cinema's most iconic antagonist onscreen entries, as the nitrous huffing, dry-humping sadist Frank Booth. A pre-"Twin Peaks" Kyle MacLachlan is wayyy over his head as wannabe detective Jeffrey, whose discovery of a severed human ear gets him all sorts of nigh-giallo style surrealist entanglements. Hot stuff. ALSO SAT
* Megafauna + Black Cock @ Flamingo Cantina / 515 E Sixth St, 9p/$5. Heavy. Guitarist Dani Neff (formerly of CT outfit Triple Threat Blues Band) anchors Megafauna, who do garage rock w/ an ATX twist. Noise-pop trio Black Cock channel classic Whale with decibel-shredding aplomb. w/ Lick Lick
TOKYO
* Ikko Narahara @ Taka Ishii Photography / 2F 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). A two-part exhibition of the Fukuoka-born artist, focusing on two distinct bodies of work. The show opens with Narahara's portraiture as the theme "Sights of Civilization". Beginning Apr 17, the gallery switches to photographs of the urban landscape.
* Miila and the Geeks @ Shibuya O-Nest / 6F 2-3 Maruyama-cho, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station, Hachiko Exit), 6:30p/4500 yen. After like a solid year of touring in support of slightly sinister, garage-rock debut "New Age", the lovable indie-pop trio Miila and the Geeks are baaaack! Singer/songwriter Moe Wadaka's group (she's Miila, saxophonist Komori and drummer Ajima the geeks), are a triumph for the indie scene, plus Moe's behind the band's fractured lovely music videos. w/ Norwegian all-Marie grrrl-indies Razika and locals DJ Twee Grrrls Club
SATURDAY
NYC
* Charles Dunn "hell on earth" @ Number 35 Gallery / 141 Attorney St. Apocalyptic possibilities enrich Dunn's vibrant color palette in his paintings and enrapture his Plexiglas and wood sculpture. Hell, if the world's going to end in 2012, might as well go for broke. Year of the Dragon. Carpe Diem.
* Independent Art Spaces Symposium and "Art Spaces Directory" Launch @ New Museum / 235 Bowery (F to 2nd Ave, 6 to Spring St), noon/$8. A two-panel symposium, moderated by 2012 Triennial "The Ungovernables" (read my props under CURRENT SHOWS) Curator Eungie Joo and "Art Spaces Directory" Co-editor Ethan Swan. Part one highlights the unique challenges of independent spaces, feat. Lia Gangitano (Founder/Director of PARTICIPANT INC, New York); Stefan Kalmár (Executive Director and Curator of Artists Space, New York); Heejin Kim (Director of Art Space Pool, Seoul, Korea); and Tobias Ostrander (Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Miami Art Museum). Part two looks at nonphysical alternatives, like online platforms and nomadic initiatives, and feat. Lauren Cornell (Executive Director, Rhizome, and Adjunct Curator, New Museum); Deana Lawson (Co-founder/Co-director, 68 Months Discussion Group, New York); and Daniela Perez (Co-founder, de_sitio, Mexico City, Mexico).
AUSTIN
* The Skatalites @ Flamingo Cantina / 515 E Sixth St, 9p/$15. Ah, Skatalites: Kingston's own, the mighty frontrunners of ska decades before the punks got hold of it. The ensemble has about 50 years in it, but check these tireless groove innovators: this is the kickoff of their 2012 U.S. tour!
TOKYO
* Takashi Ishida @ Taka Ishii Gallery / 5F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). This isn't quite Anthony McCall—in Ishida's "drawing with 16mm film animation"—but I am pretty totally stoked for the artist's debut solo at the gallery.
* Junta Egawa "Forgetting the new world seen a while ago, and the moment of seeing again" @ eitoeiko / 32-2 Yaraicho, Shinjuku-ku (Tokyo Metro Tozen Line to Kagurazaka Station, Toei Oedo Line to Ushigome-kagurazaka Station). In the Kanagawa-born artist's third solo at the gallery, he internalizes his paintings to meditate was what lost in the Tohoku earthquake.
* "Drive" (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) @ Shinjuku Wald9 / 3-1-26 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi/Fukutoshin/Shinjuku Lines to Shinjuku-sanchome Station). Call me the biggest holdout to "Drive" mania—possibly b/c I don't get the fervor for Ryan Gosling. But whatever, I saw it, and I really dug it. Take raw '80s glam and neon-lit LA with a kickass soundtrack and a decent Gosling role, as a former getaway driver trying to make good, and you've got a pretty solid picture.
* Miila and the Geeks @ Fever / 1-1-14 Hanegi, Setagaya-ku (Odakyu Inokashira Line to Shindaita or Shimokitazawa Stations), 5:30p/2800 yen. Note my effusive praise for Moe Wadaka and her indie-pop group Miila and the Geeks under FRI, then come to this show. w/ CENTRAL and SOSITE
* クチナシ @ SOUP / B1F 3-9-10 Kami-Ochiai, Shinjuku-ku (JR Sobu Line to Higashi-Nakano Station), 7p/2000 yen. This raw poppy Osaka quartet "Kuchinashi" use keyboards to buoyant effect, propelling their tight arrangements and Yuko Hirooka's bright vocals. Also: their name translates as "Gardenia". w/ locals RENTALHOPE and 90centjokes
* オーラルヴァンパイア @ Koenji High / 4-30-1 Koenji-Minami, Suginami-ku (Chuo Line to Koenji Station), 7:30p/3000 yen. That would be "Aural Vampire" for those of you incapable of reading the katakana-ized name. This is Exo-Chika (vocalist) and Raveman (DJ), and they sound like of like Ayumi Hamasaki with a harsh electroclash beat. And vampire imagery. I think I'm in love. w/ COSMO-SHIKI
SUNDAY
NYC
* "Caro Diaro" (dir. Nanni Moretti, 1993) screening @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 5:45p. About damn time! Italian filmmaker/writer/comedian/leftist Moretti hasn't had much love in the States, at least in my recollections. So IFC stages a mini-Moretti fest and is playing my all-time favorite film by him. "Caro Diario" is semi-autobiographical and winsomely sweet, but that first part "On My Vespa" hits you like a wave of Mediterranean Sea, it is that refreshing and fun.
MONDAY
NYC
* SBTRKT (DJ set) @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/SOLD OUT. Duh. Go nuts for this soulful dubstep revivalist. "With very special guests"? I wonder who they might me?
TUESDAY
NYC
* Noveller @ Death By Audio / 49 S 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$7. Brooklyn guitar goddess Sarah Lipstate aka Noveller shredded into the Year of the Dragon w/ a lauded LP "Glacial Glow" (her approachable atmospheric side) and an ultra-limited looping cassette/DVD "ARTIFACT" (her avant-experimental side), plus she's working on a commissioned project w/ Low End String Quartet—and hopefully she will tour nationally in 2012! Until then, check this dope show, feat. Electric Jellyfish (all the way from Melbourne, Australia) and local axe-wielding duo Tall Firs.
AUSTIN
* Art in Practice: Mark Allen, Executive Director of Machine Project @ Visual Arts Center / UT Art Building, 23rd St at Trinity, 6:30p. Mark Allen, the LA-based artist/educator/critic and Executive Director of non-profit performance and installation space Machine Project, discusses the Echo Park organization and contemporary creative cultural issues.
* "The Toolbox Murders" (dir. Dennis Donnelly, 1978) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St, 10:15p. The slumlord from hell! The tagline reads "Bit by bit…by bit he carved a nightmare!", but that "bit" means the kind from a drill, like in the sadistic super's toolbox! Rather than fix his tenants' leaky faucets and cracked ceilings, he'd rather kill them! Of note: Tobe Hooper remade this video nasty in 2003—kinda—and the ineffably weird Angela Bettis starred as the lead force against certain evil! Honestly, the original sounds way better.
CURRENT SHOWS
NYC
* The Generational: "The Ungovernables" @ New Museum / 235 Bowery (F to 2nd Ave, 6 to Spring St). Eungie Joo curated a superb iteration of the New Museum's Generational triennial. Stoked as I was for the 2009 inaugural, cheekily coined "Younger Than Jesus", it was so in-your-face that it left little deep meanings after I left the exhibition. Not so with "The Ungovernables", a panoply of 34 artists, groups and temporary collectives who are all about as young as Jesus and most have never exhibited "here" before. Here meaning in the U.S., so this is an awesome gaze into the greater art-making world, with its complicated cultural surroundings—take the artist-led initiative Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Project for one, Tel Aviv-based performative research group Public Movement as another. Lebanese artist Hassan Khan's booming, swaying video installation "Jewel", of a dance-off b/w two Middle Eastern men; Mounira Al Solh's wall of figurative drawings executed in the guise of a male; and Jose Antonio Vega Macotela's temporal "Time Exchanges" with inmates each comment on identity and relation, as does Pilvi Takala's impassive takedown of a Helsinki office-space—and all this is on just the 2nd fl. Julia Dault's delicate rolled Plexi and Slavs & Tatars' "Prayway" rug with rice-burner fluorescents are some of the 3rd Fl's most eye-catching. And on the 4th fl, even the artists who have shown "here" bring a multifaceted experience of moving through contemporary society, like Danh Vo's "WE THE PEOPLE", a deconstructed part of the Statue of Liberty, fabricated with pounded copper sheets in China and installed like parts of a massive candy wrapper; or Londoner Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's haunting portraiture paintings of figures existing not in reality, though their enlivening gaze won't leave us alone. And there's Adrian Villar Rojas' much-buzzed modular behemoth "A person loved me", rendered on-site in fragile clay as artifact and beautiful artwork formed by minimal resources and expert teamwork. You'll want to excavate further, to really know these artists, their backgrounds and current concerns and approaches.
* Roy Lichtenstein "Landscapes in the Chinese Style" @ Gagosian / 555 W 24th St. I wasn't in town for the blessedly polarizing spectacle that was Damien Hirst's dots, but I love the chilled-out vibe emanating from Lichtenstein's minimalist, pastel-toned landscapes. They feature a bunch of atypical Lichtenstein-ian elements—a horizontal smear of grey-blue paint in "Small Landscape"; sponged-on foliage in "Landscape with Scholar's Rock"—that echo the traditional Chinese style. There is very little Pop here, and the vertical scroll-like "Landscape with Cliff" almost does away with Lichtenstein's signature Benday dots altogether. I'm not complaining here: these are lovely paintings, and like the aforementioned "Scholar's Rock" (whose meandering gauzy white conveys more physicality and emotion than the artist's more famous comic-inspired works) inspire deep contemplation.
* "I Know This But You Feel Different", curated by Shara Hughes and Meredith James @ Marc Jancou Contemporary / 524 W 24th St. A pretty superb group show inspiring dialogue on interior spaces. Hughes' own large painting "My Head's Really Not In This" locks the whole idea together as she contorts and flattens multi-planar space with gusto, pairing the experience with a vivid color palette. But there's much other awesomeness as well, beginning with Hughes' oil-on-paper drawings and extending to highly textural oil on linen paintings by Clare Grill and a nook installation by Miles Huston and Jacques Louis Vidal. Jesse Greenberg's visceral homemade objects and Jacob Robichaux's deconstructed remnants keep the show's tone loose and compelling.
* Mounir Fatmi "Oriental Accident" @ Lombard-Freid Projects / 518 W 19th St. Exhibition as noise show, Fatmi's second solo at the gallery is INTENSE. He pairs recordings from Maghreb during the Arab Spring in speakers sprinkled with nails and embedded into a Persian rug. Sonic squalls recur in "Modern times, a History of the Machine", a video projection in the side gallery that morphs Arabic calligraphy into a kinetic Duchamp-ian affair. Even Fatmi's static pieces threaten to attack, whether bas-reliefs of the number zero composed of coaxial antenna cables or lace loops drenched in oily black paint.
AUSTIN
* PJ Raval + Nick Brown @ Tiny Park / 607 1/2 Genard St. Fleeting moments of our collective mortality, captured on canvas and animated on film. Austin-based filmmaker Raval eschews his notable collabs w/ local performance artist and "drag terrorist" CHRISTEENE (like the music video "Fix My Dick", part of UT VAC's "Queer State(s)" exhibition) in favor of three early, experimental videos. "Clean" goes from jittery, wince-worthy toothbrushing to kinetic, croaking bandaids that eventually cover the titular neat-freak, while "NET06" is a flickering slice of noise recalling Hans Richter and Dadaist visual arts. LA-based painter Brown looks like Troy Sanders from Mastodon and he creates a mean, visceral canvas, too. Beyond the beauty of these impasto creations is an ephemeral moment—the twin-edged bloodshed and psychedelia within a field of "Poppies", the discomfiting sleep of "South Pacific"—frozen in time. His fiery red pastel drawings are as strong as the paintings and reflect Brown's printmaking background, as etched marks couple with negative space and smears of pastel to conjure very realistic, occasionally harrowing scenes of natural demise. A very moving show within such a cute, boutique gallery.
* Tom Molloy "New World" @ Lora Reynolds Gallery / 360 Nueces St. Molloy strips away the noise and distractions in his historically leaning or contemporarily relevant bodies of work—oftentimes by incredibly meticulous practices—leaving a sort-of podium for us to contemplate, discuss, argue. While he's not explicitly putting his own politics behind the dozens of thrift-store framed Internet-culled b&w images of male world leaders pressing the flesh in "Shake", the works circuitous nature and site-specific installation—where "Hussein/Mubarak" slides into "Mubarak/Bush" and "Bush/Putin", until we're back at "Hussein" again—, plus the fact these nonchronological shots span from 9-11 to the Arab Spring, naturally presents some theories. How these men are friends one minute, wheeling and dealing the next, and sworn enemies separated by several frames of their "friends" after that. Molloy's nine-part titular work features nine different LP sleeves of Dvorák's "New World Symphony", the texts painted over (Molloy's analogue to Photoshop, he said) to show only benign, sunny images of the Western frontier. That "incredibly meticulous practices" bit I alluded to earlier is most clear in "Somewhere", Molloy's hand-painted sheet music to the "Wizard of Oz"'s sweetly optimistic anthem, a work that began with a black sheet of paper and lots and lots of carefully applied white gouache.
CLOSING SOON
NYC
* Ellen Berkenblit @ Anton Kern Gallery / 532 W 20th St. Berkenblit's large and mid-sized, loosely figurative paintings are just haunting, like pages of a girl's fairytale book streaked with charcoal and soaked in gasoline. Cartoonish animals and doe-eyed girls emerge from clouds of amorphously contoured chroma, or are otherwise obliterated by hazy hues. She hasn't had a solo at the gallery since '08, so I'm considerably stoked for this one.
* Not Vital @ Sperone Westwater / 257 Bowery. A shimmering stainless steel monolith extending two vertical floors of gallery space, called "Tongue". An array of Chinese coal mini-mountains. Disarmingly organic plaster forms hanging off stainless steel rods, called "Hanging & Weighting". A solid 18-Karat gold Peking duck hanging in the lift. Such is the Swiss sculptor's latest exhibition, fashioned in his Beijing studio to creep us out.
* Chris Consnowski "American Metal" @ Lyons Wier Gallery / 542 W 24th St. The Chicago artist tunes his focus to trophies—that slightly gaudy symbol of victory—in large, photorealistic renderings with assuredly multilayered, unromanticized undertones.
* Michiel Ceulers "Des malentendus et le temps perdu" @ Ana Cristea Gallery / 521 W 26th St. The gallery debuts the young Belgian artist in his first stateside solo show, who focuses on the bare essentials—canvases, wood panels, paint and spraypaint—in his deft exploration of abstraction. Roughly half the works are gridded, abraded monochromes and the other smaller, shaped canvases in glittering spraypaint.
TOKYO
* Sashie Masakatsu "Invisible Hand" @ Mizuma Art Gallery / 2F 3-13 Ichigayatamachi, Shinjuku-ku (Yurakucho/Nanboku Lines to Ichigaya Station). Masakatsu pairs his oil paintings—surrealist orbs of townships and consumer objects floating over ruins—with a huge Japanese sliding door. (ENDS SAT)
NYC
* Ellen Harvey "The Nudist Museum Gift Shop" @ DODGEgallery / 15 Rivington St. Harvey explores the art nude in all its permutations, from the glitzily framed portrait to the boob-mug, in these brushy old-school oil paintings of images culled from Ebay. Plus postcards of historical nudes, sourced from NYC art museums and modified by Harvey to depict only the figures—because what is a "museum gift shop" without postcards?
AUSTIN
* "Absurdities Crept In" @ Grayduck Gallery / 608 W Monroe Dr. Metaphysically dope neatly codifies this group show, feat. two Minneapolis artists, Terrance Payne and Jennifer Davis, plus Dallas local Mark Nelson. The former two appeared in the gallery's 2010 all-Minnesota "Pilot" show, plus Payne runs the Minneapolis artist collective Rosalux (of which Davis used to be a member). A striking figurative, visual style carries in both these artists. Payne's colored-pencil diptychs deftly incorporate text around bold stripes and wallpaper patterns ("You can count on me just don't count high"), as he comments on human fallibility. Meanwhile Davis opens a door to a very personal psyche in her acrylic and charcoal graphite works on panel, blending a dark whimsy and washed-out palette with high realism ("Get Up & Go", "Cordelia"). Nelson's the wildcard, but his Texas-based Pop Pluralism—twisted surrealism and disarming verité coexisting like they were meant to be together—locks this exhibition in. (ENDS SUN)
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
fee's LIST / through 3/27
WEDNESDAY
TOKYO
* Eikoh Hosoe @ BLD Gallery / 2-4-9 Ginza, Chuo Ward Tokyo (JR Yurakucho Station, Marunouchi Line to Ginza Station). The gallery's season-long retrospective on the pivotal Modernist photographer now follows his collaboration with and homage to Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, in "The butterfly dream". The series resulted in a collected monograph released in 2006, in celebration of Ohno's 100th birthday.
THURSDAY
NYC
* Michelangelo Pistoletto "Lavoro" @ Luhring Augustine / 531 W 24th St. Pistoletto staged this new series of mirror "paintings" at London's Simon Lee Gallery last autumn, which features his signature mirrors overlaid w/ elements of construction, dust, and rubble—not exactly out of place within W. Chelsea. This show will draw mad crowds (tourists love taking photos of themselves w/in a Pistoletto mirror), but you can't really miss it either, right?
* Stan Douglas "Disco Angola" @ David Zwirner / 525 W 19th St. I dug Douglas' "Midcentury Studio" installation in the gallery last year, but I think his assuming the role of a fictional photojournalist amid NYC's roiling early '70s disco underground sounds even doper. He includes works from Angola (considering saxophonist Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa", widely considered the first disco hit) and NY, plus the historical, political and cultural moments encompassing them.
* Kathy Ruttenberg "The Earth Exhales" @ STUX Gallery / 530 W 25th St. New, disturbing ceramics in Ruttenberg's debut at the gallery, including woodland creatures, humans, and the forest itself blurred into wild amalgams.
* Jackie Saccoccio @ Eleven Rivington / 11 Rivington St. New brain-frying large-scale abstract paintings from the NY/CT-based artist, set as imageless "portraits" with lots of wild poured, splashed, and stained elements. Yum.
* Vibha Galhotra "Utopia of Difference" @ Jack Shainman Gallery / 512 W 20th St. The New Delhi-based artist celebrates her debut at the gallery (and NY, in broader terms) w/ her sewn-metal "ghungroos" and sculpture reflecting urbanization and the environment within contemporary society.
* Catherine Lee "Quanta" @ Galerie Lelong / 528 W 26th St. Lee bridges off from her glazed raku ceramic sculptures in this new series of grid paintings, most featuring layers of sublime differing hues.
* Susan Hartnett, Ralph Humphrey, Marilyn Lerner, Dona Nelson @ Mary Boone Gallery / 745 Fifth Ave. My heart just jumped a little in my chest when reading the press release for this group show of sorta-abstract painters, curated by Klaus Kertess. Mainly for Nelson, whose iconic freestanding panels both highlight her choice of structural elements and the stretcher itself plus magnify her two-sided textural paintings.
FRIDAY
NYC
* Adolph Gottlieb "Gravity, Suspension, Motion" @ The Pace Gallery / 534 W 25th St. Nearly two decades' worth of the Abstract Expressionist's large-scale later works, including examples from series "Labyrinths", "Bursts", and "Imaginary Landscapes", highlighting dialogues between disparate forms and planar space.
* "The Spirit Level", curated by Ugo Rondinone @ Gladstone Galleryhttp://gladstonegallery.com/ / 515 W 24th St. That Swiss trickster and smile-inducer curated this 19-artist pan-medium group show, feat. Martin Boyce, Ann Craven, Latifa Echakhch, Amy Granat, Klara Liden, Rudolf Schwartzkogler, among others.
* Liz Magic Laser @ Derek Eller Gallery / 615 W 27th St. Were you cool enough to catch Laser's Performa-commissioned video "I Feel Your Pain", performed, filmed and edited live in the midst of a theatre audience during last year's Performa 11? The end result is featured here, alongside the live performance "The Digital Face", which will ultimately become a two-channel slide projection in the gallery.
* Rory Donaldson "Shared Roadway Ahead" @ Winkleman Gallery / 621 W 27th St. The Scottish-born, NY-based artist heavily works over his digital photographs of cityscapes and more rural environments, creating the illusion of paint (think particularly Gerhard Richter's abstract techniques) by stripping and distorting the prints' digital information.
* "Argento: Il Cinema Nel Sangue" @ MAD Museum / 2 Columbus Circle (CE/123 to 59th St/Columbus Circle). A three-month retrospective celebrating giallo god Dario Argento and his hot daughter Asia, punnily translated as "Cinema in the Blood"? Damn, MAD Museum, you're still cool in my books. Check back for LIST updates on the dopeness, but the series begins strong with:
+ "Se tutee le donne del mondo/Kiss the Girls and Make them Die" (dirs. Henry Livin and Arduino Maiuri, 1966) screening @ 7p. This was Dario's dad Salvatore's first producing credit, harbingering the nonstop wave of black-leather gloves, razorblades and surrealist camerawork that his son would christen horror cinema just a few years later. OK, so "Kiss the Girls…" is kinda weirdo sci-fi (like that several years of Dick Tracy's "Space Coupe" period) but I say go for it.
* Nguzunguzu @ 285 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 11:30p/$12. Cali cuties Nguzunguzu lead the sweat-inducement tonight, which also feat. Salva, Rezzie (of Weird Magic) and DJ MikeQ. I know you can dance, NYC!
AUSTIN
* PJ Raval + Nick Brown @ Tiny Park / 607 1/2 Genard St. This combo exhibition feat. animation works from Austin filmmaker Raval and visceral, impastoed paintings by LA-based artist Brown.
* "Sound of Noise" (dirs. Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, 2010) @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St. Bonkers! A sleeper hit at 2010 Fantastic Fest, comparable to an anarchist, nattily dressed Blue Man Group enacting a "musical apocalypse" upon Malmö, Sweden! It's tons more fun than you can even imagine.
* "Eraserhead" (dir. David Lynch, 1977) midnight screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St. You don't need to sleep, right? Lynch's quintessential midnight movie, starring quixotic Jack Nance as the titular sad-case bloke trudging amid a wet, ruined industrialscape, fielding requests from his girlfriend (and her freaky family) while pining for the Woman Across the Hall…and hallucinating and all that…yeah, it'll keep you up until dawn. ALSO SAT
TOKYO
* Etsuko Taniguchi "light" @ hpgrp Tokyo / B1F 5-1-15 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku (Chiyoda/Hanzomon/Ginza Lines to Omotesando Station). Taniguchi creates a disarming illumination in her nightlife cityscapes but cutting into lacquered canvases and then painting them over in acrylic.
* Terror Familia + Oh my God, you've gone @ Heaven's Door / 1-33-19 Sangen-jaya, Setagaya-ku (Den-en-toshi Line to Sangen-jaya Station), 7p/2300 yen. Tokyo-style grunge in two ace coed groups, particularly Terror Familia (composed of charismatic vocalist Diana Chiaki, plus members of Lillie and Remains and The John's Guerilla). w/ BALLOON88
SATURDAY
NYC
* Peter Saul @ Mary Boone Gallery / 541 W 24th St. Who'dathunk Peter Saul—he of the acid-toned, hypnagogic-subject palette of The Hairy Who—would be getting all this buzz? Yet the grandmaster of bad taste agitprop had both a stunning solo at David Nolan Gallery in 2009 and a superb career survey at Haunch of Venison in 2010. Now Mary Boone showcases new paintings by the artist, who hasn't dialed down the lurid colors nor subject matter an ounce. Considering Occupy Wall Street and other contemporary excesses, Saul has a LOT to work with. Should be dope.
* Grimes @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8:30p/SOLD OUT. Duh, I mean you put Claire Boucher, aka Montreal-based one-woman glitch-pop starlet Grimes, in über-DIY 285 Kent, you bet she'll draw crowds of punk-minded, groove-oriented youth just hankering to GET IT DOWN. Hence why it's been sold out for like ages. w/ Born Gold
* Widowspeak @ Death By Audio / 49 S. 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$7. Still the hottest deal in town for dope acts, and Captured Tracks' darklings Widowspeak make it extra-glamorous. w/ Massachusetts noise-pop act Eternal Summers and Bleeding Rainbow
AUSTIN
* Conrad Bakker "Untitled Project: RECORD SHOP [45s] @ Lora Reynolds Gallery / 360 Nueces St. I visited Tokyo indie gallery eitoeiko during New City Art Fair in NYC and noted they were showing artist Masaru Aikawa, whose signature style includes hand-painting CD-sized squares of canvas to expertly replicate CD album covers, only in obviously painterly style. So I am intrigued by Bakker's take, painting LP covers on carved wood slabs that mimic album sleeves. Yeah, I'll take a spin at his "RECORD SHOP".
TOKYO
* Hisami Tanaka "NOSELF" @ waitingroom / 4B 2-8-11 Ebisu-nishi, Shibuya-ku (JR Yamanote Line/Hibiya Line to Ebisu Station, West Exit). New jagged mixed-media paintings and drawings by the Kanagawa-based artist, in his debut at the gallery. I saw a little preview of Tanaka's work at waitingroom's booth at New City Art Fair in NYC, and guess what: it's dope.
* Hitomi Motoki "The fantasy bedroom-Girl and Foretaste-" @ Gallery MOMO / 2F 6-2-6 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Toei Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). Motoki conjures a dreamworld of absurdity and nostalgia in her figurative carved-wood sculpture and installation.
* 「海燕ホテルブルー」 (dir. Koji Wakamatsu, 2012) @ Theatre Shinjuku / 3-14-20 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi/Fukutoshin/Shinjuku Lines to Shinjuku-sanchome Station). Wakamatsu's latest—an ex-con's retribution plan royally screwed up after he meets a young woman in a seaside town—actually debuted at NY's Japan Society a few weeks back.
* "Trollhunter" (dir. André Øvredal, 2010) @ Toho Cinema Hiho / 2-5-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku (Yurakucho Line to Yurakucho Station, Tokyo Metro Marunouchi/Hibiya/Ginza Lines to Ginza Station). This is how you do a found-footage film: a likable, bright-eyed cast and a grizzly, charismatic hunter taking down huge-ass trolls in the Scandinavian north, that's how!
* DORAVIDEO x Keiji Haino x Toshiji Mikawa (Incapacitants/Hijokaidan) @ Goodman / B1F 55 Kanda-Sakumagashi, Chiyoda-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Akihabara Station), 7p/3200 yen. Ah Mikawa-san, everybody's favorite banker by day just happens to be one of Japan's longest-reigning noise gods. That he teams w/ improv lord Haino and drummer/composer DORAVIDEO (Yoshimitsu Ichiraku) should be more than the series' titular "collaboration breakdown". Intense.
SUNDAY
AUSTIN
* "Funny Ha Ha" (dir. Andrew Bujalski, 2002) 10th anniversary @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St, 7p. I'm just full of surprises! I think it's clear to frequent LIST-readers that my style of film leans toward the dark, violent, sexy, bloody, and overall genre-riffic. Yet I pull a big softie here for Bujalski's debut, the mumblecore ne plus ultra way before mumblecore was a "thing" to be loved and/or reviled. The unpretentiousness of his presentation, of likable cutie Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer) navigating friends and post-grad responsibility in Boston, is just disarming. Join Bujalski tonight for trip down that very special memory lane.
* Galaxy Express (Seoul) @ Mohawk / 912 Red River, 9p/$6. For better or worse, you say Korea and music in the same sentence, I'm thinking KPop: cute girl-groups with acid-tongued rappers and choreographed moves (and their boy kindred). Not so w/ Galaxy Express, a leather-clad, psych-rock middle finger to stylized, commercial radio. These dudes rock hard.
TOKYO
* CIRCUITRIP + ASTRO @ Flat / 3-17-2 Nishiogi-minami, Suginami-ku (JR Chuo Line to Nishi-ogikubo Station), 6:30p/1500 yen. "Noise as social skill" figures into Singapore sound-screwer CIRCUITRIP's ethos, who filter field sounds and big-city ambience into their washes of big noise. They share the night w/ psych-noise master Hiroshi Hasegawa (formerly CCCC, now ASTRO), who teams w/ ROHCO and Manuel Knapp as trio Cosmic Coincidence. w/ Jah Excretion and Goum
MONDAY
NYC
* "An Evening With Don Hertzfeldt" @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 7&9:30p. This was a singular night in Austin last year, a blissful 2+ hours with the indie animation god (and Sundance winner, and Oscar nominee) Don Hertzfeldt, who premiered the final chapter of his Bill trilogy "It's A Beautiful Day" in glorious 35mm, after screening parts one and two to a transfixed full house. Plus lots of lovely little bits throughout ("Wisdom Teeth", though not "Rejected"). NYC, you are lucky to have the man for two screenings, tonight AND Tuesday.
TUESDAY
AUSTIN
* "Shakma" (dirs. Tom Logan and Hugh Parks, 1990) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St, 10p. D&D freaks vs. a possessed baboon controlled by Roddy McDowall in this not-on-DVD "fatalityfest". What am I missing?
CURRENT SHOWS
NYC
* The Generational: "The Ungovernables" @ New Museum / 235 Bowery (F to 2nd Ave, 6 to Spring St). Eungie Joo curated a superb iteration of the New Museum's Generational triennial. Stoked as I was for the 2009 inaugural, cheekily coined "Younger Than Jesus", it was so in-your-face that it left little deep meanings after I left the exhibition. Not so with "The Ungovernables", a panoply of 34 artists, groups and temporary collectives who are all about as young as Jesus and most have never exhibited "here" before. Here meaning in the U.S., so this is an awesome gaze into the greater art-making world, with its complicated cultural surroundings—take the artist-led initiative Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Project for one, Tel Aviv-based performative research group Public Movement as another. Lebanese artist Hassan Khan's booming, swaying video installation "Jewel", of a dance-off b/w two Middle Eastern men; Mounira Al Solh's wall of figurative drawings executed in the guise of a male; and Jose Antonio Vega Macotela's temporal "Time Exchanges" with inmates each comment on identity and relation, as does Pilvi Takala's impassive takedown of a Helsinki office-space—and all this is on just the 2nd fl. Julia Dault's delicate rolled Plexi and Slavs & Tatars' "Prayway" rug with rice-burner fluorescents are some of the 3rd Fl's most eye-catching. And on the 4th fl, even the artists who have shown "here" bring a multifaceted experience of moving through contemporary society, like Danh Vo's "WE THE PEOPLE", a deconstructed part of the Statue of Liberty, fabricated with pounded copper sheets in China and installed like parts of a massive candy wrapper; or Londoner Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's haunting portraiture paintings of figures existing not in reality, though their enlivening gaze won't leave us alone. And there's Adrian Villar Rojas' much-buzzed modular behemoth "A person loved me", rendered on-site in fragile clay as artifact and beautiful artwork formed by minimal resources and expert teamwork. You'll want to excavate further, to really know these artists, their backgrounds and current concerns and approaches.
* Whitney Biennial @ Whitney Museum / 945 Madison Ave (6 to 77th St). My take-away thoughts from the 2012 iteration of the Whitney's unavoidably must-see biennial is "this is a very pretty, very safe show". If you reside in NYC, then you've got the advantage, as like 33% of the exhibiting artists contribute performances or films throughout the Biennial's several-month run. Which means those of us lot who can only see the show once will miss a cool third of what's good. We must rely on what's hanging on the walls, what's displayed over two and a half floors of Whitney, knowing well that we aren't getting the whole picture by any means. What IS there is very pretty, and creatively installed for the most part. Richard Hawkins' Francis Bacon-esque paintings recur on two walls of the 2nd fl, accompanying a Kai Althoff installation of paintings on a silk curtain bisecting the gallery and K8 Hardy's brutal prints of shoes and cropped figures. It's here that three of the strongest elements of the Biennial reside: LaToya Ruby Frazier's wonderful array of prints that address a Levis ad campaign that appropriated images of her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania; an intimate room of outsider artist Forrest Bess' paintings and life-story, curated by Robert Gober; and Werner Herzog's museum debut with the soul-stirring film "Heresay of the Soul". Andrew Masullo's small-scale, sunny abstract paintings brighten up the third floor, which adds a bit of creative impulse from Nick Mauss' installation "Concern, Crush, Desire". All in all, it's fine, totally, but if I hadn't encountered the Frazier (or the Herzog, really) I don't think I would have been moved nearly as deeply.
* John Chamberlain "Choices" @ Guggenheim / 1071 Fifth Ave (456 to 86th St). Moving Chamberlain's very new monolith "C'ESTZESTY", a finger of painted and chromium-plated steel and stainless soaring nearly 20 vertical feet, outside the Guggenheim proper was a wonderful decision, as this skyscraper dwarfed uncomfortably its previous occupation within the Gagosian's mammoth 24th St gallery space. Here it breathes, gleaming in the early-spring sunlight. It is one of many successful instances in a superb sendoff to the American sculptor, who passed away just months before this career retrospective opened to the public. Inside, Chamberlain's ginormous aluminum twist "SPHINXGRIN TWO" holds court in the rotunda, while battered and discolored works from decades' previous begin the exhilarating run up the Gugg's ramps. Some remarkable collages and reliefs mix with early masterpieces like "Hillbilly Galoot" (1960, a crouching red beetle) and "Miss Lucy Pink" (1962, like a rose rendered in steel). Small-scale auto-origami recurs as well, playing off the galvanized steel "Ultima Thule" and some curious, slippery mineral-coated polymer resin pieces. The human-scale array "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (like Picasso's "Musicians" re-imagined as Transformers) and the soda-straws of "Whirled Peas" (1991) prepare our eyes for the final thrust, Chamberlain's drive into chrome-love (which figured into that Gagosian show and his very last works), but the shiny shavings atop "HAWKFLIESAGAIN" (2010), with its mottled old-school base, tie the whole experience together.
* Roy Lichtenstein "Landscapes in the Chinese Style" @ Gagosian / 555 W 24th St. I wasn't in town for the blessedly polarizing spectacle that was Damien Hirst's dots, but I love the chilled-out vibe emanating from Lichtenstein's minimalist, pastel-toned landscapes. They feature a bunch of atypical Lichtenstein-ian elements—a horizontal smear of grey-blue paint in "Small Landscape"; sponged-on foliage in "Landscape with Scholar's Rock"—that echo the traditional Chinese style. There is very little Pop here, and the vertical scroll-like "Landscape with Cliff" almost does away with Lichtenstein's signature Benday dots altogether. I'm not complaining here: these are lovely paintings, and like the aforementioned "Scholar's Rock" (whose meandering gauzy white conveys more physicality and emotion than the artist's more famous comic-inspired works) inspire deep contemplation.
* Georg Baselitz @ Gagosian / 522 W 21st St. The superlative German artist revisits aspects of his own history, but in paintings larger than he's ever created before: huge figures painted in bold colors against a shifting, constrast-y backdrop. Baselitz adds a rough-hewn wood and bronze-cast sculpture to this exhibition of new works, but my eyes were locked alone on those massive paintings, with their electric, Egon Schiele-like emotive personalities.
* Fred Sandback "Decades" @ David Zwirner / 519 W 19th St. A really fine survey of Sandback's long career of spatial interventions spanning three decades of work. His "Untitled (Sculptural Study, Four-part Mikado Construction)" features four aqua acrylic yarns zigzagging across half the front gallery, while the Kerf-cut Plexiglas "Untitled" emulates his linear sculptures while remaining fully 2D. The even crazier "16 Variations of 2 Diagonal Lines" explores front and back galleries with opposing pinkie-thick bands of yellow yarn, boring through walls and careening through diagonal space. An artist's book and selection of drawings fill out the show.
* "I Know This But You Feel Different", curated by Shara Hughes and Meredith James @ Marc Jancou Contemporary / 524 W 24th St. A pretty superb group show inspiring dialogue on interior spaces. Hughes' own large painting "My Head's Really Not In This" locks the whole idea together as she contorts and flattens multi-planar space with gusto, pairing the experience with a vivid color palette. But there's much other awesomeness as well, beginning with Hughes' oil-on-paper drawings and extending to highly textural oil on linen paintings by Clare Grill and a nook installation by Miles Huston and Jacques Louis Vidal. Jesse Greenberg's visceral homemade objects and Jacob Robichaux's deconstructed remnants keep the show's tone loose and compelling.
* Alex Gross "Product Placement" @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery / 529 W 20th St 9th Fl. LA artist Gross' lush painterly style is kind of like Jim Rosenquist (or Richard Hamilton) for a decidedly 21st C. world, a globe-flattening blend of posh designer labels, a polyglot of languages on adverts, exotic critters and nondescript environments. It's a foreshortened world thrust continuously into hyperdrive, Asia, America and the Middle East coalescing into one postmodern hybrid. Snake-eyed citizens from earlier series now bear reptiles for heads, like the Komodo Dragon in a Mr. Rogers cardigan tempting a PYT with a Coca-Cola in "Original Sin". Or people get their faces pixellated a la Japanese porn in "Best Friends (7-Eleven)" and "The Lover". Gross' super-saturated palette is in full effect here, but his combinations of people and adverts is his most naturalistic yet...like they're meant to be together. A grouping of Gross' manipulated cabinet card series (particularly chi-chi superheroes and monsters) accompany the big canvases.
* Mounir Fatmi "Oriental Accident" @ Lombard-Freid Projects / 518 W 19th St. Exhibition as noise show, Fatmi's second solo at the gallery is INTENSE. He pairs recordings from Maghreb during the Arab Spring in speakers sprinkled with nails and embedded into a Persian rug. Sonic squalls recur in "Modern times, a History of the Machine", a video projection in the side gallery that morphs Arabic calligraphy into a kinetic Duchamp-ian affair. Even Fatmi's static pieces threaten to attack, whether bas-reliefs of the number zero composed of coaxial antenna cables or lace loops drenched in oily black paint.
* Douglas Huebler "Crocodile Tears" @ Paula Cooper Gallery / 521 W 21st St. I went into this sorta Existentialist show from the Estate of Huebler knowing little about the man except that he paired text and images with panache. I left with a solid appreciation of his "Variable Piece"—a project to "photographically document the existence of everyone alive"—that slid between conceptual reconfigurations of Magritte, Cézanne, Gauguin and Mondrian with photography and Huebler's own text.
* Not Vital @ Sperone Westwater / 257 Bowery. A shimmering stainless steel monolith extending two vertical floors of gallery space, called "Tongue". An array of Chinese coal mini-mountains. Disarmingly organic plaster forms hanging off stainless steel rods, called "Hanging & Weighting". A solid 18-Karat gold Peking duck hanging in the lift. Such is the Swiss sculptor's latest exhibition, fashioned in his Beijing studio to creep us out.
CLOSING SOON
NYC
* Will Ryman @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 293 10th Ave + W 27th St. I expected something big and bold from Ryman in his debut at the gallery but had to wonder: he's been filling his previous gallery, Marlborough Chelsea, which is like eight times bigger (plus open-airs Park Ave w/ those big-ass flowers), so would he run out of room at Kasmin? No fear, he makes it work, wrapping the front room w/ the hunched form of his sad-sack everyman, comprised evidently of bottle-cap limbs, melted shoes for a body and like miles of denim for his trousers. In the back, Ryman erected a labyrinth of wooden brushes that could be a frottage fanatic's wet dream.
* Paul Graham "The Present" @ The Pace Gallery / 545 W 22nd St. Pace debuts the NY-based British photographer's latest body of work, his first exhibition in the States since 2009. "The Present" includes diptych and triptych photographic works, highlighting serendipitous moments of a city constantly in motion. A new monograph, published by MACK, accompanies the exhibition.
* Marlo Pascual @ Casey Kaplan Gallery / 525 W 21st St. A much subtler show from Pascual than I'd expected, less situations of warped C-prints and situational lighting than easy, cerebral gestures, like turning a print sideways so the waterfall flows horizontally, or hewing a rocky backdrop with a woman's limbs in two and recomposing it to delete most of her figure.
* Adia Millett "Portraits of an Escape" @ Mixed Greens / 531 W 26th St. The Oakland-based artist revisits her old photographs of sculptural interiors, flipping them inside-out as new 2D façades. Her colorful architectural style holds a lot of personality, too, which is intentional as each structure reflects a portrait of someone in Millett's life.
TOKYO
* Marijke van Warmerdam "Haru" @ Taka Ishii Gallery / 5F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). The Amsterdam-based artist presents a series of paintings based on film stills printed on canvas, like frozen moments.
* Ai Udagawa "Sign" @ Kido Press, Inc / 6F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Toei Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). Udagawa typically incorporates embroidery into her mesmerizing, naturalistic acrylic and mixed-media paintings.
* Toshiaki Hikosaka + Takuro Sugiyama "Dead Paintings" @ Radium / 2-5-17 Bakurocho, Chuo-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Bakurocho Station). The two young artists present their own unique styles of abstraction, Hikosaka's systemic grids and Sugiyama's intertwined colors and planes. (ENDS SAT)
TOKYO
* Shoji Ueda "Mode in Dunes" @ Taka Ishii Photography / 2F 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). Ueda fuses fashion photography with Rene Magritte-style surrealism in this classic series of prints in the desert. (ENDS TUES)
TOKYO
* Eikoh Hosoe @ BLD Gallery / 2-4-9 Ginza, Chuo Ward Tokyo (JR Yurakucho Station, Marunouchi Line to Ginza Station). The gallery's season-long retrospective on the pivotal Modernist photographer now follows his collaboration with and homage to Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, in "The butterfly dream". The series resulted in a collected monograph released in 2006, in celebration of Ohno's 100th birthday.
THURSDAY
NYC
* Michelangelo Pistoletto "Lavoro" @ Luhring Augustine / 531 W 24th St. Pistoletto staged this new series of mirror "paintings" at London's Simon Lee Gallery last autumn, which features his signature mirrors overlaid w/ elements of construction, dust, and rubble—not exactly out of place within W. Chelsea. This show will draw mad crowds (tourists love taking photos of themselves w/in a Pistoletto mirror), but you can't really miss it either, right?
* Stan Douglas "Disco Angola" @ David Zwirner / 525 W 19th St. I dug Douglas' "Midcentury Studio" installation in the gallery last year, but I think his assuming the role of a fictional photojournalist amid NYC's roiling early '70s disco underground sounds even doper. He includes works from Angola (considering saxophonist Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa", widely considered the first disco hit) and NY, plus the historical, political and cultural moments encompassing them.
* Kathy Ruttenberg "The Earth Exhales" @ STUX Gallery / 530 W 25th St. New, disturbing ceramics in Ruttenberg's debut at the gallery, including woodland creatures, humans, and the forest itself blurred into wild amalgams.
* Jackie Saccoccio @ Eleven Rivington / 11 Rivington St. New brain-frying large-scale abstract paintings from the NY/CT-based artist, set as imageless "portraits" with lots of wild poured, splashed, and stained elements. Yum.
* Vibha Galhotra "Utopia of Difference" @ Jack Shainman Gallery / 512 W 20th St. The New Delhi-based artist celebrates her debut at the gallery (and NY, in broader terms) w/ her sewn-metal "ghungroos" and sculpture reflecting urbanization and the environment within contemporary society.
* Catherine Lee "Quanta" @ Galerie Lelong / 528 W 26th St. Lee bridges off from her glazed raku ceramic sculptures in this new series of grid paintings, most featuring layers of sublime differing hues.
* Susan Hartnett, Ralph Humphrey, Marilyn Lerner, Dona Nelson @ Mary Boone Gallery / 745 Fifth Ave. My heart just jumped a little in my chest when reading the press release for this group show of sorta-abstract painters, curated by Klaus Kertess. Mainly for Nelson, whose iconic freestanding panels both highlight her choice of structural elements and the stretcher itself plus magnify her two-sided textural paintings.
FRIDAY
NYC
* Adolph Gottlieb "Gravity, Suspension, Motion" @ The Pace Gallery / 534 W 25th St. Nearly two decades' worth of the Abstract Expressionist's large-scale later works, including examples from series "Labyrinths", "Bursts", and "Imaginary Landscapes", highlighting dialogues between disparate forms and planar space.
* "The Spirit Level", curated by Ugo Rondinone @ Gladstone Galleryhttp://gladstonegallery.com/ / 515 W 24th St. That Swiss trickster and smile-inducer curated this 19-artist pan-medium group show, feat. Martin Boyce, Ann Craven, Latifa Echakhch, Amy Granat, Klara Liden, Rudolf Schwartzkogler, among others.
* Liz Magic Laser @ Derek Eller Gallery / 615 W 27th St. Were you cool enough to catch Laser's Performa-commissioned video "I Feel Your Pain", performed, filmed and edited live in the midst of a theatre audience during last year's Performa 11? The end result is featured here, alongside the live performance "The Digital Face", which will ultimately become a two-channel slide projection in the gallery.
* Rory Donaldson "Shared Roadway Ahead" @ Winkleman Gallery / 621 W 27th St. The Scottish-born, NY-based artist heavily works over his digital photographs of cityscapes and more rural environments, creating the illusion of paint (think particularly Gerhard Richter's abstract techniques) by stripping and distorting the prints' digital information.
* "Argento: Il Cinema Nel Sangue" @ MAD Museum / 2 Columbus Circle (CE/123 to 59th St/Columbus Circle). A three-month retrospective celebrating giallo god Dario Argento and his hot daughter Asia, punnily translated as "Cinema in the Blood"? Damn, MAD Museum, you're still cool in my books. Check back for LIST updates on the dopeness, but the series begins strong with:
+ "Se tutee le donne del mondo/Kiss the Girls and Make them Die" (dirs. Henry Livin and Arduino Maiuri, 1966) screening @ 7p. This was Dario's dad Salvatore's first producing credit, harbingering the nonstop wave of black-leather gloves, razorblades and surrealist camerawork that his son would christen horror cinema just a few years later. OK, so "Kiss the Girls…" is kinda weirdo sci-fi (like that several years of Dick Tracy's "Space Coupe" period) but I say go for it.
* Nguzunguzu @ 285 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 11:30p/$12. Cali cuties Nguzunguzu lead the sweat-inducement tonight, which also feat. Salva, Rezzie (of Weird Magic) and DJ MikeQ. I know you can dance, NYC!
AUSTIN
* PJ Raval + Nick Brown @ Tiny Park / 607 1/2 Genard St. This combo exhibition feat. animation works from Austin filmmaker Raval and visceral, impastoed paintings by LA-based artist Brown.
* "Sound of Noise" (dirs. Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, 2010) @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St. Bonkers! A sleeper hit at 2010 Fantastic Fest, comparable to an anarchist, nattily dressed Blue Man Group enacting a "musical apocalypse" upon Malmö, Sweden! It's tons more fun than you can even imagine.
* "Eraserhead" (dir. David Lynch, 1977) midnight screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St. You don't need to sleep, right? Lynch's quintessential midnight movie, starring quixotic Jack Nance as the titular sad-case bloke trudging amid a wet, ruined industrialscape, fielding requests from his girlfriend (and her freaky family) while pining for the Woman Across the Hall…and hallucinating and all that…yeah, it'll keep you up until dawn. ALSO SAT
TOKYO
* Etsuko Taniguchi "light" @ hpgrp Tokyo / B1F 5-1-15 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku (Chiyoda/Hanzomon/Ginza Lines to Omotesando Station). Taniguchi creates a disarming illumination in her nightlife cityscapes but cutting into lacquered canvases and then painting them over in acrylic.
* Terror Familia + Oh my God, you've gone @ Heaven's Door / 1-33-19 Sangen-jaya, Setagaya-ku (Den-en-toshi Line to Sangen-jaya Station), 7p/2300 yen. Tokyo-style grunge in two ace coed groups, particularly Terror Familia (composed of charismatic vocalist Diana Chiaki, plus members of Lillie and Remains and The John's Guerilla). w/ BALLOON88
SATURDAY
NYC
* Peter Saul @ Mary Boone Gallery / 541 W 24th St. Who'dathunk Peter Saul—he of the acid-toned, hypnagogic-subject palette of The Hairy Who—would be getting all this buzz? Yet the grandmaster of bad taste agitprop had both a stunning solo at David Nolan Gallery in 2009 and a superb career survey at Haunch of Venison in 2010. Now Mary Boone showcases new paintings by the artist, who hasn't dialed down the lurid colors nor subject matter an ounce. Considering Occupy Wall Street and other contemporary excesses, Saul has a LOT to work with. Should be dope.
* Grimes @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8:30p/SOLD OUT. Duh, I mean you put Claire Boucher, aka Montreal-based one-woman glitch-pop starlet Grimes, in über-DIY 285 Kent, you bet she'll draw crowds of punk-minded, groove-oriented youth just hankering to GET IT DOWN. Hence why it's been sold out for like ages. w/ Born Gold
* Widowspeak @ Death By Audio / 49 S. 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$7. Still the hottest deal in town for dope acts, and Captured Tracks' darklings Widowspeak make it extra-glamorous. w/ Massachusetts noise-pop act Eternal Summers and Bleeding Rainbow
AUSTIN
* Conrad Bakker "Untitled Project: RECORD SHOP [45s] @ Lora Reynolds Gallery / 360 Nueces St. I visited Tokyo indie gallery eitoeiko during New City Art Fair in NYC and noted they were showing artist Masaru Aikawa, whose signature style includes hand-painting CD-sized squares of canvas to expertly replicate CD album covers, only in obviously painterly style. So I am intrigued by Bakker's take, painting LP covers on carved wood slabs that mimic album sleeves. Yeah, I'll take a spin at his "RECORD SHOP".
TOKYO
* Hisami Tanaka "NOSELF" @ waitingroom / 4B 2-8-11 Ebisu-nishi, Shibuya-ku (JR Yamanote Line/Hibiya Line to Ebisu Station, West Exit). New jagged mixed-media paintings and drawings by the Kanagawa-based artist, in his debut at the gallery. I saw a little preview of Tanaka's work at waitingroom's booth at New City Art Fair in NYC, and guess what: it's dope.
* Hitomi Motoki "The fantasy bedroom-Girl and Foretaste-" @ Gallery MOMO / 2F 6-2-6 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Toei Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). Motoki conjures a dreamworld of absurdity and nostalgia in her figurative carved-wood sculpture and installation.
* 「海燕ホテルブルー」 (dir. Koji Wakamatsu, 2012) @ Theatre Shinjuku / 3-14-20 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi/Fukutoshin/Shinjuku Lines to Shinjuku-sanchome Station). Wakamatsu's latest—an ex-con's retribution plan royally screwed up after he meets a young woman in a seaside town—actually debuted at NY's Japan Society a few weeks back.
* "Trollhunter" (dir. André Øvredal, 2010) @ Toho Cinema Hiho / 2-5-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku (Yurakucho Line to Yurakucho Station, Tokyo Metro Marunouchi/Hibiya/Ginza Lines to Ginza Station). This is how you do a found-footage film: a likable, bright-eyed cast and a grizzly, charismatic hunter taking down huge-ass trolls in the Scandinavian north, that's how!
* DORAVIDEO x Keiji Haino x Toshiji Mikawa (Incapacitants/Hijokaidan) @ Goodman / B1F 55 Kanda-Sakumagashi, Chiyoda-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Akihabara Station), 7p/3200 yen. Ah Mikawa-san, everybody's favorite banker by day just happens to be one of Japan's longest-reigning noise gods. That he teams w/ improv lord Haino and drummer/composer DORAVIDEO (Yoshimitsu Ichiraku) should be more than the series' titular "collaboration breakdown". Intense.
SUNDAY
AUSTIN
* "Funny Ha Ha" (dir. Andrew Bujalski, 2002) 10th anniversary @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St, 7p. I'm just full of surprises! I think it's clear to frequent LIST-readers that my style of film leans toward the dark, violent, sexy, bloody, and overall genre-riffic. Yet I pull a big softie here for Bujalski's debut, the mumblecore ne plus ultra way before mumblecore was a "thing" to be loved and/or reviled. The unpretentiousness of his presentation, of likable cutie Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer) navigating friends and post-grad responsibility in Boston, is just disarming. Join Bujalski tonight for trip down that very special memory lane.
* Galaxy Express (Seoul) @ Mohawk / 912 Red River, 9p/$6. For better or worse, you say Korea and music in the same sentence, I'm thinking KPop: cute girl-groups with acid-tongued rappers and choreographed moves (and their boy kindred). Not so w/ Galaxy Express, a leather-clad, psych-rock middle finger to stylized, commercial radio. These dudes rock hard.
TOKYO
* CIRCUITRIP + ASTRO @ Flat / 3-17-2 Nishiogi-minami, Suginami-ku (JR Chuo Line to Nishi-ogikubo Station), 6:30p/1500 yen. "Noise as social skill" figures into Singapore sound-screwer CIRCUITRIP's ethos, who filter field sounds and big-city ambience into their washes of big noise. They share the night w/ psych-noise master Hiroshi Hasegawa (formerly CCCC, now ASTRO), who teams w/ ROHCO and Manuel Knapp as trio Cosmic Coincidence. w/ Jah Excretion and Goum
MONDAY
NYC
* "An Evening With Don Hertzfeldt" @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 7&9:30p. This was a singular night in Austin last year, a blissful 2+ hours with the indie animation god (and Sundance winner, and Oscar nominee) Don Hertzfeldt, who premiered the final chapter of his Bill trilogy "It's A Beautiful Day" in glorious 35mm, after screening parts one and two to a transfixed full house. Plus lots of lovely little bits throughout ("Wisdom Teeth", though not "Rejected"). NYC, you are lucky to have the man for two screenings, tonight AND Tuesday.
TUESDAY
AUSTIN
* "Shakma" (dirs. Tom Logan and Hugh Parks, 1990) screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz / 320 E Sixth St, 10p. D&D freaks vs. a possessed baboon controlled by Roddy McDowall in this not-on-DVD "fatalityfest". What am I missing?
CURRENT SHOWS
NYC
* The Generational: "The Ungovernables" @ New Museum / 235 Bowery (F to 2nd Ave, 6 to Spring St). Eungie Joo curated a superb iteration of the New Museum's Generational triennial. Stoked as I was for the 2009 inaugural, cheekily coined "Younger Than Jesus", it was so in-your-face that it left little deep meanings after I left the exhibition. Not so with "The Ungovernables", a panoply of 34 artists, groups and temporary collectives who are all about as young as Jesus and most have never exhibited "here" before. Here meaning in the U.S., so this is an awesome gaze into the greater art-making world, with its complicated cultural surroundings—take the artist-led initiative Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Project for one, Tel Aviv-based performative research group Public Movement as another. Lebanese artist Hassan Khan's booming, swaying video installation "Jewel", of a dance-off b/w two Middle Eastern men; Mounira Al Solh's wall of figurative drawings executed in the guise of a male; and Jose Antonio Vega Macotela's temporal "Time Exchanges" with inmates each comment on identity and relation, as does Pilvi Takala's impassive takedown of a Helsinki office-space—and all this is on just the 2nd fl. Julia Dault's delicate rolled Plexi and Slavs & Tatars' "Prayway" rug with rice-burner fluorescents are some of the 3rd Fl's most eye-catching. And on the 4th fl, even the artists who have shown "here" bring a multifaceted experience of moving through contemporary society, like Danh Vo's "WE THE PEOPLE", a deconstructed part of the Statue of Liberty, fabricated with pounded copper sheets in China and installed like parts of a massive candy wrapper; or Londoner Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's haunting portraiture paintings of figures existing not in reality, though their enlivening gaze won't leave us alone. And there's Adrian Villar Rojas' much-buzzed modular behemoth "A person loved me", rendered on-site in fragile clay as artifact and beautiful artwork formed by minimal resources and expert teamwork. You'll want to excavate further, to really know these artists, their backgrounds and current concerns and approaches.
* Whitney Biennial @ Whitney Museum / 945 Madison Ave (6 to 77th St). My take-away thoughts from the 2012 iteration of the Whitney's unavoidably must-see biennial is "this is a very pretty, very safe show". If you reside in NYC, then you've got the advantage, as like 33% of the exhibiting artists contribute performances or films throughout the Biennial's several-month run. Which means those of us lot who can only see the show once will miss a cool third of what's good. We must rely on what's hanging on the walls, what's displayed over two and a half floors of Whitney, knowing well that we aren't getting the whole picture by any means. What IS there is very pretty, and creatively installed for the most part. Richard Hawkins' Francis Bacon-esque paintings recur on two walls of the 2nd fl, accompanying a Kai Althoff installation of paintings on a silk curtain bisecting the gallery and K8 Hardy's brutal prints of shoes and cropped figures. It's here that three of the strongest elements of the Biennial reside: LaToya Ruby Frazier's wonderful array of prints that address a Levis ad campaign that appropriated images of her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania; an intimate room of outsider artist Forrest Bess' paintings and life-story, curated by Robert Gober; and Werner Herzog's museum debut with the soul-stirring film "Heresay of the Soul". Andrew Masullo's small-scale, sunny abstract paintings brighten up the third floor, which adds a bit of creative impulse from Nick Mauss' installation "Concern, Crush, Desire". All in all, it's fine, totally, but if I hadn't encountered the Frazier (or the Herzog, really) I don't think I would have been moved nearly as deeply.
* John Chamberlain "Choices" @ Guggenheim / 1071 Fifth Ave (456 to 86th St). Moving Chamberlain's very new monolith "C'ESTZESTY", a finger of painted and chromium-plated steel and stainless soaring nearly 20 vertical feet, outside the Guggenheim proper was a wonderful decision, as this skyscraper dwarfed uncomfortably its previous occupation within the Gagosian's mammoth 24th St gallery space. Here it breathes, gleaming in the early-spring sunlight. It is one of many successful instances in a superb sendoff to the American sculptor, who passed away just months before this career retrospective opened to the public. Inside, Chamberlain's ginormous aluminum twist "SPHINXGRIN TWO" holds court in the rotunda, while battered and discolored works from decades' previous begin the exhilarating run up the Gugg's ramps. Some remarkable collages and reliefs mix with early masterpieces like "Hillbilly Galoot" (1960, a crouching red beetle) and "Miss Lucy Pink" (1962, like a rose rendered in steel). Small-scale auto-origami recurs as well, playing off the galvanized steel "Ultima Thule" and some curious, slippery mineral-coated polymer resin pieces. The human-scale array "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (like Picasso's "Musicians" re-imagined as Transformers) and the soda-straws of "Whirled Peas" (1991) prepare our eyes for the final thrust, Chamberlain's drive into chrome-love (which figured into that Gagosian show and his very last works), but the shiny shavings atop "HAWKFLIESAGAIN" (2010), with its mottled old-school base, tie the whole experience together.
* Roy Lichtenstein "Landscapes in the Chinese Style" @ Gagosian / 555 W 24th St. I wasn't in town for the blessedly polarizing spectacle that was Damien Hirst's dots, but I love the chilled-out vibe emanating from Lichtenstein's minimalist, pastel-toned landscapes. They feature a bunch of atypical Lichtenstein-ian elements—a horizontal smear of grey-blue paint in "Small Landscape"; sponged-on foliage in "Landscape with Scholar's Rock"—that echo the traditional Chinese style. There is very little Pop here, and the vertical scroll-like "Landscape with Cliff" almost does away with Lichtenstein's signature Benday dots altogether. I'm not complaining here: these are lovely paintings, and like the aforementioned "Scholar's Rock" (whose meandering gauzy white conveys more physicality and emotion than the artist's more famous comic-inspired works) inspire deep contemplation.
* Georg Baselitz @ Gagosian / 522 W 21st St. The superlative German artist revisits aspects of his own history, but in paintings larger than he's ever created before: huge figures painted in bold colors against a shifting, constrast-y backdrop. Baselitz adds a rough-hewn wood and bronze-cast sculpture to this exhibition of new works, but my eyes were locked alone on those massive paintings, with their electric, Egon Schiele-like emotive personalities.
* Fred Sandback "Decades" @ David Zwirner / 519 W 19th St. A really fine survey of Sandback's long career of spatial interventions spanning three decades of work. His "Untitled (Sculptural Study, Four-part Mikado Construction)" features four aqua acrylic yarns zigzagging across half the front gallery, while the Kerf-cut Plexiglas "Untitled" emulates his linear sculptures while remaining fully 2D. The even crazier "16 Variations of 2 Diagonal Lines" explores front and back galleries with opposing pinkie-thick bands of yellow yarn, boring through walls and careening through diagonal space. An artist's book and selection of drawings fill out the show.
* "I Know This But You Feel Different", curated by Shara Hughes and Meredith James @ Marc Jancou Contemporary / 524 W 24th St. A pretty superb group show inspiring dialogue on interior spaces. Hughes' own large painting "My Head's Really Not In This" locks the whole idea together as she contorts and flattens multi-planar space with gusto, pairing the experience with a vivid color palette. But there's much other awesomeness as well, beginning with Hughes' oil-on-paper drawings and extending to highly textural oil on linen paintings by Clare Grill and a nook installation by Miles Huston and Jacques Louis Vidal. Jesse Greenberg's visceral homemade objects and Jacob Robichaux's deconstructed remnants keep the show's tone loose and compelling.
* Alex Gross "Product Placement" @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery / 529 W 20th St 9th Fl. LA artist Gross' lush painterly style is kind of like Jim Rosenquist (or Richard Hamilton) for a decidedly 21st C. world, a globe-flattening blend of posh designer labels, a polyglot of languages on adverts, exotic critters and nondescript environments. It's a foreshortened world thrust continuously into hyperdrive, Asia, America and the Middle East coalescing into one postmodern hybrid. Snake-eyed citizens from earlier series now bear reptiles for heads, like the Komodo Dragon in a Mr. Rogers cardigan tempting a PYT with a Coca-Cola in "Original Sin". Or people get their faces pixellated a la Japanese porn in "Best Friends (7-Eleven)" and "The Lover". Gross' super-saturated palette is in full effect here, but his combinations of people and adverts is his most naturalistic yet...like they're meant to be together. A grouping of Gross' manipulated cabinet card series (particularly chi-chi superheroes and monsters) accompany the big canvases.
* Mounir Fatmi "Oriental Accident" @ Lombard-Freid Projects / 518 W 19th St. Exhibition as noise show, Fatmi's second solo at the gallery is INTENSE. He pairs recordings from Maghreb during the Arab Spring in speakers sprinkled with nails and embedded into a Persian rug. Sonic squalls recur in "Modern times, a History of the Machine", a video projection in the side gallery that morphs Arabic calligraphy into a kinetic Duchamp-ian affair. Even Fatmi's static pieces threaten to attack, whether bas-reliefs of the number zero composed of coaxial antenna cables or lace loops drenched in oily black paint.
* Douglas Huebler "Crocodile Tears" @ Paula Cooper Gallery / 521 W 21st St. I went into this sorta Existentialist show from the Estate of Huebler knowing little about the man except that he paired text and images with panache. I left with a solid appreciation of his "Variable Piece"—a project to "photographically document the existence of everyone alive"—that slid between conceptual reconfigurations of Magritte, Cézanne, Gauguin and Mondrian with photography and Huebler's own text.
* Not Vital @ Sperone Westwater / 257 Bowery. A shimmering stainless steel monolith extending two vertical floors of gallery space, called "Tongue". An array of Chinese coal mini-mountains. Disarmingly organic plaster forms hanging off stainless steel rods, called "Hanging & Weighting". A solid 18-Karat gold Peking duck hanging in the lift. Such is the Swiss sculptor's latest exhibition, fashioned in his Beijing studio to creep us out.
CLOSING SOON
NYC
* Will Ryman @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 293 10th Ave + W 27th St. I expected something big and bold from Ryman in his debut at the gallery but had to wonder: he's been filling his previous gallery, Marlborough Chelsea, which is like eight times bigger (plus open-airs Park Ave w/ those big-ass flowers), so would he run out of room at Kasmin? No fear, he makes it work, wrapping the front room w/ the hunched form of his sad-sack everyman, comprised evidently of bottle-cap limbs, melted shoes for a body and like miles of denim for his trousers. In the back, Ryman erected a labyrinth of wooden brushes that could be a frottage fanatic's wet dream.
* Paul Graham "The Present" @ The Pace Gallery / 545 W 22nd St. Pace debuts the NY-based British photographer's latest body of work, his first exhibition in the States since 2009. "The Present" includes diptych and triptych photographic works, highlighting serendipitous moments of a city constantly in motion. A new monograph, published by MACK, accompanies the exhibition.
* Marlo Pascual @ Casey Kaplan Gallery / 525 W 21st St. A much subtler show from Pascual than I'd expected, less situations of warped C-prints and situational lighting than easy, cerebral gestures, like turning a print sideways so the waterfall flows horizontally, or hewing a rocky backdrop with a woman's limbs in two and recomposing it to delete most of her figure.
* Adia Millett "Portraits of an Escape" @ Mixed Greens / 531 W 26th St. The Oakland-based artist revisits her old photographs of sculptural interiors, flipping them inside-out as new 2D façades. Her colorful architectural style holds a lot of personality, too, which is intentional as each structure reflects a portrait of someone in Millett's life.
TOKYO
* Marijke van Warmerdam "Haru" @ Taka Ishii Gallery / 5F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). The Amsterdam-based artist presents a series of paintings based on film stills printed on canvas, like frozen moments.
* Ai Udagawa "Sign" @ Kido Press, Inc / 6F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Toei Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). Udagawa typically incorporates embroidery into her mesmerizing, naturalistic acrylic and mixed-media paintings.
* Toshiaki Hikosaka + Takuro Sugiyama "Dead Paintings" @ Radium / 2-5-17 Bakurocho, Chuo-ku (JR Yamanote Line to Bakurocho Station). The two young artists present their own unique styles of abstraction, Hikosaka's systemic grids and Sugiyama's intertwined colors and planes. (ENDS SAT)
TOKYO
* Shoji Ueda "Mode in Dunes" @ Taka Ishii Photography / 2F 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku (Hibiya/Oedo Lines to Roppongi Station). Ueda fuses fashion photography with Rene Magritte-style surrealism in this classic series of prints in the desert. (ENDS TUES)
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