WEDNESDAY
NYC
* "New Photography 2012" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). Five young heavyweights — Michele Abeles, the duo Birdhead, Anne Collier, Zoe Crosher, and Shirana Shahbazi — invigorate classic tropes and cutting-edge techniques in photography. I am super stoked to see Abeles' newest works, and Collier's re-photography style is not to be missed, either.
* "Failed States", a reading by Jill Magid @ Art in General / 79 Walker St, 6p. What timing! On the evening of this year's first U.S. Presidential Debate, Magid addresses war-on-terror paranoia and the U.S. security state via her new nonfiction "Failed States". Daniel Kunitz, executive editor of Modern Painters, will discuss Magid's oeuvre after the reading.
* "Failed States", a reading by Jill Magid @ Art in General / 79 Walker St, 6p. What timing! On the evening of this year's first U.S. Presidential Debate, Magid addresses war-on-terror paranoia and the U.S. security state via her new nonfiction "Failed States". Daniel Kunitz, executive editor of Modern Painters, will discuss Magid's oeuvre after the reading.
* Crystal Castles + HEALTH @ Roseland Ballroom / 239 W 52nd St (CE to 50th St), 8p/$55. I love Crystal Castles live: they convert those fractured-synth suites into thunderous anthems, and petite Alice Glass is a perfect, goth-garbed, snarling frontwoman. Their new LP III is out next month, so expect new songs performed tonight. Expect HEALTH to bring the intensity, too, as their percussion-backed noise freakouts translate to feverish jams.
* RZA "The Iron Fists Tour" @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/$25. OK few shows hold a candle to a Crystal Castles/HEALTH matchup, but this is true contender. Rizza, the mighty Wu-Tang's chief producer, leads an all-star lineup of lyricists, including veterans Supernatural and some surprise guests (Ghostface? GZA?).
TOKYO
* Taro Shinoda "Homo sapiens sapiens" @ Taka Ishii Gallery / 5F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). Shinoda unveils "LRTT", a film piece and part of his ongoing lunar project, plus almost two dozen related celestial paintings.
* Who the Bitch @ Shelter / B1 Daizawa, Setagaya-ku (Keio Inokashira Line to Shimokitazawa Station, S Exit), 7p/2500 yen. Trust me, you don't want to miss a Who the Bitch party, two fierce riot-grrrls and their Guitar Wolf-looking dude drummer. w/ FULLSCRATCH
THURSDAY
NYC
* Wade Guyton "OS" @ Whitney Museum / 945 Madison Ave (6 to 75th St). To say that I am anticipating hotly Guyton's printer ink-fragrant career survey at the Whitney is like saying your taste-buds inflame just a tad after consuming a ghost chile. I am super-duper STOKED, son!
* "Japanese Power Delight" kickoff tour @ Paperbox / 17 Meadow St, E. Williamsburg (L to Grand St), 8p/$8. This sounds insanely dope: three kickass Japanese bands—scene stalwarts Otonana Trio (ex-mems. Dynamite Club), Kansai dynamos Babylon Breakers, and cartoon mashup Gelatine (actually based in NY)—collide w/ two local acts, Brooklyn's Hard Nips and Planet Peelander (actually East Asia/NYC) cuties PeeWonder-Z, in one night of rocking hard. Turning Japanese, are you?
* Weekend @ 285 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$8. West Coast feedback fiends Weekend will barrage you straight into next week with their mile-long guitars and glorious, MBV+ soundscapes. w/ Cold Showers
AUSTIN
* Ann Wood "Violent Delights" @ Women & Their Work / 1710 Lavaca St. Wood gets crafty, pairing topiaries and taxidermy, plastic jewels and industrial accents, in a decadent exhibition of death and the hunt.
TOKYO
* Reiko Imoto "Miniascape Window" @ Gallery TOSEI / 5-18-20 Chuo, Nagano-ku (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line to Shin-Nakao Station, Exit 1-2). A personalized world as seen cropped through a camera's viewfinder. Imoto takes us into those worlds in a series of beautiful gelatin silver prints.
FRIDAY
NYC
* "Picasso Black & White" @ Guggenheim / 1071 Fifth Ave (456 to 86th St). So the Metropolitan Museum, a few blocks south, staged an overblown and relatively bland Warhol exhibition. Trust in the Gugg to tune the focus on an artist equally known into something very special. This is a full-career look at Pablo Picasso's exploration of b&w and sultry gray, from Cubism, austere portraiture, sex, sculpture, and much more. It sounds exquisite.
* Noah Becker + David Goodman "No Age" @ Launch F18 / 373 Broadway, 6 Fl. NY/Canadian Becker does emotively realistic portraiture. LESider Goodman shatters contemporary art tropes with his "new painting" virtuosity. I am stoked to see how their respective works play off one another and commend this newish Tribeca space for making it happen. A LIST must-see.
* Noah Becker + David Goodman "No Age" @ Launch F18 / 373 Broadway, 6 Fl. NY/Canadian Becker does emotively realistic portraiture. LESider Goodman shatters contemporary art tropes with his "new painting" virtuosity. I am stoked to see how their respective works play off one another and commend this newish Tribeca space for making it happen. A LIST must-see.
* "V/H/S" (various dirs, 2012) @ Sunshine Cinema / 143 E Houston St (F to 2nd Ave). Reactions in the horror community have been mixed to this new found-footage scare suite, but considering the directors' pedigree — Ti West, Adam Wingard, Joe Swanberg, David Bruckner, Gleen McQuaid, and Radio Silence — I'm willing to bet the dope outweighs the lame.
* Demdike Stare + Andy Stott @ Public Assembly / 70 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 10p/$20. I've been counting the days since this Modern Love showcase was announced. If you can get into dense and cryptic techno, Lynch-ian soundscapes and ethereal beats, you'll love this night. Demdike Stare's duo Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty trade DJ sets before their headlining live act.
AUSTIN
* Jennifer Caine & Joshua Goode "Trajan's Column" @ Big Medium / 5305 Bolm Road #12. I'm a fan of that all too rare feat of skillful light-sculpting, taking the ethereal and evanescent and displaying it in a very physical — yet still quite emotive — way. Think Anthony McCall and James Turrell. I think the product of Caine and Goode's collaboration, containing an enormous hexagonal column of light via household goods, is akin to trapping a ray of sunshine, just as warming but far grander in scale.
* Jennifer Caine & Joshua Goode "Trajan's Column" @ Big Medium / 5305 Bolm Road #12. I'm a fan of that all too rare feat of skillful light-sculpting, taking the ethereal and evanescent and displaying it in a very physical — yet still quite emotive — way. Think Anthony McCall and James Turrell. I think the product of Caine and Goode's collaboration, containing an enormous hexagonal column of light via household goods, is akin to trapping a ray of sunshine, just as warming but far grander in scale.
* GZA + Killer Mike @ Mohawk / 912 Red River, 8p/$20. NICE. Two of my favorite lyricists — Shaolin vet GZA ("Liquid Swords" forever) and younger man-mountain outta Brooklyn Killer Mike (his latest LP "R.A.P. Music" is perfect) — school the live music capital of the world. What's it take to be an MC? Class is in session!
TOKYO
* Satoshi Uchiumi "Square and Round Vessel" @ Art Front Gallery / Hillside Terrace A, 29-18 Sarugakucho, Shibuya-ku (JR Lines etc to Shibuya). Uchiumi participated in a rather transcendent group exhibition, "My Place Our Scenery", at MA2 Gallery this past summer. I'm interested in how he explores space in this exhibition, featuring vividly colored prints.
SATURDAY
NYC
* "The Long Hair of Death" (dir. Antonio Margheriti, 1964) screening @ Spectacle / 124 S 3rd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 7:30p. The consummate pre-Giallo Italian classic. One one side we have Fellini and Antonioni doing their Modernist thing. On the other, we have Mario Bava and Margheriti promoting blood-curdling Goth, like this mid-'60s beauty. Young Helen's mom is burned at the stake, then Helen herself is killed by a sex-deprived Count. So what does she do? Come back from the dead a year later to exact revenge!
AUSTIN
* Grimes @ Emos / 2015 E Riverside Dr, 10p/$17. Pint-sized producer/singer Claire "Grimes" Boucher is a powerhouse on the stage. Surrounded by synths, she discharges cyborg-pop beats while managing to look awesome and sing damn well, like a possessed faerie. Get enchanted tonight.
TOKYO
* Hollis Brown Thornton @ Aisho Miura Arts / B1F 2-17-3 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station). The young S. Carolina "vintage" painter's debut solo in Japan happens to occur at one of my favorite edgy galleries. Stoked about this!
* Masahiko Kuwahara "Only in Dreams" @ Tomio Koyama Gallery / 7F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Station). Koyama's Singapore branch features Kuwahara in a trio show w/ Japanese heavyweights Yoshitomo Nara and Hiroshi Sugito. In Tokyo, we get his dreamlike waifs and fauna all to ourselves.
* Hideyuki Nagasawa "Painting on Painting" @ Gallery MOMO Ryogoku / 1F 1-7-15 Kamezawa, Sumida-ku (Toei Oedo/JR Sobu Line to Ryogoku Station). There is an incredible depth to this Saitama-born artist's dappled paintings, which he executes in pointillist waves and veils over enigmatic figures and landscapes.
* Takanobu Kobayashi @ Kido Press, Inc / 6F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Toei Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). Exquisite etchings and aquatints of somnambulant scenes and figures in repose.
* "Outrage Beyond" (dir. Takeshi Kitano, 2012) @ Marunouchi TOEI / 3-2-17 Ginza, Chuo-ku (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi/Hibiya/Ginza Lines to Ginza Station). If Kitano ushered Yakuza cinema into a new echelon w/ his hyper-violent "Outrage", starring a Dostoevskian-scale cast of vengeful gangsters, the sequel launches it even further. I loved this at Fantastic Fest, and now that Kitano pulls Kansai into the fray, well…you know those Osaka thugs can throw down.
* "Lost in Beijing" (dir. Li Yu, 2007) @ K's Cinema / 3F 3-35-13 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit). An intriguing repertory screening of this sexy indie film of nouveau riche and Beijing transplants (led by Tony Leung and Fan Bingbing), which premiered at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival.
* Call and Response Records LP party @ 20000 Den-atsu / B1 1-7-23 Koenji-Minami, Suginami-ku (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line to Higashi-koenji Station, Exit 2), 5p/2300 yen. Call and Response Records' new compilation LP "Dancing After 1AM" drops in two weeks, but some of that post-punk, indie wave plays at this overstuffed showcase, feat. Twee Grrrls Club DJs, Hysteric Picnic, Extruders, and headlined by LIST favorites She Talks Silence!
* BABYMETAL @ O-East / 2F 2-14-8 Dogenzaka, Shibuya-ku (JR etc to Shibuya Station, Hachiko Exit), 6p/3500 yen. I don't know…I mean, it's three extremely preteen girls throwing "devil horns" and dancing headbanging choreography while a masked metal band performs behind them. Idol innocence and hard-rock anthems clash together…and from the ruins comes BABYMETAL.
SUNDAY
NYC
* Flying Lotus @ Terminal 5 / 610 W 56th St (AC/BD to 59th St/Columbus Circle), 7p/$35. Flying Lotus is on the bleeding edge of electronic music: he combines shattered beats, eclectic funk, shards of hip-hop and glitch, even the odd, angelic guest vocal…and it all works so perfectly. Celebrate his new LP "Until the Quiet Comes" by dancing up a sweat.
MONDAY
TOKYO
* パスピエ @ Shinjuku Red Cloth / B1 6-28-12 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku (JR etc to Shinjuku Station, East Exit, Toei Oedo/Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Lines to Higashi-Shinjuku Station), 7p/3000 yen. Tokyo electro-pop darlings パスピエ (Passepied) channel Brooklynites Twin Sister with a hazy, nocturnal gloss. w/ 日本マドンナ
TUESDAY
AUSTIN
* Maria Minerva @ Mohawk / 912 Red River, 9p/$6. Thanks to a certain "dope music-loving fashionista" in NYC, I got tuned in and turned on to Minerva's wonderful 2nd LP "Will Happiness Find Me?". It's songbird pop psychedelia with enough edgy "The Knife"-esque undertones to keep it outta the mainstream.
CLOSING SOON
NYC
* Audrey Kawasaki "Midnight Reverie" + Jeff Soto "Decay and Overgrowth" @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery / 529 W 20th St 9th Fl. I thank the gallery for introducing me to both these artists and their fascinating, personal oeuvres. Soto's polluted pop cosmos continues to intrigue, but it's Kawasaki's new series of stunning oil and graphite portraits on wood panel that really have me jazzed.
* Ernst Wilhelm Nay @ Mary Boone Gallery / 745 Fifth Ave + 541 W 24th St. The first comprehensive stateside exhibition of the powerful, Berlin-born painter is a collaboration between Mary Boone's two spaces and Michel Werner Gallery. Boone's Chelsea hangar features Nay's intensely colorful, brushily abstract paintings from the '50s and '60s, while the midtown gallery features Nay's drawings.
* "Searching" @ Mixed Greens / 531 W 26th St. Ever since I was exposed to Bas Jan Ader at MoMA's wonderful "In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960-1976" back in 2009, I've been increasingly captivated by the elusive conceptualist…I say "elusive" because he disappeared while working on his traveling project "In Search of the Miraculous" back in '75. That unfinished (and still missing) body of work grounds this group exhibition, which also features Arianna Carossa and Mie Olise.
AUSTIN
* Anthony W. Garza @ Tiny Park / 1101 Navasota St. The biting, harsh light of Austin summers befits Garza's naturalistic practice: he either draws or paints highly realistic renderings of nature that work in an incredible attention to lighting itself. There is an entire cycle of discovery going on here, from breathtaking graphite drawings of weathered rocks and truncated branches, to seductive collages of animal and inanimate in watercolor (what seems overwhelming at first becomes far more compelling as you stare into them, the animals' eyes, the texture of fur), to a pair of romantic night skies in varying acrylic washes and textures. Garza's oeuvre cues us back into our discovery sides and bears a deep nostalgia in doing so.
TOKYO
* Taishi Niimi @ Yumiko Chiba Associates / 2F 4-32-6 Nishi-shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku (Toei Oedo Line to Tochomae Station, JR etc to Shinjuku Station, West Exit). The Nagoya-area artist unveils new illustrations, ranging from intimate to monumental but all totally encapsulating his jiggity-jaggety style.
* Hiroshige Fukuhara @ Ai Kowada Gallery / 6F 1-3-2 Kiyosumi, Koto-ku (Hanzomon/Oedo Lines to Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station). Fukuhara introduces new silkscreens featuring silver leaf embossing alongside pencil and gesso compositions on panel, all featuring hyperrealized wildlife. (ENDS SAT)
