©2016 THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC. AND ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/COURTESY VENUS NEW YORK
Opening: Andy Warhol at Venus Over Manhattan
Venus Over Manhattan will show “Little Electric Chairs”, a collection of eighteen paintings from Andy Warhol’s “Death and Disaster” series. “Death and Disaster” explored the growing banality with which the public viewed tragedy in postwar America. According to a press release, “the advent of celebrity culture and introduction of the television as a household object in the post-war era changed the way information circulated.” “Little Electric Chairs” directly references the deaths of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, which happened ten years before Warhol began his “Little Electric Chairs” series in 1963. Using repetition, and adding colors ranging from hot pink to silver, Warhol sought to provide a visual manifestation of the perversity of desensitization.
Venus Over Manhattan, 980 Madison Avenue, Third Floor, 6–8 p.m.
TUESDAY, MAY 3
©THE FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES FOUNDATION/COURTESY ANDREA ROSEN GALLERY, NEW YORK
Among Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s many achievements was his ability to offer a very personal perspective on conceptual art, a style that, since the late ’60s, had prided itself on emotional detachment in favor of ideas. Having lived through the AIDS crisis in America during the ’80s (he later died of the disease himself in 1996), Gonzalez-Torres’s work captured people and things that slip away. This show is one of three connected Gonzalez-Torres exhibitions opening across the world—the other two are at Hauser & Wirth in London and Massimo De Carlo in Milan; all are curated by Julie Ault and Roni Horn. Each focuses on a specific body of Gonzalez-Torres’s work, and this one is devoted to four wall portraits. In each piece, text runs across the top of a wall, with vague descriptions (“A New Dress 1971,” “Vote for Women, NZ 1893”) capturing people rather than their likenesses. These little remnants somehow hint at the people supposedly depicted; absence creates its opposite: presence. —Alex Greenberger
Andrea Rosen, 525 West 24th Street, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Opening reception: Thursday, May 5, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Daniel Heidkamp at Half Gallery
In this show, titled “New York, New York,” Daniel Heidkamp will debut new paintings about Manhattan. As with his older work, these paintings have a light touch—they featured landscapes pared down to basic, almost abstract forms, and their soft color palettes recall the work of Maureen Gallace. And act fast with this show, because it’s a quick one. It will only be on view in the West Village from May 4 to May 7.
Half Gallery, 61 Morton Street, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.
Opening: Carmen Herrera at Lisson Gallery
To celebrate its first permanent exhibition space in New York, Lisson Gallery will be showing a body of new work by Carmen Herrera. Despite having achieved fame rather recently, Herrera has been painting for nearly 80 years, from the same apartment she has occupied since 1954. Her work, which favorites abstraction, minimalism, and hard-edge painting, does not belong to one specific art historical group. Instead, it pulls elements of Latin American and European Constructivisim, Concrete Art, Neo-Plasticism, and Abstraction-Création to create an entirely individual strain of modernism.
Lisson Gallery, 504 West 24th Street, 10 a.m–6 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 4
MARTIN SECK/©2016 THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Those tired by Frieze week’s emphasis on high-power institutions can seek refuge at this panel, which is devoted to the legacy of the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers. Christopher Cherix, the curator of MoMA’s Broodthaers retrospective, and Cathleen Chaffee, a senior at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, will be on hand to provide a more academic context for the artist’s career, but the real stars of this panel are Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Rodney Graham. Both artists draw from Broodthaers an interest in environments and installations. How do spaces that artists create function within spaces overseen by curators? This and much more about why Broodthaers’s work remains contemporary today.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 7 p.m. Tickets $15/$10/$5
Opening: Nicole Eisenman at New Museum
Nicole Eisenman’s first solo New York museum show will feature highlights from the figurative painter’s exploration with the medium. Eisenman’s work often combines opposites: “the imaginative with the lucid, the absurd with the banal, and the stereotypical with the countercultural and queer,” according to a press release. Engaging with art history as often as she does with pop culture, Eisenman often draws from painters such as Giotto, Francisco de Goya, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Edvard Munch, using humor to add a contemporary slant.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
THURSDAY, MAY 5
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND METRO PICTURES, NEW YORK
Metro Pictures will open its newly renovated galleries with a show of new work by Cindy Sherman, the artist’s first since 2012. This latest series of photos, which was created in 2016, depicts women-of-a-certain-age wearing heavy makeup and modern clothing, in suggestive poses reminiscent of 1920s Hollywood publicity photos. The backgrounds are deliberately manipulated to refer to old film sets and backdrops. Additionally, new technology has allowed for Sherman to print her photos directly onto metal, removing the need for traditional glass protection.
Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, 1 p.m.–6 p.m.
FRIDAY, MAY 6
Opening: Bunny Rogers at Greenspon
The worlds Bunny Rogers conjures are tragic ones that, though very different-looking from our own, have some eerie similarities to real life. In her newest show, titled “Columbine Cafeteria,” the young New York–based artist creates an abstracted version of the lunchroom at the Colorado high school where 12 students where shot in 1999. Rogers has tackled the subject once in 2014, when she restaged the school’s library, and here, in her New York debut, she arranges a set of melted chairs around a pristine table. (The work also showed earlier this year at Société in Berlin.) Elsewhere in this show, fake snow falls on jack-o’-lantern candles. It’s unclear what relationship Rogers has to the shooting, but, according to her, it lives on our collective memory, resurfacing in unexpected, personal ways. —Alex Greenberger
Greenspon, 71 Morton Street, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Richard Serra at Gagosian Gallery
The release for these two Richard Serra shows keeps the information, oh, shall we say, minimal. At this time of writing, all we know is that there will be four new large-scale steel installations and one “installation drawing”—one of the works even seems to fill the entirety of Gagosian’s West 21st Street space. Nevertheless, you can expect that this is a must-see show. Last summer, the Minimalist sculptor proved that, at 76, he’s still at the top of his game with Equal, an installation at David Zwirner that featured steel cubes arranged in pairs, with one block form placed on top of another. The installation was later acquired by MoMA, and with good reason: it continued Serra’s interest in how forms construct space (and in how to freak gallerygoers out with the possibility that a 40-ton block might fall on them) in new, refreshing ways. Expect more of this in these two shows. —Alex Greenberger
Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street and 555 West 24th Street, 6–8 p.m.