COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BAXTER ST.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11
Opening: “San Gennaro 2018” at Baxter St. at the Camera Club of New York
What began as a booth at the San Gennaro Festival in New York—which fills Little Italy with carnival games and food vendors every year—is now an exhibition organized by artists Nicole Bull and Kaz Senju. The backdrops for portraits of the booth’s attendees, captured by emerging artists, will be on view at this show, which is part of Baxter St.’s series of guest-curated exhibitions. Works by Pixy Liao, Elizabeth Renstrom, Marco Scozzaro, and others will be displayed.
Baxter St. at the Camera Club of New York, 128 Baxter Street, 6–8 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12
Opening: Walter Robinson at Johannes Vogt Gallery
In his first exhibition with Johannes Vogt Gallery, titled “Salad, Candles, and Money,” Walter Robinson will present three new paintings—Joy’s Salad, Spa Candles, and Keep It Coming. The show focuses on notions of health and spirituality, and places these concerns within the context of late capitalism. Robinson’s work typically takes the form of brushy figurative paintings of everyday items and tableaux that resemble the covers of pulp novels. Vice, virtue, and combinations of the two are frequently his themes, and his new works also draw on such lusty subject matter.
Johannes Vogt Gallery, 958 Madison Avenue, 6–8 p.m.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND SEAN KELLY, NEW YORK
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13
Opening: Anthony McCall at Sean Kelly
Titled “Split Second,” this show features two new “solid-light” installations of the kind that Anthony McCall began producing in 1973. His light installations incorporate elements of sculpture, architecture, cinema, and drawing in projected beams that bring film into the third dimension. Alongside these pieces will be a horizontal work titled Doubling Back, which debuted at the 2004 Whitney Biennial, as well as a selection of black and white photographs, many of which have never been shown in America.
Sean Kelly Gallery, 475 10th Avenue, 6–8 p.m.
Concert: Justin Vivian Bond at Joe’s Pub
In what has come to be an annual tradition, singer/artist Justin Vivian Bond will present a month-long run of shows (through Dec. 22) featuring holiday music in a singular cabaret style. Last year’s show was called “Justin Vivian Bond: Manger Danger! Jesus as a Weapon and a Tool” (in reference to a similarly titled New Museum show in which Bond was a featured artist), and past shows have taken memorable titles like “The Bi-Polar Express” and “Star of Light! An Evening of Bi-Polar Witchy Wonder.” In keeping with this wintry theme, Bond’s latest show is titled “Refrigerated.” Expect music, monologuing, and more, all in tune with what can be both light and dark about the holidays.
Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, 9 p.m. Tickets $45
COURTESY THE ARTIST
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14
Exhibition: “Extremely absorbent and increasingly hollow” at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space
The three artists in this group exhibition, which is curated by Alexis Wilkinson and organized in collaboration with the Abrons Art Center, address “ideas of consumption and contamination, abundance, and void” while considering “how value is perceived and assigned,” according to a press release. Featuring a performance by Sandra Ibarra and participatory food-focused actions by Alison Kuo, the show will also include work by Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin, who often incorporates fermentation processes in sculptural pieces that draw connections between human digestion and colonialism.
Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, 120 Essex Street, 12–6 p.m.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15
Exhibition: Kevin Beasley at Whitney Museum
“A View of a Landscape,” Kevin Beasley’s first solo show in a New York museum, will focus on the mechanical and sonic capabilities of the cotton gin. A gin motor has been transferred from Maplesville, Alabama, and hooked up to a uniquely designed sound system that sends audio from the room containing the device to a separate listening area. Beasley and other artists will also interact with the installation. In a statement, the artist said, “The cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, increased the number of slaves by over 70 percent, deepening the trauma for Black folks in America. As the invention evolved and emancipation was declared, Black people have been working to reconcile our relationship to class, labor, race, and human rights within the structure of laws. For me, this exhibition embodies a continued reconciliation that can extend to the broader public.”
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m.
CARLOS VELA-PRADO/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND CASEY KAPLAN, NEW YORK
Exhibition: “Some Kind of Halfway Place” at Higher Pictures
Organized by artist Joshua Citarella (whose dystopian compositions were recently featured in a solo exhibition organized by Gallery Kendra Jane Patrick at 9 Herkimer Place gallery in Brooklyn), this group show will showcase 14 artists whose work deals with capitalism’s stranglehold on societal progress. “We occupy ‘the non-place,’ an ever perpetuated present, beyond which we cannot see or imagine,” a press release reads. “Has the future been cancelled? Or is it foreclosed? These artists attempt to peek behind that curtain and plot a new course out of our current position.” Included will be works by Eleanor Antin, Aria Dean, Joao Enxuto and Erica Love, and Felicity Hammond, among others.
Higher Pictures, 980 Madison Avenue, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
Opening: “Executive (Dis)order: Art, Displacement, & the Ban” at Queens Museum
Curated by Osman Can Yerebakan and organized by the Artistic Freedom Initiative, a human rights organization that provides pro bono representation for at-risk immigrant artists, this group exhibition deals with the ramifications of placing restrictions on the movements of people and their ideas. The show spotlights work made by artists that the group has supported, many of whom have been immediately impacted by the recent travel ban. Among the 11 artists in the show are Rashwan Abdelbaki, Ali Chitsaz, and Reem Gibriel.
Queens Museum, New York City Building, Corona, 3–6 p.m.
Concert: Phil Kline at Washington Square Park
“Unsilent Night,” a wandering congregation assembled every December in New York by the composer Phil Kline, invites viewers to bring speakers and boomboxes to broadcast one of four tracks of an original composition via cassette, CD, or digital file. Participants then create a sort of majestic soundscape parade while walking a route chosen by Kline, with a starting point in Washington Square Park and an end in Tompkins Square Park, where the 45-minute concert concludes.
Washington Square Park, 5:45 p.m.