9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

MONDAY, JANUARY 15

Performance: “Performing Fictions” at Studio Museum in Harlem
Before the Studio Museum in Harlem says goodbye to its current outpost and begins construction on a new David Adjaye-designed building, the institution is throwing one final hurrah in the form of “Last Look,” a four-day weekend of events that celebrates its current season of exhibitions. On the last afternoon of the program, Sherrill Roland will activate a day-long performance of his piece The Jumpsuit Project, in which museum-goers are invited to engage in a one-on-one dialogue with the artist on the subject of mass incarceration. Richard Kennedy and Sable Elyse Smith will stage their works at this event, which will be followed by a conversation between painter Julie Mehretu, artist American Artist, and scholar Mabel O. Wilson on the preservation of black cultural memory.
Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, 1–4 p.m. Tickets $3/$7

TUESDAY, JANUARY 16

Opening: “Figurative Diaspora” at New York Academy of Art
For the New York Academy of Art’s annual show of figurative work, the artist Mark Tansey and Academy dean Peter Drake have put together an exhibition of art that wasn’t state-sanctioned in China and the Soviet Union. Work by five Soviet artists will be shown alongside more recent art from the People’s Republic of China. The show focuses on a continuum of artists who used their academic training to subversive ends, in the process enlisting stylistic touches borrowed from social realism as a language to express dissent. Pieces by Alexander Kosolapov, You Hong, Erik Bulatov, and others will feature.
New York Academy of Art, 111 Franklin Street, 6-8 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17

Opening: Kasper Bosmans at Gladstone Gallery
The young Belgian artist Kasper Bosmans makes his New York debut this week with a show of work that relies on the visual language of European folk art. His small, spritely “Legends” paintings serve as guides to larger installations. His 2016 show “Model Garden” at Gladstone Gallery’s Brussels outpost, for example, included, among many other elements, a sculpture of a crystal ball on top of a hay bale. In his new Gladstone exhibition, Bosmans will show paintings that combine vernacular imagery, with things like scissors cutting through a sheet of paper appearing alongside a globe emoji.
Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, 6–8 p.m.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 18

Opening: Channa Horwitz at Lisson Gallery
This exhibition reaches into the depths of art history and brings to the fore work that was rejected from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s famed 1971 exhibition “Art and Technology,” one of the first major institutional shows to highlight art made in collaboration with technology companies. Horwitz’s proposed work was Suspension of Vertical Beams Moving in Space, which would have involved the use of mobile Plexiglas beams with light shone through them. From this, Horwitz derived of way of notating sound, motion, and light, in a series of drawings she called “Sonakinatography,” some of which will be included here.
Lisson Gallery, 138 10th Avenue, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: “Women are very good at crying and they should be getting paid for it” at Kaufmann Repetto
This group exhibition has a very strong artist list, with works by the Gee’s Bend artists, whose quilts are prized by folk-art fans for their geometric abstractions and improvisational quality, and Lily van der Stokker, whose large-scale wall paintings include familiar phrases, many of which refer to the domestic sphere. Despite the show’s title, not all of its participants are women: work by Bas Jan Ader, the artist who famously went missing in 1975, will also be included alongside pieces by Kazuko Miyamoto and Christina Ramberg.
Kaufmann Repetto, 535 West 22nd Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Robin Rhode at Lehmann Maupin
The Berlin-based artist Robin Rhode synthesizes the histories of public art, performance, painting, and photography. His forthcoming exhibition is titled “The Geometry of Colour” and focuses on a series of C-prints documenting performances in front of colorful geometric murals created by the artist. One piece, 2017’s Under the Sun, was inspired by a trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories and the connections Rhode drew between their current political condition and the turmoil experienced in his native South Africa.
Lehmann Maupin, 536 West 22nd Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Outsider Art Fair at Metropolitan Pavilion
The Outsider Art Fair will return to the Metropolitan Pavilion for its 26th edition this week. Some 63 galleries, among them Philadelphia’s Fleisher/Ollman, New York’s Shrine, and Beijing’s Almost Art Project, will set up shop at the fair, and as if that isn’t enough, the fair will also host a project by the artist Saya Woolfalk. With a work by the folk artist St. EOM in mind, she will debut a new work. Also planned alongside the main sector of the fair is a talk called “The Raw and the Cooked: Outsider Art Environments and Installation Art,” which will be held at the Ace Hotel on Tuesday, January 16, before the fair opens.
Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, 6 p.m.–9 p.m. Tickets $50

FRIDAY, JANUARY 19

Lecture: Paul Chaat Smith at Whitney Museum
“How is it that Indians are present everywhere—in the form of place names, popular culture, advertising, sports team names, weapons systems—yet barely present in history and largely absent from the great national debates of our time?” This was a question that Paul Chaat Smith asked last year during a talk at the Walker Art Center, and it is one he will continue asking with this new lecture, “Feathered Flags.” Drawing on his friendship with Jimmie Durham, who is currently the subject of a Whitney Museum retrospective, Smith will explore how the everyday American experience is influenced by the American Indian, in ways both seen and unseen.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 6:30 p.m. Tickets $8/$10

Performance: Gregg Bordowitz at New Museum
As part of its exhibition “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” the New Museum will host a three-day performance by Gregg Bordowitz this week. Titled Some Styles of Masculinity, the work will feature Bordowitz lecture on three identities that were important to him during his own coming-of-age: rock star, rabbi, and comedian, with each assigned the Yiddish words (“arbissener,” “rakhmones,” and “schpilkes,” respectively.) On each day of the performance, Bordowitz will unpack one persona; the rock star is up first. For Bordowitz, Some Styles of Masculinity is a way to consider how nationality, class, sexuality, and gender combine to create one complex identity.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 7 p.m. Tickets $10/$15