9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7

Performance: Rashaad Newsome at Park Avenue Armory
Running, the title of multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome’s new immersive performance, which makes its debut this week at the Park Avenue Armory, refers to the act of singing an improvised melody. Drawing on this tradition, Newsome has composed an original score that will feature three New York vocalists performing in concert with samples of so-called “vocal runs” by Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, and Whitney Houston, among others. Newsome’s previous work has referenced cultural expression from the past to elucidate societal power relations. With this performance, Newsome aims to create what he calls “an abstract portrait of the soul.”
Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Tickets $45

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8

Exhibition: Gordon Matta-Clark at Bronx Museum of the Arts
The Bronx Museum of the Arts is a fitting home for this retrospective of the late Gordon Matta-Clark. Some of his best known site-specific pieces were created in the borough, including Bronx Floors (1973), which involved cutting a wood-and-linoleum fragment out of a disheveled, unoccupied building. Under the title “Anarchitect,” Matta-Clark’s Bronx Museum show will include more than 100 works by the artist, including rare archival materials and film projections that address the role of architecture in urban development.
Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, 1–6 p.m.

Performance: Zanele Muholi at Stonewall Inn
Self-described “visual activist” Zanele Muholi is best known for her powerful black-and-white photographs of South Africa’s LGBTQI community. By turning her camera on the subjects she chooses, Muholi empowers people who are typically marginalized. Last week, as part of her Performa 17 commission, Muholi’s stark photographs appeared on billboards and screens around New York City. She will continue meeting with LGBTQI youths of color this week as part of an ongoing project to give a voice to those who too often go unheard.
Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher Street, 9 p.m. Tickets $10

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9

Exhibition: Lee Krasner at Paul Kasmin Gallery
Long sidelined by the immense reputation of her husband, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner has recently moved into the spotlight, along with many other female Abstract Expressionists. Recently, her estate switched galleries and will now be represented by Paul Kasmin. This week, the gallery will hold its first Krasner show. Focused specifically on her work between 1959 and 1962, the show brings together paintings made after the sudden passing of her husband. For the first time, Krasner experimented with large canvases; she called this body of work the “Umber Paintings” for their all-over compositions rendered in brown tones.
Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 10th Avenue, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

Opening: Nina Chanel Abney at Jack Shainman Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery
Nina Chanel Abney has garnered attention in recent years for her colorful, chaotic canvases. Combining abstract and figurative painting techniques, Abney tackles a variety of themes such as police brutality, identity politics, and the omnipresence of technology—often all in the same painting. In so doing, Abney attempts to reflect the frenzied pace that attends receiving information and culture in our current age. For her first solo exhibition with Jack Shainman since joining the gallery’s roster last year, Abney will show a series of new paintings that further contemplate this modern condition. A second part of the show will also take place at Mary Boone Gallery.
Jack Shainman Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery, 513 West 20th Street (Shainman) and 541 West 24th Street (Boone), 6–8 p.m. (Shainman) and 5–7 p.m. (Boone)

Opening: Deborah Roberts at Fort Gansevoort
After promising appearances in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and elsewhere, Deborah Roberts will have her first solo exhibition in New York. Titled “in-gé-nue,” it features collages of young girls, which are composed of paintings, drawings, and found photographs that explore the impact of popular culture and art history on notions of blackness and identity. Also included in the exhibition will be a series of silkscreen prints that feature what might be considered, according to Roberts, names that belong to African-Americans.
Fort Gansevoort, 5 Ninth Avenue, 6–8 p.m.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10

Exhibition: Laura Owens at Whitney Museum
At long last, the Whitney Museum will open its much-anticipated Laura Owens show this week. The most extensive survey of paintings to date from the Los Angeles–based artist, it features 60 paintings by Owens, who is known for playfully navigating the contours of figuration and abstraction, often in an accessible—but still very experimental—way. For the past two decades, Owens has deployed a variety of materials, traditional and otherwise, in a range of painting that at times quotes from the modernist tradition while also actively referencing digital technology and 21st-century concepts.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m.

Opening: Kenya (Robinson) and Doreen Garner at Pioneer Works
Since 2013, the artist Kenya (Robinson) has been carrying a five-inch plastic sculpture with her everywhere she goes. Mundanely named Dave Fowler but better known by the moniker #WHITEMANINMYPOCKET, the piece exists, for the artist, as a symbol of white corporate privilege. As part of this two-person show at Pioneer Works, the artist will conduct a memorial service for Fowler, in the process making 10,000 replicas of the man to be buried after the end of the exhibition. (Robinson) is paired with Doreen Garner, whose work is concerned with the brutal medical histories of enslaved women. Garner will be scanning and rebuilding a sculpture of the controversial gynecologist Dr. J. Marion Sims that currently is on view in Central Park, and will show alongside it a series of fleshy-looking sculptures hanging from a meat rack.
Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer St, Brooklyn, 7–10 p.m.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11

Opening: Martin Kippenberger at Skarstedt
German Neo-Expressionist painter Martin Kippenberger used his work as a vehicle to criticize the status quo of art and politics. Through his diverse style, he questioned the role of the artist in society and culture, commenting on consumerism and originality (or, many times, the lack thereof) in the late-20th-century art world. This exhibition will feature works from Kippenberger’s “Hand Painted Pictures” series, which first debuted in 1992 at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin. Many are unusual portraits: they feature sitters—sometimes the artist himself—who appear to be shattering into abstract pieces.
Skarstedt, 20 East 79th Street, 6–8 p.m.