9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

TUESDAY, MAY 30

Screening: The Gleaners & I at IFC Center
Agnès Varda’s 2000 film The Gleaners & I is an ode to potatoes and the people who harvest them—an unusual subject, but would one expect anything less from the French New Wave director? Tubers become a way to explore labor, which might be a natural interest for Varda, whose films often follow people typically shut out of French society. What might be less natural is for the documentary to become a meditation on film, which indeed it eventually does. At this screening, Kirsten Johnson, the director of Cameraperson and the cinematographer for some of Laura Poitras’s work, will be on hand to talk about the film.
IFC Center, 323 6th Avenue, 7 p.m. Tickets $14/$17

THURSDAY, JUNE 1

Opening: Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook at Tyler Rollins Fine Art
In past works, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook has given lectures to corpses and filmed her paralyzed dog, who, for a miraculous hour, regained the power to walk. The Thai artist’s videos ponder mortality, usually with dry humor and Buddhist principles thrown in. With her latest show at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, Rasdjarmrearnsook will continue exploring the cycle of life, this time by looking at how we relate to objects both mundane and valuable. Her installation Jaonua: The Nothingness, a version of which initially premiered at the 2016 Singapore Biennale, features various moving images projected onto objects, from a bed to a rug, while her video Sanook Dee Museum observes Thai museum visitors as they look at art.
Tyler Rollins Fine Art, 529 West 20th Street, 10W, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: “The Times” at FLAG Art Foundation
Could Robert Gober have been the original creator of fake news? In 1993, Gober produced a series of sculptures that were simply a bundle of New York Times newspapers, or at least what purported to be New York Times newspapers. Eagle-eyed viewers could note that embedded in these papers were manipulated photographs and stories—what appeared to be reporting wasn’t necessarily true. Some of Gober’s newspaper sculptures appear in “The Times,” a group show of 80 artists whose work involves the New York Times. From On Kawara’s newspaper cuttings to Rachel Harrison’s blobby sculptures, the show surveys how, over the past few decades, artists have viewed journalism. Also included in the show will be works by Ellsworth Kelly, Lorraine O’Grady, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
FLAG Art Foundation, 545 West 25th Street, 9th Floor, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Sidsel Meineche Hansen at Ludlow 38
The teaser image for this show—a swastika that appears to be crossed out—feels fit for our times, even if its subject matter seems futuristic. For this exhibition, Sidsel Meineche Hansen will debut OVER, an augmented reality app, alongside new sculptures that look like emoticons. The sculptures will be used to set off the app, which will in turn set off an artificial-intelligence bot that will deliver a speech about its own use and abuse. For the young Danish artist, the app can be used to ward off alt-right users on the internet. Fittingly, one of the app’s many functions is to show an anti-Nazi symbol upon its user’s command.
Ludlow 38, 38 Ludlow Street, 6–9 p.m.

FRIDAY, JUNE 2

Opening: Nari Ward at Lehmann Maupin
On the heels of opening a show of public sculptures at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, Nari Ward will debut new paintings, sculptures, and installations at Lehmann Maupin. The show is titled “TILL, LIT,” in reference to two bodies of work—his paintings (“TILL”) and his sculptures and installations (“LIT”). The paintings take their look from cash registers and, through abstract patterns, obliquely refer to the flow of money, while the sculptures and installations use artificial lighting to refer to devices used by NYPD officers to surveil street corners and parks. For Ward, these works are about how marginalized citizens get used by systems. A portion of the proceeds from this show will go to Housing Works, the New York nonprofit that fights AIDS and homelessness.
Lehmann Maupin, 536 West 22nd Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Stephanie Hier at Downs & Ross
Stephanie Hier’s paintings often look like kitsch illustrations in which most of the details are missing. It’s not unusual for the young Toronto-based artist to pull out various elements—blooming flowers, fallen leaves—and place them on unprimed canvas so that they appear to float in space. In other works, Hier creates paintings about painting, zeroing in on palettes and then, in a David Salle–like fashion, overlaying transparent images. At this show, her second solo exhibition in New York, Hier will have on offer new and recent works.
Downs & Ross, 55 Chrystie Street, #203, 6–9 p.m.

SATURDAY, JUNE 3

Talk: “Demystifying Our Stories: Resistance and Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Traditions” at New Museum
This talk that draws a line between protest groups with Afro-Caribbean traditions like Santería, Hoodoo, and Palo is led by Rose Sackey-Milligan, a co-director of the Puerto Rican institute c-Integral. Organized in connection with the New Museum’s RAGGA exhibition, which showcases a platform designed to bring together queer Caribbean artists, the talk will bring together several strands of history, many of which are not usually discussed in America. After the talk, Sackey-Milligan will lead a workshop on spirituality and activism. Those who want to attend that workshop are asked to email season@newmuseum.org with a statement of their interest.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 12:30 p.m.

Opening: BABZ Fair at Knockdown Center
For the fifth year, the BABZ Fair will return to New York, this time with over 100 exhibitors from around America. Formerly known as the Bushwick Art Book & Zine Fair, this fair is devoted entirely to small art-book publishers. Among the exhibitors this year are Primary Information, Capricious, Dancing Foxes Press, Pioneer Works Press, and students from Parsons’s Fine Arts M.F.A. program. Alongside the main exhibitors will be a series of talks and events, including Sean J. Patrick Carney’s THE GALA, a play that follows an artists colony preparing to hold a gala that, unbeknownst to them, will be sabotaged by a terrorist cell.
Knockdown Center, 52-19 Flushing Avenue, Queens, 1–7 p.m.

Screening: “Clair/Picabia/Buñuel/Dalí” at Anthology Film Archives
Long before anyone ever imagined David Lynch’s Twin Peaks returning to TV, the Surrealists were thinking up new ways to confound viewers with bizarre juxtapositions and outlandish scenarios. This screening program focuses on three of the Surrealists’ most memorable cinematic efforts, among them Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s 1928 film Un Chien Andalou, which, in its first few minutes, features a man graphically slicing open his lover’s eye. Also playing at this program, part of Anthology Film Archives’s ongoing “Essential Cinema” series, will be René Clair’s Entr’acte (1924) and Buñuel’s Land Without Bread (1932).
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue, 5:30 p.m. Tickets $7/$9/$11