©2017 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK, AND SIAE, ROME/COURTESY KUNSTMUSEUM BASEL AND SAMMLUNG GOETZ/WILFRIED PETZI, MUNICH
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
Opening: “Arte Povera” at Hauser & Wirth
Having been considered unfashionable by American audiences for years, Arte Povera is making a comeback in New York this fall. This show, the first of two major surveys about the Italian art movement planned for this season (another unrelated show will follow at Lévy Gorvy later in the fall), is organized by collector Ingvild Goetz, who has over the years assembled an entire library of materials related to Arte Povera. Included here will be works by Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Pier Paolo Calzolari, and others, all of whom explored postwar Italy’s changing relationship to nature.
Hauser & Wirth, 548 West 22nd Street, 6–8 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
Exhibition: “Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason 1950–1980” at Met Breuer
This expansive show explores 30 years of absurd and irrational art made in part as a response to the political and cultural turbulence from the 1950s through the ’80s. The exhibition includes around 100 works by 62 heavyweight international artists, and it’s divided into four appropriately named sections—“Vertigo,” “Excess,” “Nonsense,” and “Twisted.” Time to get wacky. Works by Dara Birnbaum, Yayoi Kusama, Ana Mendieta, Hélio Oiticica, and Peter Saul will be featured in this show.
Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
©THE ESTATE OF RUTH ASAWA/COURTESY DAVID ZWIRNER, NEW YORK AND LONDON
Opening: Ruth Asawa at David Zwirner
After years of playing a background role in the history of postwar art, Ruth Asawa is finally being reconsidered as a major force. Having appeared at last year’s “Revolution in the Making,” a survey of sculpture by women since 1947 at Hauser, Wirth & Schimmel in Los Angeles, and then at a recent survey of abstraction by women at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Asawa’s wire sculptures, which are typically hung from ceilings and appear to undulate, have come in for renewed attention. At David Zwirner, which now represents the artist’s estate, Asawa’s sculptures, paintings, and works on paper will be on view. Also on show will be photographs of Asawa creating her sculptures shot by Imogen Cunningham.
David Zwirner, 537 West 20th Street, 6–8 p.m.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
Opening: Affordable Art Fair at Metropolitan Pavilion
The Affordable Art Fair, now in its 24th New York edition (the fair also has branches in other cities), lives up to its title: most of the works for sale are, relatively speaking, fairly cheap. Don’t expect works by Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, and other blue-chip names here. Instead, expect affordably priced paintings, prints, and photographs, from such spaces as New York’s Agora Gallery and Toronto’s Spence Gallery.
Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
Opening: “The WPA: Save the NEA” at Washburn Gallery
After 25 years in the 57th Street gallery district, Washburn Gallery has made the move to Chelsea. To christen its new space on 10th Avenue, the gallery will present an exhibition of work made as part of the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program that employed more than 5,000 American artists between 1935 and 1943. “The WPA: Save the NEA” brings together some of the biggest names of the era, including Philip Guston and Jackson Pollock. Among the most notable works in the exhibition is Ilya Bolotowsky’s 17-foot reconstruction of a mural that originally was seen at the Williamsburg Housing Project in 1936.
Washburn Gallery, 177 10th Avenue, 6–8 p.m.
©DAIDO MORIYAMA PHOTO FOUNDATION/COURTESY LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK, AND TAKA ISHII GALLERY, TOKYO
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
Opening: Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine
Since the 1970s, Daido Moriyama has been photographing Japan and its shifting cultural values. Women in kimonos share the same streets as sex shops and lewd forms of entertainment, and various urbanites appear to be losing touch with the blossoming cherry trees around them. At this show, Moriyama will show new color photographs in that vein alongside recent erotic black-and-white photographs. In both cases, Moriyama’s flair for clashing opposites—flesh and fabric, old and new—is on full display. (Though this show opened last week, Luhring Augustine will host its opening reception this week.)
Luhring Augustine, 25 Knickerbocker Avenue, Brooklyn, 6–8 p.m.
Exhibition: Rachel Rose at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
Following a critically acclaimed U.S. solo debut at the Whitney Museum in 2015, Rachel Rose returns to New York with this exhibition. Rose’s interests have ranged from ecological disaster to space travel and infinitude, and at the Venice Biennale right now, visitors can see Lake Valley, her 2016 animation that draws on the look of 19th-century children’s books. Earlier this year, Rose said of the film, which features a rabbit lost in a forest and which will now be on view in this exhibition, “I was thinking about self-development and adulthood. The separation between yourself as an adult and yourself as a child is modern, and these differentiations between selfhood seemed to happen at some time during the Renaissance.”
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, 439 West 127th Street, 6 p.m–6 a.m.
COURTESY THE ARTIST, PILLAR CORRIAS GALLERY, AND GAVIN BROWN’S ENTERPRISE
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
Conference: IdeasCity at Sara D. Roosevelt Park
Created by the New Museum as a way to explore how art and culture can help us better understand urbanity, the IdeasCity conference will focus this year on “100 Actions for the Future City.” The event will convene a host of speakers, from Trevor Paglen, who will discuss his work about surveillance, to Kasim Reed, the mayor of Atlanta, who will discuss leading a major city with other politicians. Tania Bruguera, the Cuban artist known for her aggressive social-practice works about power structures, will deliver a lecture on civic intervention, and David Byrne will do a talk called “Reasons to Be Cheerful.”
Sara D. Roosevelt Park, 106 Chrystie Street, free admission
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
Opening: Kelly Akashi at SculptureCenter
Material transmutation is central to the work of Los Angeles–based artist Kelly Akashi. Throughout the duration of her SculptureCenter exhibition, Akashi will be lighting wax candles inside of her installations, which often consist of glass forms placed in tandem with other objects, including bronze casts. This process will slowly modify the appearance of her sculptures with the passing of time. Her exhibition is fittingly titled “Long Exposure.”
SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves Street, Queens, 5–7 p.m.