TUESDAY, JUNE 9
Opening: “DE/CONSTRUCTING CHINA: Selections from the Asia Society Museum Collection” at Asia Society Museum
China has eclipsed the U.S. as the world’s largest trading nation, and this exhibition looks back on the way this success has affected—and how it will alter—the physical and social landscape of the country (in particular, the socioeconomic divide between urban and rural areas). Works by Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Hai Bo, Lin Yilin, Song Dong, Sze Tsung Leong, Wang Qingsong, and Zhang Dali will be on view.
Asia Society Museum, 725 Park Avenue, 11 a.m.—6 p.m.
Panel: “Digital Space/Physical Space: Mapping the 21st-Century Museum” at New Museum’s theater
The New Museum Triennial ended on May 24, but its reverberations are still being felt. Featuring Piotr Adamczyk (program manager at the Google Cultural Institute), Lauren Cornell (2015 Triennial curator), Jennifer Foley (director of interpretation at the Cleveland Museum of Art), and Sree Sreenivasan (chief digital officer at the Met), this American Federation of Arts-sponsored panel will discuss the effects of technology on the physical museum space over the past few decades.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 4—6 p.m. Tickets $10 for American Federation of Arts members, $20 for non-members
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10
Exhibition: Albert Oehlen at New Museum
“Home and Garden” marks Albert Oehlen’s first major New York museum show. The German abstract figure painter, who became widely known in the ’80s along with Jörg Immendorff-associated circle of friends Werner Büttner, Georg Herold, and Martin Kippenberger, often painted interiors, self-portraits, landscapes, language fragments, and diverse abstractions. According to a press release, it is “difficult to overstate the importance of Oehlen’s work to the recent history of painting, [though] it is also challenging to find a comfortable resting point for him within the story of contemporary art. But that is also precisely his intention.”
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 11 a.m.—6p.m.
Opening: Sadie Laska at CANADA
Following her group show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise earlier this year, Sadie Laska (who performs in the sound band I.U.D. along with artist Lizzie Bougatsos) will display more of her explosive abstract canvases in her third solo show to date.
Canada, 333 Broome Street, 11 a.m.—6p.m.
FRIDAY, JUNE 12
Opening: Mark Reynolds at Pierogi
Geometer Mark Reynolds’ first exhibition of drawings reflects the artist’s lifelong commitment to “drawing and visually constructing geometries,” according to a release, in the styles of geometric abstraction, hard-edge painting, minimalism, and others. Specifically, Reynolds is interested in the relationship between geometry and human thought, especially “the origins of geometry, how geometry works, how it builds things, and how it orders space and records the development of an infinite variety of choices and structures because of the ratios and relationships inherent in the system of geometric forms.”
Pierogi, 177 North 9th Street, Brooklyn, 7—9 p.m.
Performance: “CKTV Karaoke Party” at Red Bull Studios
Following photographer Ben Rayner’s book release party (for a book of karaoke photography, titled Organized by Title), this event is a mixture of performance and installation art curated by Joe Kay and Chris Rice, featuring commissioned works by Alexandra Marzella, Lex Rocket, Sam Cooke, Sean J. Patrick Carney, and Shireen Ahmed, among others. (Previous editions of CKTV at the Shanghai Biennial and BAM were curated by Cleopatra’s.)Each will involve the artist’s personal karaoke video, which they will also perform onstage. Audience members are welcome to choose from the CKTV catalogue of 100+ artist-made karaoke videos and take up the mic as well.
Red Bull Studios, 220 West 18th Street, book release party: 8—10 p.m., CKTV karaoke party: 10 p.m.—2 a.m., RSVP required
Opening: “Life Lines: Portrait Drawing from Dürer to Picasso” at the Morgan Library & Museum
A simple but thorough show, “Life Lines” highlights the importance of drawing in portraiture—and the relationship between artist and sitter—across five centuries, beginning with Dürer and ending with Picasso. Formal portraits and more intimate likenesses are featured, as well as both preparatory sketches and finished works. As a press release states, “All of them share…a likeness of someone worth remembering.”
The Morgan Library & Museum, 255 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, 10:30 a.m.—9p.m.
SATURDAY, JUNE 13
Opening: Faith Holland at Transfer
Faith Holland’s first solo show, “Technophilia,” focuses on the intersection of technology and desire. As Holland keenly observes,
“I sleep inches away from my phone; it is the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning, regardless of who or what else is in my bed. I gently massage my laptop’s pressure points as I write this text. I caress screens throughout the day. I softly cup a mouse in my right hand as it grazes across my desk. This is the new intimacy.”
Besides new abstract installation work, Holland’s “Visual Orgasms” series, a collection of looped moving images that “reflect popular media’s pressured attempt to make sex visually consumable,” according to a release, will also be included.
Transfer Gallery, 1030 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, 7—11p.m. RSVP required
Opening: “Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play” at Artists Space: Exhibitions
This very exciting show marks the most comprehensive Tom of Finland survey to date, looking back at six decades, 180 drawings, and 300 reference pages, which encompass 1930s childhood paper dolls, 1940s gouaches, triptychs, and storyboards. Born Touko Laaksonen, the Finnish senior art director of McCann Erickson’s Helsinki branch became an iconic gay figure during the 1950s, via ongoing contributions to Physique Pictorial. From there, Tom published a well-known comic series, and started showing in galleries in 1978.
Artists Space: Exhibitions, 38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor, 6—8p.m.