COURTESY HIGHER PICTURES
MONDAY, AUGUST 31
Opening: “7 Deadly Sins” at Garis & Hahn
Wrapping up its Summer Windows series, Garis & Hahn will present “7 Deadly Sins,” a selection of video works curated by Kristin Sancken. Each day of the week will feature an aesthetic (rather than objective or narrative) representation of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, or gluttony. An aesthetic focus, a press release explains, “[is] the key factor that defines video art while drawing a parallel between time, substance and sense of self.”
Garis & Hahn, 263 Bowery, August 31—September 6, 24/7
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2
Opening: Charles Swedlund at Higher Pictures
Charles Swedlund’s photographs don’t just hang on the wall—they also come in the form of flip books, coins, matchbooks, and, perhaps most appropriately, puzzles. This show, which bares the title “Buy Photographs – Not Gold! and Other Works, 1970 – 1975,” looks at Swedlund’s interest in exploring the image’s ability to both document and disguise, and to allow for fine craft and tomfoolery in equal measure. Swedlund did everything from in-camera multiple exposures to fisheye-lensed nudes to experimentation with color toning and, in the process, looked at the popularity of photography. This show even what Swedlund called a Photographic Gumball Machine, which dispenses images of nude figures. How could you resist that?
Higher Picutres, 976 Madison Avenue, 6–8 p.m.
Premiere: Fall to Earth at the New Museum
Chelsea Knight’s video work Fall to Earth was commissioned as part of the museum’s Spring 2015 series “New Museum R&D Season: SPECULATION,” created during the artist’s corresponding residency. Inspired by Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, this work addresses socially-condemned speech, as well as “the inadequacy of language and its relation to the reproduction of authority and identity [in group behavior],” according to a press release. This screening marks the video’s worldwide premiere.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 7 p.m. Tickets $10/8
COURTESY THE WHITNEY MUSEUM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3
Opening: Trisha Baga at Greene Naftali
No press release is available for Trisha Baga’s second show at Greene Naftali, titled “Orlando,” and that only adds to its mystery. To say the least, Baga’s work excels in making you wonder. The 29-year-old artist’s seemingly haphazard combinations of video, sound, painting, sculpture, and readymades are usually made in haste (most of the work for a recent show at Société Berlin was done in the two-week install period), which, for many artists, would spell disaster, but is a strength of Baga’s work. We’re left to piece together associations between all of Baga’s oddball objects, and to discover that, though each medium she uses is very different from the last, there are often connections between various art forms where we least expect them.
Greene Naftali, 508 West 26th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: “Horizon of Expectations” at C L E A R I N G
In the work of the underrated Pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, commercial images get cut up and collaged. Yet, unlike American Pop, Paolozzi, who hailed from Scotland and died in 2005 at age 81, didn’t do this with a cynical edge. When he put together stills from I Love Lucy and advertisement images of fruit salad, he wasn’t trying to show the banality of it all. Instead, he was celebrating the excitement of the then-new consumer culture, with its bright colors and strange objects. Though it remains unclear what work by Paolozzi will be shown at C L E A R I N G (he also did sculpture, though he is better-known for his Pop work), or, for that matter, why a Paolozzi show is being staged in Bushwick, this intriguing show is not to be missed, especially since a survey of the Scotsman’s work has yet to make it to the U.S.
C L E A R I N G, 396 Johnson Avenue, Brooklyn, 6–8 p.m.
COURTESY ALEXANDER GRAY ASSOCIATES
Opening: Jack Tworkov at Alexander Gray Associates
The gallery’s first showcase of Jack Tworkov’s work since gaining representation of the late Polish artist’s estate, “Mark and Grid, 1931 – 1982″emphasizes the artist’s stylistic progression throughout each decade of his career. The show especially focuses on Tworkov’s conceptual mode of painting, which he practiced during the 1960s and 1970s.
Alexander Gray Associates, 510 West 26 Street, 11 a.m.—6 p.m.
Opening: Wu Tsang at Clifton Benevento
Wu Tsang is known best for his film and video work, which has, in the past, focused on queer identity and performance. In fact, Tsang even does performance himself sometimes, though he notes that it’s always to get into the minds of his subjects. “The more subjective I could be in telling my own experience of the situation, the more ethical I could be to my subjects and collaborators,” Tsang told Frieze in 2012, the same year that premiered his acclaimed feature-length documentary Wilderness at the Whitney Biennial. Although no press release is available on Clifton Benevento’s site for Tsang’s newest show, it is still sure to be a fascinating look at how we shape our identity today.
Clifton Benevento, 515 Broadway, 6–8 p.m.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
Opening: Bruce Dorfman at June Kelly Gallery
Since the ’60s, New York–based painter Bruce Dorfman has been working to challenge the borders of his paintings, but now he believes he’s finally succeeded in what he aimed to do then. Been there, done that. Now, with a new show at June Kelly Gallery, Dorfman is working with how the inside of paintings determines our relationship to space. Here, he splits frames in two, allowing them to come apart at what is quite literally the seams in this case, as many are made using fabric rather than paint on canvas. Dorfman is now moving his paintings away from order entirely, but, as he said in a statement, “There is a kind of informed intuition that I trust to drive my art.”
June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, 6–8 p.m.
©2015 JUAN DOWNEY/ARTIST’S RIGHTS SOCIETY/VIA MOMA.ORG
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
Opening: “Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980” at the Museum of Modern Art
This exhibition compares the international evolution of the art scene in Latin America and Eastern Europe during the cultural dynamism of the 1960s and 1970s. A dispersion of ideas fueled experimentation and expansion from Prague to Mexico City, challenging established Western narratives of art history and circumnavigating oppressive post-WWII politics and borders. One of the most significant developments of this movement was the acceptance of institutional critique and a growing interest in creating art independent of the art market context.
MoMA, 11 West 53rd Street, 10:30 a.m.—5:30 p.m.