COURTESY ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9
Screenings: Shigeko Kubota at Electronic Arts Intermix
To honor the recently deceased Fluxus artist Shigeko Kubota, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is screening her videos throughout the day. Having been married to Nam June Paik, who is often called the “father of video art,” Kubota was one of video’s early adopters. Kubota, in particular, was a fan of Marcel Duchamp, and she used video to pay homage to the Dadaist’s interest in time and chance. (One such video, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, will be screened.) Many of Kubota’s videos are meant to be seen as parts of sculptures. Though none of the actual objects will be at EAI, footage of the videos in situ will be shown.
Electronic Arts Intermix, 535 West 22nd Street, 5th floor, 11 a.m.–8:15 p.m.
Opening: Adrián Villar Rojas at Marian Goodman Gallery
What would culture look like from the point of view of an alien? This is a question that the young, Argentinian-born artist Adrián Villar Rojas continues to ask with his sculptural work that combine clay with everyday objects. His new show at Marian Goodman Gallery, titled “Two Suns,” will continue that inquiry with work that implies the passage of a stretch of time—one so long, in fact, that it feels like humans no longer exist. The remnants of humanity are left over, however, and they now appear in Villar Rojas’s work, which implies that there is never any such thing truly any such thing as nothingness. Even after destruction, there are always traces of what came before.
Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th Street, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
©FRITS LEMAIRE/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MARIA AUSTRIA INSTITUUT
Opening: “The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up: Cobra and Its Legacy” at Blum & Poe
Cobra may be the most unfairly overlooked avant-garde of the past century. With this two-part show at Blum & Poe’s two locations, curator Alison M. Gingeras seeks to rectify that. The first part focuses on the smaller avant-gardes that led to the formation of Cobra in Northern Europe, in the ’50s. Collectives and groups like the Dutch Experimental Group and the Belgian Revolutionary Surrealists gave way to the Marxist, anti-establishment attitudes of Cobra, which stood in opposition to traditional Western aesthetics and wanted to do away with them. The show will be followed by a second exhibition about Cobra’s impact on art at Blum & Poe’s Los Angeles branch.
Blum & Poe, 19 East 66th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Senga Nengudi at Dominique Lévy
As a response to her 1975-1977 series Répondez s’il vous plaît (RSVP), Senga Nengudi will present new editions of her minimalist, second-wave feminist nylon pantyhose and sand sculptures. These works will also christen the opening of the gallery’s new third-floor space, The Back Room.
Dominique Lévy, 909 Madison Avenue at 73rd Street, 5:30—8 p.m.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10
Opening: Sarah Sze at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Sarah Sze will present more of her “3D landscapes,” created from a myriad of ordinary objects, at this solo exhibition. Not much additional information is available, but prepare for a show that “navigate[s] and model[s] the ceaseless proliferation of information and objects in contemporary life,” according to Tanya Bonakdar’s website.
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, 10 a.m.—6 p.m.
COURTESY LEHMANN MAUPIN
Opening: Billy Childish at Lehmann Maupin Gallery
Billy Childish will present new works in an exhibition titled “flowers, nudes, and birch trees: New Paintings 2015.” His fourth show at Lehmann Maupin will include “unabashed nudes, self-portraits, and dense woodland scenes, honor[ing] the simple nature of being and in the process transcend[ing] the ordinary,” according to a press release. His works, per usual, draw influence from artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Kurt Schwitters, Edvard Munch, Mikhail Larionov, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 536 West 22nd Street, 6—8 p.m.
Opening: Rachel Perry Welty at Yancey Richardson Gallery
Rachel Perry Welty’s “Chiral Lines,” her fifth solo show at Yancey Richardson, investigates the line from an ambidextrous perspective using every drawing instrument she owns. These fingerprint-like rainbows of lines are in contrast to her works created for the Project Gallery room, in which she used slices of fruit stickers to create elliptical outlines that suggest produce. These outlines, a press release states, “combine conceptualism with process to record a cycle of domestic consumption, obsessive collection and meticulous mark making.”
Yancey Richardson Gallery, 525 West 22nd Street, 6—8 p.m.
COURTESY LUHRING AUGUSTINE
Opening: Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine
Josh Smith’s sixth exhibition at the gallery is titled, simply, “Sculpture.” The Tennessee-born experimental artist usually favors abstraction, but also uses figural elements in his body of work that includes paintings, collages, sculptures, drawings, prints, books, and ceramics. A press release offers, with equal simplicity, “[with this show,] Smith seeks to question certain parameters of painting and sculpture.”
Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, 6—8 p.m.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
Opening: “The Xerox Book” at Paula Cooper Gallery
This show takes its name from a book published in 1968 by Seth Siegelaub and Jack Wendler, who asked Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Lawrence Weiner to each produce art to published in a Xeroxed tome. There was never going to be any show—the book was the exhibition, raising questions about what it really meant to curate art. Now, in a strange turn of events, Paula Cooper Gallery is having a show based on this anti-show, which wound up being one of Conceptual art’s most important moments. Works from the book will be exhibited alongside other site-specific art by the book’s participants.
Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, 6–8 p.m.