COURTESY ALEXANDER GRAY ASSOCIATES
MONDAY, OCTOBER 26
Talk: Lisa Yuskavage and Jarrett Earnest at The Strand
Painter Lisa Yuskavage’s busty women and well-endowed men could easily feel kitschy, but her sexy, strange work has earned all the critical attention its gotten thanks to Yuskavage’s craft. With her references to Mannerism and Old Master painting, Yuskavage relies on the art-historical subject of the nude, which should be tired by now, and renders it new. Surprisingly, one of Yuskavage’s first major career surveys ever is only just now being put on, at the Rose Art Museum. In honor of that show and a catalogue that came out alongside it, Yuskavage and the writer Jarrett Earnest will discuss the painter’s career at The Strand.
The Strand, 828 Broadway, 7–8 p.m., purchase of catalogue ($65) or $15 Strand gift card required for entry
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28
Talk: RoseLee Goldberg and Robin Rhode at the Museum of Modern Art
As part of MoMA’s “Conversations: Among Friends” program, artist Robin Rhode and curator RoseLee Goldberg will be discussing how art can have political effects. Though Rhode is known best for his work that deals with the fallout after Apartheid in South Africa, he has also done a number of performances, and he will do one in November as a commission for Performa 15. (Goldberg founded Performa a little over ten years ago.) Goldberg, who has written some of the most important scholarship about performance, will talk with Rhode about the social context of his work. A reception will follow their discussion.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 7 p.m., $35
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29
Opening: “Passage” at Alexander Gray Associates
Not much information is available about this show, but images on the gallery’s website would suggest that the show’s title is also the show’s theme. Work by Siah Armajani, Luis Camnitzer, Valie Export, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Mona Hatoum, Robert Longo, Ana Mendieta, Dennis Oppenheim, Regina Silveira, Lorna Simpson, and Ai Weiwei.
Alexander Gray Associates, 508 West 26th Street #215, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Enoc Perez at Koenig & Clinton
“Digs” marks Enoc Perez’s first show at the gallery. The Puerto Rican-born artist will be displaying new “swizzle stick” sculptures—inspired by swizzle sticks collected from luxury hotels—as well as paintings of the World Trade Center. Wondering how these two ideas reconcile? A press release states, “All works emphasize the operations of history and memory as they relate to the legacies of optimism embodied by 20th century Modernist structures.”
Koenig & Clinton, 459 West 19th Street, 6–8 p.m.
COURTESY PACE GALLERY
Opening: Zhang Huan at Pace Gallery
No, Zhang Huan won’t be hurting himself as performance art for his newest show at Pace Gallery, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to get political. In this show, titled “Let There Be Light,” Zhang will show one of his largest works to date—an ash painting measure 122 feet in length based on a photograph of Mao Zedong’s followers. Because the painting is made in ash, the work, like Zhang’s memory of the even itself, could disintegrate with the slightest disturbance. Likewise, Zhang’s new braille paintings could also fall apart easily because they are made with incense ash. Now is the time to mediate on them, to pore over their intricate surfaces—they may not last much longer.
Pace Gallery, 510 West 25th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Vibha Galhotra at Jack Shainman Gallery
India’s Yamuna River is one of the world’s most polluted water sources, and so Vibha Galhotra, an Indian artist interested in urbanization’s effect on her home country, took a water sample from it every day. The 365 bottles of contaminated water that resulted will be displayed this week in Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery as part of Galhotra’s new show, “ABSUR -CITY -PITY -DITY.” As in the past, Galhotra will continue to rely on materials rarely seen in art—ghungroos, the metal bells Indian women wear in traditional dance, will get made into paintings, for example. The resulting show will depict a changing India, and it remains ambiguous whether Galhotra is concerned or curious. Perhaps it’s a combination of both.
Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street, 6–8 p.m.
COURTESY GLADSTONE GALLERY
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30
Opening: Carroll Dunham at Gladstone Gallery
Carroll Dunham’s nine new large-scale paintings continue with the same motif of nude female figures (this time riding a white horse) and pastoral landscapes that the artist has worked in since the late 2000s. And for the first time, men and animals will be pictured. As a press release states, “Viewers are invited to enter the painting[s]…[which possess] an erotic and comedic twist.”
Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Frank Stella at the Whitney Museum
“Frank Stella: A Retrospective” will encompass 120 works of painting, relief, maquette, sculpture, and drawing dating from the mid-1950s to the present, and will mark the artist’s most comprehensive survey to date. The show was co-organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Whitney, and will notably present Stella’s most recognizable works next to rarely-seen pieces on loan from around the world. The exhibition will fill the Whitney’s 18,000-square-foot fifth floor, the museum’s largest temporary exhibition space.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.
COURTESY BLUM & POE
Opening: Yun Hyongkeun at Blum & Poe
This “concise” survey, as the gallery notes in a release, consists of 13 works by the late Yun Hyongkeun, one of the fathers of Tansaekhwa, the single-color painting movement that revolutionized Korean art beginning in the mid-1960s. In Tanseakhwa, artists interacted with painting by ripping, dragging, and soaking it until they had redefined the material entirely. Yun’s 1970s Umber Blue series, in which umber and ultramarine pigments were diluted and layered over the canvas, gradually led to defined edges, hallmarks of the artist’s last decade of life.
Blum & Poe, 19 East 66th Street, 6–8 p.m.