9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18

Opening: Regina Silveira at Alexander Gray Associates
Regina Silveira’s work evokes things that aren’t there—a Duchamp readymade, a torrent of frogs, an oversize comb—using what appear to be theatrical shadows but are actually vinyl prints. At first glance, the Brazilian artist’s work is always perceptually confusing, especially since the things that appear to be casting the shadows, the very thing that are normally the objects, aren’t present. Simultaneously references to Plato’s cave allegory and fun mindbenders, Silveira’s playful, formal installations play with the way we perceive a gallery space. After all, this show, which features a room-size installation, will be replaced at the end of its run by yet another show—the objects are here today, gone tomorrow, as the saying goes. Only the shadows will be left behind. —Alex Greenberger
Alexander Gray Associates, 510 West 26th Street, 6–8 p.m.

Lecture: Hal Foster at Pratt Institute
Hot off his latest book Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency, art critic Hal Foster will do a lecture this week called “Sculpture, Space, Tradition, and Time.” A blurb on Pratt’s website doesn’t give any further explanation for what the lecture will be about, but, if it’s anything like Foster’s writing about postmodernism, which contributed to the formalization of the movement, this will be a can’t-miss talk. Plus, it’s free, which is never a bad thing.
Memorial Hall at Pratt Institute, 200 Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn, 6:30–8:30 p.m.

Opening: Jeanette Mundt at Off Vendome
Fauvism-inspired landscapes, vaguely pornographic nudes, Paul Gauguin pictures, home interiors—Jeanette Mundt has painted it all, and it just about goes without saying that it’s hard to pinpoint what interests the New York–based artist about all of these images. What can be said, however, is that she is interested in the concept of images themselves, and the way pictures get transferred, both on- and offline. By layering, altering, and sometimes even directly appropriating photographs she comes across, Mundt relies on pictures that are familiar to us, even once they’re abstracted. No press release is available for her Off Vendome show at this time of writing, but Mundt’s work is already better known in Europe, and it seems only a matter of time before her paintings catch on in the U.S.—Alex Greenberger
Off Vendome, 254 West 23rd Street #2, 7–9 p.m.

Performance: For Claude Shannon at the Kitchen
Based on the grammatical dependencies between words in a statement from computer science pioneer Claude Elwood Shannon, Liz Santoro, and Pierre Godard have created a “choreograph machine” that draws upon the artistry of syntax. Twenty-four “atoms” serve as an alphabet from which a predetermined number of inputs is randomly chosen each time the piece is performed. According to a press release, “dancers must assemble and learn one particular choreographic outcome among the billions possible that cannot be rehearsed. They rely on the intimacy they have acquired with the fixed linguistic structure of the text and the intimacy they have acquired with one another.”
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, 8 p.m. Tickets $15

Opening: “Munch and Expressionism” at Neue Galerie
It’s not hard to see the connection between Edvard Munch’s work and that of the Expressionist movement. The Norwegian artist’s use of vibrant color to explore dark themes such as alienation, sin, and vulnerability directly influenced and was influenced by contemporary Expressionist artists in Germany and Austria, such as Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gabriele Münter, Emil Nolde, Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele. The show, which features 35 paintings and 50 works on paper, has been curated by Expressionist scholar Dr. Jill Lloyd and Munch specialist Dr. Reinhold Heller.
Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

Panel: “Who Owns Digital Social Memory?” at New Museum
In light of the release of Rhizome’s Mellon Foundation–funded Webrecorder, a digital archival tool, the New Museum is hosting a discussion of ethics pertaining to social-media archiving. From a press release: “What kinds of archives are needed, and who should own them? What kinds of archives should be avoided? What privacy concerns are raised by social media archiving?” Panelists will include Kimberly Drew, the Met’s associate online community producer; Nathan Jurgenson, social-media theorist, editor of the New Inquiry, and researcher for Snapchat; Guadalupe Rosales, visual artist and founder of the veteranas_and_rucas Instagram account; and Øs Crunc Tesla, artist, filmmaker, musician, and inventor of the Turntablist Transcription Methodology. Rhizome’s artistic director, Michael Connor, will moderate.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, New Museum Theater, 7 p.m. Tickets $15/10

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19

Opening: Orion Martin at Bodega
For his surreal paintings, Orion Martin creates situations that can’t be possible in the real world—a floating telephone gets squished by a ropey net, a flower is woven through an image of a desk lamp with holes in it, guitar strings curve and become a ladybug. And yet, despite the fantastical subject matter sourced partially from online image research, all of Martin’s pictures are painted with such naturalism that they feel real. Martin, whose work is currently on view at the Whitney’s figural-painting show “Flatlands,” has become a buzzy emerging artist for these perplexing images, and now, at Bodega, he’ll show more of them in a show titled “Eczema Song,” which, if its loopy press release is any proof, will be as weird and hypnotic as anything else he’s done.—Alex Greenberger
Bodega, 167 Rivington Street, 6–8 p.m.

Installation and Concert: Sabisha Friedberg at Swiss Institute 
A rather esoteric work, A Plane Unseen and Scattering its Curve, au loin will tackle the concept of the “angle of incidence” over two consecutive evenings. From the perspective of three connected states that drive desire—the exalted, the neutral, and the profane—Sabisha Friedberg explores the possibility of a fourth dimension through a sonic construction of reality over the course of a one-hour composition.
Swiss Institute, 18 Wooster Street, 8–9 p.m.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20

Opening: Hayden Dunham and Nicolas Lobo at Red Bull Studios
Red Bull Studios continues its run of trendy shows with this two-part exhibition of new, site-specific work by Hayden Dunham and Nicolas Lobo, titled “BIO:DIP.” Curated by Neville Wakefield, the show pairs two artists who have become known for creating work about how we leave our mark on our surroundings, sometimes literally—both fuse the biological with the industrial. Here, Lobo is showing new works he made out of fragrant soap and by covering a window with lipstick, while Dunham has tapped into the heating and ventilation systems and made ice sculptures that, over the course of the show’s run, will melt. Dunham and Lobo are ones to watch (Dunham is now represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery; Lobo recently had a well-received show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami), and the Red Bull Studios show marks some of their most major work to date.—Alex Greenberger
Red Bull Studios, 220 West 18th Street, 6–8 p.m.