9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

MONDAY, MARCH 7

Talk: Andrea Fraser at New York University
As her Whitney sound installation enters its third and final week, Andrea Fraser will discuss her use of performance with NYU professor Malik Gaines. Fraser is known for taking on various personas—a curator, an artist, a person present at a ’90s New Orleans city council meeting—and then fluidly moving between her characters, often performing multiple ones during a single work in front of a live audience. (NB: Fraser’s Whitney piece doesn’t feature any performative elements.) Any Fraser talk is a good one—she usually has pointed, intelligent opinions on art, museums, and artists who make work about museums.
New York University, 721 Broadway, 6th Floor, Room 612, 7 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9

Talk: Lynn Hershman Leeson at Light Industry
Lynn Hershman Leeson, long an underappreciated figure in the art world, has finally come into the limelight. In the past year, the feminist video artist has secured New York gallery representation, thanks to Bridget Donahue, and was the subject of a retrospective at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. (We still haven’t gotten a Hershman retrospective stateside, but it doesn’t feel too far off—curators are quickly beginning to realize just how much she’s influenced a generation of artists whose work deals with the Internet.) Now, Hershman’s work, which deals with the male gaze and technology’s effects on organic matter, will be surveyed in a new book called Civic Radar. Not only will Hershman be discussing her work with Artforum editor-in-chief Michelle Kuo, she’ll also be previewing a new piece at this talk, making this a can’t-miss event. —Alex Greenberger
Light Industry, 155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are pay-as-you-wish

THURSDAY, MARCH 10

Opening: Hernan Bas at Lehmann Maupin
Hernan Bas’s paintings seem deliberately stuck in the past. For one, they’re entirely figurative, unlike the majority of painting made today. For another, they deal with images, ideas, and themes that are no longer current. His new works are no exception. Coming out of a series called “Bright Young Things,” their subject matter is inspired by 1920s England, when young men could out themselves as being gay—but only if they had enough money to offset the prejudice of the time. Though queerness was once again repressed in London high society after the decade ended, the period interests Bas as a time when some men, at least, were allowed to truly express themselves.
Lehmann Maupin, 536 West 22nd Street, 6–8 p.m.

FRIDAY, MARCH 11

Opening: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge at Rubin Museum of Art
When you think of artists who should show at the Rubin Museum of Art, which focuses on Asian art, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge might not be the first person to come to mind. Known for h/er trippy photographic images (and, in non-art-related matters, for being heavily involved in occultism), P-Orridge has made art about bodies in flux for almost half a century. Now, the Rubin Museum will stage a show called “Try to Altar Everything,” which draws parallels between the ways that Nepalese people view identity and religion. On the opening night of the show, the first 1,000 visitors will get what P-Orridge is calling a “psychic cross.” To receive the cross, these visitors will have to give something of their own in exchange, and their objects will be included in the show.
Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street, 6–9 p.m.

Talk: Laura Poitras and Edward Snowden at Brooklyn Academy of Music
The history between Laura Poitras and Edward Snowden hardly needs to be reiterated. Poitras’s film Citizenfour, which follows Snowden as he begins to leak top-secret documents that expose the realities of U.S. government surveillance, won the Academy Award for best documentary in 2014, and has since gone down in film history. With a solid Whitney show in tow, Poitras now heads to BAM for a conversation with Snowden, who will, unsurprisingly, be appearing via live video link, as he is still unwelcome on American soil. (Russia has provided Snowden with temporary asylum until August 2017.) Brian Lehrer, a radio personality at WNYC, will moderate.
Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $35

SATURDAY, MARCH 12

Opening: Nancy Lupo at Swiss Institute
In past interviews, Nancy Lupo has discussed the erotics of food. “Cherries are bright and sexy, while nutritional yeast might remind you of snot, fat, or the gum soles on some shoes,” the Californian artist, who often affixes real and fake organic matter to her objects, has said. In the process, she looks at why surfaces are alluring. Why do we get turned on by the way certain objects look? The answers are unclear, which is why Lupo’s surreal sculptures are often hard to interpret. For her latest project, Parent and Parroting, which opens at the Swiss Institute this week, Lupo will arrange objects across 28 racks in such a way that seem to be enacting a narrative. From a bizarre statement in the release for this show: “It might seem like a coincidence but of course these things are carefully coordinated, orchestrated, scripted. Meanwhile, it seems to have now all metabolized literally and elegantly into a classic potpourri. Perhaps it was there the whole time, but I’m really smelling it now.” —Alex Greenberger
Swiss Institute, 18 Wooster Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: John Divola at Maccarone
In this new body of work, titled “Theodore Street Project,” Los Angeles–based photographer John Divola continues to explore interest in the Californian landscape, this time with a Gigapan scanning device. Using this technology, Divola was able to set up 20-minute exposures where the Gigapan would take a series of pictures (up to 120, in some cases) in abandoned, rotting houses, and then stitch them together to create a seamless landscape. These photographs notably capture spray-paint marks other people had left behind the houses, and it’s interesting to think—when viewed through images, are the marks somehow less site-specific than they were when Divola made them?
Maccarone, 630 Greenwich Street, 6–8 p.m.

Screening: Masculin Féminin at Metrograph
“It wasn’t the total film we carried inside ourselves. That film we would have liked to make, or more secretly, no doubt, the film we wanted to live.” This dialogue is uttered by the protagonist of Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Féminin (1966), one of the French New Wave director’s most accessible efforts. Shot in black and white, the film loosely follows a group of young Parisians (one is played by Jean-Paul Léaud, who gives one of his most dynamic performances here as a neurotic bohemian named Paul) as they try and fail to find love in a city overrun with images of pop culture. Godard’s signature playful edits and oddball intertitles remain intact, but unlike the majority of his other films, which are more formal, Masculin Féminin develops characters that viewers can follow. And, since this is arguably a movie about movies, there’s no better way to see it than at this late-night screening at the Metrograph, the newly opened art-house theater in the Lower East Side where the film will screen on 35mm. —Alex Greenberger
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow Street, 11 p.m. Tickets $15

SUNDAY, MARCH 13

Opening: “Chatham Square” at Foxy Production
Newly relocated from Chelsea, Foxy Production inaugurates its Chinatown space with this group show, titled after the square that the new gallery looks out onto. Foxy Production has always felt like more of a Lower East Side gallery than a Chelsea one—its artist roster tends toward young, emerging artists whose work engages in dialogues with the Internet and technology—and the artist list for “Chatham Square” attests to that. Included in this show will be work by Michael Bell-Smith, Sascha Braunig, Ellen Cantor, Petra Cortright, Sara Magenheimer, and Travess Smalley.
Foxy Production, 2 East Broadway, 3–6 p.m.