9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9

Opening: Mario Merz at Gladstone Gallery
Mario Merz, one of the most important members of the Arte Povera movement, which blossomed in Italy in the 1960s, was known for combining natural and industrial forms, such as tree branches and plastics, in his sculptural installations. In the process, he asked whether the gallery space was so different from, say, a forest. Could institutions evolve with time? This show features three major installations, among them Giap Igloo – If the Enemy Masses His Forces, He Looses Ground: If He Scatters, He Loses Strength (1968), one of Merz’s signature igloo sculptures adorned with neon lettering.
Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, 5:30–7:30 p.m.

Screening: Two A.M. at School of Visual Arts
Loretta Fahrenholz’s film Two A.M. (2016) is showing right now at the Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany, but this week New Yorkers will thankfully get a shot at seeing the German artist’s latest work without having to travel. Fahrenholz made her mark on the New York art scene with one video, Ditch Plains (2013), which she shot partly during Hurricane Sandy, and which resembles a post-apocalyptic New York where dancers move through seemingly empty apartments. That video, like other works by Fahrenholz, explores the interplay between reality and fantasy, and so too will this new work, which focuses on a family falling apart at a politically tense moment. (Emily Sundblad plays a half-sister who finds herself caught in a love triangle.) Two A.M. is shown here in collaboration with Reena Spaulings Fine Art.
School of Visual Arts, 333 West 23rd Street, 8:30 p.m.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10

Opening: Rita Ackermann at Hauser & Wirth
Titled “KLINE RAPE,” this show sees the dependably inventive semi-abstract painter returning to New York for her first solo show in the city since 2013. It inaugurates the ground floor of Hauser & Wirth’s new temporary space in Chelsea, in the former Dia building.
Hauser & Wirth, 548 West 22nd Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Wade Guyton at Petzel Gallery
Wade Guyton has made a career out of running digital images through printers over and over again. The New York–based artist’s work is about how, when images online come offline, they mutate and become something altogether new. This show appears to continue Guyton’s subtly funny streak with a series of recent works called “The New York Times Paintings,” for which Guyton prints, blows up, and then reprints the New York Times website homepage. A press release—which includes an image of one untitled work featuring a distorted Taylor Swift, among other things—dryly notes that Guyton made the works using an Epson 9900 printer and Ultrachrome HDR ink.
Petzel Gallery, 35 East 67th Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Andreas Gursky at Gagosian Gallery
As if to quash any doubts you might have about the work going in, German photographer Andreas Gursky has titled his latest show “Not Abstract II,” to refer to how even though his large-format pictures often look like Abstract Expressionist paintings, they are very much couched in the real world. Gursky burst onto the scene in the ’90s with his photographs of a Germany overrun by plenty—aisles of groceries that seem to go on infinitely, densely packed buildings. Yet Gursky’s photographs are often not entirely real, since he often Photoshops them, digitally stitching together images and making the monumental size of his works possible. Here, Gursky will show recent works such as Amazon (2016), a photograph of an Amazon shipping facility where rows and rows of books seem to stretch on forever.
Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: “Implosion 20” at Anton Kern Gallery
Before it moves to 55th Street in Midtown, Anton Kern Gallery will bid adieu to its Chelsea space with a big group show called “Implosion 20.” It will feature work by 27 artists associated with the gallery—to name just a few of them, Georg Baselitz (Kern’s father!), Anne Collier, Nicole Eisenman, Chris Martin, Matt Mullican, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Jonas Wood. Rather appropriately for a gallery about to leave its home of the past 15 years (Kern opened in 1996 in SoHo, and moved to Chelsea in 2001), the show is focused on destruction and what happens after it. At the opening, John Bock will perform Dünnhäutiger Butcher (Thin-skinned Butcher), a piece in which the German artist creates little sculptures of gallery visitors, and then gives the works to them.
Anton Kern Gallery, 532 West 20th Street, 6–8 p.m.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11

Symposium: “Avant-Museology” at Brooklyn Museum
Following the lead of recent activist programs like “Decolonize This Place” at Artists Space, the Brooklyn Museum will host a symposium this weekend called “Avant-Museology” in a nod to a similarly titled e-flux book. The symposium will offer insight into curating and museology, ultimately suggesting alternatives for how artists and institutions can work together to combine art, politics, and ideas. Among the speakers at the symposium, which continues on November 12, will be artist Liam Gillick, Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist, blogger and curator Kimberly Drew, artist and DJ Juliana Huxtable, and Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak. A similar symposium will be held at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis later this month.
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, 6–9 p.m.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13

Opening: Iiu Susiraja at Ramiken Crucible
In one memorable photograph, Iiu Susiraja flips viewers off—she stands in front of her own camera, expressionless and with both middle fingers raised, and looks right into her lens. Attached to her middle fingers are two wieners that could be symbols of the patriarchy, which she literally takes into her own hands here. This is a typical image for the Finnish photographer—visually muted and perhaps even a little sad, but with a quiet fury.
Ramiken Crucible, 389 Grand Street, 12–6 p.m.

Panel: “A Fresh Coat of Paint: The Critical and Commercial Rebirth of Painting in the Twenty-First Century” at Sotheby’s
Ahead of next week’s Impressionist and modern sales, Sotheby’s will have a discussion on painting and its role in the contemporary art world. This is a fairly broad topic, but it’s a complicated one, and this panel will likely address many issues, among them zombie formalism, the resurgence of figurative painting, and the rediscovery of veteran female painters. The panelists will be artist Sean Landers, ARTnews Top 200 collector Edward Lee, New York Times critic Martha Schwendener, and Brooklyn Museum deputy director and chief curator Nancy Spector. Sotheby’s chairman of the Global Arts Division and Art Agency, Partners co-founder Allan Schwartzmann, will moderate.
Sotheby’s, 1334 York Avenue, 1 p.m.