9 Art Events to Attend in the New York Area This Week

TUESDAY, AUGUST 15

Talk: Carrie Mae Weems at the Watermill Center
As part of its summer lecture series, the Watermill Center will host Carrie Mae Weems. Weems’s work has, over the few decades, considered everything from the nature of violence to the importance and power of personal and political histories, often as they relate to identity. Here, Weems, who is currently an artist in residence at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, will discuss the ways that people construct their cultural memories.
The Watermill Center, 39 Watermill Town Road, Water Mill, 7:30–8:30 p.m. Tickets $12

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16

Talk: Jill Mulleady at Swiss Institute
With the Swiss Institute playing host to screenings of Andy Warhol’s Sleep, as part of a New York City–wide, Ugo Rondinone–organized John Giorno survey, artist Jill Mulleady will discuss the Pop artist’s 1963 film. “Watching Warhol’s recording of his sleeping muse, boredom becomes mesmerizing at the closed gates of the other’s dream state,” Mulleady has said. The Los Angeles–based artist makes fantastical paintings and videos about altered states and the supernatural, some of which will be shown at this event.
Swiss Institute, 102 Franklin Street, Front 1, 7 p.m.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 17

Opening: JPW3 at Martos Gallery
JPW3, the artist persona of J. Patrick Walsh, is best known for wax works he makes with layered pictures and impressions of found objects, but for this show at Martos Gallery, he will revisit a hologram of Serena Williams that he made last year. First shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, that work, titled Serena Hologram xl (2017), features a projection of the tennis player swinging her racket. JPW3’s new version of the piece will also include the two-sided projection, as well as a soundtrack courtesy of the rapper Chedda Da Connect. Alongside the projection will be shirts and tennis gear with Williams’s image printed and embroidered on it.
Martos Gallery, 41 Elizabeth Street, 6–8 p.m.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 18

Exhibition: “An Incomplete History of Protest” at Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum’s latest permanent-collection hang is “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940–2017,” an exhibition featuring eight decades of work related to activism and politics. The museum’s curators have broken down the art on view into several titled thematic categories, from “Stop the War” to “Resistance and Refusal,” which includes work by Larry Clark, Toyo Miyatake, and Gordon Parks. Among the works in this show is a recent acquisition making its Whitney debut: Julie Mehretu’s Epigraph, Damascus (2016), a 12-sheet print featuring swirls of black forms that appear to float above a grid.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m.

Screening: Stop Making Sense at Brooklyn Academy of Music
Long before he made an acclaimed Netflix documentary about Justin Timberlake, Jonathan Demme directed Stop Making Sense (1984), the storied Talking Heads concert film. Shot over the course of three days, the film features the band performing various hits, among them “Psycho Killer,” “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” and “Girlfriend Is Better.” All the while, the band’s lead man, David Byrne, dons a suit that inexplicably keeps getting bigger. The documentary plays here as part of a Demme retrospective at BAM, where it will receive a one-week run.
Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, screenings at 2, 4:30, 7, and 9:30 p.m. Tickets $7.50/$15

SATURDAY, AUGUST 19

Exhibition: Lone Wolf Recital Corps at Museum of Modern Art
For Terry Adkins, instruments weren’t just objects—they also embodied the lives of the people who played them. In 1986, for his quest to prove that sound and performance were deeply connected to personal biographies, Adkins, who died in 2014, created the Lone Wolf Recital Corps, a collective of artists and musicians who would activate his exhibitions. Adkins called these activations “recitals,” and they often included musical, spoken-word, and visual elements. For the first time since Adkins’s death, the collective has reunited for this exhibition, part of the Museum of Modern Art’s ongoing “Projects” series. In the museum’s galleries will be videos, props, and paraphernalia related to the group. Over the course of the show’s two-month run, the museum will invite artists such as Jason Moran, Dread Scott, and Charles Gaines to perform in connection with the exhibition.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 10:30 a.m.–9 p.m.

Opening: “Summer Trip” at Tripoli Gallery
This group show, curated by painter Katherine Bernhardt and Tripoli Gallery founder Tripoli Patterson, is intended as a respite from New York, which Bernhardt and Patterson call a “chaotic, sticky city” in a release. The lighthearted affair will include work by Yevgeniya Baras, Katherine Bernhardt, Todd Bienvenu, Katherine Bradford, Quentin Curry, Mira Dancy, Dan McCarthy, Jonathan Rajewski, and Claude Viallat.
Tripoli Gallery, 30A Jobs Lane, Southampton, 7–9 p.m.

Opening: “Women in Colour” at Rubber Factory
Organized by photographer Ellen Carey, this group show explores the connection between women and color photography. “Why do women photographers choose color?” Carey asks in the show’s statement. “What are the aesthetic reasons? How are they gender-driven?” Featuring work by several generations of photographers, the show includes work by Amanda Means, Carrie Mae Weems, Cindy Sherman, Carey herself, Elinor Carucci, Jan Groover, Liz Nielsen, Patty Carrol, Meghann Riepenhoff, Mariah Robertson, Marion Belanger, Moira McDonald, Penelope Umbrico, Susan Derges, and Laurie Simmons, who will here show photography from her “How We See” series, a work from which appeared on the cover of the ARTnews March 2015 issue.
Rubber Factory, 29C Ludlow Street, 6–9 p.m.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 20

Screening: A Touch of Zen at Metrograph
King Hu’s 1971 epic A Touch of Zen, often considered to be one of the most important wuxia films, is a crime story stretched out over three hours, and it’s remembered by critics for its cinematography and its suavely choreographed action sequences rather than for its plot. Hsu Feng stars as a fugitive who has escaped the clutches of a corrupt government and gone on the run to a small town. A painter and a group of Buddhist monks discover her identity and then help her continue to evade her captors. When the film showed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975, it took home the Technical Grand Prize for its lush visuals.
Metrograph, 13 Ludlow Street, 3:15 p.m. Tickets $15