MULTIPLE PLEASURES

FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday – Friday through July 30
Admission: free
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

A few months back, Sabrina Blaichman, Caroline Copley, and Genevieve Hudson-Price, of 7Eleven Gallery, put together “Make Yourself at Home,” in which they turned a Chelsea garage into a sort of home showcase, featuring works by a multitude of artists arranged in different “rooms,” with nearly every chair, table, lamp, tire swing, and fake shower available for sale, sitting, and touching. Curator Nathalie Karg, the founder of Cumulus Studios, has now organized “Multiple Pleasures: Functional Objects in Contemporary Art,” a two-floor exhibit of reimagined useful household items by such artists as Doug Aitken, Ross Bleckner, Olaf Breuning, Peter Doig, Sarah Sze, William Kentridge, Douglas Gordon, Barbara Kruger, Yoshitomo Nara, Andrea Zittel, Ernesto Nara, and Richard Prince, among more than eighty others, one big name after another. As opposed to the 7Eleven show, you can’t touch most of the pieces here, which tend to be somewhat more expensive on the whole. But at the front counter, Tanya Bonakdar is selling a number of far more affordable items, including magnets, T-shirts, salt-and-pepper shakers, and towels by the likes of Kenny Scharf, Ed Ruscha, and Damien Hirst. In addition, you can obtain a unique digital screensaver by Olafur Eliasson by making a small donation to Maternity Worldwide, a nonprofit organization seeking to reduce the maternal mortality rate in Ethiopia and around the world.