this week in art

BRONX MUSEUM SUMMER SEASON OPEN HOUSE

David Thomson and Jonathan Gonzalez will perform solos as part of summer season open house at Bronx Museum

Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse
Wednesday, July 13, free, 6:00 – 8:00
718-681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org

The Bronx Museum of the Arts’ annual summer open house takes place on July 13 at 6:00, celebrating not only the season but the opening of three new exhibitions. At 6:30, BAX/Dancing While Black Fellow Jonathan Gonzalez will perform Arthur Aviles’s In the Garden of Mi Amigo El id in the galleries, followed at 7:15 by a solo work by artist-choreographer and Bronx native David Thomson in the North Wing on the second floor. Attendees will also get a sneak peek at the new exhibitions “Art AIDS America,” “CAZA: Rochele Gomez, Margaret Lee, Alejandra Seeber,” and “En Foco Presents Mask: Photographs by Frank Gimpaya,” with member tours of the first at 5:00 and the third at 5:30. In addition, the Keith Haring Foundation – Project Street Beat Mobile Medical Unit of Planned Parenthood of New York City will be on hand. (On Saturday, July 16, at 3:00, Robb Hernández, PhD, and Joey Terrill will lead a free public tour of “Art AIDS in America” sponsored by AIDS Center of Queens County and AIDS Healthcare Foundation.)

THE RUBIN BLOCK PARTY

Rubin Block Party will have Nepalese-inspired theme this year (photo courtesy Rubin Museum of Art)

Rubin Museum of Art
West 17th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Sunday, July 17, free (including free museum admission all day), 1:00 – 4:00
rubinmuseum.org

Block parties are a type of social ritual, so it is rather apropos that the Rubin Museum of Art’s annual summer block party, taking place on July 17 on Seventeenth St., is being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Nepalese Seasons: Rain and Ritual,” which runs through March of next year. Hopefully it won’t rain between 1:00 and 4:00, when the museum will host Nepalese-inspired music and dance by Dikyi, Sonam Rinzin with Brooklyn Raga Massive, and Kabina Maharjan Singh and her son; educational activities with KathaSatha, Walung Community of North America, Yulha Fund (“Voice of the Himalayas”), and Mero Gaon; traditional Nepali dress demonstrations with Adhikaar; interactive weaving demonstrations with Grassroots Movement in Nepal; yoga with Susan Verde; art workshops in which participants can make rainsticks, frog masks, pinwheels, prayer flags, flower garlands, and hybrid animals; an interactive “Karma Chain” weather ritual; henna tattoos; Himalayan food from Café Serai; ice cream from Van Leeuwen; and more. In addition, the museum will be open for free all day long (11:00 am – 6:00 pm), so you can check out such exhibits as “Gateway to Himalayan Art,” “Masterworks of Himalayan Art,” “Genesis Breyer P-Orridge,” and “Sacred Spaces” in addition to “Nepalese Seasons: Rain and Ritual,” with museum tours and gallery searches for children. Namaste!

TICKET ALERT: PANORAMA NYC

Who: Arcade Fire, Alabama Shakes, Major Lazer, Kendrick Lamar, the National, Sufjan Stevens, LCD Soundsystem, Sia, A$AP Rocky, many more
What: Panorama NYC music and art festival
Where: Randall’s Island Park
When: July 22-24, $125 per day ($230 VIP), $369 for three-day pass ($699 VIP), ferry $25 per day, shuttle $30 per day
Why: Goldenvoice, the promoters behind such festivals as Coachella, Stagecoach, FYF, Hangout, Firefly, and Splash House as well as 2008’s All Points West at Liberty State Park, is giving it another go in the metropolitan area this summer with Panorama NYC, a three-day fest taking place on Randall’s Island July 22-24. The innovative Panorama Stage, which features a wraparound HD video screen that is 30 feet high and 170 feet long, will host such bands as Arcade Fire, Alabama Shakes, Major Lazer, and Silversun Pickups on Friday, Kendrick Lamar, the National, Blood Orange, and Foals on Saturday, and LCD Soundsystem, Sia, Run the Jewels, and Kurt Vile & the Violators on Sunday. Meanwhile, the Pavilion stage boasts such groups as Schoolboy Q, FKA Twigs, and Broken Social Scene on Friday, Sufjan Stevens, Flosstradamus, and Daughter on Saturday, and A$AP Rocky, Grace Potter, and SZA on Sunday. At the more intimate Parlor you can catch DJ Khaled, Netsky, and Madlib on Friday, Kaytranada, Alunageorge, and Horse Meat Disco on Saturday, and Classixx, Tourist, and Holy Ghost! on Sunday. (Complete set times are below.) The festival also features the Despacio dance floor, created by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and David and Stephen Dewaele of Soulwax with recording engineer John Klett. In addition, the Verge will be presenting the Lab, a seventy-foot video dome and projection Façade that will house seven multimedia digital art experiences, consisting of Emilie Baltz and Philip Sierzega’s “Cotton Candy Theremin,” Future Wife’s “Visceral Recess,” Dave & Gabe’s “Hyper Thread,” Gabriel Pulecio AKA lustix’s “Infinite Wall,” Mountain Gods’ “Giant Gestures,” Red Paper Heart’s “The Art of Pinball,” and Zachary Lieberman’s “Reflection Study.” Keep watching twi-ny for more coverage of Panorama as the big weekend approaches.

LIZZI BOUGATSOS: THE LAST HOPE

Lizzie Bougatsos will present a site-specific performance at MAD on July 8 (photo by Brian DeGraw)

Lizzi Bougatsos will present a site-specific performance at MAD on July 8 (photo by Brian DeGraw)

MADactivates: PERFORMANCE AT MAD
Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Eighth Ave.
Friday, July 8, $20, 7:00
212-299-7777
madmuseum.org

Queens native Lizzi Bougatsos, leader of Gang Gang Dance, will be at the Museum of Arts and Design on July 8, giving a specially commissioned performance in conjunction with the exhibition “Atmosphere for Enjoyment: Harry Bertoia’s Environment for Sound.” Bertoia, who died in 1978, was a jewelry and chair designer who also created sounding sculptures that he housed in his Pennsylvania barn. For the exhibition, Bougatsos, who performed “ENERGY CHANCE” at MoMA in 2014 as part of “John Cage: There Will Never Be Silence,” created a sound and video recording at the Sonambient Barn with Brian DeGraw for the show, “We Echo Now His Love”; on Friday night, she will enact the site-specific performance “The Last Hope” at MAD, interacting with works in the exhibit. On July 15, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (aka Lichens), who made “Spell Casting” at the barn, will perform “Levitation Praxis Pt. 4” at MAD.

TOM SACHS — BOOMBOX RETROSPECTIVE: SUMMER DJ BOOMBOX RESIDENCIES

Tom Sachs’s boomboxes will be put to good use on upcoming Thursday night programs at the Brooklyn Museum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THURSDAY NIGHTS
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Thursday, July 7, 21, 28, August 4, free, 6:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Tom Sachs is one busy guy. In March, Van Neistat’s film about Sachs’s 2012 Mars Space Program installation at the Park Avenue Armory opened at Metrograph and “Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony” began its four-month run at the Noguchi Museum; in April his exhibit “Tom Sachs: Boombox Retrospective, 1999-2016” opened at the Brooklyn Museum; and since June 9, his wall piece “Training” has been included in the FLAG Art Foundation group show “Summer School.” On July 6, the DIY bricolage artist, who prefers such basic and found materials as plywood, tape, glue, batteries, wires, and foamcore, will be at FLAG to play the last “Training” game. And on July 7, the Brooklyn Museum will host the first of four free Thursday nights in which DJs will use his boomboxes for dance parties. “Like many suburban lonely guys, I’ve been making sound systems for myself, to impress friends, and mostly to bore and alienate beautiful women with long talks about high quality electronics . . . just ask my wife,” New York native Sachs, who has been making portable sound systems since he was fifteen years old, explains in the accompanying handout. The show, which continues through August 14, comprises more than a dozen of his boomboxes, all of which are operative, from the small “McDonald’s Boombox,” “Clusterfuck,” and “AAU (Acoustic Amplification Unit)” to the massive ninety-six-square-foot “Toyan’s” and a pair of large-scale speakers, “Euronor.” On July 7, Natasha Diggs teams up with #SoulintheHorn, Mursi Layne takes the reins on July 21, and Juliana Huxtable will spin the black circle on August 4, all as part of “Summer DJ Boombox Residencies.” In addition, on July 28, for the Guest Bodega Clerk Series, Acyde and Tremaine Emory will take over Sachs’s life-size bodega boombox, where visitors can buy candy, granola, and other real items as well as take out cash from an ATM that dispenses a zine as a receipt. “In movies, 70% of what you understand comes from the sound. The rest is just pictures,” Sachs notes in the handout. “In sound systems, the opposite is true: the way things look influence the way things are heard. We spend with our eyes.” Sachs’s boomboxes both look and sound great, with a low-tech feel but a high-tech concept.

PEOPLE WHO WORK HERE: EVENING PERFORMANCES IN THE GALLERY

peoplewhoworkhere7

David Zwirner
533 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Performances: July 7, 21, 28, free, 6:00
Exhibition: Monday – Friday through August 5, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-727-2070
www.davidzwirner.com

In conjunction with its summer group show “People Who Work Here,” which features painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation from more than three dozen gallery artists, including Vanessa Castro, Xavier Donnelly, Dan Gratz, Sam Martineau, Clive Murphy, and Emily Shanahan, David Zwirner will be presenting three free evenings of music from 6:00 to 8:00. On July 7, there will be a DJ set by Blaksquirrel and Wizzerd (Josh Brown and Joel Fennell) and live performance by Anicon (Owen Rundquist). On July 21, Nickolaus Typaldos & Whitney Platt, who created the artists book Truth and Subterfuge, will perform at the Chelsea gallery, along with Kyle Combs and Bentley Anderson. And on July 28, there will be performances by Ziemba LoPiccolo, consisting of Rhys Ziemba and Liz LoPiccolo of Luscious Skin, and painter, installation artist, and musician Jay Pluck. The second iteration of “People Who Work Here” — the first took place in 2012 — continues through August 5.

TOM SACHS: TRAINING

Tom Sachs, “Training,” synthetic polymer paint on plywood, 2016 (image courtesy the artist)

The FLAG Art Foundation
545 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., ninth floor
Wednesday, July 6, free with advance RSVP, 6:30
212-206-0220
flagartfoundation.org
www.tomsachs.org

In his operation manual for his 2006 installation “The Island,” New York City native Tom Sachs quotes Yoda: “Do, or do not. There is no try.” Sachs does. And he has a lot of fun doing it. The Bennington College graduate takes a DIY approach to his art, displaying a wry sense of humor in such works as “Chanel Guillotine,” “Prada Toilet,” “Nutsy’s McDonald’s,” “Barbie Slave Ship,” and “Hello Kitty Nativity.” In 2008, he went up against the Neistat brothers in a hilarious power boat race. In 2012, he staged an intricately planned trip to the red planet in his massive interactive Park Avenue Armorny exhibition “Space Program: Mars,” which was later turned into a 2016 film. Currently, “Tom Sachs: Boombox Retrospective, 1996 – 2016” welcomes visitors to the Brooklyn Museum, while “Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony” offers an immersive experience at the Noguchi Museum. On July 6, Sachs will be at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea, activating “Training,” his contribution to the group show “Summer School,” which consists of playful works by such artists as John Baldessari, Dan Colen, Tara Donovan, Mark Grotjahn, Tony Matelli, Marilyn Minter, Vik Muniz, and Ugo Rondinone. “Training” is a helicopter rescue game / wall sculpture that involves riddles and such game pieces as a bag of McDonald’s fries and an Apollo command module. Sachs and his studio team will participate in a live tournament that will put the finishing touches on the work. Admission is free, but advance RSVP is recommended; as a bonus, whiskey and wine will be served. The tournament starts at 7:00, but be sure to get there at 6:30 to check out “Summer School” as well as the tenth-floor exhibit, Patricia Cronin’s “Shrine for Girls, New York.”