this week in art

ARTIST TALK: SEAN SCULLY AND GLENN FUHRMAN

Sean Scully, “Landline Deep Blue Sea,” oil on aluminum, 2015 (©Sean Scully / courtesy of Timothy Taylor Gallery, London)

Who: Sean Scully and Glenn Fuhrman
What: Artist talk
Where: The FLAG Art Foundation, 545 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., ninth floor, 212-206-0220
When: Friday, November 20, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: In 2006, Irish-born American artist Sean Scully said, “I remember growing up in Ireland and everything being chequered, even the fields and the people.” The two-time Turner Prize nominee creates abstract canvases lush with horizontal and vertical rectangles and stripes that are filled with power and emotion while always displaying the hand of the painter. The seventy-year-old artist will be at FLAG on November 20, discussing his work with FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman in conjunction with the group exhibition “Surface Tension,” where Scully’s 2015 “Landline Deep Blue Sea” can be seen along with pieces by El Anatsui, Mark Bradford, Sam Gilliam, Sterling Ruby, Rebecca Ward, and others in an exploration of materiality, texture, and depth.

EXPLORATIONS: IRRESISTIBLE RESISTANCE

The New Negress Society will present a program of short films in conjunction with “Irresistible Resistance” exhibit at Made in NY Media Center

Who: Members of the New Negress Film Society
What: “Irresistible Resistance”
Where: Made in NY Media Center by IFP, 30 John St., DUMBO, 718-729-6677
When: Friday, November 20, free, 7:00
Why: Formed in 2013 by Frances Bodomo, Ja’Tovia Gary, Kumi James, Stefani Saintonge, and Dyani Douze, the New Negress Film Society identifies itself as “a core collective of Black woman filmmakers whose priority is to create community and spaces for support, exhibition, and consciousness-raising.” On November 20 at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP in DUMBO, the society is hosting an evening of experimental short films and discussions about power relations around the world, held in conjunction with the exhibition “Irresistible Resistance,” which runs through November 27. The lineup consists of Gary’s An Ecstatic Experience, Saintonge’s Seventh Grade, Bodomo’s Boneshaker, James’s savage, and Douze and Nontsikelelo Mutiti’s Pain Revisited. It is all part of “Explorations,” a series of programs examining the creative process from multiple angles.

DANISH MODERNITY: JACOB A. RIIS AND VILHELM HAMMERSHØI IN 1900

Museum of the City of New York will host discussion surrounding

Museum of the City of New York will host presentation and discussion about contemporaries Jacob A. Riis and Vilhelm Hammershøi

Who: Danish ambassador Anne Dorte Riggelsen, curator Bonnie Yochelson, and assistant professor of art history Dr. Thor J. Mednick
What: “Danish Modernity: Jacob Riis and Vilhelm Hammershøi in 1900”
Where: Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave. at 103rd St.
When: Monday, November 16, $16, 6:30
Why: In conjunction with the exhibition “Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half” at the Museum of the City of New York and “Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershøi from SMK — The National Gallery of Denmark” at Scandinavia House, MCNY is hosting an evening of presentations and discussions on the similarities and differences between the life and careers of Danish-born American photojournalist and social reformer Jacob A. Riis and Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi as they relate to the movement toward modernity.

MOBY-DICK: A MARATHON READING

Frank Stella, “The Whiteness of the Whale (IRS-1, 2X),” paint on aluminum, 1987 (© 2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Steven Sloman)

Whitney Museum of American Art
Neil Bluhm Family Galleries, fifth floor
99 Gansevoort St.
Friday, November 13, 11:00 am – 10:00 pm
Saturday, November 14, 11:00 am – finish
Free with museum admission of $18-$22
212-570-3600
whitney.org

Last November’s second biennial Moby-Dick Marathon took place over the course of three days at the Ace Hotel, the South Street Seaport Museum, and the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. This year a bonus marathon is being held November 13-14 on the fifth floor of the new Whitney, where more than 150 artists, writers, curators, editors, and others will celebrate the 164th anniversary of Herman Melville’s thousand-page 1851 epic with a two-day marathon reading in conjunction with Frank Stella’s Moby-Dick series, part of a major retrospective of the work of the Massachusetts-born, New York-based artist that continues through February 7. Stella created the works for a special 150th anniversary publication of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, containing reproductions of sculptures, reliefs, prints, and a mural inspired by the tale of Captain Ahab’s desperate hunt for the title mammal. Among the myriad scheduled readers of the massive tome are Ben Greenman, Brian Floca, Trisha Baga, Alan Light, Morgan Parker, AK Burns, Lucky DeBellevue, Monica de la Torre, Salman Rushdie, Melissa Febos, Paul Rome, Rebecca Dinerstein, Kurt Andersen, Ben Fama, Angela Flournoy, and Rowan Ricardo-Phillips, with more to be announced.

CANSTRUCTION

Gensler’s What’s U, Doc? Canstructure consists of 5,932 cans (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Gensler’s “What’s Up, Doc?” CANsculpture consists of 5,932 cans (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brookfield Place
250 Vesey St.
Daily through November 16, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-945-0505
brookfieldplaceny.com
www.sdanyc.org/canstruction
canstruction nyc slideshow

The twenty-third annual Canstruction NYC Design/Build Competition is under way at Brookfield Place, although they’re a little trickier to find this year than in the past, when they lined the Winter Garden. The architectural battle and fundraiser — visitors are asked to bring a can of high-quality, nonperishable food to donate — features more than two dozen creative structures built by teams referencing the international hunger crisis. As always, the overall construction is best viewed through a camera, but get up close and personal with the naked eye to see how ingenious many of the intricate designs are. You can vote for your favorite here. Among the impressive competitors are HOK’s “Presidential CANdidates,” Thornton Tomasetti’s “Wall Street Charging Bull,” Severud Associates’ “Spanning the Hungry Rapids,” GACE Consulting Engineers’ “The Butterfly Effect: How Far CAN Kindness Go?,” RAND Engineering & Architecture’s “Pipe Down Hunger,” and WJE Engineers & Architects’ “Yoshi’s Soup’er Mission,” although it will be mighty tough to beat out Gensler’s “What’s Up, Doc?” At the end of the competition, the structures are taken apart and the cans donated to City Harvest, so come on by, bring some nonperishable items, and help CANstruction raise upwards of 100,000 cans of food. On November 12 from 12 noon to 3:00, Jenny McCoy, a chef-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education and author of Desserts for Every Season, will host a free presentation and tasting (of sweets made with canned food) next to Hudson Eats, right near several of the CANsculptures.

ARTIST TALK: AWOL ERIZKU

Artist Awol Erizku will be at FLAG on November 13 to discuss his latest solo exhibition (photography by Art Echo LLC)

Who: Awol Erizku, Alicia Quarles, and Glenn Fuhrman
What: Artist talk
Where: The FLAG Art Foundation, 545 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., tenth floor, 212-206-0220
When: Friday, November 13, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: In conjunction with the exhibition “New Flower | Images of the Reclining Venus,” New York-based artist Awol Erizku will talk about his solo show, consisting of photographs of sex workers taken in Addis Ababa in 2013 that reexamine and challenge conventional art-historical tropes. “While ‘New Flower’ importantly revises the homogeneous tradition of the ‘odalisque,’ the series also complicates the counter tradition by highlighting the tension between labor and the aesthetic — through a framing that is definitively and defiantly new,” Ashley James writes about the exhibit. On November 13, Erizku will be at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea to discuss his work, in conversation with fashion journalist Alicia Quarles and FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman. “New Flower | Images of the Reclining Venus,” which includes a mixtape you can check out here, will remain on view through December 12.

MARINELLA SENATORE AND NÁSTIO MOSQUITO: VISIBLE ON THE HIGH LINE

Nástio Mosquito will perform “S.E.F.A. Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I Were Angolan)” to help kick off Creative Time Summit

The High Line
Gansevoort St. entrance to Chelsea Market Passage
Friday, November 13, free, 6:00
thehighline.org
creativetime.org

The Creative Time Summit, a two-day series of workshops, roundtables, and open discussions exploring the intersection of art and social justice, takes place November 14-15 at the Boys and Girls High School campus on Fulton St. in Brooklyn, featuring such participants as keynote speakers Nikole Hannah-Jones and Boots Riley along with Bill Ayers, Hans Haacke, Leonard Lopate, Luis Camnitzer, Hope Ginsburg, Tahir Hemphill, Chloë Bass, Tania Bruguera, and many others. But the summit, “The Curriculum NYC,” kicks off Friday night with the special event “Visible on the High Line,” an evening of site-specific participatory performances focusing on collaboration and social interaction, curated by Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander of the Visible Project, “a research project in contemporary art devoted to art work in the social sphere, that aims to produce and sustain socially engaged artistic practices in a global context.” Italian visual artist Marinella Senatore will present the latest iteration of her “School of Narrative Dance” project, beginning at the Gansevoort St. entrance to the High Line and continuing on to the Chelsea Market Passage above Sixteenth St., where Angolan artist and musician Nástio Mosquito will perform “S.E.F.A. Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I Were Angolan),” a look at media and identity, with visuals by Vic Pereiro. Admission to the High Line performance is free; tickets to the Creative Time Summit run from $25 to $350, depending on what you can afford.