this week in art

NO MORE LOVE

Art, music, and more come together at all-night Brooklyn warehouse party

63 Woodward Ave. between Metropolitan and Flushing Aves., Brooklyn
Saturday, March 5, 6:30 – 3:30
Admission: $5 with RSVP to www.mememovement.com
www.facebook.com/event

As Saturday nights go, this is a big one in the art world, with more than a dozen fairs in town, many with special programs scheduled for tonight. But a very different kind of event is taking place in a large warehouse in Brooklyn, where the nonprofit arts collective the Meme Movement has curated an exciting evening of art and music. While beer from the Brooklyn Brewery flows all night long ($2 6:30 – 8:00, $4 8:00 – 3:30), Loren Alliston, Lindsay Wynn, D. Oscar Horner, and Taylor Marie Prendergast will display their photography and installation art. The band lineup, beginning at 8:30, includes the Nelsonvillains, Evan Shinners & the SUITS! (who are planning a special fog-filled multimedia set, with the opening song played in complete darkness), Shapes, Ghost Pal, Flowers for Reagan, and Sitting Ducks, with DJs Earl, Big Time DK’s, and BullwInkle filling in the gaps. In addition, there will be tattoos by Aris, a photobooth, body painting, video projections, and more. Admission is five bucks with RSVP to www.mememovement.com. It should all make for a pretty wild night.

SITE Fest and IonSound Music Festival

You never know what you’ll walk into at Bushwick’s Site Fest (photo: Sidewalk Dances)

Multiple venues in Bushwick
March 5-6, suggested donation $5 per event, $10 day pass, $15 weekend pass
www.artsinbushwick.org

Celebrating the burgeoning art, music, dance, and film scene in Bushwick, the third annual Site Fest will feature a bevy of performances Saturday and Sunday in conjunction with Armory Arts Week. Held at Chez Bushwick, Grace Exhibition Space, the Bushwick Starr, 3rd Ward, and numerous satellite venues, the festival will feature such participatory events at 3rd Ward as Gavin Campbell’s “Documentation of Flag,” which deals with his growing up on the Irish border; Hoyun Son’s “Social Shredding,” centered on a garment made of Korean funereal fiber; Stefan Adamski’s “Induction,” involving audience hypnosis; and Michael Freeman’s “Part 3: The Mnemonic Fool Series,” in which he interacts with the public while naked. The Bushwick Starr will host a series of text-based performances and installations (Jeremy Finch’s “Sketchbook,” Ari and Friends’ “Shake,” “vvitalny shares her thoughts w/ birds”), while Chez Bushwick will concentrate on experimental dance, including Laurel and Aya’s “Hand in Glove,” CJ Holm/Creature Theater’s “The Salad of the Bad Café,” and Michele Torino Hower’s “Merengue, as in Pie.” At Grace, Dr. Lisa will offer “Psychotherapy Live!,” Polaroica will be tattooing in “Tiempofaga,” and Meatspace will stage an interactive multimedia “Frankenstein Sweater Party,” where sewers can join in. Goodbye Blue Monday will be home to the IonSound Music Festival, with performances by Aimee Norwich, Bombs Making Bombs, Dear Comrade, Pezzettino, the Controversy, Rarefaction, Emilyis, and other music groups. The suggested donation for all hub space events and performances is a mere five bucks, with proceeds benefiting the nonprofit organization Arts in Bushwick. Our choice for best title: Kate Berlant’s “An Illustrative Colonoscopy into an Epistemological Kitty Cat.”

FIRST SATURDAYS — TIPI: HERITAGE OF THE GREAT PLAINS

Lyle Heavy Runner (Blackfeet), design owner and painter; Naomi Crawford (Blackfeet), tipi maker, “Blackfeet Tipi,” canvas, latex paint, wood, Great Falls, Montana, 2010 (photo: Jenny Steven)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, March 5, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The new Brooklyn Museum exhibit “Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains” is the focus of the institution’s March First Saturdays program, a free night of art, music, talk, film, literature, and dance. The party begins at 5:00 with singer/songwriter/activist Martha Redbone’s unique blend of soul, R&B, and traditional Native American music. At 5:30, the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers will perform. James McDaniel’s 2003 film, Edge of America, set at a high school reservation, will screen at 6:00, the same time Brooklyn artist Yatika Fields will discuss the “Tipi” exhibit. The Hands-On Art workshop (6:30-8:30) will teach children and adults how to make the Native American pouch called a parfleche. At 7:00, Nancy Rosoff will lead a tour of “Tipi,” followed at 8:00 by a Young Voices talk in which student guides will venture through the exhibit. DJ Frame of the Redhawk Arts Council will be behind the turntables for the always smokin’ Dance Party (8:00 – 10:00). At 9:00, visitors have the choice of continuing to dance up a storm, checking out Joseph Marshall III talking about his latest book, To You We Shall Return, or participating in an interactive dance performance with the Redhawk Arts Council. In addition, the galleries remain open until 11:00, giving everyone ample time to check out such exhibits as “reOrder: An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio,” “Thinking Big: Recent Design Acquisitions,” “Lorna Simpson: Gathered,” “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera,” “Sam Taylor-Wood: Ghosts,” and “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets.”

THE ARMORY SHOW 2011

Some sixty thousand art lovers attended last year’s Armory Show, the centerpiece of Armory Arts Week

Twelfth Ave at 55th St.
Pier 92: Modern
Pier 94: Contemporary
March 3-6, $30 per day, Run of Show Pass $60, Armory/VOLTA Pass $40
212-645-6440
www.thearmoryshow.com

Named after the legendary 1913 Armory Show, the thirteenth Armory Show: The International Fair of New Art begins today on the Far West Side, with eighty galleries at Pier 92 displaying modern and historically significant contemporary art, two hundred booths at Pier 94 featuring new work by living artists, and another eighteen from seven countries taking part in “Armory Focus: Latin America.” Among the special programming is “Open Forum,” held at both the Armory Show and VOLTA and consisting of such free discussions as “In Conversation: Richard Flood and Gabriel Kuri” (the Mexican-born, Belgium-based Kuri was commissioned to give the 2011 fair its unique visual identity) and “Ask Los Artistes” today, “Art Funds: Is Now the Time?” and “Spectacle Against Spectacle” on Friday, “In Conversation: Ivan Navarro and Victor Zamudio-Taylor” and “Post-Conceptual: The Reach of Theory in Contemporary Art” on Saturday, and “Biennials as Barometers of Social Transformation? Dublin Contemporary 2011: Art, Crisis, Change & the Office of Non-Compliance” and “In Conversation: Ed Halter and George Kuchar” on Sunday. We strongly recommend leaving work early to attend “In Conversation: Luis Camnitzer, Deborah Cullen, and Gabriel Perez-Barreiro” on Friday at 4:00, as Camnitzer’s current retrospective at El Museo del Barrio is one of the best shows in the city right now. The centerpiece of Armory Arts Week, the Armory Show runs in conjunction with VOLTA and Artprojx Cinema; a free shuttle bus will take fairgoers between Piers 92 and 94 and Volta (34th St. & Fifth Ave.) and the New Museum (235 Bowery).

THE ART SHOW 2011

Jaume Plensa, “Endless III,” stainless steel, 2010, Galerie Lelong / Richard Gray Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 2-6, $20
212-488-5550
www.artdealers.org/artshow

The twenty-third annual Art Dealers Association of America Art Show is back at the Park Ave. Armory, where nearly seventy galleries will be selling painting, drawing, sculpture, and more, benefiting the Henry Street Settlement. In general, the Art Show is geared more toward collectors than any of the other fairs; at numerous (but by no means all) galleries, the more you look like a potential buyer, the more forthcoming the men and women working in there can be. With that in mind, the ADAA has made available online a free Collector’s Guide, which will help novices and experienced buyers navigate such topics as “What to Look for in a Work of Art,” “Understanding the Art World,” “How to Buy and Sell Through a Dealer,” and “What About Auctions?” But even if you don’t have deep pockets, there is plenty to see at the show, which is highly manageable, not overstuffed and overloaded with too much art and too-narrow aisles. Ameringer / McEnery / Yohe is displaying all twenty-one drawings that comprise Robert Motherwell’s “The Dedalus Sketchbooks,” what he referred to as “artful doodles” inspired by Joyce’s Ulysses, made on Cape Cod during the summer of 1982. David Opdyke’s “Bit Assemblage,” at Ronald Feldman, consists of sculptures and black-and-white drawings anchored by the large-scale Styrofoam landscape “Zenith.” Knoedler & Company’s “Milton Avery and the Figure” consists of a number of outstanding oils, while Jill Newhouse has beautiful drawings, watercolors, and small sculptures by Auguste Rodin.

David Opdyke’s “Bit Assemblage” is at the Ronald Feldman Fine Arts booth at the Art Show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

L&M Arts has a splendid collection of Joseph Cornell boxes that look as fresh as if they were made yesterday. Franz Erhard Walther’s “Gesang des Lagers” sewn dyed canvases line the walls and even the floor at Peter Freeman, while Kathy Butterly’s small ceramic sculptures cover a table at Tibor de Nagy. Paintings by Oscar Bluemner and Charles Burchfield mesh surprisingly well at Debra Force, as do paintings and drawings by Richard Diebenkorn at Greenberg Van Doren. Photography fans will find William Klein at Howard Greenberg, Paul Strand at Zabriskie, Diane Arbus at Robert Miller, William Henry Fox Talbot and Eugene Atget at Hans B. Kraus, twelve of Laurel Nakadate’s “365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears” (one from each month) at Leslie Tonkonow, and twenty of Irving Penn’s engaging corner portraits at Pace / MacGill, including Truman Capote, Salvador Dali, John O’Hara, Igor Stravinsky, Jerome Robbins, and Walter Gropius. Among the other featured artists are Rachel Whiteread at Luhring Augustine, Jessica Stockholder at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Gabriel Orozco at Marian Goodman, Richard Artschwater at David Nolan, Alice Neel at David Zwirner, and Zhang Huan’s “Ash Paintings” at Pace. There’s also Watteau and Turner at David Tunick, “The Figure: From Old Masters through Contemporary Art” at Odyssia, Picasso at Pace Prints, Schiele at Galerie St. Etienne, and Philip Guston just about everywhere you look.

PULSE CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2011

David Ellis’s percussive symphony “True Value (pain fukette)” helped him win the Pulse Prize (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
March 3-6, $20 (children under twelve free)
212-255-2327
www.pulse-art.com

Year in and year out, Pulse Contemporary Art Fair is among the best of the fairs during Armory Arts Week, offering fun and fascinating site-specific installations and special programming. For 2011, Pulse has moved into the Metropolitan Pavilion, where more than fifty international galleries have booths, in addition to another fourteen participating in the upstairs Impulse section. Among the Pulse New York 2011 Projects are a preview of “Assembly,” comprising work by eight emerging Southern California photographers on view March 15 – April 9 at Fred Torres Collaborations on West 29th St.; Craig Damrauer’s vinyl greetings placed throughout the fair; Molly Dilworth’s paint-on-Mylar “Field Test” at the entrance, incorporating X-ray and electron microscopy images; Oskar Schmidt’s HD video “Back Portrait”; and Ben Wolf’s large-scale “Clamber,” centered on an eighteen-foot hull from a salvaged ship abandoned in Newark. Impulse, comprising one-person shows, has some excellent painting, including Jeff Kellar’s “Toler’s Fence,” “Jaded,” and “Barnyard Brawl 1” at Freight + Volume, Sangram Majumdar’s “Behind Things,” “Studio Chair,” and “Nighttree” at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, and Pulse Prize finalist Jinny Yu’s exquisite oil on aluminum works, some flat, others folded and scrunched, such as the triptych “Notes (large),” the embedded “Painting, wiped, on the wall,” and the dreamlike “Black Cloud (small).” The winner of the Pulse Prize for “exceptional artist” in the Impulse section was David Ellis of Joshua Liner, whose installation includes “True Value (pain fukette),” a group of metal and plastic paint cans that come alive and give a percussive concert, in addition to a wall sculpture of resin-encased record covers (no Barry Manilow allowed) and animated videos of splashing paint. Among the downstairs highlights are Dilworth’s “Times Square Test Pour” series at David B Smith, preparatory studies for her massive ground painting in Times Square; new black-and-white paintings by Martin Mull at Samuel Freeman; Pablo Zuleta Zahr’s acrylic C-prints of wandering people at Richard Levy; a preview of Eve Sussman’s nextfilm project at Cristin Tierney; Carlos Garacioca’s photo lightboxes at Habana; Brooklyn-based printmaker and sculptor Beka Goedde’s delightfully soothing mixed media on panel and paper “Moment of Transference” works at Christina Ray; and Margie Livingston’s “Paint Objects” and Heather Gwen Martin’s large-scale “Pigeon Hands” at Luis de Jesus. We always look forward to Jeffrey Blondes’s latest water-related meditative video project at Nicholas Metivier, and this year he has brought the twelve-and-a-half-hour “Bay of Fundy, Long Island West.” Be sure to stop by the Jen Bekman Gallery booth to check out her 20×200 project, which offers limited-edition artwork at ridiculously affordable prices. Pulse Presents will feature performance art and discussions, while Pulse Play highlights such video art as Desi Santiago’s “Work for Love.”

SCOPE NEW YORK 2011

Cinders Gallery’s “The Outer-Boroughs Cyclical Non-Cynical Art School of Thought” will be part of “us vs us” program at Scope

320 West St. at the West Side Highway across from Pier 40
First View: Wednesday, March 2, $100, 3:00 – 9:00 pm
General Admission: March 3-6, $20
www.scope-art.com

This year Scope is expanding into a sixty-thousand-square-foot space along the West Side Highway, where more than fifty international exhibitors will have work on view, including a.m.f. projects, Mindy Solomon, Galeria Christopher Paschall, Galerie Von Braunbehrens, Gallery Dukan & Hourdequin, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Paci Arte, and Aureus Contemporary. Scope will host numerous special events during the fair, centered around “us vs us,” which takes place in the fenced-in mezzanine and consists of such site-specific performance art pieces as “Come On Guy,” Craig Smith’s “Stacking Boats: A Lesson Plan,” Stephanie Diamond’s “Home Away from Home” corner store, Cinders Gallery’s “The Outer-Boroughs Cyclical Non-Cynical Art School of Thought,” and Grace Space’s “The Way to Love Me,” in which members of the audience are encouraged to lie to one another. Other special projects include the Rebaroque Artist Series Sound Wall, a film program from Robert Boyd, and the West Harlem Art Fund’s “Gumboot Dance.”