this week in art

CONVERSATIONS WITH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS: REINVENTING ARTIST COMMUNITIES

Mildred’s Lane artist project will be discussed at MoMA panel on November 8

Museum of Modern Art, Celeste Bartos Theater
The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, November 8, and Wednesday, November 17, $10 each, 6:00
212-708-9781
www.moma.org

On November 8, MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry will moderate “Reinventing Artist Communities” with artists Mark Dion and J. Morgan Puett and critic Alastair Gordon, who will be discussing the Mildred’s Lane project, while on November 17 MoMA senior deputy director of curatorial affairs Peter Reed will moderate a talk with artists Andrea Zittel and Lisa Anne Auerbach about their High Desert Test Sites. Dion’s “Rescue Archaeology” uncovered fascinating historical artifacts under MoMA during its renovation and reconstruction earlier this decade, while Puett’s large-scale installations combine living environments with multimedia performance art; the two are collaborating on the Mildred’s Lane Historical Society and Museum in Pennsylvania, which “incorporates questions of our relation to the environment, systems of labor, forms of dwelling, new sociality — all of which compose an ethics of comportment.” Zittel, whose “Small Liberties” Whitney Altria exhibit consisted of customized Wagon Stations, and Auerbach, who keeps journals about the project, are two of the cofounders of High Desert Test Sites, which invites artists to create alternative, experimental living spaces in desert communities “to challenge traditional conventions of ownership, property and patronage.”

FIRST SATURDAYS: TOMASELLI’S UNIVERSE

Fred Tomaselli, “Echo, Wow, and Flutter,” leaves, pills, photocollage, acrylic, and resin on wood panel, 2000 (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. James G. Forsyth Fund)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, November 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program for November focuses on the institution’s current midcareer retrospective of hybrid collage artist Fred Tomaselli, and the Williamsburg-based Tomaselli will be on hand to give a talk at 8:00. The evening also includes a screening of ALICE IN WONDERLAND (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, 1951), live performances by the Wingdale Community Singers, Laura Cantrell, and the Isle of Klezbos, a book discussion with Rick Moody, a lecture on Tomaselli by psychiatrist Julie Holland, a curator talk by Catherine J. Morris on the exhibit “Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968,” and an electronica dance party hosted by Wolf + Lamb.

KingCon II

Dean Haspiel and Neil Swaab will both be part of KingCon II in Brookly this weekend (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Lyceum
227 Fourth Ave. between President & Union Sts.
Friday, November 5, $3, 8:00
November 6-7, $3-$10, 11:00 am – 7:00 pm
718-857-4816
www.kingconbrooklyn.com

The second annual KingCon independent comics and animation convention got under way with two panel discussions on Thursday night at the Brooklyn Lyceum and has a hoppin’ party scheduled for tonight, with readings and live music by such guests as Jeff Newelt, Jen Ferguson, Paul Pope, Dean Haspiel, Joan Hilty, Joe Infurnari, Americans UK, and the Charles Soule Band. The convention kicks into high gear Saturday and Sunday, featuring appearances by such writers and illustrators as Kyle Baker, Simon Fraser, Michael Kuperman, Neil Swaab, Mike Cavallaro, and Becky Cloonan, with such panels as “Collaboration Counseling,” “The Funny Pages: Comedy in Comics,” “How to Draw Comic Characters for Kids of All Ages,” and “Hips, Lips & Pencil Tips: The Sexual Female as Feminist Focal Point.” We can’t wait for Saturday afternoon’s look at the Brooklyn-set HBO series BORED TO DEATH, a discussion with creator Jonathan Ames and graphic artist Haspiel, moderated by Newelt.

LIVE ACTION NEW YORK 10

Rita Marhaug’s “Norwegian Liquid” is part of Scandinavian performance art festival (photo © V. Odin)

Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
November 5-7, free
212-847-9740
www.scandinaviahouse.org
www.liveactionnewyork.org

The second annual Live Action New York series continues at Scandinavia House Friday through Sunday, following shows Wednesday and Thursday at Grace Exhibition Space, featuring performance art by emerging artists as well as established stars from Scandinavia and North America curated by critic, artist, and historian Jonah Stampe. Friday night’s program includes Mari Novotny-Jones’s “Tender,” Rita Marhaug’s “Norwegian Liquid,” Maurice Blok’s untitled piece, and Joshua Selman’s “Full Massage.” Saturday night begins with Johanna Householder’s “Verbatim 3: Moon,” followed by Kjetil Skøien’s “Still Life,” Peter Rosvik’s “Abandoned Identities,” and Jessica Higgins and Mary Averill’s “Pick Up Sticks.” The festival concludes Sunday afternoon with Birgit Salling Hansen’s “Contours (Writing in the Rain),” Magnus Logi Kristinsson’s “Understandable Not Understandable Words,” and Jörgen Svensson’s “The Wedding.” Although all events are free, advance reservations are suggested.

ZHANG HUAN: THREE LEGGED BUDDHA

Zhang Huan’s “Three Legged Buddha” was officially dedicated with a special ceremony at Storm King on October 30 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Storm King Art Center
Old Pleasant Hill Rd., Mountainville
Wednesday – Sunday through November 14, $8-$12 (children under five free), 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
www.stormking.org
www.zhanghuan.com

On Saturday, October 30, the Storm King Art Center in upstate Mountainville celebrated Chinese artist Zhang Huan’s gift of his monumental 2007 forged-copper sculpture “Three Legged Buddha” with a special dedication ceremony that included chanting by Tibetan monks, a performance by Tibetan teen singing sensation Tenzin Kunsel, and a ritual circumambulation of the work, led by one of the monks and Zhang. Donated as part of Storm King’s fiftieth anniversary, the twenty-eight-foot-high, twelve-ton “Three Legged Buddha” consists of three giant legs facing the ground and forming an arch as if in an elaborate yoga pose with just the bottom half of a body, two feet balanced on pins, the third standing on an eight-foot-high human head, as if pushing it into the earth, or perhaps the head is rising up from below. The detailing is exquisite, from the anklets to the ears, the toes to the face.

Zhang Huan’s “Three Legged Buddha” was officially dedicated with a special ceremony at Storm King on October 30 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The work, which has been placed in Storm King’s South Fields amid sixty-four sugar-maple trees, is inspired by fragments of destroyed Buddhist statuary that Zhang, one of China’s most successful and innovative artists, has been collecting during his travels in Tibet. Also on view as part of Storm King’s fiftieth anniversary is “5+5: New Perspectives,” featuring outdoor works by Mark di Suvero, Andy Goldsworthy, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Maria Elena González, and Alyson Shotz, as well as the indoor exhibit “The View from Here: Storm King at Fifty,” but you better hurry, because the massive, spectacular sculpture center closes for the season November 14. And now is a particularly great time to visit, as the leaves are changing color as fall heads toward winter. Zhang’s 2010 piece “Head from Buddha Foot” is also currently on view at the 590 Atrium on Madison Ave. at 56th St.

MOVE!

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Sunday, October 31, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
Suggested donation: $10 (free with MoMA ticket within thirty days of MoMA visit)
718-784-2084
www.ps1.org

MoMA PS1’s two-day event, MOVE!, continues its melding of art and fashion today, featuring unique collaborations between such inspired pairings as Kalup Linzy and Diane Von Furstenberg, Olaf Breuning and Cynthia Rowley, Rashaad Newsome and Alexander Wang, Dan Colen and Proenza Schouler, David Blaine and Adam Kimmel, Ryan McNamara and Robert Geller, Terence Koh and Italo Zucchelli, and others. Part of MoMA PS1’s Free Space program, the special afternoon should be a great way to spend Halloween.

DAY OF THE DEAD

Attendees can learn to make sugar skulls and more at Mexican Day of the Dead celebration at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery

St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery
131 East Tenth St. at Second Ave.
October 30-31, free, 12 noon – 8:00
212-587-3070
www.manoamano.us

Mano a Mano: Mexican Cultures Without Borders will be celebrating the Day of the Dead with a weekend of free activities at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, with Saturday’s events kicking off at 12 noon with a traditional dance procession beginning in Union Square, making its way to the church for the Ceremony at the Altar. Each day will feature a Mexican marketplace. Saturday’s workshops are “Building Individual Altars / Making Paper Flowers” and “Making Pan de Muerto Bread,” with “Calaveras de Azúcar/Sugar Skulls” and “Calaveras: Day of the Dead Poetry” scheduled for Sunday. Saturday will also include a musical performance by Radio Jarocho, with Mariachi Tapatío de Álvaro Paulino playing on Sunday.