this week in art

ART IN ODD PLACES: CHANCE

Paul Notzold’s “TXTual Healing” will project audience texts onto a 14th St. building as part of Art in Odd Places public art festival

14th St. between the Hudson & East Rivers
October 1-10
Admission: free
www.artinoddplaces.org

Everyday life in New York City is built around the idea of chance — risk as well as luck, both good and bad — as residents, tourists, workers, and other visitors are all part of a daily maelstrom filled with expected and unexpected encounters with friends and strangers, taxis and buses, parks and skyscrapers. If the city is its own massive museum, then its streets are like individual galleries, and with that in mind, curators Yaelle Amir and Petrushka Bazin have taken over 14th St. from October 1 to 10. “Chance” is the latest presentation from Art in Odd Places, which seeks to stretch the limits of public art. Playing off the themes of “proposition, luck, randomness, risk, and opportunity,” Amir and Bazin have gathered together more than two dozen site-specific projects that run the length of 14th St. from the Hudson to the East River, as passersby will come upon live music, dance, sound installations, interactive sculpture, and other participatory events. Perhaps you’ll find one of Sheryl Oring’s “To a Young Poet” envelopes, inside of which is an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke and a request for you to respond. Or maybe your movement will be incorporated into Simonetta Moro’s “Chance Drawing: Reverse Window Shopping” at Rags-a-Gogo. Make sure you have proper identification if you want to take one of notary public Carrie Dashow’s “Great Oaths.” Go ahead and answer that ringing phone, as it could be Christopher Dameron and Annika Newell’s “Silent Call” on the other end. Be brave and enter Einat Amir’s “Enough About You,” in which you’ll be put in a room with a stranger and then have a conversation. Although it might be raining anyway, you won’t want to get wet from BroLab Collective’s “Pump 14,” which will be transporting water down 14th St. via a manual bucket filtration system. Watch to see if Irvin Morazan, munching on Cheez Doodles while dressed in a Mayan-inspired headdress, is able to hail a cab in “Taxi!! Taxi!! Taxii!!” If someone is waving at you from across the street, be sure to wave back, because it’s probably part of Flux Factory’s “Sign a Waver.” And if three women suddenly start telling you stories on a street corner, it could very well be Jessica Ann Peavy’s “Two Lies and a Truth,” and it’s up to you to decide which rumor is real. Some of the events will continue all week, while others will take place only tonight, so check the schedule at the above website if you’re interested in a specific performance.

THE FALL AFFORDABLE ART FAIR NEW YORK CITY

7W New York
7 West 34th St.
September 30 – October 3, $15-$20 per day
www.aafnyc.com

The Affordable Art Fair has been a mainstay of the spring season, but it is now holding its first-ever New York City fall fair. From September 30 through October 3, more than seventy-five exhibitors will be selling contemporary art, including paintings, drawings, photography, and sculpture, with prices ranging from $100 to $10,000. The fair will also feature such workshops as “How to Live with Art” and “Get Your Art On: Navigating the Landscape of Collecting” and daily open studios. And as a bonus, admission is free Friday night from 6:00 to 8:00. It doesn’t get much more affordable than that.

SEVEN WORKS BY TRISHA BROWN

Stephen Petronio walks down the outside of the Whitney as part of Trisha Brown “Off the Wall” show at the Whitney (photo by twi-ny/mdr)



OFF THE WALL: PART 2
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
September 30 – October 3, free with museum admission of $12-$18
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
Stephen Petronio: “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building” slideshow

The Trisha Brown Dance Company continues its fortieth anniversary celebration with four days of live performance art at the Whitney, re-creating seminal works inside a second-floor gallery, in the museum’s outdoor sculpture court, and down the side of the building. The exciting weekend begins Thursday afternoon at 3:30 with “Falling Duet I,” “Leaning Duets I,” “Walking on the Wall,” and “Spanish Dance” in the Mildred & Herbert Lee Galleries, along with films and the sound installation “Skymap,” and will be repeated on October 1 at 3:30 & 7:00 and October 2-3 at 12 noon and 3:30. “Floor of the Forest” will be staged by members of the 2010-11 Second Avenue Dance Company at 4:30 in the sculpture court on Thursday and repeated numerous times through Sunday. Yesterday people marveled as a woman made her way down the outside facade of the Whitney, but that was no mere daredevil; it was choreographer Elizabeth Streb rehearsing Brown’s “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building,” which will be performed by Stephen Petronio Thursday at 5:00 and Saturday at 1:30 and 5:00 and by Streb Friday at 5:00 and Sunday at 1:30 and 5:00.

SHIFTING THE GAZE: GALLERY TALKS

Deborah Kass, “Double Red Yentl, Split, from My Elvis,” screen print and acrylic on canvas, 1993



PAINTING AND FEMINISM
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Select days at 1:00 from October 4 through November 8
Free with museum admission of $12
212-423-3337
www.thejewishmuseum.org

The Jewish Museum will be hosting a series of exciting talks and discussions in conjunction with its latest exhibit, “Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism,” which runs through January 30. The series begins October 4 with Joyce Kozloff, whose “Naming II (or Who’s Jewish?)” is in the exhibition, followed by Judy Chicago (“Sky Flesh”) on October 5, Mira Schor (“Silence”) on October 11, a tour with curator Daniel Belasco on October 18, Deborah Kass (“Double Red Yentl, Split”) on October 25, Robert Kushner (“Blue Flounce”) on November 1, and Elisabeth Subrin (“Shulie: Film and Stills by Elisabeth Subrin”) on November 8, with all talks free with museum admission. In addition, the Jewish Museum will be presenting a three-part lecture series by CUNY art history professor Dr. Nanette Salomon, “Shifting Crossroads: Feminism, Art, Modernity, and Difference,” at 11:30 am on October 4 (“The Prequel: Women Painters in Early Modern Europe”), October 11 (“Impressionism and the Moment of Modernism: Women, Jews, and Other ‘Others’”), and October 18 (“Women Painters and the Jewish Museum 2010”); each lecture is $20, or you can get a series ticket for all three for $45.

MUSEUM DAY

Multiple venues
Admission: free with printed ticket
www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday

The sixth annual Free Museum Day, sponsored by Smithsonian magazine, takes place on Saturday, September 25, with institutions all over the country opening their doors to people who have downloaded a free ticket for two from the above website. There’s only one ticket allowed per household/e-mail address, so be careful before filling out the online form; some of the museums are free anyway, either all the time or on Saturdays, while others might be between exhibits so there won’t be all that much to see. The participating venues in the five boroughs are the American Folk Art Museum, Asia Society, the Bartow-Pell Mansion, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Museum, the Children’s Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt, El Museo del Barrio, the Fraunces Tavern Museum, Historic Richmond Town, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, the Museum of American Finance, the Society of Illustrators, the Museum of Arts & Design, Museum of the City of New York, the New Museum, the New York City Fire Museum, the New York Transit Museum, the New-York Historical Society, the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, the Queens Botanical Garden, the Queens Historical Society, the Queens Museum of Art, the Rubin Museum of Art, the South Street Seaport Museum, the Staten Island Museum, the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, the Center for Book Arts, the Drawing Center, the Hispanic Society of America, the Jewish Museum, the Morgan Library, the Museum at FIT, the Noble Maritime Collection, the Noguchi Museum, the Skyscraper Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Ukrainian Museum, and the Vilcek Foundation. Of course, if you pair up with friends and relatives, you can get more tickets for different places.

DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL

“Sushi” is performed in the windows of the BoConcept furniture store at 79 Front St. hourly between 2:00 & 5:00 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations
September 24-26
www.dumboartsfestival.com

The 2010 DUMBO Arts Festival will feature hundreds of events Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, three days of open studios, juried exhibitions and installations, concerts, dance, a digital summit, book signings, walking tours, performance art, a visual poetry marathon, children’s activities, and more, much of it free. The New York Photo Festival is premiering “Capture Brooklyn” at the powerHouse Arena, No Longer Empty will take over a suite in 111 Front St. as well as scaffolding outside 25 Washington St., Tom Verlaine will be playing at Galapagos with Billy Ficca and Patrick Derivaz, and Jonathan Lethem will be celebrating the launch of the paperback version of CHRONIC CITY. Among the other myriad participants and special events are the Brooklyn Ballet, Jane’s Carousel, storyteller LuAnn Adams, E. J. Antonio, the Strung Out String Band, Daniel Fishkin, Crystal Gregory, Mighty Tanaka, Bubby’s seventh annual Pie Social, a Steampunk Salon Saloon, and a bug-eating discussion with chef and artists Marc Dennis.

Anyone can be a star in Nelson Hancock’s two-part “That’s (not) Me” at DUMBO Arts Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

We particularly recommend Nelson Hancock’s “That’s (not) Me” outside on Main St. and inside at 55 Washington St., an August Sander-inspired project in which you can take a photograph of a friend or stranger, then switch places, then take a self-portrait, and you get to take home each photo of yourself; “Sushi,” in which Felisia Tandiono, Kashimi Asai, and Nung-Hsin Hu perform as three pieces of sushi in the windows of BoConcept at 79 Front St.; Andrea Cote and Michael Drisgula’s “Clay,” in which Cote will sculpt your head in clay while Drisgula documents it on video, with the same piece of clay used for all sitters; Fountain Art Fair favorite Allison Berkoy’s creepy projection “Asleep #3,” hidden away in a loading dock at 30 Washington St.; eteam’s “Gallery Cruise” at Smack Mellon on 92 Plymouth St., where you can relax at a table in the Tea Room, which offers a view of the Atlantic Ocean through a pair of windows; and Demetria Mazria’s “Take-Less” at 30 Washington St., composed of plastic take-out containers that form the number 2629, representing the number of such containers used (and then thrown out) every second in the United States. (We were looking forward to Janet Biggs’s “Wet Exit,” but it was canceled at the last minute.)

SEYMOUR CHWAST: THE DIVINE COMEDY

Designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast reinterprets Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY in new graphic novel

Society of Illustrators
138 East 63rd St.
Friday, September 24, $10-$20, 6:30
www.societyillustrators.org
www.pushpininc.com

Longtime commercial designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast enters the world of the graphic novel with his original take on a complex classic, DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY (Bloomsbury, September 2010, $20). Adapted from Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century foray into the nine circles of hell, Chwast’s black-and-white tale follows Dante, depicted as a tall, thin, pipe-smoking noir writer in hat, trenchcoat, and sunglasses, and Virgil, a short, stout, mustached man in dark suit and hat who walks with a cane. As the pair make their way through thirty-three cantos of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, they come upon Captain Charon, who ferries the dead across the River Acheron; souls boiling in tar; an angel that carves peccatums on Dante’s forehead; sinners engulfed in flames; and sowers of discord who are repeatedly stabbed by a devil. Also among the punished are falsifiers of metals, blasphemers, thieves, the unshriven, the avaricious, the gluttons, and the lustful. Chwast’s interpretation of Dante is indeed divine and comic, a playful retelling filled with humor and light horror. Chwast, who is seventy-nine and known as the Left-Handed Designer, will be at the Society of Illustrators on September 24 for a lecture, book launch, and reception celebrating the release of this delightfully devilish hardcover.