this week in art

CLEANING THE CLOUDS

Michael Alan’s “Harmonious Opposites” exhibition will conclude with a six-hour living installation performance on July 29 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MICHAEL ALAN: HARMONIOUS OPPOSITES
Gasser / Grunert
524 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Thursday, July 29, free to watch, $17-$20 to participate, 6:00 pm – 12 midnight
6460944-6197
www.michaelalanart.com/art

Multimedia artist Michael Alan investigates what he refers to as “chronic time exaggerators” in his work, commenting on time and space as well as art history through drawings, paintings, sculpture, video, happenings, and performance. The New York City native, born during the 1977 blackout, is most well known for his Draw-a-Thon events, which combine art, theater, and music with live models and an audience. His latest “living installation,” titled “Cleaning the Clouds,” in which eight Draw-a-Thon veterans will play the beautiful yet mysterious, always moving white objects, takes place July 29 at Gasser / Grunert in Chelsea, concluding Alan’s first solo show at the gallery. “Harmonious Opposites,” which opened July 8, features line drawings and a pair of videos spread across two floors of a cavernous, post-industrial space. Alan believes in “artistic revolution,” so there’s no telling what will go on at this unique live closing.

MULTIPLE PLEASURES

A multitude of well-known artists offer “Multiple Pleasures” at Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/mdr)



FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday – Friday through July 30
Admission: free
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

A few months back, Sabrina Blaichman, Caroline Copley, and Genevieve Hudson-Price, of 7Eleven Gallery, put together “Make Yourself at Home,” in which they turned a Chelsea garage into a sort of home showcase, featuring works by a multitude of artists arranged in different “rooms,” with nearly every chair, table, lamp, tire swing, and fake shower available for sale, sitting, and touching. Curator Nathalie Karg, the founder of Cumulus Studios, has now organized “Multiple Pleasures: Functional Objects in Contemporary Art,” a two-floor exhibit of reimagined useful household items by such artists as Doug Aitken, Ross Bleckner, Olaf Breuning, Peter Doig, Sarah Sze, William Kentridge, Douglas Gordon, Barbara Kruger, Yoshitomo Nara, Andrea Zittel, Ernesto Nara, and Richard Prince, among more than eighty others, one big name after another. As opposed to the 7Eleven show, you can’t touch most of the pieces here, which tend to be somewhat more expensive on the whole. But at the front counter, Tanya Bonakdar is selling a number of far more affordable items, including magnets, T-shirts, salt-and-pepper shakers, and towels by the likes of Kenny Scharf, Ed Ruscha, and Damien Hirst. In addition, you can obtain a unique digital screensaver by Olafur Eliasson by making a small donation to Maternity Worldwide, a nonprofit organization seeking to reduce the maternal mortality rate in Ethiopia and around the world.

NEW MUSEUM BLOCK PARTY 2010

New Museum will be hosting annual block party Saturday in Sara D. Roosevelt Park

Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Houston & Chrystie Sts.
New Museum, 235 Bowery at Prince St.
Saturday, July 24, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

This Saturday, the New Museum will be hosting its annual block party, an afternoon of art and family activities held in Sara D. Roosevelt Park and the museum theater on the Lower East Side. There will be live performances by poet and storyteller Pappa Susso, beatboxer Adam Matta, dance company LoVid, and Hisham Akira Bharoocha in addition to workshops, a walking tour of the neighborhood focusing on art and architecture, screenings presented by the REDCAT International Children’s Film Festival, and more. Free passes to the museum will be given out in the park, good for that day only, so you can head over to the Bowery and check out the current exhibits, including “Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other,” “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine,” and “Amy Granat: Light 3 Ways.”

ZOMBO ITALIANO: DEMONS 2

Zombies invade museum at MAD screening Saturday night

DEMONS 2 (DÈMONI 2: L’INCUBO RITORNA) (Lamberto Bava, 1987)
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Broadway
Saturday, July 24, $7-$10, 7:00
212-299-7777
www.madmuseum.org

Written by Dario Argento and director Lamberto Bava, DEMONS 2 (DÈMONI 2: L’INCUBO RITORNA) will be screening on Saturday night at the Museum of Arts & Design as part of “Zombo Italiano: The Italian Zombie Film Movement, 1972-1985.” (The first DEMONS film will be shown Friday night, July 23, at 7:00.) A sweet sixteen party goes terribly wrong in this loud, bloody film, which stars David Edwin Knight, Nancy Brilli, Asia Argento, and Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni. Tickets are $10, but you’ll save three bucks at the door if you come in a zombie costume or just happen to be a zombie yourself. Cataldi-Tassoni will introduce the screening and participate in a Q&A afterward. And for even more of the actress/artist, be sure to check out her latest exhibit, “Smart Innocence,” on view at the Tuscan Mexican restaurant Matilda on East Eleventh St. through September 30. “Zombo Italiano” concludes on July 29 with a rare presentation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 flesh-eater, PIGSTY (PORCILE).

MIKE BIDLO: NOT WARHOL (BRILLO BOXES, 1964)

Mike Bidlo appropriates master appropriator Andy Warhol at Lever House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Lever House
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through September 11
Admission: free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
flickr slideshow

As Walter Benjamin noted nearly seventy-five years ago, “In principle a work of art has always been reproducible.” Andy Warhol built much of his artistic legacy around this idea, appropriating pop-culture images, from Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and Mao to Campbell’s Soup cans and Brillo Soap Pad boxes, and creating multiples, most of which were untouched by his own hand yet eventually sold for record prices. Since the 1980s, Chicago-born artist Mike Bidlo, who lives and works in New York City, has been appropriating iconic images by the likes of Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Warhol himself, producing exact replicas of the original. No mere art forger, Bidlo works from reproductions, furthering the theoretical and physical distance between himself and the initial artist, questioning the entire nature of art and the creator. At Lever House on Park Ave., Bidlo has installed his 2005 work “Not Warhol (Brillo Boxes, 1964),” a replica of the original 1964 Warhol piece that consisted of forty-seven wooden boxes that in themselves replicated the cardboard packing boxes Brillo used to ship its product. “I thought it would be interesting to appropriate a work by another appropriator,” Bidlo explains in the exhibition handout, “so in a way I just kept the proverbial snowball rolling.” Bidlo’s pyramidlike construction rises in the northeast corner of the Lever House lobby, its bright red, white, and blue color scheme bringing light to the dark corner. Of course, it is rather appropriate that the appropriated piece is in Lever House, continuing the work’s connection to commercialism and the art world, as William and James Lever started their company in 1885 by making soap products. It all combines for a dizzying prospect, but it helps that the sculpture is really cool to look at, regardless of its history and the grand statements behind it. “Not Warhol (Brillo Boxes, 1964),” which includes an original Brillo packing box in a nearby vitrine, will be on view at Lever House through September 11; Warhol fans will also want to check out “Andy Warhol: The Last Decade,” at the Brooklyn Museum through September 12.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD

Tamra Davis examines the life of her friend Jean-Michel Basquiat in revealing documentary (photo courtesy of Lee Jaffe)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD (Tamra Davis, 2010)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
July 21 – August 3
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.jean-michelbasquiattheradiantchild.com

Director Tamra Davis (GUNCRAZY) transports viewers back to the 1980s New York art scene in the intimate documentary JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD. In 1986, just as the career of street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was exploding, Davis filmed him being interviewed by designer Becky Johnson, a revealing portrait that she put away in a drawer for more than twenty years. Davis finally brings out that footage, making it the centerpiece of this new examination of the ambitious, influential artist and musician who experienced massive success before falling hard and fast and dying of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-seven in 1988. Davis, a friend of Basquiat’s, conducts new interviews with many of the people from his inner circle, including art dealers Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian, Annina Nosei, Tony Shafrazi, and Bruno Bischofberger; Basquiat’s girlfriends Suzanne Mallouk and Kelle Inman; close Basquiat friends Diego Cortez and Fab 5 Freddy; NEW YORK BEAT cable TV host Glenn O’Brien; and fellow artist Julian Schnabel, who directed Basquiat in DOWNTOWN 81. Davis has also dug up amazing footage from the 1980s of Basquiat that shows him to be a unique, driven figure who used whatever he could — from broken windowframes and doors he’d find on the street to immense canvases — to spread his art and world view, which began with drawings in which he identified himself as Samo, criticizing contemporary art as “the same old shit.” Ultimately, though, it was his relationship with Andy Warhol that was the beginning of the end. JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD is a dazzling document of a fascinating time and a cautionary tale of success that comes too fast, too soon. Davis will be at Film Forum for the 8:00 shows on July 21-22, with Fab 5 Freddy appearing at the 8:00 screening on July 23.

NOT A PLACE, AN OUTLOOK

Andrea Mastrovito’s cutout installation brings paper creatures to life in “The Sixth Borough” exhibit on Governors Island (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE SIXTH BOROUGH
Governors Island, Colonels’ Row
Film series: July 16-18, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
Exhibit continues Friday – Sunday through September 25
Admission: free
www.nolongerempty.com
www.govisland.com
sixth borough slideshow

While the city, state, and federal governments debate over what to do with Governors Island, we continue to be the beneficiaries, as the island has become a home away from home for lovers of art, music, history, nature, and just about everything else under the sun. This weekend, July 16-18, from 12 noon to 5:00 each afternoon, No Longer Empty, which has organized the excellent site-specific installation “The Sixth Borough” in the rooms along Colonels’ Row, will be presenting “Not a Place, an Outlook,” short films that examine the relationship between place and the mind, with works by Julieta Aranda, Javier Tellez, Erin Shirreff, Steve Roden, Luke Fowler, and others. (The series repeats August 13-15 and September 10-12 and 17-19.) Also as part of the “The Sixth Borough,” Mary Walling Blackburn continues to offer tutorials on the second floor of Building 408 dealing with “Radical Citizenship,” one-on-one discussions between a visitor and such tutors as Regine Basha and Amir El Saffar (“Tuning Baghdad,” July 17), TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone and Blackburn (“Our Bad Relationship: The Revolutionary + the Policeman,” September 4), and A. B. Huber (“Due Vigilance: One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, on Alert,” September 17). Among the other highlights of the exhibit are Adam Cvijanovic’s trompe l’oeil paintings that imagine worlds beyond the walls; Andrea Mastovito’s massive “The Island of Dr. Mastrovito,” consisting of thousands of animals cut out of some seven hundred books, lining the walls and floor of one room, while a video of playfully re-created famous horror scenes screens in another; Teresa Diehl’s haunting projected video “Return of Pleasure,” which casts shadows of memories across scrims in the middle of a room; and Trong G. Nguyen’s “Marcel Duchamp Versus Bobby Fischer,” a three-channel video installation depicting a chess match as seen from above. And as long as you’re on the island already, you might also want to check out Ivy Baldwin Dance on Friday at 2:00, the free Gone to Governors concert with Caribou and Phantogram on Water Taxi Beach on Friday at 7:00, Let’s Fly a Kite! at noon on Saturday, the Big Apple Circus Family Fun Fest and the Jazz Age Dance Party with Michael Arenella and the Dreamland Orchestra on Saturday and Sunday, the Figment Sculpture Garden (complete with mini-golf course), and other special events and activities, most of which are free.