this week in art

NORTHSIDE FESTIVAL

We Are Country Mice are among the growing lineup of excellent bands hitting Williamsburg this week for the Northside Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations throughout Williamsburg & Greenpoint
June 24-27
Admission: free – $19, badges $50
www.thelmagazine.com/blogs/NorthsideFestivalNews

The second annual Northside Festival is like a mini-CMJ, featuring a great lineup of mostly local bands — including the Fiery Furnaces, Takka Takka, Au Revoir Simone, Savoir Adore, Pillow Theory, Grooms, We Are Country Mice, Wavves, White Hills, High Places, Titus Andronicus, Ribbons, the Black Hollies, Les Savy Fav, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Harper Blynn, and Islands, among dozens of others — packing them in at Coco 66, Europa, Glasslands Gallery, the Knitting Factory, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Pete’s Candy Store, Public Assembly, Red Star Barn, Shea Stadium, Spike Hill, the Trash Bar, Union Pool, and Warsaw. In addition, Northside Film at IndieScreen will show such works as Zeina Durra’s THE IMPERIALISTS ARE STILL ALIVE, Ry Russo-Young’s YOU WON’T MISS ME, Todd Solondz’s LIFE DURING WARTIME, James Franco’s THE FEAST OF STEPHEN, and Neil Marshall’s CENTURION as well as host an animation block party, shorts programs, and more. And Arts at Northside includes exhibitions and special events, including Conrad Ventur’s “Screen Tests Revisited” at Momenta Art, Rob List’s collaborative dance at Parker’s Box, and live music by Party of Virgins and Live Footage at the opening of Liubo Borissov’s “Crowdsource” at Eye Level BQE. Expect massive crowds, an unusually high hipster quotient even for Williamsburg, and lots of awesome music. Keep watching twi-ny for specific recommendations and must-sees over the next few days.

CREST FEST ’10

Crest Hardware
558 Metropolitan Ave. between Lorimer & Union
Saturday, June 19, free, 12 noon – 11:00 pm
Exhibit runs through July 30
www.cresthardwareartshow.com
slideshow

The third annual Crest Fest, a celebration of art, music, and hardware, takes place today on Metropolitan Ave., benefiting the City Reliquary Museum. More than one hundred artists have taken over fifteen thousand square feet of space with exciting multidisciplinary works. The opening will feature food, drink, a design market, and live performances by such bands as Deluka, the Sundelles, Motel Motel, Oberhofer, Zongo Junction, Darlings, and Wizardry, along with DJ sets by DJ Teenwolf, Faux Mex, Lucas Walters, and others. Curated by Joe Franquinha, the manager of Crest Hardware (a store that was founded by his father, Manny, in 1962), the show has very quickly become a Brooklyn tradition and is an absolute blast, as the artists generally use materials found in hardware stores to create pieces that comment on hardware, incorporating screws, saws, blades, plungers, air fresheners, plaster, paint, metal, sockets, switches, buckets, wire, cords, mops, planters, and even toilet seats into their work. The nearly two hundred paintings, sculptures, drawings, collages, and other creations are then placed throughout the store and outside garden, many hidden within the long, narrow aisles as if they were just another product. So be careful; that shovel might be a lot more than forty bucks if it’s one of the ones Dave Tree painted on. Most of the pieces are for sale, ranging in price from twenty bucks to thirty thousand, although most fall in the $100-$1,000 range. Some of our favorite works and titles include Fanny Allie’s “Crossed Fingers,” white plaster fingers cleverly stored in the electric saw case; Xian Lee’s romantic painting “Love Screw”; Larry Heintjes’s “Silicone Stalagmite”; Kim Beury’s “The Nail That Stands Up Gets Pounded Down”; Leslye Learess’s “For a Feminine Touch” air fresheners; Wendy Klimperer’s “African Crested Porcupine”; Ted Stanke’s “Claw Hammer” and “Wrench,” both made out of pocket change; Alexandre Sazonov’s “Hammer and Jesus” painting; and Mike Houston’s playful signs. It’s a riot that while you’re searching for all the art, that person next to you is actually looking for a power drill, a paintbrush, or a pale to finish up some work on his apartment. You’ll also develop a whole new love of the tool, as not everything you might think is art is art; a hammer, after all, is sometimes just a hammer.

WORLD CUP LIVE: AFRICA CELEBRATES!

The World Cup comes alive in art and on-screen at the Paley Center

Paley Center for Media
25 West 52nd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through July 11
Admission: free
212-621-6800
www.paleycenter.org

Looking for somewhere different to watch the World Cup? Perhaps crowding into a pub at 9:30 in the morning is a bit much? The Paley Center will be screening all the World Cup games — live and for free — in its upstairs theater at 9:30 am and 2:00 pm every day, so you can enjoy the matches with other soccer lovers playing hooky from work during the week or sneaking out on weekends. In addition, the Steven Spielberg Gallery on the main floor is hosting “Africa Celebrates!” an exhibit of photographs taken by Joseph Peter during his whirlwind 2009 tour following the FIFA World Cup Trophy as it made its way through fifty African nations prior to arriving in South Africa. The photographs, shown alongside African art and furniture from the Hemingway African Gallery on 55th St., are divided into four sections: Happiness, Inspiration, Motivation, and Celebration, focusing on the people themselves and their love of the sport. Be sure to catch the United States, who earned a stunning, rather lucky, draw with England last week, as they take on Slovenia on June 18 at 9:30 am and Algeria on June 23, also at 9:30 am.

THINKING PERFORMANCE

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Thursday, June 17, 8:00, and Friday, June 18, 2:00
Tickets: $30
212-423-3500
www.guggenheim.org

In conjunction with the exhibition “Haunted: Contemporary Photography / Video / Performance,” the Guggenheim is presenting “Thinking Performance,” a two-day examination of performance art. On Thursday night, Joan Jonas will stage an expanded version of her 1969 work “Mirror Piece I: Reconfigured,” followed by a discussion between Jonas and curator Chrissie Ilies. On Friday beginning at 2:00, there will be a series of talks and discussions, including Rebecca Schneider’s “The Immaterial Labor of Temporal Drag: Tino Sehgal, Photography, and Interinanimation,” Carrie Lambert-Beatty’s “Performance Police,” Claire Bishop’s “Delegated Performance — Outsourcing Authenticity,” and a pair of artist conversations, one between Susan Philipsz and Nat Trotman, the other with Marina Abramovic and Nancy Spector. The two-day symposium will conclude with a viewing of the exhibit and a reception.

HELP BUILD HOMEBASE

BENEFIT, BRICK DRIVE & ART SALE
East Village Townhouse
Saturday, June 12, and Sunday, June 13, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
Donation: $25-$500
www.homebaseproject.com

For the past four years, Anat Litwin has been examining the idea of home in site-specific installations in which she gathers together a diverse group of artists who each get a room of their own in an abandoned structure either soon to be torn down or completely renovated. The HomeBase Project has been previously situated in a brick building in Greenpoint, a cast-iron building in SoHo, a historic townhouse in Harlem, and a former nursing home on the Lower East Side, where artists filled the rooms with multimedia works and were on hand to speak with visitors as they walked through. For its fifth incarnation, Litwin is taking HomeBase to the Pankow district of Berlin (not at the urging of Helen Thomas), near Germany’s largest synagogue. In order to raise funds for the ambitious project, there will a fundraiser this weekend at a private home in the East Village, open to everyone who buys a brick ($25-$500) that is symbolic of the construction of the German installation. The event will feature an art sale with works by an international collection of artists (from Israel, Lebanon, Switzerland, Iran, Poland, America, and other countries), live music and performances (by Sylvie Diegez, Willum Geerts, Amir Darzi, and others), a hard/soft lemonade stand, baked goods from Colson Patisserie, special presentations, and a raffle. Artists interested in being part of the project can attend an information session on Saturday at 3:00, while Litwin will host “Tea Time Tales: Stories That Lino Loves” at 4:00. On Sunday, German filmmaker Mo Asumang will screen her documentary ROOTS GERMANIA at 2:30. The exact location, an architectural delight, will be emailed upon donation.

KIKI SMITH: LODESTAR / SOJOURN

Kiki Smith’s “Lodestar” continues at the Pace Gallery in Chelsea through June 19 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LODESTAR
The Pace Gallery
545 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 19
Admission: free
www.thepacegallery.com
“Lodestar” slideshow

German-born American artist Kiki Smith has been examining nature, the human body, and, particularly, the role of women in art and society for more than three decades, from her days as a member of the Colab group in the late 1970s through to today, as seen in two strong, powerful shows currently on view in Chelsea and Brooklyn. Inspired by Prudence Punderson’s lovely late-eighteenth-century silk needlepoint “The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality,” which depicts three stages of a woman’s life, Smith has created a pair of site-specific installations that center on the life cycle of women from birth to death, a compelling celebration of creative inspiration and innate spirituality. At the Pace Gallery in Chelsea, “Lodestar” consists of nearly thirty hand-painted mouth-blown stained-glass panels that tell an abstract narrative of pilgrimage. Smith collaborated with Munich glass atelier Mayer’sche Hofkunstanstalt GmbH-Mayer and Bill Katz, who designed the panels as well as three white benches where people can sit and take in the wonder of it all. Smith’s line drawings are spectacular, particularly one in which a baby’s beautiful head is just entering the world. Smith incorporates such symbols as lightbulbs, birds, and chairs as women proceed from life to death in dramatic opaque panels that can be seen from both sides, as if the past is always present. The title, “Lodestar,” evokes the guiding North Star as well as the word “motherlode,” paying homage to femininity.

Kiki Smith’s “Sojourn” runs at the Brooklyn Museum through September 12 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SOJOURN
Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Wednesday – Sunday through September 12
Suggested contribution: $10 (free first Saturday of the month after 5:00)
718-638-5000
www.brooklynmuseum.org
“Sojourn” slideshow

A related exhibition, “Sojourn,” continues the tale at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Winding around Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party,” the site-specific installation begins with “Field,” a bronze sculpture of a woman sitting on a chair, holding up her hand as if telling the viewer to proceed at their own risk. Divided into small roomlike segments, “Sojourn” features lifesize bronze sculptures, pencil and ink drawings on fragile Nepal paper, hanging lightbulbs and aluminum constructions, and even a wooden casket. The works feature such titles as “Messenger,” “Visitation,” “Annunciation,” “The Leaving,” and “I put aside myself that there was room enough to enter,” with several drawings the same as those seen at the Pace Gallery. In addition, Smith has added oil paintings, an embroidery, a projected video, and haunting, ghostlike papier-mâché figures to two rooms and the staircase of the Major Henry Trippe House, part of the museum’s outstanding period rooms in the Decorative Arts Galleries, once again evoking the past alongside the present. Taken together, “Lodestar” and “Sojourn” mark a major step forward in the career of one of America’s most important artists, a must-see pilgrimage well worth the journey.

MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL

The Museum Mile Festival kicks off at El Museo del Barrio, which will host live music and dance as well as chalk drawing for kids and adults

Multiple locations on Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts.
Tuesday, June 8, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Admission: free
www.museummilefestival.org

Once again nine of the city’s finest art institutions will open their doors for free for the thirty-second annual Museum Mile Festival, from 6:00 to 9:00 on Tuesday night, June 8. The participating museums (with one of their current shows listed here) include El Museo del Barrio (“Retro/Active: The Works of Rafael Ferrer”), the Museum of the City of New York (“Charles Addams’s New York”), the Jewish Museum (“South African Photographs: David Goldblatt”), the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (“National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?”) the National Academy (“Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art”), the Guggenheim (“Haunted: Contemporary Photography / Video / Performance”), the Neue Galerie (“Otto Dix”), the Goethe-Institut (the institute has moved downtown but will be at the festival nonetheless), and the Met (“Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art”). Fifth Ave. will also be closed to vehicular traffic and instead will be filled with art activities (chalk drawing, live model drawing), street performances (clowns, juggles, magicians), and live music and dance featuring P-STAR: the ABAKUÁ Afro-Latin Dance Company, Paul Labarbera and Rockbeat, Quarteto Rodriguez Cuban Jewish Allstars, and the Hayes Greenfield Jazz Duo. The Museum Mile Festival is a great way to check out some very cool institutions, especially those you might not be quite as familiar with.