— WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28 —
Opening reception for Carroll Dunham at Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, 6-8 p.m. (through December 22nd)
These nine new works by Carroll Dunham expand on his previous landscapes and nude figures, replacing a demure bather with a brazen and confidently posed woman.
Opening reception for “David Humphrey: New Paintings” at Fredericks & Freiser, 536 West 24th Street, 6-8 p.m.
This show will center on recent works by painter and critic David Humphrey, who appropriates public imagery and transposes it into new, distorted scenarios.
Artist talk with R.H. Quaytman at the Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, 6:30 p.m., $10, $7 members
As part of the museum’s Conversations With Contemporary Artists series, R.H. Quatyman will speak about her work and unique artistic practice, which involves grouping paintings into specific “chapters,” a process that creates an underlying narrative structure.
— THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29TH —
Opening reception for “Claudia Joskowicz: Sympathy for the Devil” at Forever & Today, Inc., 141 Division Street, 6-8 p.m. (through December 23rd)
Joskowicz’s newest video installation reenacts the daily and, to put it mildly, awkward encounters of a Polish Jewish refugee and former Nazi Klaus Barbie in Bolivia during the 1970s, a region where both men were offered asylum.
Opening reception for Gary Simmons at Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, 6-8 p.m. (through January 12, 2013)
This expansive survey includes multimedia work from the past 20 years of Simmons’s career, including some of his first “erasure” technique chalk drawings, recent plywood sculptures, and pieces not seen since their initial display at the Drawing Center in 1992. The exhibition also coincides with the release of Gray Simmons: Paradise, the first monograph of the artist’s oeuvre.
Opening reception for “Don Edler, George Jenne, and Andrew Smenos: Do Something (Else) To It” at Freight+Volume, 530 West 24th Street, 6-8 p.m. (through January 5th, 2013)
Celebrating the idea of transformation espoused in Jasper Johns's classic piece of advice on how to make art ("Take an object, do something to it, and then do something else to it"), the gallery will inaugurate its recently refurbished space with an exhibition of three emerging artists, each of whom work in a variety of media and look to present new understanding of stereotypical ideals.
Opening reception for “Chris McCaw: Marking Time” at Yossi Milo Gallery, 245 Tenth Avenue, 6-8 p.m. (through January 19th, 2013)
Artist Chris McCaw renounces the childhood warnings of staring at the sun and starting fires with magnifying glasses, creating works in which sunlight is filtered through high-powered lenses and literally burns the trajectory of the earth’s orbit around the sun onto vintage photo paper. McCaw will also be signing copies of his recently published monograph, Sunburn, during the opening reception.
— FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30TH —
Opening reception for David Humphrey and James Siena at Valentine Gallery, 464 Seneca Avenue, Queens, 6-9 p.m. (through December 30th)
Valentine Gallery in Queens will be displaying new and recent drawings by the odd couple pairing of the intentionally restrained abstractionist James Siena and the wild and expressive painter David Humphrey.
Opening reception for “The Quantum Effect” at Active Space, 566 Johnson Avenue, Brooklyn, 7-10 p.m. (through January 13th)
If you’re already out to see the previous show, stop by Active Space only a few blocks away to see “The Quantum Effect,” a group show curated by David Gibson that takes a Donald Rumsfeldian approach to beauty, investigating the ways in which what we know, don’t know, and know we don’t know affect how we perceive art.
— SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1ST —
Opening reception for “John Silvis: Crashcourse IV” at Norte Maar, 83 Wycoff, #1B, Brooklyn, 6-9 p.m. (through December 13th)
In the fourth installment of a continuing series, multidisciplinary artist John Silvis will present Crash Assemblage, a large-scale installation, as well as a number of smaller sculptures, which further his ongoing exploration of the theme of automobile accidents by way of art historical touchstones like Andy Warhol and John Chamberlain.
Opening reception for “About Face” at ACME Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, 6-8 p.m. (through December 22nd)
This group show, which was curated by art dealer Daniel Weinberg and focuses on the subject of distorted portraiture, spotlights over 40 small works on paper by over 35 artists including Richard Artschwager, Anh Duong, Loren Munk, Robyn O’Neil, Joshua Parker, John Wesley, and Tad Lauritzen Wright, among others.
— MONDAY, DECEMBER 3RD —
Art talk and book launch with Pablo Helguera and Paddy Johnson at the 8th Floor, 17 West 17th Street, 8th Floor, 6-8 p.m.
Artist and writer Pablo Helguera sits down with Art Fag City editorial director Paddy Johnson to discuss the ideas of institutional critique and “Art World Studies” in his new book, Art Scenes: The Social Scripts of the Art World.
Art talk and reception, "Problems in Asian Art" at the Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue, 6-8:00 p.m., $15 for general admission, RSVP at www.appraisersassoc.org
Presented by the Appraisers Association and Freeman's Auction House, appraiser Robert Waterhouse will discuss how to correctly distinguish period furniture, porcelain, and other decorative arts from their copies.
— TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4TH —
Art talk with Ellen Altfest at the New York Studio School, 8 West 8th Street, 6:30 p.m.
The penultimate presentation in the New York Studio School’s fall lecture series features New York-based painter Ellen Altfest who will talk about her realist paintings of plant life and male anatomy, which have been featured in solo exhibitions at the New Museum and London's White Cube Gallery, among other venues. Also be sure to check out the excellent exhibition of works on paper by Hans Hoffman, which is on view in the adjacent gallery space through January 5th.
