The Skinny on Art Events in New York:
With NASA's Curiosity rover once again reviving interest in what Trekkies (but not Shakespeareans) call "the undiscovered country," it seems that this week's stellar event, Trevor Paglen's "The Last Pictures," takes precautionary measures, launching a series of photographs representative of the current cultural climate into outer space much in the spirit of NASA's 1977 Voyager Golden Records project, which sent beats from the likes of Beethoven, Stravinsky, Blind Willie Johnson, and Chuck Berry into orbit for safekeeping. The sky, it would seem, is not the limit.
- WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH -
"The Last Pictures" launch in Bryant Park, 7 p.m.
You really won't want to miss this one. To introduce The Last Pictures, Trevor Paglen's latest extraterrestrial project, filmmaker Werner Herzog and the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith join the the very smart artist and geographer for an evening under the stars in Bryant Park. Co-presented by Creative Time and LIVE from the NYPL, the star-studded evening will feature a poetry reading by Smith and a tête-a -tête between Herzog and Pagden about the themes of his project, in which he is launching a series of photographs representative of the current cultural climate into outer space for safekeeping. The images, which will be sent into orbit attached to the exterior of communications satellite EchoStar XVI in a golden disk time capsule created by Paglen, will also be presented. The Amateur Astronomers Association of New York will be on hand with telescopes for viewing the night sky. The event is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.
Closing party for Carol Hepper's stint at the Park Avenue Armory, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Hopper concludes her year as Armory Artist-in-Residence with an installation of new sculptural work responding to the building's varied states of renewal and restoration in the Field & Staff Room. This event is free, but space is limited: rsvp@armoryonpark.org.
- FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21ST -
"Josef Albers: At Home and at Work," lecture at the Morgan Library and Museum, 6:30 p.m.
Nicholas Fox Weber, who knew and worked with Albers in the last years of the artist's life, will speak about how the hugely influential abstract painter worked, providing a personal glimpse into the life of the passionate, original, and ferociously independent man who changed the way people look at color. Coinciding with the exhibition "Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper," this lecture is free with museum admission, and galleries will remain open as late as 9 p.m.
Book Launch: History of the World by Eduardo Sarabia, New Museum Book Store, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Sarabia's new book features reproductions of ten oil paintings based on photographs from the artist's family events and daily life and also includes an introductory section showing the artist's signature iconography which fuses imagery of illegal contraband with more traditional folklore motifs. The event is free and open to the public: storersvp@newmuseum.org.
"Art in Your Pocket" at the New Museum, $8 general public, $6 members, 7 p.m.
If you make the trek out to the New Museum for the launch of Sarabia's "History of the World," you might also wander into this evening's art and technology event on the smartphone as an emerging platform for interactive screen-based art. Assembling leading media artists working with mobile devices, this panel will touch on current trends relating to this practice. Moderated by Museum of the Moving Image assistant digital media curator Jason Eppink, the discussion will involve panelists include artist and iPhone app company founder Paul Slocum, mobilities research theorist Mimi Sheller, OKFocus co-founder Jonathan Vingiano, and the art collective LoVid.
- SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND -
Opening reception for fall exhibitions, Art in General, 79 Walker street, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
The downtown nonprofit kicks off its fall exhibitions with a reception for the opening of new commissions by robbinschilds, Christopher Duffy, and Jong Oh. robbinschilds' I came here on my own. includes live performance, sound, and video that reframe and subvert the classic male journey myth. Christopher Duffy's I Think I Want My Energy in All Colors features a series of new glass sculptures presented together as a dynamic, mechanized installation suspended from the ceiling of the storefront Project Space. The first exhibition in Art in General's newly renovated Musée Miniscule, Jong Oh's site-specific installation Position, Reposition manipulates the presentation of everyday materials to complicate our relationship to the quotidian object.
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- WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH -
Opening reception for "Adam Pendleton: I'll Be Your," Pace London, 6-10 Lexington Street, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. (through October 27th)
In Pendleton's first solo U.K. exhibition, as well as his first one-man show with the gallery, expect the artist's characteristic play with appropriation to recontextualize historical narratives with works moving fluidly between painting, publishing,"¨ photographic collage, video, and performance.
- THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20TH -
Opening reception for Slater Bradley's "Melancholia," Galeria Filomena Soares, Rua da Manutenção nº 80 (Xabregas), Lisbon, 9:30 p.m. (through November 10th)
The artist will be on hand to discuss his melancholic interventions in pop iconography.
- FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21ST -
Opening reception for Clare E. Rojas, "Spaces in Between," Kavi Gupta Gallery, 835 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. (through October 21st)
Rojas presents a group of new abstract paintings on stretched linen using the traditional format of a free-hanging painting. Stepping back in her perspective from the tight, detailed narrations of previous bodies of work, the artist takes a hard-edged view of interior spaces and the abstract shapes produced by architecture and shadow.
Opening reception for Elmgreen & Dragset, "Harvest," 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. (through November 10th)
For the duo's second solo exhibition with the gallery, two choreographed environments bring to life a multilayered set of narratives that play upon childhood memories and question issues linked to our cultural heritage and the institutional through a personally charged perception. Displayed in the downstairs space is a series of new unique monochrome works, the surfaces of which consist of white wall paint carefully removed from prominent museums and public galleries by professional conservators, using techniques employed to restore frescoes and murals. In the upstairs gallery, and in stark contrast to the clean precision and clarity downstairs, the artists lay out an altogether different setting-one that takes its cue from the rustic interior architecture of the bare-brick and wooden-beamed upper space of Victoria Miro with a playful version of a hayloft, replete with strewn hay and works that operate within a lexicon of rural iconography.
- SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND -
"Night (1947-2015)," a new sculpture-in-residence project, opens at the Philip Johnson Glass House, 199 Elm Street, New Canaan, CT (through 2015)
Sometime in the mid-1960s, a rail-thin white plaster sculpture called Night (1947), by Alberto Giacometti, walked away from the Glass House and never came back. One of very few artworks ever displayed in the Glass House, Night's rawboned figure was granted pride of place atop the Mies van der Rohe glass coffee table. Over time, the sculpture began to shed its outer layer and was eventually sent to the artist's studio for repairs. But Giacometti died before the work was restored and the sculpture never returned. Neither repaired nor replaced, its absence still lingers: a Modern ghost. In place of a traditional artist-in-residence program, "Night (1947-2015)" is instead a sculpture-in-residence program; an unfolding sculptural exhibition held in the same spot where Giacometti's Night once stood. A series of contemporary artists will contribute works that contend with the legacy of Giacometti's sculpture and Johnson's architectural opus. On display for three to six months at a time, the sculptures in "Night (1947-2015)" will "disappear" after their run, making room for new work and new absences.
Opening reception for Rashid Johnson's "Coup d'état," David Kordansky Gallery, 3143 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. (through November 10th)
For his second solo exhibition at the gallery, Johnson examines the neuroses of power that accompany established regimes of all kinds. The exhibition will feature a group of major new works in a variety of materials, in which wood, mirrored tile, and wax are used as grounds for a series of mark-making strategies, as well as a series of floor-based works that use rugs as supports for further gestures.
