Mayor Eric Adams was indicted, and I can’t remember the last time New Yorkers came together in such harmony to rejoice. Speaking of coming together — we’re having a party! There’ll be drag performances by DiDiOpulence, Amygdala, Kekoa Is, Felicia Oh, Kanika, and Junior Mintt; Pillow Princess will be DJing; and Tanoreen catering. Think: feast of the gods. Think: fall of empire. Think: bacchanalia. Maybe Nero was onto something when he fiddled while Rome burned — a little art at the end of the world. Get your tickets here. Indeed, Senior Editor Hakim Bishara sees the long arc of history in Lee Bul’s fractured angels in The Met’s facade niches. His review opens with a screed on the splintered self in the age of digital alienation, leaves you, somehow, with a sense of scarred hope. We feel similarly bittersweet about the Rubin, which officially closes its doors this Sunday, October 6 — but we, too, will take the long view. Speaking of hope: Let me introduce you to our Upstate contributor, Taliesin Thomas, who can always be counted on for her unshakeable cheeriness. She’s got the scoop on what to see during spooky season. But if you’re stuck in overly familiar environs, let John Yau’s piece on a studio visit with painter David Reed inspire you. The two go back more than half a century — and yet there’s still room for newness, for wonder. — Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor | |
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| | | Kristen Wells’s absurdist cardboard worlds, Susan Wides’s ecological abstractions, Alannah Farrell’s loaded tableaux, and more. | Taliesin Thomas |
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SPONSORED | | | | Rooted in the principles of disability justice, to hold a we features newly commissioned work by 14 emerging and early-career disabled artists and collectives from the BRIClab residency program. Co-organized with the artists, it poses kinship, abundance, tenderness, and trust as alternatives to structural inaccessibility, exploitation, and violence. On view through December 22. RSVP at bricartsmedia/toholdawe | Brothers Sick, "For Help” (2024) (photo by Sebastian Bach) |
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FROM OUR CRITICS | | | | Lee Bul: Long Tail Halo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art | “If Cubism was a reflection of the disjointed self after the Industrial Revolution, it’s updated and contemporized here to respond to today’s mind-boggling advances in artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and other technologies…. [Lee’s sculptures] are at once hideous and beautiful, hateful and loving, tragic and hopeful.” |
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| | | Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue at the Museum of Modern Art | “Life Dances On is true to its title, demonstrating that if anything, Frank’s work became more interesting after his magnum opus. Just as The Americans was beginning to make waves in the photography world, he turned to filmmaking, collaborating again with Kerouac and other Beat poets.” |
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| | | Encyclopedia: The Late Collages of Dorothea Tanning at Kasmin Gallery | “There’s a certain sensual, otherworldly quality that pervades her work…. Tanning’s practice shows that there is always another door to open, a new world to explore, and that, when life sometimes feels ridden with obstacles and dead ends, art offers us another possible existence.” |
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| | | Joshua Hagler: Nihil III / Already Paradise at Nicodim Gallery | “With their worked surfaces, the different colored, interlocking planes and shapes become a visual puzzle … hovering between figural form and geological accretion. I was reminded that when Antonin Artaud entered the land of the Indigenous Tarahumara people in Mexico, he saw a mountainous landscape marked by what he understood as the indecipherable imprints of higher spirits.” |
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| | | The Secret World of Elephants at the American Museum of Natural History | “[The exhibition] takes us away from elephant science and into the many ways humans relate to them, from labor to worship to war …. But even as humans situate them as objects for projection, study, and labor, they are also sentient beings with individual — one could say secret — emotions, dispositions, and relationships.” |
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| | | Studio Visit with David Reed | “I have been looking at Reed’s paintings for nearly 50 years. During that time, I have interviewed him, reviewed his exhibitions, and written essays on his work for both gallery and museum publications. And yet there I was, studying these artworks in his studio, wondering whether I could see them for what they are.” |
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SPONSORED | | | | This expansive exhibition of sonic installations explores the recent trajectory of sound as a dynamic branch of contemporary art practice. Learn more |
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ALL BARK & NO BITE | | | | Concluding its nationwide tour at the Asia Society, Maḏayin gathers intricate eucalyptus bark works by artists from the Indigenous community of Yirrkala. | Isa Farfan |
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| | | | The humans (and rats) of New York are rejoicing. | Lisa Yin Zhang |
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WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING? | | | The New York Film Festival (NYFF) continues this week — and so does the New York Counter Film Festival (NYCFF), which was organized in protest of Lincoln Center’s pro-Israel founders. On Wednesday, October 2, Amant resident artists Ruth Angel Edwards and Chloée Maugile are showing their two-channel video installation Hyperopia at a drive-in movie theater. [amant.org] Anne Anlin Cheng, Cathy Park Hong, and Jia Tolentino — the holy trinity of Asian American writers, maybe — are having a conversation this Thursday, October 3 at MoMA. [moma.org] A Rainforest Cafe on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building? We’re obsessed — sounds like the perfect place to disassociate. Running this Thursday, October 3, to Sunday, October 6. [ny.eater.com] On Friday and Saturday, October 4–5, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will host a convening in honor of James Baldwin’s 100th birthday. [eventbrite.com] Wondering what to watch to take advantage of your Criterion subscription? The Criterion Closet Picks van will be stationed outside Lincoln Center, October 5–6. While there, be sure to record your own Closet Picks. [criterion.com] Join artist Jesse Lambert for a free sketching workshop at the Bowne House in Flushing — one of the oldest homes in the city, by the way! [bownehouse.org] McKenzie Wark, Elizabeth Teets, and Brian Gresko are doing a free reading at Niagara Bar in the East Village next Monday, October 7. [instagram.com ] Scholar Ariella Aïsha Azoulay will be giving a talk at Bard College on decolonizing museums — or, more specifically, the impossibility of doing so without decolonizing the world, on Tuesday, October 8. [chra.bard.edu] |
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