Lygia Pape, Divisor (Divider), 1967, performance at Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, 1990.
PAULA PAPE/©PROJETO LYGIA PAPE
TUESDAY, MARCH 21
Opening: Lygia Pape at Met Breuer
With critically acclaimed Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica retrospectives having been staged within the past couple years, it’s safe to say that Brazilian modernist abstraction is having a moment in America. The latest entry in the lineage is the Met Breuer’s Lygia Pape retrospective, the first-ever full-career exhibition devoted to the Neo-Concrete artist’s work in America. Pape’s work from the 1950s and ’60s explored what happens when abstraction leaps off the canvas and begins to include the real world. The more she experimented, the more her work grew radical, branching into performance and participatory works. One “living sculpture,” Divisor (Divider) from 1968, involved participants poking their heads through a large piece of fabric so that art united, and even engulfed, its audience.
Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
THURSDAY, MARCH 23
Olafur Eliasson, Space resonates regardless of our presence (Monday), 2017.
MARÍA DEL PILAR GARCÍA AYENSA/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY, NEW YORK
Opening: Olafur Eliasson at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
In his first gallery show in New York since 2012, Olafur Eliasson will reflect on how we experience other people and their settings. “At its best,” Eliasson has said, “art is an exercise in a democracy,” and so this show will offer an abstract way of exploring that. As is typical for Eliasson, mirrors and lights are involved. Perception is key—works such as the installation The listening dimension (orbit 1, orbit 2, and orbit 3), 2017, will confuse the eye, causing spaces in mirrors to look like those that appear in the real world.
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 West 24th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, English Breakfast, 2009, mixed media.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND INVISIBLE-EXPORTS
Talk: Genesis P-Orridge, Lia Gangitano, and Kris Grey at the 8th Floor
The 8th Floor has turned over its exhibition spaces to “The Intersectional Self,” a show about the complicated ways that collective ideas about femininity shape who we are. To celebrate the show, the gallery has invited Genesis P-Orridge, Lia Gangitano, and Kris Grey to discuss how art can portray gender. P-Orridge, who has work in “The Intersectional Self,” collages images and notions of bodies to explore identity, while Gangitano, the founder of the alternative space Participant Inc., and Kris Grey, a genderqueer activist, have become known for being outspoken about their political beliefs.
The 8th Floor, 17 West 17th Street, 6–8 p.m.
FRIDAY, MARCH 24
Opening: Postcommodity at Art in General
Hot on the heels of the opening of its Whitney Biennial installation, the three-person collective Postcommodity will have its first New York solo show. Based in New Mexico and Arizona, the collective has made thoughtful, subtle work about the border between the United States and Mexico. Their position is clear: the border, ever the pressing issue these days, has become a hindrance for people and cultures on either side. With this show, Postcommodity turns its attention to decoys used by U.S. authorities to catch people illegally making their way to America. The group will debut a large-scale sculpture and sound works that could function as decoys, to highlight the lies that surround debates about border-crossing today.
Art in General, 145 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, 6–8 p.m.
Postcommodity, Es mas alcanzable de lo que se imaginaban (It’s more achievable than imagined), 2017.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS
Talk: “Partial, Passionate, Political: Writing Criticism in Troubled Times” at Whitney Museum
This panel focuses on how arts critics can remain political while also offering layered opinions in a post-election world. All of the panelists write for 4Columns, the relatively new online magazine that offers four arts-related essays a week. Geeta Dayal, Aruna D’Souza, Ed Halter, Tobi Haslett, and Andrea K. Scott will discuss their writing and their work in general. Their topics of choice have included everything from Amy Sillman’s iPad drawings to I Am Not Your Negro, a documentary that surveys unpublished James Baldwin writings in service of a portrait of blackness in America today. Margaret Sundell, editor of 4Columns, will moderate.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 6–8 p.m. Tickets $8/$10
SATURDAY, MARCH 25
Opening: E. Jane at American Medium
E. Jane, one half of the sound-art duo Mhysa, presents her first solo show in New York with the title “Lavendra,” in reference, the artist says in a release, to a fictional “brown dwarf” planet. Harnessing what she calls the “magic of the Black diva,” Jane will empower images of blackness with works in the show, many of which are sculpture collages that mimic the look of women in ’90s R&B music videos. The goal, for Jane, is to reverse the idea that black women’s bodies are targets. “THIS WORK LOVES BLACK WOMEN REGARDLESS,” she writes in a release.
American Medium, 424 Gates Avenue, Brooklyn, 6–8 p.m.
SUNDAY, MARCH 26
COURTESY MOMA PS1
Fair: Come Together Music Festival and Label Market at MoMA PS1
This record label market, a coproduction put on by MoMA PS1 and the dearly departed record store Other Music, will shine a spotlight on New York’s local music scene. Records and music on other mediums will, of course, be on sale, courtesy of 60 labels, but over the course of the day there will also be workshops, performances, film screenings, and panels. Among those slated to perform is Black Quantum Feminism, a duo known for combining sound, art, and activism in an effort to reach marginalized communities. MoMA PS1 and Other Music have also co-curated a mixtape that will be on sale at the fair.
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens, 12–6 p.m. Tickets $15
Lisa Alvarado, Traditional Object 20, from “performance banner” series, 2016, acrylic, fabric, wood.
©LISA ALVARADO/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BRIDGET DONAHUE, NYC
Opening: Lisa Alvarado at Bridget Donahue
Though Lisa Alvarado and the band Natural Information Society typically perform in front of paintings, Alvarado considers her objects and her sounds independently. Nevertheless, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York will make a case for why the different strains of work belong together. Alvarado’s paintings often take on the repetitive, visually abrasive look of Mexican textiles, offering viewers something to meditate on while Alvarado and her band perform. The Chicago-based artist calls them “Traditional Objects,” a reference to their use for rituals and performance. A number of guests will perform over the show’s run—Alvarado, Joshua Abrams, and Chad Taylor will be on hand during the opening—but for those who can’t attend one of the live performances, a soundtrack will play throughout the show.
Bridget Donahue, 99 Bowery, 2nd Floor, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Michaela Eichwald at Reena Spaulings Fine Art
Michaela Eichwald’s work is something like a clever retort to the trend toward abstract painting—it’s decorative without being pretty and eye-catching without being truly desirable. The Berlin-based painter often works in a mode that recalls a host of avant-garde legacies, from Abstract Expressionism to the short-lived but influential Japanese Gutai movement. Her paintings include marks from her fingertips and appendages, suggesting an unseen performance component, and they can often be so large as to include entire walls, from floor to ceiling. For this exhibition, Eichwald will show new and recent works.
Reena Spaulings, 165 East Broadway, 6–8 p.m.