False Idols:Al Wadzinski Convergent Evolution: Deborah Simon

Reception May 20; 7-9pm

May 19, 2011 through June 19, 2011

NY Studio Gallery is pleased to present Al Wadzinski’s third solo show in New York. Wadzinski’s False Idols refer to the predominantly Judeo-Christian concept of idolatry, the worship of a physical object as a god. Here these carefully assembled icons are comprised of humanity’s abandoned cast-offs, the remnants of our bloated consumer culture now repurposed as inert fetish objects. The centerpiece of the exhibition revolves around a massive golden calf, referencing the Old Testament story, but this god-proxy’s body is a shopping cart filled with gold-painted bones, its undeniably bovine head an amalgam of odd parts ranging from boots to a Christmas tree stand. (READ MORE.)

LZ Project Space is pleased to present Convergent Evolution, a solo sculpture exhibition by Deborah Simon. Inspired by viewers miscatagorization of Simon’s animal sculptures, she began to group together her pieces along those lines – also known as convergent evolution. This exhibit contains both king penguins and northern fur seals, both animals that have arrived at seemingly alike solutions for locomotion despite coming from different and unrelated ancestries. Simon’s animals float between taxidermy, toy, and art object; their life-sized bodies represent hours of meticulous multi- processed work in the form of sewing, molding, and painting of their almost ethereal clay faces. (READ MORE.)

 

Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 @ICP.

MAY 20–AUGUST 28, 2011
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After the United States detonated an atomic bomb at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the U.S. government restricted the circulation of images of the bomb’s deadly effect. President Truman dispatched some 1,150 military personnel and civilians, including photographers, to record the destruction as part of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The goal of the Survey’s Physical Damage Division was to photograph and analyze methodically the impact of the atomic bomb on various building materials surrounding the blast site, the first “Ground Zero.” The haunting, once-classified images of absence and annihilation formed the basis for civil defense architecture in the United States. This exhibition includes approximately 60 contact prints drawn from a unique archive of more than 700 photographs in the collection of the International Center of Photography. The exhibition is organized Erin Barnett, Assistant Curator of Collections. (READ MORE.)

The Super Coda presents: DUCK CALLS AND HALLELUJAHS!

22 VOL 1 CONTRIBUTOR JOHN JENNISON @ GREENPOINT GALLERY SALON SHOW
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The 22 Magazine contributer John Jennison will have work this Friday, May 20th at Greenpoint Gallery’s Spring Juried Show.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101072903317023

http://www.thegreenpointgallery.com/

http://www.the22magazine.com/Pages/johnjennison.html

MEET THE FILMMAKERS OF LOST BOHEMIA

Filmmakers in person Fri-Sat at 7:00pm!
Movie Screenings:
Fri, May 20 at: 3:20 PM, 5:15 PM, 7:00 PM, 8:50 PM, 10:35 PM
Sat, May 21 at: 3:20 PM, 5:15 PM, 7:00 PM, 8:50 PM,10:35 PM

For over a century, Carnegie Hall rented affordable studios to residents like Marlon Brando, Paddy Chayefsky and Isadora Duncan. As a privileged tenant himself, director Astor began to record his neighbors, witnesses to decades of artistic history. But when the landlord served everyone with eviction notices for a conversion to offices, his project became a chronicle of the battle to save the apartments and their rich heritage. (READ MORE.)

The Witch’s Dungeon
Cortlandt Hull with figure of his great uncle, Henry Hull, “The Werewolf Of London”

An illustrated lecture and show and tell with collector, artist, and proprietor of “The Witch’s Dungeon” Cortlandt Hull
Date: Friday, May 20th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Part of Out of the Cabinet: Tales of Strange Objects and the People Who Love Them,presented by Morbid Anatomy and Evan Michelson

Friday, May 20th may be a dark and stormy night. Brave souls normally catch the coach at midnight from the Borgo Pass to access the lawless and far off lands of Bristol, CT, spoken about in hushed tones as the home of the Witch’s Dungeon. But on this rare occasion the stars have aligned and like the Baba Yaga’s chicken-footed cabin, the Witch’s Dungeon is coming to Observatory! (READ MORE.)

The Believer Presents QNA: The Art of the Interview
Celeste Bartos Forum, Saturday May 21, 1:00-3:00 pm. Free.

QNA: A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW

http://facebook.com/event.php?eid=120307598051270

  

As part of the New York Public Library’s centenary celebration weekend, the Believermagazine will host “QNA: A Roundtable Discussion on the Art of the Interview,” featuring:

• DICK CAVETT, legendary host of The Dick Cavett Show, which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982, and author, most recently, of Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets.
• CLAUDIA DREIFUS, interviewer for the “Conversation with…” column in the Tuesday science section of the New York Times, former Playboy interviewer, and author of two books of interviews. She’s known for her unusual Q-and-A’s with heads of state, Nobel Prize winners, and quirky engineers. She was called by Dan Rather “one of the world’s great interviewers.” Her latest publication, with Andrew Hacker, is Higher Education?   
• KENNETH GOLDSMITH, editor of I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, and author of the underground classic Soliloquy, an unedited, 487-page transcript of every word, um, and yeah that came from his mouth during one week of his life.
• LORIN STEIN, new editor of The Paris Review, the beloved source for some of the most in-depth interviews with writers published in the English language since the 1950s, collected in editions such as Writers At Work and The Paris Review Interviews series, he’s also the translator of Gregoire Bouillier’s The Mystery Guest.

There will be a short reading of a self-interview by the author and Saturday Night Live writer SIMON RICH, to be performed by actor PAULO COSTANZO, (of Royal Pains) followed by a presentation of playwright Darren O’Donnell’s relational theater piece, Q+A, in which the audience becomes both the interviewer and interviewee.

The event will be hosted by Believer interviews editors Sheila Heti and Ross Simonini.

This event is free but reservations are recommended. To reserve your spot via ShowClix, visit http://www.showclix.com/event/33344 or call 1.888.71.TICKETS.

More info: http://tinyurl.com/blvr-nypl-qna

UNDER DESTRUCTION II: Jimmie Durham, Martin Kersels, Michael Landy, Liz Larner, Christian Marclay, Ariel Orozco, Arcangelo Sassolino, Roman Signer, and Johannes Vogl @ Swiss Institute.

May 18 – June 19 2011

Part two is more oriented toward cyclical issues of consumption and spectacle. It can be seen as the crescendo of the exhibition. Here, destruction assumes the more aggressive and dramatic character one might normally associate with it.

Among the works that more directly engage the question of consumption can be found Johannes Vogl’s absurd, homemade contraption Untitled (Machine To Produce Jam Breads, 2007) which produces pieces of bread with jam on them and thus addresses questions of overproduction and consequently waste. (READ MORE.)

Andrew Schoultz: Unrest
May 19 – July 1, 2011
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Morgan Lehman Gallery is pleased to present, UNREST, a solo exhibition of new works by Andrew Schoultz. This is the artist’s third show with Morgan Lehman Gallery.

Andrew Schoultz’s UNREST stems from the artist’s continuing interest in issues of global turmoil and societal angst. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Japanese Earthquakes and the BP oil spill all fuel this new body of work. Rather than depict literal narratives of these events, Schoultz captures their essence using an ever-expanding arsenal of pictorial symbols. Billowing clouds of smoke create an “all-over” surface reminiscent of abstract expressionism and Op-art. These stylized clouds both unify the composition and veil the reality of the horrors depicted in the background. The obscuring impact that these clouds has on the images they hide may indicate the frustration Schoultz has with the partisan and misleading journalism the press has in disseminating information to the public. Other oft-repeated symbols include crumbling and exploding brick structures and monuments, the rearing horse, the all-seeing Masonic eye, and a lit candle set against green, yellow and red camouflaged backgrounds. The lit candle – a universal sign of hope and optimism-suggests that even in uncertain times the human spirit is nothing if not optimistic. These recurring symbols function as visual cues for a loose narrative the artist has constructed through previous bodies of work. Out of this narrative, Schoultz forms an historical construct that melds contemporary calamitous events with the broad sweep of Western civilization. (READ MORE.)

Nicholas Kashian
DEAN PROJECT

May 19 – June 25
solo-exhibition
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I am essentially driven by libidinal and anti-normative desires, coupled with sensitive and concerted attention to materials and to the mechanisms of visual perception. The objects I create both resonate with heroic and cynical strains of object making and seek to undermine these very strains with humility and sincerity.

Each work or series of works is created as a compulsive reaction to the burn of being alive and the spilling over of emotions that accompany the dogged difficulty of managing life. I intend to create visual signs or experiences that approximate the shocks and waves of living.

David Levinthal: Black Again
May 19th to July 2nd

John McWhinnie at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller is pleased to announce our next exhibition, David Levinthal: Black Again. The show opens with a reception on May 19th, from 6-8pm, and runs through July 2nd, 2011. The exhibition is drawn from David Levinthal’s project Blackface, dating from 1995-1998, featuring blackface Polaroids and the original memorabilia, drawn from the artist’s personal collection, that are the Polaroid’s subject matter.

Levinthal’s collecting of black memorabilia evolved into Blackface, a stimulating and controversial body of work. The title, according to Levinthal, “makes reference to the many facades, poise and physicality of these figures.” The title is also taken from the name of a journal of a black film-making company and is a term referring to both blacks and whites. Traditionally associated with minstrelsy, these images were used to perpetuate negative stereotypes. Levinthal’s work was originally intended to be exhibited at Philadelphia’s ICA in 1997. However, the show was cancelled when it became a cause célèbre as a result of its controversial subject-matter. Subsequently, images from the series were exhibited at the International Center of Photography and at Janet Borden, Inc. in New York. This is the first time that the artist has exhibited this body of work with the original figurines and advertising that inspired the portraits. (READ MORE.)

In 1973, the Detroit band Destroy All Monsters was a wild and reckless synthesis of psychedelia, proto-punk, heavy metal, noise and performance art. The collective hailed from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and consisted of Cary Loren, Mike Kelley, Niagara and Jim Shaw (with later members including Ron Asheton of the Stooges, Michael Davis of the MC5 and the Miller brothers of Mission of Burma). (READ MORE.)

MORE:

3rd Ward’s Annual Birthday BBQ!
SUCKLING PIGS and OLD FASHIONEDS W/EGG AND DART CLUB
with two suckling pigs and assorted accoutrements by Sam Sherman and John Dawson (applewood, Blue Smoke) and variations on the Old Fashioned cocktail paired by Justin Lane Briggs (applewood, barbes, James, Marie Belle) plus a bit of live music from Quince Marcum and local beers for cheap! from 4pm – 10pm just $10 a head. (15 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn)
SPECIAL FUNDRAISER FOR CRITICAL RESISTANCE AND THE BRECHT FORUM
Some 40 years after uprisings at Attica and her own arrest, Angela Davis comes to Riverside Church in Harlem to build bridges around issues of austerity, prisons and global resistance. She will be joined in conversation by leading intellectual activists Ruthie Gilmore and Vijay Prashad. (READ MORE.)
A Conference of Works: MODE, METHOD, MEDIUM @ UNIVERSITY OF THE STREETS
GIGANTIC MAGAZINE INDOORS LAUNCH PARTY AT 285 KENT
Rally to Save Our Seaport
The ships, collection and galleries of the Seaport Museum New York are a valuable and irreplaceable part of our proud maritime heritage as well as a unique educational opportunity for New York City’s youth. They are at now serious risk of being lost, dispersed or destroyed. The museum galleries have been closed since March. The 2011 seasons of the museum’s working vessels have been cancelled. We need your help to ensure these historic resources are protected and continue to be available to the public in New York City. (READ MORE.)