Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking, shows, screenings, and events. See them below.
Monday, February 4
Marie Lorenz, Oyster Island, part of “It’s a Trap!” Image courtesy of the artist and Where Container.
1. Oyster Island Site Visit at the Staten Island Ferry Manhattan Terminal
Artist Marie Lorenz will lead a voyage on board the Staten Island Ferry, offering guests a rare glimpse of New York’s Oyster Island, located about a mile south of the Statue of Liberty. Lorenz’s invite extols the virtues of this “limited-availability oceanfront property”—she claims to have found the island on an old city map. Nowadays, it is submerged beneath the harbor save for one day a year, thanks to extremely low tides courtesy of the positions of the sun and moon, on opposite sides of the earth.
Today is supposedly that day—but the ferry trip is part of a mysterious, Star Wars-referencing art and publishing project called “It’s a Trap!“, so who knows what is fact and what is fiction. (You can pick up the “It’s a Trap!” newspaper from sites across the city, including at Printed Matter in Chelsea, McNally Jackson in Soho, and Small Editions in Red Hook.)
Learn more about Oyster Island by calling 765-998-3080.
Location: Staten Island Ferry Manhattan Terminal, 4 Whitehall Street
Price: Free
Time: 1:30 p.m. sharp
—Sarah Cascone
Tuesday, February 5
Self-taught artist Hawkins Bolden, one of the stars of the film MAKE. Photography by Ted Degener. Image courtesy of filmmakers Scott Ogden and Malcolm Hearn.
2. MAKE screening at the Wythe Hotel
MAKE explores the lives and practices of four self-taught American artists: Prophet Royal Robertson, Hawkins Bolden, Judith Scott, and Ike Morgan. Co-directed by Malcolm Hearn and Scott Ogden, the founder of Lower East Side gallery Shrine, the film combines footage of each artist in his or her studio with archival material, plus interviews with friends, family members, and scholars to illuminate these under-appreciated talents.
Location: The Wythe Hotel, 80 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn
Price: Free with RSVP, contact rachael@wythehotel.com
Time: Doors at 6:30 p.m.; Screening at 7:30 p.m.
—Tim Schneider
Tuesday, February 5–Friday, March 1
Celicia Duhau, El Nacimiento de la Primavera (The Birth of Spring). Courtesy of the artist.
3. “Cecilia Duhau: Tropical Icebergs” at the Consulate General of Argentina
Argentine artist Cecilia Duhau makes her US solo debut at her country’s New York embassy, presenting a mini-retrospective spanning the last decade. Duhau creates many of her abstract works on a computer, and will present a video projecting her digital paintings onto a blank white wall. She is also overlaying a series of mixed media collages with 3-D wall reliefs, installed so as to appear as though they are floating in front of the gallery walls.
Location: The Consulate General of Argentina, 12 West 56th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturday by appointment
—Sarah Cascone
Tuesday, February 5–Saturday, March 30
Deborah Brown, Branch (2018). Courtesy of Burning in Water.
4. “Deborah Brown: This dream and other animals” at Burning in Water
Deborah Brown’s bold female nudes exist in the wild, often accompanied by faithful canine companions as they traverse swampy forests and sandy deserts. Her fearless figures, effortlessly wielding heavy swords or scaling craggy rock faces, are imbued with myth and heroism, with titles at times referencing the biblical Judith and the goddess Diana.
Location: Burning in Water, 505 West 27th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, Thursday, February 7, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Wednesday, February 6–Sunday April 7
Yi Xin Tong, Animalistic Punk – Fish (2018). Courtesy of BRIC.
5. “BRIC Biennial: Volume III, South Brooklyn Edition” at BRIC
BRIC brings together the work of 19 emerging and mid-career South Brooklyn artists, showcasing the influence of diverse, rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods such as Park Slope, Gowanus, Sunset Park, and Bay Ridge on the creatives that live and work there. The theme, “The Impossible Possible,” explores alternate realities beyond today’s trying political situation, exploring both fantasies and dystopias. In addition to the main gallery show, the biennial includes satellite exhibitions at Green-Wood Cemetery, La Bodega, NARS Foundation, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, and Trestle Gallery.
Location: Gallery at BRIC House, 647 Fulton Street (enter on Rockwell Place), Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 7 p.m.–9 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, February 7–Saturday, March 2
Ruhee Maknojia, Speechless (2018). Courtesy of FACTION Art Projects.
6. “Harlem Perspectives II” at FACTION Art Projects
FACTION Art Projects holds their second annual exhibition celebrating local talent from above 110th Street, curated by Leanne Stella of Art in FLUX, organizers of the neighborhood’s short-lived Flux Art Fair. Featuring artists Coby Kennedy, David C. Terry, Elan Cadiz, Kennedy Yanko, Patrick Alston, Ruhee Mankojia, and Tammy Nguyen, the exhibition promises works both political and personal, that engage with history and cultural values.
Location: FACTION Art Projects, 2602 Frederick Douglass Boulevard
Price: Free; RSVP to opening
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Wednesday–Friday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 12 p.m.–4 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, February 8–Sunday, August 18
Yorùbá artist, Egúngún Masquerade Dance Costume (circa 1920–48). Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.
7. “One: Egúngún” at the Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is taking a close look at an African work of art with ties to the local community in an exhibition dedicated to a single 20th-century Yorùbá masquerade dance costume from Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́, Nigeria. Called a egúngún, this garment would have been used in festivals honoring the dead, a tradition still practiced in Nigeria, Benin, and in Yorùbá diaspora communities. Recent research has identified the makers of Brooklyn Museum’s egúngún, displayed here with related West African textiles as well as photographs and videos documenting the use of this ceremonial garb.
Location: The Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway
Price: General admission $16
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Wednesday, Friday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m.–10 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, February 8–Sunday, April 28
Sheng Qi, Memories (Me) 2000. © Sheng Qi. Courtesy of the International Center of Photography.
8. “Your Mirror: Portraits from the ICP Collection” at the International Center of Photography Museum
Curated by Erin Barnett and Claartje van Dijk, “Your Mirror” draws from ICP’s vast collection to survey the history of photographic portraiture, examining the evolution and shifting conventions of representation from the advent of the medium through today. The show will accompany “For Freedoms: Where Do We Go From Here?,” an exhibition looking at portrayals of American civic life through the work of the For Freedoms collective.
Location: The International Center of Photography, 250 Bowery
Price: $14
Time: Tuesday–Sunday, 1 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Taylor Dafoe
Friday, February 8–Monday, February 11
A work by Dan Thompson. Courtesy the Art Student League of New York.
9. “Musculoskeletal Gross Anatomy for the Figurative Artist” at the Weill Cornell Gross Anatomy Laboratory
The Art Students League of New York is hosting a drawing workshop with real human cadavers from the Cornell College of Medicine. Figurative artist Dan Thompson is teaching the workshop, titled “Musculoskeletal Gross Anatomy for the Figurative Artist,” to help students grasp the complexities of the body through the observation of human and plastinated specimens, which offer a closer look at anatomical structure than typical models..
Location: Weill Cornell Gross Anatomy Laboratory
Price: $800
Time: Friday–Monday, 10 a.m.–3 p.m.
—Rachel Corbett
Friday, February 8–Saturday, April 6
Jasper Johns. Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery, ©Jasper Johns/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
10. “Jasper Johns: Recent Paintings & Works on Paper” at Matthew Marks Gallery
At age 88, Jasper Johns is still keeping busy in the studio, as this latest gallery outing handily proves with a showcase of 15 paintings and 40 works on paper made since 2012. New pieces from 2018 include canvases revisiting his “Seasons” series of the 1980s, in which Johns painted his own shadow (here, he’s added an eerie skeleton wearing a hat) and a pair of paintings and related drawings based on Larry Burrows’s photograph for LIFE magazine of Lance Corporal James Farley sitting with his head in his hands after a failed mission in the Vietnam War.
Location: Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Sunday, February 17
Installation view of “Angela Fraleigh: Shadows Searching for Light” at the Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center. Photo courtesy of the Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center.
11. “Angela Fraleigh: Shadows Searching for Light” at the Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center
It’s a familiar story: two artists fall and love and get married. The husband is written into the history books, but his wife is reduced to a footnote. At the former home of Edward Hopper (1882–1967), Angela Fraleigh has created an installation inspired by his relationship to his wife, Josephine (Jo) Nivison Hopper (1883–1968). A successful artist at the time of her marriage, she helped her husband achieve success at the expense of her own career and is today best-known as serving as a model for his works. Fragleigh’s new paintings are based on photographs taken of contemporary female models, posing as Jo would have done at the Hoppers’ former home at what is now New York University.
Location: The Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center, 82 North Broadway, Nyack
Price: General admission $7
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–5 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone