Monday, April 11:

Geographically Intermediate Fantasies.
Photo: Courtesy of ARTFCITY.

1. The Launch of “Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies: The Animated GIF as Place”
Unleashed to the world today online, this show features more than 100 art-gifs, selected by curators who know their art-gifs: Paddy Johnson, Michael Anthony Farley, and Rea McNamara (of the ArtFCity blogazine). Check ‘em out now—though the show also opens June 4 at GRIN Galleries in Rhode Island, if you prefer the IRL art experience, and promises to be “permanently installed” within the website of Providence College Art Galleries, which sponsored the show (or at least as “permanently installed” as anything is on the internet, I presume). Some of these gifs, like Giselle Zatonyl’s newly commissioned Modular Landscape (Kyplon) (2016), are really spacey.

Location: PC Galleries
Price: Free
Time: Anytime

–Ben Davis

Tuesday, April 12:

Sur Rodney (sur) and Gracie Mansion.
Photo: Courtesy of Red Bull Studios.

2. “The Soul Has Bandaged Moments,” a discussion with Gracie Mansion at Red Bull Studios
A wild cocktail of grit, grunge, and glamour lent the East Village art world of the 1980s a certain mystique. Gracie Mansion, a mainstay of the scene, promoted the likes of Minter and David Wojnarowicz at her eponymous Gracie Mansion Gallery on 2nd Avenue. Now an artnet auctions senior specialist, Mansion is convening this Tuesday with critic Carlo McCormick, artists Marilyn Minter and Walter Robinson, and her former business partner and husband, curator Sur Rodney (Sur). The panel, moderated by Yasmin Ramirez, adjunct curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, promises to be a frank discussion about the historical moment.

Location: 220 W 18th Street
Price: free with RSVP
Time: 7:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.

—Rain Embuscado

Wednesday, April 13:

Whisper or Shout by Jason Wyche.
Photo: Courtesy of BRIC, Brooklyn.

3. Alicia Grullón, Filibuster performance at BRIC House
Alicia Grullón is taking on the Texas senate in her upcoming Filibuster performance at BRIC House, where the artist will re-enact all eleven hours of senator Wendy Davis’ 2013 filibuster against a sweeping anti-abortion bill that would have shut down 37 out of 42 abortion clinics in the state. Despite Davis’ efforts, Texas House Bill 2 passed that same year, restricting access to reproductive health centers, and creating nightmare scenarios for women.

Grullón’s previous performances include No Cookies (2010), where she recreated protesting workers’ signs at the Stella D’oro cookie factory in the Bronx, and Illegal Death (2007), where the artist “re-enacted” the death of a young undocumented Honduran worker who froze near Huntington Station that same year.

The performance can be streamed online.

Location: 647 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: 10:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m.

—Kathleen Massara

Wednesday, April 13:

David Salle, We Back Them Up, (1978-79).
Photo: Courtesy of artnet.

4. Artist Talk at Skarstedt Gallery
Art critic Hunter Braithwaite leads a conversation between David Salle and Gary Stephan, Patricia Treib, and Nicole Wittenberg, three of the painters in “Nice Weather” the current group exhibition curated by Salle at Skarstedt gallery. The show, which brings together a multi-generational group of artists who each have “a fresh mind-set,” as per the exhibition description, takes its title from Frederick Seidel’s poem of the same name.

Location: Skarstedt Chelsea, 550 West 21st Street
Price: Free
Time: 6:00 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, April 13–17:

Tina Modotti, Workers Rally, Berlin (1930).
Photo: courtesy Richard Moore Photo.

5. The Photography Show, the Association of International Photography Art Dealers
Now in its 36th year, AIPAD, the world’s longest-running photography fair, will welcome 86 international dealers to the Park Avenue Armory this week. Offerings range from 19th-century prints to contemporary photos, and well as new media work. Highlights will include a recently-rediscovered image by Italian photographer and political activist Tina Modotti (1896–1942) at Oakland’s Richard Moore Photographs. The photo, of a workers’ rally, was taken during a short stint in Berlin, after Modotti was exiled from Mexico—where she was part of the artistic milieu of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera—for joining the Communist party.

Location: Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue
Price: $250 for opening night, $30 general admission
Time: Wednesday VIP preview, 3:30 p.m–5:00 p.m.; Wednesday opening night preview, 5:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.; Thursday and Saturday, 11:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.; Friday, 11:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m.; Sunday, 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.  

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, April 14–Saturday, May 21:

Ha Chonghyun, Conjunction 15-05, (2015).
Photo: Courtesy of Blum & Poe.

6. Dansaekhwa and Minimalism at Blum & Poe
This is the second installment of the traveling exhibition, which looks at the Korean monochromatic painting movement known as Dansaekhwa, alongside American Minimalism.  The wide range of work focuses on the top representatives of each movement, including pieces by Carl Andre, Chung Sang-hwa, Ha Chonghyun, Donald Judd, Kwon Young-woo, Lee Ufan, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin, Park Seobo, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, and Yun Hyong-keun.

Location: 19 East 66th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Eileen Kinsella

Thursday, April 14:

Olga Balema, Early Man.
Photo: Courtesy of Swiss Institute.

7. Olga Balema, “Early Man” at the Swiss Institute
As part of the Swiss Institute’s One For All series, which is dedicated to giving emerging artists their first institutional shows, “Early Man” is a collection of new works by Ukrainian artist Olga Balema. Her hybrid collage-sculptures of outdated world maps altered with lumpy breasts deal with themes of a world in flux and motherhood.

Location: Swiss Institute, 18 Wooster Street
Price: Free
Time: 6:00 p.m.

—Alyssa Buffenstein

Friday, April 15–Saturday, June 11:

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Marionette Maker, (2014)
Photo: Courtesy of Luhring Augustine.

8. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, “The Marionette Maker” at Luhring Augustine
I’ve long been entranced by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s multimedia installations, including a 2012 piece that dominated the Park Avenue Armory with sound; Forty-Part Motet, a 2001 sound work based on a 16th-century choral work, had a spellbinding outing at my neighborhood museum, the Cloisters, in 2013. In The Marionette Maker, the central work in their upcoming show at Luhring Augustine, in Chelsea, the duo uses an antique trailer that as the home of a marionette who bends over a work table building marionettes; in theaters surrounding the trailer, those figures act out an opera.

Location: Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24st Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening Friday, 6:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m.

—Brian Boucher

Through Saturday, April 16:

Mark Dion, Library for the Birds of New York, detail, (2016).
Photo: courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

9. “Mark Dion: The Library for the Birds of New York and Other Marvels” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Don’t tell PETA, but Mark Dion has brought 22 live birds to Chelsea, displaying them inside a massive art installation featuring an 11-foot-tall white oak tree pressed into service as a rustic bookshelf. “The birds are uninterested in these objects; thus underscoring the absurdity of a man-made library for birds, which purports to school them in subjects such as geography, navigation, and the natural world, of which they inherently have full command,” notes the exhibition description.

Location: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 West 21st Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Sunday, April 17:

EJ Hill, I Still Believe in Anchors (2015).
Photo: Courtesy of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

10. Artists-in-Residence Open Studios at the Studio Museum
This Sunday, the Studio Museum’s newest wave of talent will be hosting open studios. Since 1968, the museum’s Artist-in-Residence program has served as an incubator for art world power players of African and Latino descent. Notable participants in recent years include Eric Mack, Jennifer Packer, and Kevin Beasley. This year, visitors can look forward to the works of Jordan Casteel, EJ Hill, and Jibade-Khalil Huffman.

Location: 144 West 125th Street
Price: Free
Time: 1:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.

—Rain Embuscado