Editors’ Picks: 10 Things Not to Miss in the Virtual Art World This Week

Get your art fix online.

Jansson Stegner, Archer. Photo courtesy of Almine Rech, New York.

Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting, and thought-provoking, shows, screenings, and events. In light of the global health situation, we are currently highlighting events and exhibitions available digitally. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)

 

Beginning Monday, March 23 

Barbara Hammer, Still from <i>Schizy</i> (1968). Courtesy of Company.

Barbara Hammer, Still from Schizy (1968). Courtesy of Company.

1. “In Company With: Barbara Hammer Streaming Videos” at Vimeo

As part of a new virtual viewing initiative, Company Gallery is launching a series called “In Company With,” where digital performances, readings, and screenings are available on Instagram live with gallery artists. Kicking off the project is an archive of the late, great queer artist Barbara Hammer’s films, ready for your viewing pleasure on Vimeo.

Price: Free; those so moved are asked to donate to Queer I Art, which helps to fund the Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Film Grant.
Time: Open daily, at all times

—Caroline Goldstein

 

Monday, March 23–Saturday, May 2

“Staying With the Trouble: Prompts for Practice” at A.I.R. Gallery. Image courtesy of A.I.R. Gallery.

“Staying With the Trouble: Prompts for Practice” at A.I.R. Gallery. Image courtesy of A.I.R. Gallery.

2. “Staying With the Trouble: Prompts for Practice” at A.I.R. Gallery

Brookyln’s A.I.R. Gallery, which has championed women artists since 1972, has devised a raft of new online programming “in the spirit of intimacy without proximity.” That kicks off tonight with “Staying With the Trouble,” a six-week prompt-based art project led by artist Alison Owen, a former A.I.R. fellow. She’ll share prompts every other night in the hopes of inspiring new works of art, literature, or music. Interested parties are encouraged to spend the evening ruminating on the prompt, and to use it as a jumping-off point for the next day’s studio practice—however they see fit, be it for new projects or for a new direction for existing work. Share the results on social media under #stayingwiththetrouble or #AIRpromptsforpractice2020 to be included in the official project archive.

Price: Free
Time: Prompts will be posted 6 p.m. every other day

—Sarah Cascone

 

Wednesday, March 25

Yali Romagoza, The Mistress of Loneliness (Chapter 1: The Departure ), 2019, video still. Courtesy of the Immigrant Artist Biennial.

Yali Romagoza, The Mistress of Loneliness (Chapter 1: The Departure) (2019), video still. Courtesy of the Immigrant Artist Biennial.

3. “Apart, Together: The Immigrant Artist Biennial Zoom Series – 1. The Emergency Exposes Your Status… and Our Shared Vulnerability” from the EFA Project Space

New York’s Immigrant Artist Biennial is meant to be a response to intensifying anti-immigrant sentiment, offering a platform of cultural exchange. The central exhibition, “Here, Together!,” was supposed to open March 18 at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts’ project space on West 39th Street. Instead, the NYFA-sponsored event is staging a roundtable discussion on Zoom, moderated by curator Katya Grokhovsky and Dylan Gauthier and featuring artists Esperanza Cortés, Bahareh Khoshooee, Daniela Kostova, Levan Mindiashvili, Qinza Najm, Anna Parisi, daaPo reo, and Yali Romagoza. The meeting ID is 378 427 830, and you can call in at +1 646-876-9923. The multi-venue exhibition is being postponed in lieu of a series of online talks, workshops, and other programming that will allow immigrant artists to share their thoughts on identity, the meaning of home, and the challenges of being an immigrant cultural worker today.

Price: Free
Time: 7 p.m.–9 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

 

Louise Bourgeois in her home on West 20th Street, New York, 2000. Photo ©Jean-François Jaussaud.

Louise Bourgeois in her home on West 20th Street, New York, 2000. Photo ©Jean-François Jaussaud.

4. “Louise Bourgeois: Drawings 1947–2007” at Hauser & Wirth

After decades of staging museum-scale exhibitions across three continents, the mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth will mark another milestone this week: On Wednesday, it will open its first online-only exhibition, a survey of drawings by Louise Bourgeois, spanning 1947 to 2007, three years before the artist’s death. That’s a pretty ambitious topic to take up for a show that’s only on computer screens and smart phones, and it promises to be a large-scale investigation into an overlooked part of the artist’s practice. Though she’s best known as a sculptor and installation artist, the gallery points out that, for Bourgeois, drawing was “a necessary tool to record and exorcise her memories and emotions.” Put together by longtime Bourgeois assistant Jerry Gorovoy—who is now the head of the late artist’s estate, the Easton Foundation—the exhibition is part of Dispatches, the cyberspace-based slate of programming the gallery is putting together while the world is quarantined. Look for more Hauser & Wirth programming to be rolled out on the information superhighway in the coming weeks.

Price: Free
Time: Open daily, at all times

—Nate Freeman

 

5. “GWA Live: Jordan Casteel” hosted by the Great Women Artists 

Art historian Katy Hessel’s Instagram account @thegreatwomenartists celebrates the work of female visual artists. Her latest feature, launching this week as a digital alternative to shuttered galleries and museums, is a series of live artist interviews. She’s starting with Jordan Casteel, who currently has a show at New York’s New Museum of her nearly life-size portraits of African American subjects. Hessel is inviting her followers to submit questions for the painter ahead of the interview on Wednesday.

Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m. GMT

—Sarah Cascone

 

Through Saturday, March 28

Film still from Josephine Meckseper, <i>PELLEA[S]</i> (2017). © Josephine Meckseper. Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor, London/New York.

Film still from Josephine Meckseper, PELLEA[S] (2017). © Josephine Meckseper. Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor, London/New York.

6. Pellea[s] by Josephine Meckseper” at Timothy Taylor Gallery

After Timothy Taylor Gallery in London closed to the public, putting a premature end to its exhibition of Josephine Meckseper’s video PELLEA[S], the gallery decided to put the full 42-minute film online for free. For a limited time, you can watch the video—which debuted at the Whitney Museum in 2018 and was screened last year at the Kitchen—from the comfort of your couch. An adaptation of Maurice Maeterlinck’s surreal play Pelléas et Mélisande, the film tells the story of a doomed love triangle set in a largely abandoned Washington, DC—sound familiar?—featuring real footage from Donald Trump’s inauguration and the 2017 Women’s March.

Price: Free
Time: Open daily, at all times

—Julia Halperin

Through Sunday, March 29

"Faustin Linyekula: My Body, My Archive." Performance view. Courtesy of the Tate. Photograph by Oliver Cowling

“Faustin Linyekula: My Body, My Archive.” Performance view. Courtesy of the Tate. Photograph by Oliver Cowling.

7. “Faustin Linyekula: My Body, My Archive” at Tate Modern 

Congolese choreographer and artist Faustin Linyekula was one of the artists scheduled to perform as part of this year’s recently canceled BMW Tate Live Exhibition. Instead, Linyekula and his performers collaborated with the museum to present a one-off site-specific work performed to a camera in the Tanks, the museum’s devoted performance space which was formerly used to hold oil when the gallery was a power station. The performance “My Body, My Archive” is an autobiographical exploration of the millennia’s of knowledge held within the body as opposed to the relatively brief accounts of written histories. Musicians, performers, and actors join Linyekula to poignantly activate personal and collective memories. 

Price: Free
Time: Open daily at all times

—Katie White

 

Through Saturday, April 4 

Nicholas Galanin, The Imaginary Indian (Totem) (2016), Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery.

8. “Nicholas Galanin: Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem” at Peter Blum Gallery

Available for online viewing is Peter Blum’s exhibition of Native American artist Nicholas Galanin. Having just shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennale, Galanin is making his solo exhibition debut in cyberspace (although it was intended for Peter Blum’s New York gallery). “To carry the songs of Indigenous people, to carry the songs of the land, is inherently disruptive of the national anthem,” the artist says of the exhibition title. In The Imaginary Indian (Totem), a totem is covered in the same floral wallpaper as the wall it hangs on, a metaphor for attempted and forced assimilation between European and Native American cultures.

Price: Free
Time: Open daily, at all times

—Cristina Cruz

Through Saturday, April 18

“Jansson Stegner” installation view. Courtesy of Almine Rech.

9. “Jansson Stegner” at Almine Rech

What can I say? I’m totally in awe of Jansson Stegner’s genuinely weird approach to figuration. The people that populate his world come from the uncanny valley of just-distorted-enough to tickle my brain, full of muscular huntresses captured in gloriously active poses. I wish I could stand in front of these in person to fully appreciate Stegner’s masterful approach to remixing Western painting tropes, but I’m very happy to share my computer monitor with these in the meantime.

Price: Free
Time: Open online or by appointment through April 18

—Tatiana Berg

Through Saturday, May 10

Addie Wagenknecht, <i>There Are No Girls on the Internet</i>, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

Addie Wagenknecht, There Are No Girls on the Internet, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

10. “Addie Wagenknecht: There Are No Girls on the Internet” at the Museum of the Moving Image

In November 2019, the Museum of the Moving Image began installing quartets of animated GIFs inside its main elevatorone GIF on each wall, another on the ceilingas part of a series dubbed “The Situation Room.” Each foursome of GIFS was commissioned from a different artist and set to run for two months, with the GIFs simultaneously being released on GIPHY.

The piece installed just before the museum was forced to temporarily close comes from self-described “anti-disciplinary” artist Addie Wagenknecht, and it investigates the meme holding that the internet is strictly a man’s world. Wagenknecht recorded her search through hundreds of video chats looking for another woman, moving on as soon as her next potential conversation partner was revealed as anyone but. In just a few seconds, each of her four GIFs reinforces the disturbing gender imbalance and fundamental weirdness of the online experience, as the artist is served up a steady stream of dudes lying in bed, dudes wearing only a towel, even dudes serving active military dutyand nothing else except the occasional empty room.

Price: Free
Time: Open daily, at all times

—Tim Schneider


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