Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. In light of the global health crisis, we are currently highlighting events in person and digitally, as well as in-person exhibitions open in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)
Tuesday, May 4
Installation view of “Tony Cokes/: Collision/Coalition,” at the Shed, New York (2019). Photo by Stan Narten, courtesy of the artist; Greene Naftali, New York; Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles; and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.
1. “Tony Cokes: Words and Spaces” at the American Academy in Berlin
Tony Cokes gives a virtual talk about his text-animated artworks of the last decade, which he considers “video essays.” They feature phrases like “Disco isn’t dead. It has gone to war” and “If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late.” The artist is interested in displaying these works in public spaces as a counterpoint to both the barrage of advertising and the private nature on reading on one’s smartphone.
Price: Free
Time: 1:30 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
Tuesday, May 4–Saturday, June 5
Suzanne McClelland, PLAYLIST: Sha-Rock with Debbie D and Lisa Lee (2021). Photo by Lance Brewer, courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen, ©Suzanne McClelland.
2. “Suzanne McClelland: Playlist” at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
For her first solo show with Marianne Boesky, Suzanne McClelland presents a new series of paintings that offer a new take on portraiture through the use of language, with each almost graffiti-like work feature the name of a musician. The multimedia canvases, which collectively read as a musical playlist, make use of materials including polymers, dry pigments, glitter, and graphite.
Location: Marianne Boesky Gallery, 507 West 24th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Wednesday, May 5–Saturday, June 5
Gianna Dispenza, Bathers (2021). Courtesy of Charles Moffett, New York.
3. “Gianna Dispenza: Overcome by Joy” at Charles Moffett, New York
For her first U.S. solo show, London artist Gianna Dispenza presents four separate bodies of work, including her “Bathers” paintings, which invert the trope of the woman caught unaware at the water’s edge by a voyeuristic male artist. These canvases are inspired not by sexual desire but by the Dispenza’s discovery of a women-only swimming pool that she quickly embraced as a safe space—one that made her realize how much that feeling was missing in her everyday life.
Location: Charles Moffett, 511 Canal Street, 2nd Floor, New York
Price: Free
Time: By appointment only, Wednesday–Saturday 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Andy Thomas, Abstract Parrot 2. Courtesy of Techspressionism.
4. “NFT Now” at Techspressionism
Anne Spalter, an artist who taught the first digital art courses at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, was an early adopter of NFTs. She was on a panel discussion for the NFT marketplace SuperRare in September and has already sold 35 works in the new medium. Now, she’s curated a show that aims to demonstrate the broad range of works being created in the NFT space, from traditional paintings to digital collages, augmented reality works, 3-D models, imagery generated by artificial intelligence, and more. And while most of the NFT artists making headlines have been white men, nearly half the works in this virtual exhibition are by women, including Spring/Break Art Show founder Ambre Kelly and feminist artist Coco Dolle.
Price: Free
Time: Zoom opening, 6 p.m.–7 p.m.; on view daily at all times
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, May 6
Dan Colen. Photo by Andrew Zuckerman. Aimee Meredith Cox. Photo by Frederick Williams. Hank Willis Thomas. Photo by Andrea Blanch. Ora Wise. Photo by Stephen Vixjo.
5. “In Conversation: Dan Colen, Aimee Meredith Cox, Hank Willis Thomas” at Gagosian, New York
Ora Wise, executive director of Upstate New York’s Sky High Farm, founded by Dan Colen, will moderate a conversation between the artist, Yale University anthropology professor Aimee Meredith Cox, and artist Hank Willis Thomas about how art and creative expression can be used as tools in the social justice movement. The event, which is part of Frieze Art Fair’s tribute to Vision and Justice founder Sarah Lewis, coincides with the release of chapter two of Sky High Farm’s collaboration with Dover Street Market, featuring t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, caps and tote bags designed by 23 artists, including Jenny Holzer, Maurizio Cattelan, Takashi Murakami, Urs Fischer, Jeff Koons, and Anicka Yi. All sales proceeds go to the farm and its mission to feed food-insecure New Yorkers.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 5 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Adebunmi Gbadebo. Photo courtesy of the artist.
6. “Abstraction: Investigations of Social Change” at Galerie Lelong, New York
Art critic Seph Rodney moderates a panel discussion with artists Adebunmi Gbadebo, Samuel Levi Jones, and Tariku Shiferaw on how to infuse messages calling for social and political change into abstract works of art.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 3 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Bisa Butler, Dahomey Amazon (2019). Private collection. Photo by John Butler.
7. “Pride and Presence: An Artist Talk with Bisa Butler, Quilt Artist and Storyteller” at the Newport Museum of Art, Rhode Island
In a virtual event presented with Sankofa Community Connection of Newport, which promotes the African American cultural heritage of colonial Newport, the Newport Museum of Art hosts an event with Bisa Butler about her contemporary art quilts, which draw on African American quilting traditions and use African fabrics from Nigeria, South Africa, and her ancestral Ghana.
Price: $15
Time: 6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Left: portrait of Tobias Pils; photo: Elfie Semotan. Right: portrait of Michael Williams.
8. “A Virtual Conversation Between Tobias Pils and Michael Williams” at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles
In conjunction with Tobias Pils’s solo presentation at the Frieze New York viewing room, the artist will discuss his new body of paintings and drawings, “The Islands” with fellow Los Angeles-based artist Michael Williams. Pils’s latest work is the result of significant changes in his methods and visual vocabularies. The paintings have been rendered in black, white, and shades of gray, but where the artist has previously painted on the floor and left surface fronts unprimed, now he has painted vertically on primed and stretched canvases supported by an easel. “The Islands” are filled with scenes of creatures, humanoid and otherwise, that occupy their own terrains—including unique islands of vision and circumstance with their own particular laws of nature.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 11 a.m. PST/2 p.m. EST
—Eileen Kinsella
Friday, May 7–Saturday, June 19
Wynnie Mynerva, Story of Revenge (2021). Photo courtesy of Latchkey Gallery.
9. “Wynnie Mynerva: Sweet Castrator” at Latchkey Gallery, New York
Peruvian artist Wynnie Mynerva, who was trained at San Marcos University and Bellas Artes in Lima, rebels against art history’s time-honored depiction of the female nude through the lens of the male gaze in autobiographical artworks that draw on their own personal traumas. The centerpiece of the show, the wrathfully cathartic Story of Revenge, is Mynerva’s take on Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting Judith Beheading Holofernes, widely interpreted as the Baroque artist’s response to being raped by her painting teacher.
Location: Latchkey Gallery, 323 Canal Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 2 p.m.–8 p.m. with performance 5:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.; Tuesday–Thursday by appointment
—Sarah Cascone
Saturday, May 8
Viswanathan Anand and Murali Doraiswamy. Photo courtesy of the Rubin Museum of Art.
10. “The Brain’s Gambit: Viswanathan Anand and Murali Doraiswamy” at the Rubin Museum of Art, New York
Viswanathan Anand, a five-time chess world champion who became the first Indian grandmaster in 1987, will speak with Murali Doraiswamy, a cognitive neuroscientist at Duke University School of Medicine, about how memorizing patterns is part of the key to his success on the chess board—and how he relates to the hit show The Queens Gambit. The talk is part of the Rubin Museum’s “Brainwave: Awareness” series which looks to tap into Buddhist teachings to help us cultivate awareness amid the many distractions of our hyperconnected world,
Price: $15 suggested donation
Time: 2 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
—Tanner West
Through Thursday, June 3
William Eric Brown, ColorStatic #3 (2020). Photo courtesy the National Arts Club.
11. “William Eric Brown: Colorstatic” at the National Arts Club, New York
The National Arts Club presents a new series of cast plaster panels reinforced with burlap and metal by William Eric Brown. The artist has developed a fresco-like process, pouring wet plaster directly onto watercolor to fuse the pigments to the rough, textured surface of the work.
Location: The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, New York
Price: Free with reservations
Time: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
—Tanner West