Artwork by Dilek Baykara via Cotton Candy Machine.
It’s easy to forget that the skinny streets of the Lower East Side are bursting at their seams with galleries and performance art spaces. Let the fact that forty of them are holding opening receptions on the same night this month serve as a reminder. That’s a lot of art (and free wine). Highlights include “Dots, Stripes, Liquid Cyber and Other Plaiditudes,” a fashion design and photography exhibit at Strange Loop Gallery, and an inaugural group show at Monya Rowe Gallery, which just bailed on its Chelsea home in favor of a spot on Orchard Street, featuring the Dali-level surrealism of Larissa Bates and Jacolby Satterwhite’s experimental videos.
Opening Night: Art and Fashion also features a block party on Orchard between Broome and Grand, with a fashion show curated by Cosmo editor Amy Odell using clothes from Old Hollywood, Urban Cricket, and other local shops. If you’d prefer to pace yourself, read on for our early September art guide to see which galleries in the B+B domain have big shows to kick off the season.
WEEK 1
The Age of Delightenment
Solo exhibition of paintings by Amy Hill. Enlightenment era Flemish art parody complete with an ear-budded, shoulder-tattooed woman in profile.
The Front Room Gallery, 147 Roebling Street, Williamsburg; Sept. 6, 7pm
The Usual Magic; Character of a Private Secretary; Manos
Artists China Marks, Rose McShane, and Julio Pantoja hold simultaneous solo shows of “little dramas” in embroidered text, paintings on antique clay poker chips, and a series of hands made with “thick, raw paint.”
Art 101, 101 Grand Street, Williamsburg; Sept. 6, 6 p.m.
The Map is Not the Territory
Brooklyn-based Ati Maier presents her new space-themed short films and paintings, which manage to feel quite dark despite their depictions of unicorns and stars and rainbow swirls.
The Boiler, 177 North 9th Street, Williamsburg; Sept. 6, 7 p.m.
Do Not Blow Horn Use Bell
Tim Spelios’s second solo show is a collection of photo collages of “baroque exuberance” made from printed materials he found at flea markets and in abandoned books all over the streets of Brooklyn.
Studio 10, 56 Bogart Street, Bushwick, Sept 6, 7pm
Limbus
James Cullinane uses shades of red and map pins in his eerie new painting series of animal traps.
Robert Henry Contemporary, 56 Bogart St., Bushwick; Sept 6, 6 p.m.
BYO Art
For a $10 fee, any visual artist can bring their work for display on the Living Gallery’s currently bare walls for a one-night local artist pop-up.
The Living Gallery, 1094 Broadway, Bushwick; Sept 6, 6 p.m.
Cary Leibowitz
Leibowitz has shed his ’90s moniker Candy Ass in favor of his real name for this exhibition of “candy-colored, cheeky” paintings and “rococo, pre-adolescent” belt buckles.
Invisible Exports, 89 Eldridge Street, Lower East Side, Sept 6, 6pm
Passage
Andrew Prayzner’s new work is a complicated conceptual series based on theories of Lacan. He creates “interrupted” space in his paintings using peeled-off tape.
TSA, 44 Stewart Ave. #49, Bushwick, Sept 7, 7 p.m.
Material
Three female artists create installations made of wood plaster, aluminum and plastic to explore “consumption, utility, lifecycle and resource privilege” in the premiere opening of Storefront Bushwick’s new location.
Storefront Ten Eyek, 324 Ten Eyek St., Bushwick; Sept 7, 6 p.m.
Artwork by Ashley Bickerton via Lehmann Maupin.
WEEK 2
Ashley Bickerton
Whimsically colorful and unsettling portraiture, as well as sculpture and photography by the Bali-based artist.
Lehmann Maupin, 201 Chrystie St,, Lower East Side, Sept 11, 6 p.m.
REVERSE Benefit: Defrost
A silent art auction and Elliot Sharp concert to raise money for a heat system installation in REVERSE Space, which currently uses space heaters in the winter. Drop $120 for an “intimate dinner” with the artists, or $25 for the concert, art show, and open bar.
REVERSE Space, 28 Frost St., Williamsburg; Sept. 12, GA 9:30 p.m.
Figure Series
A series of etchings by early 20th century kinetic sculptor Alexander Calder, who invented the mobile. One set of etchings retells an E.E. Cummings story in which Santa Clause agrees to switch places with Death to make a quick buck in a wheel mine scheme.
Figureworks, 168 North 6thSt., Williamsburg, Sept 12, 6 p.m.
Chance Directions
A group art show dreamed up by two former Bushwick schoolteachers, in which artists were mailed a postcard with an art-class-like prompt on it (ie. “How are you feeling today?”). They each made their postcard into its own work of art, then mailed it back.
Ventana244, 244 North 6th St., Williamsburg, Sept. 12, 7 p.m.
Greenpoint Gallery Night
In Greenpoint’s answer to Williamsburg’s Every 2nd Friday (which is also on the 13th), a dozen of the neighborhood’s galleries will hold opening receptions on the same evening, including All Together Now, an art show about being an art collective at Fowler Project Space, and #flashbackfriday at Calico Brooklyn.
Various venues, Greenpoint; Sept 13, 6-9 p.m.
Allegorical Quarter
Colorful ink drawings by Michael Motorcycle, Dilek Baykara, Jeremy Hush, and Paul Romano, whose varied styles all seem to recall dark and fantastical fairy tales.
Cotton Candy Machine, 235 South 1st St., Williamsburg; Sept 13, 7 p.m.
James Tatum
A solo show of the UK-based artist’s speckled abstract landscapes.
P339, 339 Bedford Ave., Williamsburg; Sept 13, 7 p.m.
Show #7
A video installation show featuring insurance scam artists-turned videographers Jack+Leigh Ruby, who spent 13 years in prison for robbing their own house.
The Parlour, 971 Bushwick Ave., Bushwick; Sept 13, 6 p.m.
All-Over or Nothing
A group show of contemporary artists with Jackson Pollack-esque approaches to perspective (as in, no perspective).
Parallel Art Space, 17-17 Troutman St. #220, Bushwick; Sept 14, 6 p.m.
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