10 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

MONDAY, APRIL 30

Memorial: Tim Rollins at School of Visual Arts
This event will convene artists, collaborators, and art historians in celebration of the life of Tim Rollins, an artist and activist who died late last year at age 62. One of the founders of the collective Group Material, Rollins is best known for his collaborations with Kids of Survival (K.O.S.), a group that originated during the artist’s time teaching at Intermediate School 52 in New York’s South Bronx neighborhood in the 1980s. He spent much of his career working to create a more accessible and inclusive form of art-making—a topic that is sure to be addressed at this event at the artist’s alma mater.
School of Visual Arts Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, 6:30 p.m.

TUESDAY, MAY 1

Performances: “A Prelude to the Shed” at the Shed
Ahead of its opening next spring, the Shed, a forthcoming interdisciplinary performance and exhibition space, will present “A Prelude to the Shed,” 12 days of free art events starting this week. One block away from the Shed’s future home, the event series will be staged in a temporary structure designed by Kunlé Adeyemi and Tino Sehgal, and will feature D.R.E.A.M. dance battles, Asad Raza’s class-cum-artwork Schema for a School, choreography by William Forsythe, and concerts by ABRA, Arca, and Azealia Banks. Additionally, programming will include panel discussions organized by Berlin Dorothea von Hantelmann, a professor of art and society at Bard College; Hans Ulrich Obrist, senior program adviser at the Shed; and Kevin Slavin, the Shed’s chief science and technology officer.
The Shed, West 31st Street and 10th Avenue, various times, consult the Shed’s website for more information

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2

Opening: Charles Ray at Matthew Marks
Charles Ray, whose work is currently featured in the Met Breuer’s exhibition “Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300-Now),” is known for his sculptures of human and animals that sometimes feel like revisions of ancient Greek and Roman works, thanks to their strange, seductive forms. A new show at Matthew Marks, “three rooms and a repair annex,” will showcase five new sculptures by the artist. Ray has divided Marks’s larger gallery, at 522 West 22nd Street, into three spaces, each featuring one sculpture—Reclining Woman (2018), Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog (2017), and A copy of ten marble fragments of the Great Eleusinian Relief (2017). At 526 West 22nd Street, the small-scale sculptures Mechanic 1 and Mechanic 2 (2018), both of them stainless steel pieces finished with white matte paint, will be on view.
Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 and 526 West 22nd Street, 6–8 p.m.

THURSDAY, MAY 3

Book Release: Whitewalling: Art, Race, & Protest in 3 Acts at Brooklyn Museum
Hannah Black’s open letter to the Whitney Museum regarding Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket, which featured an image of Emmett Till’s funeral, may be the most notable example of protest in the art world in recent memory. But, as Aruna D’Souza’s new book Whitewalling: Art, Race, & Protest in 3 Acts makes clear, it is part of a larger lineage that includes events staged in reaction to programming at Artists Space and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in past decades. D’Souza, an ARTnews contributor, will read part of her book at this event, which also includes a conversation with artists Devin Kenny and Lorraine O’Grady, as well as a Q&A moderated by Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art senior curator Catherine Morris.
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, 7–9 p.m. Tickets free with RSVP

FRIDAY, MAY 4

Exhibition: “One Hand Clapping” at Guggenheim Museum
The latest installment in the Guggenheim’s ongoing Chinese art initiative, “One Hand Clapping” will feature new commissions by Cao Fei, Duan Jianyu, Lin Yilin, Wong Ping, and Samson Young. Working in traditional and new mediums that range from oil paint to VR, the five artists examine systems of exchange and communication, as well as the world’s uncertain future. The exhibition takes its name from a Zen Buddhist riddle: “We know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Avenue, 10 a.m.–5:45 p.m.

Opening: Charles Gaines at Paula Cooper Gallery
A series of twelve new large-scale works by Charles Gaines will be on view at this exhibition. “Faces 1: Identity Politics” marks the artist’s return to his “Faces” series, originally begun during the late 1970s. The newest iteration in the series is a group of portraits of distinguished thinkers on identity, with figures such as Aristotle, Maria W. Stewart, Karl Marx, and bell hooks painted on gridded clear acrylic panels. Continuing his investigation of how meaning is manifested via images and language, Gaines created Manifestos 3, an addition to his earlier series of musical scores. This new work draws on a James Baldwin essay and a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr.; Gaines translated the letters of their words into corresponding musical notes. Two large graphite drawings of the transcription and a broadcast of the performed score will be presented in the exhibition.
Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Liz Deschenes at Miguel Abreu Gallery
Building on her previous work, “Rates (Frames per Second)” continues Liz Deschenes’s line of inquiry around the history of image production and the ways viewers perceive photographic images. For her fourth solo exhibition with Miguel Abreu, Deschenes has taken inspiration from Étienne-Jules Marey, a 19th-century scientist and chronophotographer. At the gallery’s Eldridge Street location, equally spaced strips of silver-toned photograms will line the walls; at the Orchard Street location, a series of photograms, each corresponding to the various speeds at which people walk, will be on view.
Miguel Abreu Gallery, 88 Eldridge Street and 36 Orchard Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Arthur Jafa at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
For his first New York outing since the debut of his video Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death, Arthur Jafa will take over Gavin Brown’s Harlem space. Included here will be a new video, A Kingdom Come, which focuses on the aesthetics and ritualistic qualities of black Christian worship, as well as the sculpture Big Wheels, which is made with seven-foot truck tires and continues Jafa’s fascination with American demolition derby and monster truck culture. Like much of Jafa’s work, these pieces are about the complicated nature of African-American identity.
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, 439 West 127th Street, 6 p.m.

SATURDAY, MAY 5

Opening: Juliana Huxtable and Carolyn Lazard at Shoot the Lobster
This collaborative exhibition between the Philadelphia-based artist Carolyn Lazard and Juliana Huxtable, from New York, is partly inspired by Bloodchild, a short story by the seminal African-American science fiction writer Octavia Butler in which the narrator assumes the role of black female slaves in America. Details are scant in advance of the show, titled “epigenetic,”  but it promises to be a spirited affair.
Shoot the Lobster, 138 Eldridge Street, 6–8 p.m.

SUNDAY, MAY 6

Exhibition: Virginia Overton at Socrates Sculpture Park
For her show of newly commissioned works, Virginia Overton has created a sculpture that spans 40 feet and takes the shape of a crystal. Made out of architectural truss systems and iron, the massive structure refers to industrial objects and is meant to address the role labor plays in today’s economy. Also on view will be a work that adds a reflective glass bead surface to a 1990 Ford F250 pickup truck. Like much of Overton’s work, the pieces were crafted with the space in mind, both physically and conceptually—they are site-specific in more sense than one.
Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 9 a.m.–sundown