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It’s happening. The March blues where we are simultaneously struck by an eagerness for spring and the indignation that it’s not here yet, while one work week drags into the next. Sometimes you just need a little distraction to get you out of the house and into the ‘hood! This weekend’s art events are all about entertainment, escapism, and looking at the landscape around us, that can help you take a break from the monotony of the daily grind. Check out these six art shows that are not only guaranteed to help you get out of the grasaille funk you’ve been feeling, but stimulate your mind, body, and soul.
#1 Preach R Sun: Chrysalis @ Grace Exhibition Space (FRI, 9PM, $5-15 Suggested Donation)
Referencing Albert Camus’ famous adage, “the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence becomes an act of rebellion” Preach R Sun will present Chrysalis – the last chapter, or stage of its ONEMAN project which is a combination of performance and social activism/critique. In its ambitious mission, the ONEMAN Project seeks to question, critique, explore, and investigation the very nature of freedom and its implications today.
#2 Paul Weston: Conduit @ GCA (FRI, 7-9PM)
Paul Weston’s exhibition Conduit at GCA Gallery explores the omnipresence of technology in our lives. The star gadget in Weston’s current work is the television which he uses to reflect on how media never really leaves us. Television is that reliable friend that is always there for you—whether you need to catch up on your shows, kill time, or you just like the background noise, thinking about life without television gets very quiet. Conduit shows that even without a TV right in front of us, we still live in its perpetual afterglow because the screen never really turns off.
#3 Occult: Dark/Art @ Morgan Avenue Underground (SAT, 8PM)
There’s something brewing in Bushwick, and the Morgan Avenue Underground is confronting this trend toward the occult this Saturday night. Join them for performance and multi-media installations that explore the secret world of dark magic, that invites visitors to bring their own magical weapons and relics to partake in a “blessing ceremony.” Tarot card readings, a faerie earth queen performance by Ariel Italic, and a free samples courtesy of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab complete the themed night.
#4 Woody Guthrie’s Wardy Forty: Greystone Park State Hospital Revisited @ Valentine (FRI, 6-9PM)
We all know and love Woody Guthrie as the godfather of folk music, influencing artists like Bob Dylan, but many people don’t know about the five years he spent as a patient a Greystone Park State Hospital in New Jersey while he was being treated for the degenerative Huntington’s Disease from which he suffered. Wardy Forty showcases the largely historical photographs by artist Phillip Buehler of the hospital after it had been abandoned for over forty years. The hauntingly derelict decay of the images is more reminiscent of a horror movie, yet the exhibit also explores the undeveloped negatives of the hospital when Guthrie was a patient there, giving an incredible overview of the spaces history.
#5 Mary Manning: If the Stadium Were Empty I Would Be Able to See More Clearly @ Jackie Klempay (SAT, 7-10PM)
Mary Manning’s work is about exploring aspects of the everyday, through different points of blurred boundaries; real life/the stage, love/longing; loneliness/stoicism; energy/frailty. Working with a now defunct 90s film camera Manning captures contemporary moments with this outmoded technology in order to create a stronger impression of permanence (the timestamp that prints onto the image, for example, forever incapsulates the moment). In conjunction with the exhibition, Manning will also be presenting a curate screening of rarely seen footage from film artists Jonas Mekas, Henry Hills, Charles Atlas & Merce Cunningham, Nick Collins, and Gillian Wearing at Anthology Film Archives on Thursday, April 3 from 8-9:30 pm.
#6 Thick With Cold @ Associated Gallery (SAT, 7-10PM)
Artists Monica Haak, Matthew Shelley, and Aaron Williams each explore the concept of “landscape” as it is manifested in a number of different ways. All three artists reflect how landscape – natural, social, or artificial – is created and experienced. The show oscillates between Haak’s “manifestations of the mundane beauty of the overgrown outskirts of the city and the specific solitude they provide,” to Shelley’s works that combine his own experience with the materials, the assemblage, and the landscape itself, and Williams’ juxtaposition of everyday objects and traditionally rarified objects, resulting in a profound exploration of the every changing way we perceive the world around us.