If you were looking for a theme, you won’t find one here. This weekend’s art openings are all over the place, and the artists come from all over too. Microscope’s Allison Somers is in town from Paris, Fine & Raw showcases Berlin-based artist Jerry Kowalsky and Outlet brings us Cristin Richard in from Detroit. Some artists take on loss, desire, accident, intent, others take animal intestines to make fashionable art, set photosensitive dye onto fabric or transport us into psychedelic video worlds.
Get your bearings here!
#1 “Allison Somers: ENFOLDING” @ Microscope Gallery (FRI 6-9 PM)
1329 Willoughby Avenue, #2B, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Paris-based artist Allison Somers takes her time with hand-made works produced by varied lengths of exposure for her third exhibition at Microscope Gallery. New works featuring dye on fabric, cyanotype on birch log, and black & white photograms take us away from the “insta” mechanics of it all. A little bit of darkroom chemistry creeps into her dyeing methods by way of her photograms in which she replaces photosensitive paper with photosensitive dye and fabrics.
In the mood to get creative with dyeing techniques as well? Stop by the opening to truly appreciate the works in person or prepare to dye with indigo dyeing classes at BUAISOU. Brooklyn Lab!
#2 “Beneath the Skin” @ Outlet Fine Art (FRI 7-10 PM)
253 Wilson Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
In “Beneath the Skin,” an intimate dynamic of mixed media, video, music and live performance plays out with artists Cristin Richard, Matthew Caron, Joseph Moore and Nate Czarling. Creating tangible art objects from animal intestines (yes), Richard interprets fashion as sculpture, with sculpture as a second skin in pieces like “Kapitaq” (or seal intestine parka). Created out of fear of aging, “obsessed with my own skin. Worried that I will fade, and become unnoticed. The work is helping me push through this,” says Richard.
Joseph Moore’s series of etched mirrors and pseudo words accompany Richard’s sculptures alongside Matthew Caron’s psychedelic video works. We told you about Caron’s video worlds and visual weavings before, and now we’ll see these alongside Nate Czarling’s musical heartbeat as his aggressive soundscapes reverberate throughout Outlet’s gallery walls.
#3 “Seizure Policy” by Anthony Taylor @ 99¢ Plus Gallery (FRI 7-10 PM)
238 Wilson Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
In “Seizure Policy,” 8.5” x 11” flyers and pieces of signage will be posted throughout 99¢ Plus Gallery. Fictionalized by Anthony Taylor, these works reflect upon paper trails left by police and security tactics, hospice, airline companies, service dogs, etc. Mainly sourced from public awareness flyers and community outreach bulletins, Taylor re-communicates the original messages in his own style and format, seized from the outside and re-purposed for within.
#4 “Jude Tallichet: U Turn” @ Studio 10 (FRI 7-9 PM)
56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206
Sculpture takes on a grand scale in “U Turn” as several full-sized car castings park themselves inside Studio 10. Already in sensory overload, these gigantic shapes will be accompanied by a precarious arch of stacked crockery and vases, as well as half a dozen cracked iPhones. What does this all mean to Jude Tallichet? Accident, intent, meditation, loss, desire and the USA’s great manifest destiny of the West. But how so? “U Turn” juxtaposes the discombobulated car castings with the reversal of direction by the accompanying sculptures—all conflated by freedom, the old “open road” and the “dystopian traffic jam and all too literal sense that we have lost our way.”
#5 “Incident at the Flower Shop” @ Fine & Raw Chocolate Factory (FRI 7-10 PM)
288 Seigel Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206
If you are a friend of a friend of Berlin-based artist Jerry Kowalsky, you might see a composite of your Facebook profile picture on display this Friday night inside Fine & Raw Chocolate Factory! In “Incident At The Flower Shop” Kowalsky groups over 100 portraits of his Facebook friends and friends of friends as he explores the phenomenon of profile pictures and the truth behind them. His subjects will find themselves illustrated in oil pastel smoothness and overlaid several times within the same picture. In this way, Kowalsky gives a single response to the many faces people show on their profile pages and in the growing takeover of social media.
#6 “Spatial Intelligence” @ Odetta (SAT 6-8 PM)
229 Cook Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206
In Saturday night’s opening of “Spatial Intelligence” four artists interpret intuit and pattern and transport viewers to a mix of real and imagined places and structures. Drawn to spaces that are engineered to be placeless (think big box stores, airports and distribution centers), artist Steven Baris finds this inclination after growing up on various American Indian reservations out West. Odd terrains, infrastructures and skylines come off the wall at Odetta, as Ryan Sarah Murphy explores the way simple materials can be constructed into quiet surfaces of calm and dilapidation.
James Pustorino travels into the graphical unknown, synthesizing a mix of science fiction, Abstract Expressionism, comic and psychedelic art while Thomas Lendvai’s site-determined sculpture for Odetta illicits a dreamlike sense of traveling through the space itself.