Last weekend’s opening event for the annual Bushwick Open Studios Benefit was a blast, and remember the date of May 10th for the official raffle party where you can take home your very own piece. Now it’s time for another major event! Momenta Art is hosting their annual Spring Benefit event on Thursday, April 23rd, raffling off works by hundreds of our favorite New York artists.
It doesn’t stop there – six new shows are opening this weekend, including group exhibitions at ODETTA and Los Ojos, and solo shows at Robert Henry Contemporary and Life on Mars Gallery. You can also catch a glimpse of “Life in Burma” through the lens of photojournalist Jeenah Moon at SoAM Studio during the Friday night reception.
#1 Spring Benefit and Raffle Auction Party @ Momenta Art (THURS 6:00 PM)
56 Bogart Street
Hundreds of artists’ works are currently on display at Momenta Art in celebration of Momenta’s annual Spring Benefit. The preview opening reception took place on April 3rd, and now the Raffle Auction Party is happening Thursday night beginning at 6:00 pm with the official raffle drawing from 7:15 – 8:00 pm. Tickets can be purchased online at MomentaArt.org.
If you haven’t been by to see the works in person, preview them online here, including pieces you could own by Bushwick artists Liz Ainslie, Phil Beuhler, Carl Gunhouse, Jen Hitchings, Lisa Levy, Joey Parlett, Polly Shindler, Christopher Stout, Karen Tiliakos and many more!
#2 Sharon Lawless “Slightly Ajar” @ Robert Henry Contemporary (FRI 6-9 pm)
56 Bogart Street
Oscillating between rational and irrational, “Slightly Ajar” brings a disorienting experience to Robert Henry Contemporary with 20 new collages by Sharon Lawless. Using found materials to illustrate visual logic, Lawless explores the tension between accident and control and how this tension effects perception. While her manipulation is more disorienting than ambiguous, her random arrangements and geometric abstraction themselves act and react to achieve the desired optical effects.
#3 Karen Schwartz “Down the Rabbit Hole” @ Life On Mars Gallery (FRI 6-9 pm)
56 Bogart Street
With what has been describes as a furious and fearless working process, painter Karen Schwartz illustrates from an unlikely inspiration combo of both generations of German Expressionists and Post-Modern Neo-Expressionists, with a sense of color and light that recalls the likes of Matisse. Alongside Shwartz’s “Down the Rabbit Hole,” the Life On Mars Gallery Project Room will exhibit new works by painter Margrit Lewczuk on transformation and renewal after disaster.
#4 “Textual” @ ODETTA (SAT 6-8 pm)
229 Cook Street
ODETTA’s latest group show “Textual” presents four artists who spin contemporary tales of diversity, technology, codes, structures and the multiple layers of meaning packed within the spatial field. Leonardo Benzant, Annette Cords, Elana Herzog and Ken Weathersby show us that as textiles and language evolve, their gesture of an embrace repeats and sustains over time, conveying messages both written and woven. See the opening on Saturday night then connect with the artists during an artist talk on Sunday, May 10th from 4 – 6 pm.
#5 Kyle James Dunn & Sarah Elise Hall @ Los Ojos (FRI 6-9 pm)
12 Cypress Avenue
Los Ojos presents new works by Kyle James Dunn and Sarah Elise Hall: using foam, plaster, fiberglass and caulk, Dunn creates sculptural paintings that incorporate a maximalist approach in a playful union of color and texture. Microcosms emerge in Hall’s sculptures and paintings made up of slabs, stacks and cavities. From those microcosms, which originated in her studio space, themes of breakdown, contamination and corruption emerge as well, resulting in a range of abstract and minimalist compositions across plywood and acrylic paint skins.
#7 “Life in Burma” by Jeenah Moon @ SoAM Studio (FRI 6-9 pm)
35 Meadow Street, Suite 205
New York-based photojournalist Jeenah Moon is opening an exhibition of compelling photography at SoAM Studio this Friday night. Moon experiments in capturing the overlooked humanity in various marginalized urban populations, showcasing how these individuals thrive in their respective niches. This exhibition is centered around her 2012 travels to Burma with a close look at Burmese daily life, the historical issues in Myanmar and the improvement that came after military dictatorship ended in 2011 when Aung San Suu Kyi took over as Prime Minister.
#7 The Great American Performance Art Festival @ Grace Exhibition Space (FRI 9 pm)
840 Broadway, Second Floor
The latest performance series at Grace Exhibition Space invited curators and artists to respond to the problematics of borders and barriers within the Americas in ways that reinterpret and reimagine their diverse social, cultural and economic landscape. The performances are bound to break interactive barriers between not only the artist and the audience, but between broad cross-sections of communities and demographics as well.
The Great American Performance Art Festival will take place from March-August 2015, with events at both Grace Exhibition Space in Bushwick and the Grace Performance Art Farm in Rosendale, New York.