It wouldn’t be the weekend without a run through Bushwick’s art playground, scaling imagined landscapes, moving through installations and reading visual diaries. Schema Projects brings us 15 artists who use paper as a serious play tool while Songs for Presidents plays with a paper job application found on the streets of Midtown. Attempts to record nature and all-immersive environments appear to us at the galleries of 56 Bogart, and BFP Creative treats us to the work select art handlers from the Whitney Museum in their latest show, “Temporary Storage.”
#1 “Mystic Renegade” @ CHASM Gallery (FRI 6-9 pm)
56 Bogart Street
Based in Australia and the UK, contemporary art force Christian Thompson exhibits a deep understanding of his Bidjara (Indigenous people of central South-West Queensland) heritage in “Mystic Renagade.” In a curated selection of photographs spanning eight years, CHASM describes Thompson’s self-portraits as “flamboyantly performative,” speaking to a wider audience while unraveling layers of symbolic significance with respect to personal identity, memory and landscape.
“Mystic Renegade” runs through May 25, 2015.
#2 “VOLUME 1” @ Schema Projects (FRI 6-9 pm)
92 St. Nicholas Avenue
“Volume 1” is the first of a two-part exhibition co-curated by Mary Judge and Enrico Gomez with 15 artists using paper as a serious play tool. Featured artists include Nancy Baker, Richard Bottwin, Jaynie Crimmins, Mila Dau, Edoardo de Falchi, Ellen Hackl Fagan, Joan Grubin, Brent Hallard, Karen Margolis, Lael Marshall, Alex Paik, Gary Passanise, Sylvia Schwartz, Lawrence Swan and Austin Thomas.
“Volume 1” runs through June 14, 2015.
#3 Works by Chris Zitelli @ Galerie Manqué (FRI 7-9 pm)
56 Bogart Street
Galerie Manqué’s next pop-up show inside 56 Bogart presents “tiny, intense and obsessively rendered” paintings and drawings by Bushwick artist Chris Zitelli. Using a 3D imaging program, Zitelli creates realistic depictions of nature in an attempt to record the manifested color relationships and to bear witness to a deep regard for those who have historically made “the utterly human, and ultimately futile, attempt to record nature.”
The show runs through through May 24, 2015.
#4 “Paintings” and “comes in the moment so please stay in touch” @ OUTLET (FRI 7-10 pm)
253 Wilson Avenue
Jason Andrew’s latest curation at OUTLET features two one-person exhibitions with painters Judith Dolnick (“Paintings”) and Lucy Mink (“comes in the moment so please stay in touch”). Having exhibited alongside Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and Franz Kline in New York in the 60’s, Dolnick’s lush paintings are an endless expression of color with a slight pull of nostalgia. Mink’s works weave a visual diary of Futurist intention and Cubist vision within a modern world; offering a “paradoxical echoing of organic forms that are consciously built up with architectonic volumes and planes.”
These works will be on view through June 28, 2015.
#5 “Behind the White Walls” @ Temporary Storage (FRI 6-10 pm)
119 Ingraham Street, Gallery 105
BFP Creative hosts their finale exhibit from a trio of showcases of work by the art handlers of the Whitney Museum, including artists-employed-as-preparators of the Guggenheim and MoMA. “Behind the White Walls” is curated by Norton and Hazel Lee Santino for BFP Creative, with curatorial assistance from Carmen Hermo of the Guggenheim and Elisabeth Sherman of the Whitney.
“Temporary Storage” is up through May 22, 2015.
#6 “Forever 21” @ Songs for Presidents (SAT 7-10 pm)
1673 Gates Avenue, Ridgewood
In a literal nod to the retail giant Forever 21, the title takes form in paintings and sculptures by Julian Pozzi opening at Songs for Presidents gallery in Ridgewood. After finding a crumpled job application for Forever 21 on the streets of Midtown, Pozzi created new works enacting an ersatz “filling out” of the application. Using color, form and bad faith, Pozzi answers the application’s invasive and tedious questions, touching on ideas of labor, play, aging and sloth.
“Forever 21” is on view through June 20, 2015.
#7 “THANK YOU” @ Black & White Gallery (FRI 6-9 pm)
56 Bogart Street
In this collaboration by long time friends Raul de Nieves and Erik Zajaceskowski, “Thank You” sets out to explore the modern myth of circular nature of existence, the wheel of life, and karma. Hosted by Black & White Gallery / Project Space, this site-specific installation utilizes plastics and refuse that the artists have gathered from around Brooklyn to create a large-scale immersive environment mapping narratives and mythologies of creation, destruction and consumption. Viewers are meant to become part of the narrative as the move through the installation space.
“Thank You” is on view through June 28, 2015.