There has been a rustling through town about this weekend’s openings: it seems everyone under the Bushwick sun will be at Lorimoto’s “Open Call” reception on Saturday, and in between shows at 56 Bogart plus another at the new Space776 location, a selection of artist talks are taking place this weekend as well. Things are getting good in our part of the ‘wicks and ‘woods!
#1 “Open Call” @ Lorimoto (SAT 6-9 PM)
1623 Hancock Street, Ridgewood
“Open Call” is Lorimoto’s holiday salon show with over 300 works by New York artists. All works will be on sale for $300 and under. In the spirit of gift-giving or collecting work by your artist crush, you’ll see works by literally everyone under the Bushwick sun.
#2 “Days Have Gone By” @ Galerie Manqué (FRI 6-9 PM)
56 Bogart Street
Pop-up space Galerie Manqué is opening “Days Have Gone By” on Friday, November 20th, featuring works by Glen Baldridge, Juliet Jacobson, Alex McQuilkin, Chris Oh and B. Thom Stevenson, and guest-curated by artist and poet Andy Mister. With a shared interest in objects and imagery and how they inform our lived experience, these artists apply their technical skill towards accurately representing the world around them; their painstaking craft leads us to spend time with them.
#3 “Endymion” @ MOTEL (FRI 7-10 PM)
1078 Dekalb Avenue, BedStuy
Down the block from Wayfarers and just past the geographic center of the five boroughs at Dekalb and Broadway, lies Motel gallery (1078 Dekalb). They’ve been exhibiting since May 2015 and are celebrating this Friday night with “Endymion,” an installation by Isabel Legate which imagines a potential future; a boneyard both vile and thrilling, desolate and yet, everything we ever wanted.
#4 “Raw: Word and Image” @ SPACE 776 (FRI 7-10 PM)
229 Central Avenue
Quotidian realities are explored in the group show “Raw: Word and Image,” taking place in the new Space776 location at 229 Central Ave. In “Raw” William Hempel uses old master materials of linseed oil, walnut oil and encaustic, building upon canvases that reveal and conceal the raw canvas beneath. Evoking the baroque style, Kate Ryan paints raw meat – the likes of ham hocks and slabs of flesh confronting the viewer in a stylized setting. Paint is used in a sculptural manner by Piers Secunda, and recorded as visceral movements in the video works of Christopher Smith; raw and visceral paintings turn up again in Riccardo Vecchio’s portrayal of delicate scales, bright red gills, and guts in a Milan market scene.
#5 “Strange Friends” and “Original PNGs” @ Honey Ramka (FRI 6-9 PM)
56 Bogart Street
Honey Ramka’s latest shows open Friday with “Strange Friends” by Ana Wieder-Blank and “Original PNGs” by Tom Moody in the project room. A combination of dark humor, joy and tragedy make up the works of “Strange Friends” where paintings and ceramics are both serious and playful. Digital draftsman and blogger, Tom Moody evokes underground comix styles, graffiti, and modernist painting through the use of open source paint applications, where the preferred output file format for these apps happens to be a “PNG.”
#6 “Nature Made” @ Galerie Petite (SAT 6-9 PM)
114 Wilson Avenue
Henry G. Sanchez, Scott Partlow, Ursula Clark, Matta Tripoli, Eman, John Grant and Nicole Pilar are all part of “Nature Made” because they can’t help but to incorporate nature into their work. According to the show’s curator, Tyrome Tripoli, one way or another, natural materials or even natural forces like wind and deterioration work themselves in. “These artists don’t mimic nature, instead they tap into its artifacts and cycles.”
#7 “Urban Juxtapositions” @ Slag Gallery (FRI 6-8 PM)
81 Grand Street
Slag Contemporary’s second location, which opened in July, presents “Urban Juxtapositions” with artists Liv Mette Larsen and Carol Salmanson. Their works touch on themes of memory and fragmentation: Larson’s monochrome works are described as “intuitive paintings” with a illusions of volume and energetic dialogues, as Salmanson’s contain an underlying technological format. Her “light-paintings” utilize LED technology as paint with reflective or transparent materials as the canvas. Each piece implies memory, and the viewers themselves reignite the memory.
Artist Talks
“Woo-Woo Womanival” and “Portrait of Some Sort of Self” @ Wayfarers (SUN 3 PM)
1109 Dekalb Avenue
We explored the material selections in a number of shows that opened in early November: papier-mâché, plywood, polaroids, plastic bags and works on black and white paper all appeared in the same week of openings. Now the paper and mixed media works of artists Caroline Paquita and Eddie Chu are being discussed during Wayfarer’s artist talk this Sunday. Questions on material origins and underlying subject matter will be asked to further explore how the artists came to choose their materials and topics.
Linda Griggs discusses “The First Time Is Not Like Porn” @ Christopher Stout Gallery (SAT 3 PM)
299 Meserole Street
“The First Time Is Not Like Porn” opened on November 6th at CSG/NY, showcasing the painted narratives of first time sexual experiences of the artist’s friends and acquaintances with images from commercial pornography. Some images draw a parallel, others seem to bring to life the starkness of these personal stories. Linda Griggs will discuss these stories, touching on her ideation process and what she learned during her 2-year journey in making this series of work.