John Lennon said it best – the sun is up, the sky is blue – it’s beautiful and so are you…Dear Bushwick, won’t you come out to see some art?
Beyond our neighborhood borders, Greenpoint Open Studios is back again this weekend (and dare we say, better than ever), featuring open studios of over 300 artists. But you don’t have to cross that border if you’re not so inclined, or just had one too many burgers.
Follow this openings guide for a fun and art-filled weekend: whether you’re in search of something as highbrow as a discussion of social history through jazz, or as wild as an EDM-infused gallery performance, Bushwick can offer up just the thing for you.
#1 “Jason Moran: Staged” @ Luhring Augustine (Thur 6-8 pm)
25 Knickerbocker Ave
Luhring Augustine presents the first ever solo exhibition of multi-disciplinary artist Jason Moran this weekend at its Bushwick location. Moran, who explores the relationship between music and language, is a musician, composer, and visual artist, and the exhibition will include two of his large-scale sculptures which were recently exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale as part of his STAGED series. These two larger works are complemented by works on paper, which provides insight into the artist’s practice and creates a dialogue between the artist’s investigations of sound, social history, and jazz culture.
Suffice to say, this exhibition promises to be exceptional and an incredible opportunity to see the visual of work of a visionary figure in contemporary jazz (did we mention he is a 2010 MacArthur Fellow?)
#2 “Mayest” @ Orgy Park (Sun 4-9 pm)
237 Jefferson Street 1B
Mayest at Orgy Park is a performance-oriented exhibition that brings together an eclectic group of women artists who work in sculpture, mixed media, installation and performance and features a real life May dance: Phoebe Berglund will present a beautifully conceived performance capturing the impressions made by swaying dancers as they entwine to the rhythmic beat of EDM over slabs of wet clay; the clay will then be fired into permanent terracotta artifacts of this Dionysian celebration of spring.
The exhibition also features work by Stacy Fisher, Elisabeth Kley and Cassie Raihl.
#3 “An Intricate Stew of Truths and Mirages” @ The Third Policeman (Fri 6-9 pm)
1535 Decatur St.
The works in this heady, vivid, almost deliriously joyful show at the Third Policeman celebrate magical realism through the narratives of the featured artists’ lives and heritage. The diverse backgrounds of the artists (Russian, Latin American, Japanese) make for for an interesting cocktail of symbols, meanings, puns, and small triumphs over the banality of daily life.
Did you know that this is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude? The works featured in this show are a testament to the universality of the truths presented in the novel, which provided the basis for this exhibition (the second of a series).
#4 “I’ll be your mirror” @ Brooklyn Wayfarers (Sat 7-10 pm)
1109 Dekalb Avenue
This show is a pop-up exhibition of photography featuring work by Maureen O’Leary, Laura Parker, Terri Phillips, and Linda Robinson. Though separated by their locales of choice— Los Angeles, Wichita, Memphis, and New York, respectively— the four artists create a dialogue through their work by exploring the notions of gaze and sensory perception, and by utilizing an empirical approach to documenting the human condition.
#5 “Passing Index” @ Hometown Gallery (Sat 5:30-8 pm)
1002 Metropolitan Avenue
In this two-person exhibition, Lilian Kretuzberger and Yasue Maetake present wall reliefs and sculptural works. Both artists explore themes of “systems,” object and language associations, and appropriation of recognizable object forms through a personal vocabulary of visual form and structure. However, while Kreutzberger accomplishes this through the use of abstract, rectilenear forms, Maetake’s evoke more of the organic, natural world, creating parallels of opposition within both the exhibition as well as the artists’ practice.
Enjoy, Bushwick!