(Flyer via Living Gallery / Facebook)
Consumption
Opening Monday August 22, 6 pm to 9 pm at The Living Gallery. On view one night only.
For one night only, the humble Living Gallery will be taken over by artist and “earth-loving dumpster-diver” Jill Rosati’s fantastical sculptures. Among them are “vomcanoes,” vaguely grotesque creations that look as if a mound of dirt grew legs and eternally spewed a fine stream of luminescent sludge that may or may not contain human hair. Yum! Rosati is committed to showing the ugly and excess-filled side of human nature (and sometimes, just nature itself), but smartly does so using sustainable and recycled materials so she doesn’t necessarily waste in order to portray waste.
(photo: Daniel Maurer)
Vector Gallery: SEND GOD TO HELL
Opening Thursday August 25, 8:25 pm at Vector Gallery.
Vector was spawned on Clinton Street in 2013, and relocated to East Broadway after not-so-divine intervention (i.e.: New York real estate). This year, despite uncertainties if they would ever come back to NYC, they’ve set up Satanic shop once more, this time on East 3rd Street. By this year, we mean sometime after 2017. Or 2033? Vector operates on its own time, seeing as the Official Art Gallery of Satan is an independent country that seceded from the US in 2017. Which already happened according to JJ Brine, the man behind the mystery. And in this mystery, you’re going to see an overwhelming assortment of bright colors, blinding neon signs, cryptic warnings, disembodied limbs, funhouse-esque reflective walls, and more that’s probably beyond our comprehension and ability of articulation. You’ll have to step in and see for yourself, but not without surrendering your soul first.
(image via Strictly New York / Facebook)
Strictly New York 3
Opening Thursday August 25, 6 pm to 10 pm at Rockwall Studios. On view through August 27. $5.
If venturing into the day-glo depths of hell and surrendering your soul to stare disoriented at a fucked-up portrait of Condoleezza Rice sounds a little too extreme for a Thursday, there’s this alternate art offering. Strictly New York 3 is a multimedia group show featuring over 15 artists who work to portray the “daily grind” of New Yorkers who carry on despite ever-encroaching gentrification around them. Determined to render this hustle in all respects, they’ve got street artists, photographers, rappers, painters, documentarians, collage artists, and more. And if the $5 price tag is off-putting, think of it as karmic contribution for all the free wine you snagged at art shows through the years. You’re doing a good deed.
(image via SIGNAL / Facebook)
Opening Saturday August 27, 7pm to 10 pm at SIGNAL Gallery. On view through October 2.
This is technically two solo exhibits happening at once, so think of it as a 2-for-1 combo deal. They’re unique in that one, “Iris” by Aidan Koch, consists of sculpture and works on paper; the other, Madeline Hollander’s “Drill,” is actually a durational dance performance piece that will be happening periodically throughout the month. Both shows take pieces of reality and blur them or abstract them; Koch’s pieces place ambiguous pieces of consciousness into reality while Hollander has taken real-life procedures such as airplane evacuations and instructed dancers (including Hollander herself) to loop them inside the gallery to a live score by $3.33. In the process, real emergency procedures become something artistic to be observed passively, rather than engaging one’s fight or flight reaction.
(Flyer via Sylvia Rivera Law Project)
Small Works for Big Change
Sunday, August 28 at 5 pm to 9 pm at 41 Cooper Gallery.
This isn’t an art opening but an art auction—stay with me, though, because it’s not the sort of thing with yelling robotic auctioneers and finely-dressed folk doling out impossibly high chunks of change for bland abstract paintings. This is a fundraising event for the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, an organization that works to combat discrimination against transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming folk, with a focus on people of color and poor people—demographics that have been proven to be especially vulnerable to this violence. Small Works for Big Change acts as their yearly fundraising event, and a large number of queer artists have donated works to be auctioned off, including Juliana Huxtable, Raul de Nieves, Colin Self, and Vaginal Davis, to name just a few. After the auction is over, the fun doesn’t stop, as there’ll be live performances and an afterparty.