Artists Envision Inspiring Women, Masterful Portraits of Black Artists, and More Art Openings

She Inspires
Opening Tuesday, May 2 at The Untitled Space, 6 pm to 9 pm. On view through May 20.

Tribeca art gallery The Untitled Space and its curator Indira Cesarine, who reacted swiftly after Election Day with their massive Angry Women group show in partnership with the ERA Coalition, are returning with another large and women-centric group show. She Inspires will show the work of 60 artists who have made pieces that feature or are inspired by “women that have made a positive impact on the world.” Exhibiting artists include Cesarine herself, Molly Crabapple, and Elisa Garcia de la Huerta of the Go! Pushpops collective. The definition of “inspiring women” is broad, as the show includes portrayals of local luminaries, famous faces like Frida Kahlo, and even fictional characters like Wonder Woman.

There will be several events over the course of the exhibition, including an artist talk and a dance performance. Similar to the Angry Women show, a portion of the proceeds from She Inspires will benefit She Should Run, a nonprofit aimed at increasing the number of women in leadership and government positions.

Innovation: made in France II
Opening Wednesday, May 3 at Demisch Danant. On view through July 1.

Many gallery exhibitions seek to spotlight new creators, but this series of shows wants to cast more light on how artists and designers of yore have been impactful on the artistic landscape today. Specifically, this is part of a yearlong series at Demisch Danant showcasing French designers who were active in the postwar period from 1965 to 1975.

Focusing on mostly innovation in functional design, the show features a variety of chairs, lamps, desks and more. Notably, many of these pieces used materials like Plexiglas, polyurethane foam, and other plastics for the first time, and the lamps and lighting fixtures in the show feature halogen lamps and fluorescent tubes, new lighting technologies at the time. Displaying designs we may take for granted nowadays in such a way reminds us that someone had to be the first to make something in this fashion.

Organ Farm
Opening Friday, May 5 at Industry City, 6 pm to 10 pm. On view through May 20.

Out of context, the idea of an “organ farm” calls to mind morbid notions of kidneys snatched from bodies in the dead of night or research facilities set up for the purposes of studying how decomposition unfolds. Interestingly, this Wallplay-curated solo exhibition of multidisciplinary artist and curator Julia Sinelnikova’s work is constructed largely from materials normally considered to be the opposite of fleshy and human: holographic light sculptures and video installations. Sinelnikova embraces this tension between industrial, digital, and human, dubbing these glowing hand-cut resin sculpture constructions “Fairy Organs.” At the reception, Sinelnikova (also known as “The Oracle”) will be present to “activate” her sculptures with a performance.

Trickster
Opening Friday, May 5 at Sean Kelly Gallery, 6 pm to 8 pm. On view through June 17.

A variety of notable black contemporary artists including Nick Cave, Hank Willis Thomas, Rashid Johnson, and many others will be immortalized in paint for this large exhibition of painted portraits by Kehinde Wiley. Portraying recognizable and familiar figures like these artists is a new endeavor for Wiley, as he is usually known for painting anonymous sitters and people he found on the streets.

The exhibition takes its title from The Trickster archetype, which the artists describes as omnipresent in oral traditions across cultures. Trickster figures are particularly engrained in African-American culture, in which it was common to find tales of animals cleverly outsmarting their so-called masters. Wiley is also largely influenced by how he first learned to paint, which was copying the Old Masters and studying the largely-white works in big galleries and museums. By portraying these black contemporary artists through grand portraiture in the style of European Masters, Wiley effectively elevates them to a level normally only reserved for white artists or subjects in fancy museums.