Image: Jenna Westra, Mariana Sits on “The Complete Photographer, An Encyclopedia of Photography” (1949), Volume 6, Pages 2178-79, ‘Best Fashion Study and Best Action Production Still Taken in a Studio’, 2018. Archival pigment print, 26 x 21.75 inches (image courtesy of Lubov)

Parts Of Some Quartet, Fruits
Opening Saturday, March 24 at Lubov, 6 pm to 9 pm. On view through May 6.

The Tribeca gallery Lubov is small, tucked away on the second floor of an office building, but within it you’ll find none of the monotony typically associated with such work. Instead, you’ll be greeted with contemporary art of all sorts, including their newest exhibition Parts Of Some Quartet, Fruits. In addition to being a very good exhibition name in my opinion, it’s also an assortment of analog photography by Jenna Westra that focuses on what happens when you don’t shy away from the act of purposefully trying to create an engaging scene ripe for the snapping. The scenarios recall a kind of captured choreography, such as an amateur model (or maybe a dancer?) kneeling with their dirt-dusted feet squarely sitting on (what else?) a book of photography, simultaneously desecrating and establishing its position as subject.

(image via goodgood / Facebook)

goodgood: a light-inspired show
Opening Saturday, March 24 at Studio 301 NYC, 7 pm to 10 pm. One night only.

Even though spring is allegedly nearly upon us, there has still been an awful lot of dreary, gray days. In addition to being mildly irritating (spring, you needn’t be such a tease), it can also have quite an effect on one’s mood. I never asked for light to be this profoundly powerful, but here we are. I’m not sure what the weather will be like this Saturday, but you’ll have a lot of light to soak up at art collective goodgood’s latest show, which has asked each of the 10 participants to create works that either involve or are inspired by light, from projections to paintings and everything in between. The show will happen in a 2,500 square foot East Williamsburg warehouse, so there’ll be plenty to see and plenty of space to flit about without worrying about accidentally running into anything. It does cost $10 at the door, but as the event description says, “Support art. It’s good.”

(image via Fridman Gallery / Facebook)

jump at the sun
Opening Sunday, March 25 at Fridman Gallery, 5 pm to 8 pm. On view through April 25.

Everyone’s individual experience is certainly valid, but how others interpret these experiences can be telling, or at least composer and artist Matana Roberts seems to think so. Her latest exhibition, which takes its name from a Zora Neale Hurston quote, offers up multimedia soundscapes and collages that “place participants in a call-and-response relationship with a historical ecosystem.” By contextualizing an array of individual happenings and people, she allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions about American life, history, and mythology. Rather than merely having a reception, the exhibition will open with an artist talk with Roberts and writer/artist Christopher Stackhouse, and then yes, the familiar ritual of a reception will follow.

(image via Soloway / Facebook)

Several Years Have Passed
Opening Sunday, March 25 at Soloway, 6 pm to 8 pm. On view through April 29.

The act of curation can take many different shapes. Sometimes you happen upon the people or work you include, sometimes you seek them out, sometimes you’ve known them for years. Curator Jenny Nichols met some of the artists she’s included in her group show Several Years Have Passed at parties over the course of just a couple days, and knew some already, but what sets her curation apart from others is that rather than merely providing a platform for these artists and their creations, she firmly states that they’re all sources of admiration and learning for her. These five individuals, she says, have provided “a way forward” for her. In placing her professional, personal, and social investment in Patricia Iglesias, Lee Maida, Mónica Palma, Annette Wehrhahn, and Abbey Williams, Nichols has at least partially fulfilled what the show wonders is possible, which is “letting all of our labor serve … living things and their needs in life and death,” and then seeing what comes from it.