Animals

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Watch This New Show to Find Out What the Dogs of Tompkins Really Think About You

Something strange is happening in the American psyche right now. Just a few years ago, the heroes of New York City-centric comedy TV were disconnected 20-somethings with suspiciously fancy apartments who wandered the earth clueless as to why no one wanted to date their flawless Tinder profile/soulless body. Now, they’re much tinier creatures that we rarely notice IRL and if we do, we’re like gagging and pointing and screaming: “Gawwwwd, I think that rat is bubonic.”

Hot on the hoofs of Louis CK’s The Secret Life of Pets, and HBO’s Animals (which just returned for season two), a new animated feature from Brooklyn-based animation company Cartuna offers a peek at what these city-dwelling creatures see in us humans. Obviously, it ain’t pretty.

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Animals Become Artists and Collaborators in This Unique Exhibition

 Aganetha Dyck, An Inconvenient Proposal, 2007, Porcelain figure, beeswax, honeycomb, Courtesy of the artist and Michael Gibson Gallery, London, ON (image courtesy of apexart)

Aganetha Dyck, An Inconvenient Proposal, 2007, Porcelain figure, beeswax, honeycomb, Courtesy of the artist and Michael Gibson Gallery, London, ON (image courtesy of apexart)

It’s generally understood that nature, while vast and occasionally intimidating, can be very beautiful. But how much of this has been intentionally placed and crafted? Is a bee’s honeycomb pleasing to the eye by accident or is there something more to it? Tribeca gallery apexart’s latest exhibition Animal Intent, organized and curated by Emily Falvey, puts animals in the spotlight alongside human artists, framing them as “collaborators” who can potentially assist in the purposeful creative act of making art, a practice normally framed as a very “human” endeavor.

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Jennifer Rubell, Art By Animals, and More Art Openings To Investigate

(flyer via The Living Gallery / Facebook)

(flyer via The Living Gallery / Facebook)

Emergence: Emerging Artists in New York
Opening Tuesday January 17 at The Living Gallery, 6 pm to 9 pm. One night only. 

The term “emerging artist” has been a bit of a buzzword for quite some time now. To some, it means someone who has literally just started creating, to others, it is someone who’s been on the scene for a couple years but hasn’t won any fancy awards. And sometimes it’s somewhere in between. But this art show really owns the title in a way that’s clear: simply, Emergence is showing work by New York artists who have never shown their work in a gallery before. There will be over 20 artists covering the gallery in their work, whether it be painting and sculpture, performance, or even fashion pieces. Come one, come all, and witness the emergence.

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This Taxidermy Show Will Make You Wish You Stuffed all Your Dead Pets

(Photo: Courtesy of Morbid Anatomy Museum)

(Photo: Courtesy of Morbid Anatomy Museum)

Get your “disgusted-but-intrigued” face ready: the Morbid Anatomy Museum, the ultimate haven for the morbidly curious, is putting on a new exhibition. The Gowanus center for all things bizarre has featured enough deathly art and grotesque miscellany to last any one of us a lifetime. So let’s just assume that you’re dead. But has Morbid’s “temple of the weird” gone to the dogs? Apparently so. And the cats. And birds. And undoubtedly dozens of other long-dead animals.

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Not Here, Kitty Kitty! Development Threatens Greenpoint Cat Colony

After the cat colony was moved by construction (Photo: Nicole Disser)

After the cat colony was moved by construction (Photo: Nicole Disser)

As a work-resident of Greenpoint, the soundtrack to my daytime life is a near constant wash of brutal jackhammer vibrato and diesel-spewing growls emitted from a stream of trucks. As you might have noticed, the neighborhood, from the edge of Williamsburg to the Pulaski Bridge, is getting seriously tore up by mega-developments like Greenpoint Landing and the expansion of the Brooklyn Greenway.
It’s easy to speak about the consequences of all this change in abstract terms, and harder to know exactly who will be impacted, when, and how. But that’s not really the case when it comes to feral cats like Kool-Aid, a mangy little black-and-white dude who lurks around the neighborhood’s abandoned lots and the in-between spaces. Clearly, his way of life is about to change. As new construction threatens the colony where he and about ten other cats live, their caretakers are scrambling for a way to assert something like squatter’s rights.
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In Ridgewood-Bushwick, the Last of the Rooftop Pigeon Whisperers

 Paul Wohlfarth keeps more than 250 pigeons in his rooftop coop (Photo by Daniel Hoffman)

Paul Wohlfarth keeps more than 250 pigeons in his rooftop coop (Photo by Daniel Hoffman)

To get to his rooftop, Paul Wohlfarth passes by a gigantic stag’s head hanging in the hallway, climbs a wobbly ladder and slips through a narrow opening. The 64-year-old has been repeating these gymnastics for the past six decades. On top of his building is a fenced coop, housing more than 250 pigeons in different compartments. Wohlfarth, a roofer by profession, can recognize any of his birds in a flash. “That one with the blue band is a tippler,” he says. “It’s got a short beak, a wide eye. If you didn’t know, you’d think it’s a street pigeon. But there are a million breeds.”

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