Selena Gallery

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Bushwick Open Studios and More Art This Week

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(image via La Mama)

Inside Out Here
Opening Thursday, September 27 at La Mama Galleria. On view through October 20.

La Mama, the historic East Village theater space primarily known for presenting a range of experimental performance, also maintains a gallery space on Great Jones Street. Thursday, it will open Inside Out Here, an exhibition by multidisciplinary artists Devin N. Morris and Frederick Weston. Morris was born in 1986 and Weston in 1946, 40 years prior; uniting these two to create work around queerness, blackness, and how these communities have made space for themselves throughout history has made for a show that quite literally stretches across generations. More →

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Art This Week: Salsa Soul Sisters, Persian Neil Diamond and More

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(image via Lesbian Herstory Archives / Facebook)

Salsa Soul Sisters: Honoring Lesbians of Color
Opening Wednesday, May 9 at EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, 6 pm. On view through June 29.

There are only a paltry handful of lesbian-specific spaces left in the city, but many initiatives exist to inform of the bars, venues, and collectives that make up lesbian and queer history in the city and beyond. The Lesbian Herstory Archives in collaboration with EFA will be presenting an archival exhibition that shines a light on the Salsa Soul Sisters, a collective of lesbian and bisexual Black, Latina, Indigenous, and Asian-American women founded in NYC in 1976. If you can’t make the opening reception on Wednesday, there will be a panel discussion and open mic on June 1 and a closing reception on June 29. More →

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Art This Week: Developer Trays and Stylized Selfhood

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(image via Elizabeth Houston Gallery)

Developer Trays
Opening Wednesday, March 28 at Elizabeth Houston Gallery, 7 pm to 9 pm. On view through May 5.

Though digital photography (whether on fancy DSLRs or iPhones with portrait mode) is inarguably king today, there are still people out there shooting film. Though not quite a relic yet, the chemical-laden process of developing and printing your own film in a darkroom is something many people may not understand or even be aware of. One of the key components of doing this is laying the soon-to-be photograph in a tray filled with developer chemicals, which steadily brings the photo to life. Artist John Cyr, a photographer and printer himself, has latched onto the developer tray as an integral object to the working photographer. His images, portraying developer trays that belonged to notable and unknown photographers alike, cast these practical objects in a light usually reserved for more “important”-seeming items. Their unique textures, stains, colors, and designs documented for posterity illuminate film development as a historically-significant art practice in itself. More →

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Exhibitions To See: 8-Bit Reality, Kathleen White, Immigrant Women

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(image courtesy of Catinca Tabacaru Gallery)

Lateral Thinking With Withered Technology
Opening Thursday, December 14 at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, 6 pm to 8 pm. On view through January 21.

Though the title of this exhibition may call to mind a really wrinkly cell phone, it is in fact a reference to the ideology of the creator of the Nintendo Game Boy, Gunpei Yokoi. This sort of reference feels right at home when it comes to this show by Shinji Murakami, which will transform a gallery space into an illuminated augmented reality playland. His materials of choice tend to be more traditional, such as wood, plastic, and glue, but he also uses vast amount of LED lights. Altogether, this creates a homage to 1980s gaming, particularly the simple and nostalgic 8-bit aesthetic. In the midst of this 8-bit world, the artist has turned an LED panel into a real-time display of Elon Musk’s Twitter feed, a clear reminder that while the gallery may look rooted in the technology of the past, we are in the present, and it’s a present that may not be too far away from colonizing other planets. More →

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New Exhibitions: One Artist In Two Galleries, Beautiful Soup, Native Transformers

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(image via Disclaimer Gallery / Facebook)

First, Play / Second Date
Opening Wednesday, November 8 and Thursday, November 9 at Disclaimer Gallery and Field Projects, 6 pm to 9 pm and 6 pm to 8 pm.

It’s common to see many artists showing work in one gallery show, but less so to see a singular artist (who isn’t a long-deceased master or buzzy household name) exhibiting at multiple galleries in the same city at the same time. Though this may be rare, queer artist Loren Britton is far from ordinary. Both exhibitions explore the confines and freedoms of bodies and language, specifically in regards to the queer and gender non-conforming experience.

At Chelsea’s Field Projects, their charming but rough paper pulp wall reliefs reside. Over at Bushwick’s Disclaimer Gallery, a sandbox installation rife with pastel, pulp, and radical politics makes its home. At the former, it’s recommended attendees “stay clean”; at the latter, “getting dirty is encouraged.” Rounding out the artist’s presence is a coloring book collaboration with artist/designer Laura Coombs; people are encouraged to fill in the book on their time between exhibitions. More →

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