COMMISSIONED BY THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Opening: Takesada Matsutani at Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth will be hosting Osaka-born, Paris-based Takesada Matsutani’s first New York show, featuring previously unseen early paintings and sculptures from the 1970s as well as drawings and abstract works made in his trademark medium of graphite and vinyl glue. Matsutani, a participant in the avant-garde Gutai Art Association, whose career spans five decades, began as an apprentice at Stanley William Hayter’s Paris-based Atelier 17, later developing an interest in American Minimalism and Ellsworth Kelly’s hard-edge paintings. Of his graphite, paint, and turpentine drawings, Matsutani has said, “I feel something universal in the beauty of this black.”
Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, 6—8 p.m.
COURTESY TEAM GALLERY
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5
Opening: Ryan McGinley at Team Gallery
Ryan McGinley’s new show at Team Gallery will be divided between the gallery’s New York and Venice Beach locations. The Venice Beach location will host McGinley’s “Fall” photo series, while its “Winter” counterpart will be on display in New York. For these series, McGinley shot nude figures in upstate New York during the respective seasons in the style of his iconic “Road Trip” photos, which were taken during the summer. Signaling a departure for the photographer, “Fall” pays homage to the Romantic landscapists, while “Winter” captures nude models in frozen landscapes, which required extreme measures to produce.
Team Gallery, 83 Grand Street, 6—8 p.m.
Opening: Mary Heilmann at 303 Gallery
In a period when abstraction can feel out of step with the times, Mary Heilmann’s abstract paintings should feel tired, but they don’t at all. Instead, her shaped paintings and offbeat diptychs allow abstraction to leap out of the confines of the rectangular canvas. Using roads and waves to create a sense of movement, Heilmann makes work in which the horizon line barely matters anymore—it seems as if you could drive into the sky or swim into the sunset. As usual, her new show at 303 Gallery, titled “Geometrics: Waves, Roads, etc.,” will be accompanied by chairs designed by Heilmann, some of which were on view this summer at the Whitney.
303 Gallery, 507 West 24th Street, 6–8 p.m.
COURTESY DAVID ZWIRNER
Opening: Bridget Riley at David Zwirner
Bridget Riley’s first show in the city since 2007 will also mark 50 years since her career-making feature in MoMA’s “The Responsive Eye” show. The British artist, known for her work in line and color, has also “test[ed] the limits of each element [including circles, stripes, and curves] at various stages throughout her career,” according to a press release, since the early 1960s. Besides paintings, the exhibition will also include works on paper created throughout a period of 35 years. The show will begin with Riley’s vertical striped works from the 1980s, featuring her “Egyptian color palette,” which, unlike her previous rationally-ordered work, was organized by plastic principles. This led to a period of diagonal grid paintings, which began in 1986, which then influenced her curved paintings of the late 1990s.
David Zwirner, 525 West 19th Street and 533 West 19th Street, 6—8 p.m.
Opening: Camille Henrot at Metro Pictures
Camille Henrot’s much-anticipated first show at Metro Pictures will encompass large gestural drawings and sculptures, works that “[construct] a view of dysfunctions and felt inadequacies inherent to the interpersonal dynamics of any given social group, be it as citizens or family members,” according to a press release. Depicting social anxieties often dismissed as “hangups,” Henrot’s new work offers an alternative viewpoint that connects minor interactions to more serious psychological and sociopolitical issues. New watercolors, evoking Matisse and cartoonists such as Saul Sternberg simultaneously, depict anthropomorphic animals in the throes of everyday unfair and abusive situations inspired by sources ranging from mythology to gossip blogs. One of the highlights of the show includes telephones programmed as self-help hotlines, which urges the listener to do things like, “press 5 if your dog manipulates you with lies, contradictions or promises.”
Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, 6—8 p.m.
COURTESY ARTISTS SPACE
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6
Opening: Union Gaucha Productions at Artists Space Books & Talks
Much like its critically acclaimed Hito Steyerl survey from earlier this year, Artists Space’s Union Gaucha Productions show will be another film- and video-based exhibition that isn’t afraid to make viewers think hard. Active between 1997 and 2010, the New York–based collective was the brainchild of Karin Schneider and Nicolás Guagnini, two artists who both had experience with experimental and avant-garde film. Together, they began working in a documentary tradition to show that objects and people were always in motion—meaning was never fixed, whether it was a Barnett Newman painting or a New York neighborhood.
Artists Space Books & Talks, 55 Walker Street, 6–8 p.m.
Journal Launch: aCCesSions at SculptureCenter
With the MA students at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies having recently started aCCesSions, SculptureCenter will host a launch for the online art journal. The launch will include an online tour of the journal, whose first issue focuses on the role of global crises in the art world. But if that sounds too safe, too expected, the launch will also feature performances by Deanna Havas, who has brewed coffee for Hans-Ulrich Obrist as performance art, and Puppies Puppies, who staged an entire show at Freddy Gallery last year based on horseshoe crabs.
SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves Street, Queens, 7–9 p.m.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7
Opening: “Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015” at the Museum of Modern Art
On the 30th anniversary of its acclaimed survey of emerging photographers, MoMA has expanded “New Photography”—this year it includes 19 artists and collectives from 14 countries. The theme this year is the profusion of images available online, which these artists and collectives use as a way of seeing the world. If that sounds a lot like the New Museum Triennial’s thesis, it may not be coincidence—DIS has even made more of its creepy-chic manipulated photos for this show. Something might just be in the air. Also included will be Israeli photographer Ilit Azoulay’s Salon-style pictures of objects and UK–based artist Mishka Henner’s photobook version of the solar system.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m., free with museum admission
COURTESY MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8
Screening: Be Kind Rewind at the Museum of the Moving Image
A screening of Be Kind Rewind is admittedly an unlikely subject for a listing in an art-events post. Michel Gondry’s oddball comedy stars Jack Black and Mos Def as two video-store owners who begin remaking classic films and then renting them out. You may be surprised to learn, however, that French video artist Pierre Bismuth, whose work often plays with fact and fiction in mainstream filmmaking, co-wrote the film with Gondry. (He also shared an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.) Bismuth will introduce and do a Q&A after the Museum of the Moving Image’s screening, held in connection with its show “Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art.”
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Queens, 4:30 p.m., $9/$12
Talk and Viewing Reception: “Max Kozloff and the Unfolding of Photography Criticism” at SVA and Steven Kasher Gallery
Legend alert! Author Phillip Lopate, photographer Duane Michaels, SFMOMA senior curator of photography Sandra Phillips, and Yale School of Art dean Rob Storr will discuss the career of critic and photographer Max Kozloff. After the discussion, the action moves to Kasher for a viewing of portraits by Kozloff.
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, 2–5 p.m. and Steve Kasher Gallery, 515 West 26th Street, 5:30–7 p.m.