Contrary to the discursive habits of the art world, art is not a code to be deciphered; it is rather a place where one goes, ideally in good company. In February, go there. Listen to a sonic fusion of orchestral music and noise from a concrete plant, watch furniture come to life in protest or pleasure, and dance in a glittering reimagining of the first black-owned gay bar in San Francisco.
When: until February 26
Or: EFA Project Space (323 West 39th Street, Midtown West, Manhattan)
Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist artist collective co-founded by Brooklyn-based artists Sharmistha Ray and Dannelle Tegeder in 2020, used ritual divination – and an invocation of the spirit of the organization’s deceased namesake, the artist Swedish theosophist Hilma af Klint – to organize Cosmic geometries. The work of a diverse group of 25 creators, including Carrie Moyer, Yevgeniya Baras and Laleh Khorramian, unites around a shared affinity for the spiritual, mystical and occult in abstraction.
When: until February 26
Or: Meredith Rosen Gallery (11 East 80th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
“The sense of presence: it’s the defining quality of the metaverse,” one voice tells us bluntly, borrowing some of Mark Zuckerberg’s vacant techno-utopian statements. Among the highlights of the solo exhibition by Athens-born, Los Angeles-based artist Theo Triantafyllidis are two video installations that connect contemporary feelings of alienation to the pipeline of radicalization: a simulation depicts bored Orks on their electronic devices amid storms and kitchen fires, while the other features a violent clash of figures, some of whom carry white nationalist flags.
When: until February 26
Or: Dia Chelsea (537 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
The Dia Art Foundation, which counts Max Neuhaus’ sound installation in Times Square among the eleven sites it manages, has been a strong supporter of sound art for some time – and now has three releases to celebrate. In Listening areagallery visitors can enjoy a jukebox preloaded with the association’s sound publications, from On Kawara’s “One Million Years (Future)” (1993), in which a man and a woman methodically count , to new records from La Monte Young, Deantoni Parks and Lucy Raven and Carl Craig.
When: until March 5
Or: White Columns (91 Horatio Street, Meatpacking, Manhattan)
After a pandemic break from tradition, New York’s oldest alternative art space has opened the 12th edition of its annual, carefully curated by New York photographer Mary Manning, as a reflection and response to their final year of artistic experiences. The exhibition features works by 25 cross-generational artists, including Patrick Angus, Aria Dean, Stewart Uoo and Gordon Parks, and will be accompanied by a screening of films by Barbara Hammer at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.
When: until March 5
Or: Lounge 94 (3 East 89th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
In 1967, the Judson Gallery launched a suite of fantasy furniture by downtown New York artist and radical feminist writer Kate Millett, who is best known today for her 1970 text. Sexual policy. The furnishings, currently on display at Salon 94, are whimsical, anthropomorphic, and wonderfully odd fusions of found objects and hand-carved wood that form a cabinet that opens up its chest cavity, a bed with protruding legs, a stool that feeds all alone and even a table on roller skates (depicted on the streets of New York in a 1967 edition of Life was weaponized as “evidence” that Columbia PhD student Millett was not a serious scholar).
When: until March 6
Or: The Kitchen (512 West 19th St, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Organized in collaboration with the Studio Museum of Harlem, The New Eagle Creek Lounge features Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette’s fluorescent recreation of the San Francisco gay bar that her father, founder of the Compton chapter of the Black Panther Party, operated in the early 1990s. On select Saturdays, the architectural installation is activated by guest DJs by scholar and queer artist madison moore as part of The Kitchen’s new nightlife and club culture residency; visitors are invited to dance, a tribute to queer black spaces past and present.
When: until March 28
Or: SculptureCenter (44-19 Purves St, Long Island City, Queens)
Don’t put it back the way it was, co-curated with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, studies the work of Liz Larner, a surprisingly versatile sculptor and installation artist who graduated from CalArts in the 1980s. The works on display run the gamut of Larner’s early experiences. with bacterial cultures, to a kinetic wall-pounding machine, to the ceramic slabs that have occupied the artist for the past two decades. Although materially and aesthetically diverse, these sculptures are rooted in a common interest in how bodies move and exist in social and architectural space.
When: until April 24
Or: Madison Square Park (11 Madison Avenue, Nomad, Manhattan)
Towering over four lawns in Madison Square Park, Hugh Hayden’s ambitious sculptural installation features 100 elementary school wooden task chairs rendered unusable by bare tree branches aggressively growing from them. Contemplating inequalities in the American education system, Hayden’s surreal take on vernacular classroom furniture portrays institutionalized learning as a structurally unattractive, exclusionary, and absurd thicket.
When: February 3–March 12
Or: Susan Inglett Gallery (522 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Initiated in the early 2000s, Beverly Semmes’ ongoing “Feminist Responsibility Project” works with vintage porn magazines; using paint or ink to erase most of the female body in graphic images, Semmes transforms subjects into clumsy abstractions. Continuing this complex gesture, recent works exhibited in JAR OVERVIEW explore the similarities between erased women and vessels, literally and conceptually.
When: February 17–June 5
Or: New Museum (235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
Celebrating six decades of art by Harlem-born nonagenarian Faith Ringgold, this long-awaited retrospective showcases a collection of figurative paintings, narrative textiles and soft sculptures shaped by a belief in the power of women’s labor and black visual traditions. . A highlight is the entirety of “The French Collection” (1991-1994), Ringgold’s 12-part series of experimental quilts exploring the life of a black American artist and model working in modernist circles from the 1920s to Paris.
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