Installation view of “Marguerite Humeau: Echoes,” 2015, at DUVE Berlin.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND DUVE BERLIN
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
Exhibition: Marguerite Humeau at New Museum
For her first solo exhibition at a U.S. museum, Marguerite Humeau will show a new installation that combines sculpture and sound and focuses on the inevitability of humanity’s extinction. Her new bronze and stone figures, each resembling old Venus statuettes and situated in a darkened gallery, are meant to allude to the annihilation of their human offspring. Animism, totemism, and spiritual travel have all been influences for Humeau, and they have helped spur on the work in her New Museum exhibition, “Birth Canal.”
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 11 a.m.—6 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
Opening: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Bitforms Gallery
“Confirmation Bias” will feature five works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer—an immersive light installation, a 3D-printed steel sculpture, and three data-driven, screen-based works. Named for the tendency to favor information that aligns with one’s own beliefs or hypotheses, the show, like much of Lozano-Hemmer’s practice, relies on the active engagement of the viewer. Highlights include Saturation Sampler (2017), a flat-screen triptych that tracks and classifies saturated colors from visitors’ bodies and clothes, and Volute 1, Au clair de la lune (2016), an aluminum sculpture that a release claims is the first-ever 3D-printed speech bubble.
Bitforms Gallery, 131 Allen Street, 6–8 p.m.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Saturation Sampler, 2017.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BITFORMS GALLERY
Talk: Wolfgang Tillmans at New York Public Library
As part of the “Live from the New York Public Library” series, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans joins the program’s founder and director, Paul Holdengräber, in conversation. Their discussion will focus on the role of art in supporting democracy and fighting nationalistic movements. Tillmans’s talk at the NYPL precedes his latest New York solo outing, “How likely is it that only I am right in this matter?,” which opens at David Zwirner gallery on September 13.
New York Public Library, 476 Fifth Avenue, 7 p.m. Tickets $40
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
Exhibition: Jack Whitten at Met Breuer
This exhibition sheds light on a lesser-known aspect of the painter Jack Whitten: his sculptures, which connect traditions from around the globe and often include objects that the artist himself found, like fishing lines, bone, and marble. On view will be 40 sculptures alongside 18 paintings, including the entirety of Whitten’s “Black Monolith” series, as well as African, Cycladic, Minoan, and American objects from the Met’s collection.
Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Frank Bowling, Drift I, 2017, acrylic on printed canvas.
©2018 FRANK BOWLING/COURTESY ALEXANDER GRAY ASSOCIATES, NEW YORK, AND HALES GALLERY, LONDON
Opening: Frank Bowling at Alexander Gray Associates
For more than five decades, the painter Frank Bowling has been developing a multifaceted approach to abstraction, informed both by modernist painting and political concerns. He’s known, in his work, to gesture at his own narrative—he was born in British Guiana and studied at the Royal College of Art in London—and situate it within larger postcolonial stories from around the world. His new show will include paintings that often suggest larger historical frameworks, albeit ambiguous ones. Bowling has said of these new paintings: “I do not want to illustrate anything, but to make the paint dance. . . . The paint does its own thing, spreads and bleeds and then suggests images.”
Alexander Gray Associates, 510 West 26th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Joan Mitchell at Cheim & Read
This exhibition at Cheim & Read takes a look at a formative decade of work from the late artist, spanning the early 1950s through the beginning of the ’60s. During this period, Mitchell produced abstract paintings drawing influences from a host of personal and visual references, including her Midwestern upbringing and her love of bridges. Ahead of a forthcoming retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2020, the exhibition offers a sampler of the Abstract Expressionist’s work during the prime of her career.
Cheim & Read, 547 West 25th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Toyin Ojih Odutola at Jack Shainman Gallery
Hot off a Whitney Museum solo show last year, Toyin Ojih Odutola will debut new works spread across both of Jack Shainman’s Chelsea spaces. Titled “When Legends Die,” the exhibition is part of a larger body of work centered around the UmeEze Amara Clan, a fictional Nigerian family descended from the noble class. Past works by Ojih Odutola have included portraits of family members, their skin marked by whorls of black, brown, and white pencil marks. Borne out of a collaboration with Shainman and the late dealer Claude Simard, the show concludes a long-term project by the artist built around notions of cultural heritage.
Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street and 524 West 24th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Simone Leigh , 100 (Face Jug Series), 2018, salt-fired stoneware.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND LUHRING AUGUSTINE
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
Opening: Simone Leigh at Luhring Augustine
Currently a finalist for the Guggenehim Museum’s $100,000 Hugo Boss Prize, Simone Leigh will here show a new series of ceramic sculptures that, like much of her other work, focuses on the black femme experience. Subjects range from an ancient bronze vase featuring a Nubian boy to the Mississippi diner Mammy’s Cupboard, the architecture of which resembles a racist artifact. The show’s centerpiece is Untitled (M*A*S*H), a film first shown at this year’s Berlin Biennale, which takes the plot of an episode of the TV show M*A*S*H and refocuses it such that the story is now acted out entirely black female performers. In Leigh’s hands, the plot becomes a statement about the role of spaces of care and healing for black women.
Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, 6–8 p.m.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
Opening: “Sutures” at Marc Straus
“Sutures” takes its name from a 1993 sculpture by Louis Bourgeois that featured spools of thread seemingly bound together by a rack and an ovoid form. Using the work’s connection between textiles and personal narratives (Bourgeois’s first studio was in a former thread factory) as a jumping-off point, the group show brings together artists whose pieces combine craft and strands of history. Artists featured include Athi-Patra Ruga, Sonia Gomes, Elaine Reichek, and Maria Nepomuceno.
Marc Straus, 299 Grand Street, 6–8 p.m.