Picks of the Week (1/14-1/20)

Opening…

Hey Girl! has its U.S. premiere in Columbus, Ohio, at the Wexner Center for the Arts on January 15-16. Clearly much more than conventional theater, the production promises dramatic imagery, sculptural props and costumes, and an atmospheric soundscape. Created by Italian theater director Romeo Castellucci, Hey Girl! is a surreal reinterpretation of archetypes of feminine isolation, i.e. Juliet sans Romeo, Joan of Arc, or even “the girl next door.”

Following the Ohio premiere, Hey Girl! will move on to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art on January 18-19.

(Romeo Castellucci/Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Hey Girl!, Photograph by Francesco Raffaelli. Courtesy: Wexner Center for the Arts.)

Take a rare opportunity to view early work by Japanese artists Atsuko Tanaka and Akira Kanayama at Paula Cooper Gallery beginning January 17th. Both Tanaka and Kanayama were involved in the avant-garde Gutai Art Association in Osaka in the 1950’s. Within this context of constant aesthetic reinvention,Tanaka became famous for her Electric Dress (1956) and Kanayama for his Remote-Control Paintings (1955). Though not a self-proclaimed feminist, as one of the few women prominently involved in a mid-twentieth century avant-garde movement, Tanaka is an incidental predecessor of the Feminist art movement.

(Atsuko Tanaka, Untitled, 2004. Courtesy: Paula Cooper Gallery.)

Now Open…

The Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers, an organization that aims to support challenging art made by artists from under-represented groups, hosts its Annual Exhibition through January 25th. Don’t miss the collection of mixed media work in Femfolio, made by 20 founding artists of the 1970s Feminist movement including Nancy Azara, Betsy Damon, Mary Beth Edelson, Harmony Hammond, Joyce Kozloff, Carolee Schneemann, Sylvia Sleigh, Joan Snyder, Nancy Spero, and June Wayne.

(June Wayne, Zinc, Mon Amour, 2007. Courtesy: Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions.)

John Connelly Presents hosts AA Bronson’s School for Young Shamans through February 16th. The show features two irreverent collaborations between Bronson and Terence Koh, alongside work by nine younger artists, including feminist artist Sands Murray-Wassink. This collection of artists, intentionally cross-generational and international, provides, likewise, work employing a wide-ranging spectrum of media: two and three dimensional work as well as video, performance, and even a musical score by composer Andrew Zealley.

(AA Bronson, Evidence of Body Binding (arm with torso), vintage gelatin silver print, ca. 1970. Courtesy: John Connelly Presents.)

A show of paintings and photographs by Karen Kilimnik, at 303 Gallery through February 23rd, follows up the artist’s first American survey at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, which premiered last year. (The survey is currently at the Aspen Art Museum until February 3rd and will conclude its tour at the MCA Chicago February 23rd-June 1st.) These paintings, an expansion of Kilimnik’s practice of historical landscape painting, further explore her interest in the natural world as situated in time and space. Kilimnik’s photographs of east coast clouds, seemingly displaced from a tropical climate, allude to the curious effects of global warming–a timely subject for a Chelsea show, considering New York’s unseasonably warm January.

(Karen Kilimnik, A Summer Day, 1763, 2001. Courtesy: 303 Gallery.)