Turn that frown upside down!

Saturday at 4pm is the Art Parade, in which dozens of revelers shimmy down West Broadway from Houston to Grand Street, garbed in outrageous outfits, scathing political placards, portable sculptures, origami kites, papier-mâché heads and tableaux of all stripes. Is it pretentious and just a little bit silly? Yes—but it’s two fucking months till Halloween and we have a werewolf Giuliani costume that we’re dying to try out.

^{Photo: Charlie Samuels}

The shuttered storefront at 117 Delancey Street was an otherwise forgotten Chinese restaurant that led into now-abandoned Building D of the Essex Street Market. But today, the former purveyor of cheap takeout is awaiting a delivery of its own: 70 tons of sand. It’s all part of the transformation of a desolate urban space into a work of art by the British artist Mike Nelson. Since July, Nelson has been busily preparing the former eatery (as well as rest of the old LES marketplace) for a rebirth September 8 as A Psychic Vacuum, the latest of the artist’s installations informed by his reading and experiences. Viewers will move through the old Chinese restaurant into a series of disorienting hallways that mix original elements (decades’ worth of peeling paint) with touches Nelson has added (the sound of one’s foot against the floor has even been controlled). This ambitious project (instigated by former Creative Time curator and producer Peter Eleey) complicates Nelson’s usual method of converting galleries by giving him work in a place that’s so full of history, it will be hard to determine what’s been there all along and what the artist has brought in. Read the rest of this entry »

Elizabeth Murray was only 65 when MoMA mounted a retrospective of her works at the close of 2005, but the show was tragically comprehensive—Murray died yesterday due to complications from lung cancer. Like most greats (Murray was only the fourth woman to be featured in a MoMA retrospective, and was honored as a MacArthur “genius” in 1999), her style was never easily characterized, generally falling under the genre “Post-Minimalism.” She strongly favored painting, though her surfaces varied, and these works, while abstract and not overtly intimate, echoed her personal life, becoming almost comforting in their confidence and humor.

The Chicago-born painter leaves works in museums across the nation, and in New York City, where she first showed at the Whitney Museum, Elizabeth Murray will remain a part of history and daily life through two vibrant mosaics in subway stops at 23rd Street and 59th Street.

As someone who had a fuzzy pink bedtime companion—Growing Up Teddy—every night as a child, I tend to see teddy bears as something to be cherished, not mutilated or torn apart. Photographer Kent Rogowski clearly has a different attitude. In his artistic curiosity, Rogowski has turned these comforting creatures inside out and photographed the resulting forms for an exhibition at the Foley Gallery (547 W 27th St between Tenth and Eleventh Aves, fifth floor; 212-244-9081). At first glance, the bulging eyes, frayed strings and stray cotton fluffs appear somewhat terrifying, but Rogowski challenges the viewer to find a new kind of beauty in these unusual creatures. As I perused the various plush mutants, I came across a baby-blue figure that reminded me of my own Teddy, making me realize that even these bears have their charms. Check out the quirky exhibition while you still can; it runs only through August 10.

With Rolling Rock becoming the go-to gallery drink, the beer drinking at Chelsea openings is starting to rival that of your average frat house. But brew sipping becomes a particular topic of interest in Elizabeth Dee Gallery’s summer show “Carte Blanche,” organized by Jenny Moore.

For the first two weeks of August, the gallery is devoted to video works: Aldir Mendes de Souza’s experimental film Suicidio Brasileira screens continually in the back room (shot in X-ray, this work was the thing at the 1971 Bienal de São Paulo), while each day the gallery’s front room houses a new program of videos selected by various guest artists and curators. Read the rest of this entry »

Cory Arcangel revels in obsolete technology. Is it nostalgia? Just short of 30, he hardly seems old enough to yearn for the good ol’ days. The artist, who first made waves at Deitch Projects in 2005 with Super Mario Movie (a video played live off of an altered Nintendo Entertainment system), is now showing at MoMA. In celebration of his quick rise to exaltation, the king of the ’90s will be joined by his court (well, friends), the impish Paper Rad kids, to host PopRally, MoMA’s late-night art/music/performance extravaganza on July 24 from 8 to 11pm.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Three Kings Day parade has its sheep and donkeys, the Chinese New Year Parade its dragons. But toilets-turned-tricycles? Try the Deitch Art Parade. Attacking West Broadway on September 8 with artists’ floats and naked dancers, the Art Parade isn’t your average family affair. Participants are selected by Deitch Projects, who, along with Creative Time and Paper Magazine, put on the event. Some groups are invited to submit proposals, but you can still go for it uninvited—the open call for concept submissions ends July 20. Previous parades have seen paintings mounted as picket signs, marching bands, inflatables of all sorts, those toilet tricycles and Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE banner, which, not having inspired the desired effect the first time around, has appeared annually since the first parade in 2005.

Confession: I haven’t been outside since 10 o’clock this morning. Afraid to stray from air-conditioned sanctuaries, many of us are missing out on outside happenings—not to mention fresh air. Switch off that AC for a couple hours and venture out to Chelsea at 8pm Wednesday for a free parking-lot screening of films by the Cuban-Dominican artist Quisqueya Henríquez, who is renowned for her sensory invocations of city life in places much closer to the equator than you are. Anticipating a survey of works by Henríquez opening at the Bronx Museum in September, the screening will include four videos, beginning with the 46-minute El mundo de afuera (”the world outside”) (2006), which culls from footage taken over the course of three years from the artist’s balcony in Santo Domingo. The film witnesses sailing ships and quotidian activities, all accompanied by a discordant soundtrack. Three shorter films will follow, concluding with the three-minute Salón de baile (”dance hall”) (2004), which allows a peek through a hole in a wall at a pair of dancing feet.

7 W 21st St, between Fifth and Sixth Aves. R.S.V.P.: Anne Edgar, anne@anneedgar.com or Lori Salmon, lsalmon@bronxmuseum.org

Salutations, my little zucchini flowers. My desk is closing in on me but that’s really nothing you should concern yourself with, seeing as my inability to keep my workspace neat and orderly is between me and the fire hazard. Okay, what the fuck is going on? Everyone around me is whispering! I’m getting paranoid. Good thing they can’t get to me behind this extra-sturdy desk fortification. If only I had rearview mirrors on my computer. And a seatbelt for my computer chair. I already wear a helmet, but that’s just good sense. And good fashion. And court ordered.

So I suppose you’re waiting around for today’s hot plans and I’m not one to disappoint. Why don’t you take yourself to “Equal, That Is, to the Real Itself.” And then why don’t you watch Ethan and my 1 Thing vlog. It’s vlogtastic and vlogpendous and vlogriffic and vlogderful and we talk about the art show I just recommended!

Hate being cooped up in a museum on a gorgeous summer day? Then it’s your time of year. Saturday, June 30, from 3 to 9pm, P.S.1 kicks off its annual ten-Saturday dance party, Warm Up. Under the kaleidoscopic brilliance of “Liquid Sky,” the Mylar canopy by Ball-Nogues (winners of this year’s MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program), the P.S.1 courtyard will see a rotating schedule of both live music and DJ sets. Curated by David Weinstein, Jason Drummond and Zach Layton, the party runs through September 1, so you’ll have plenty of chances to dance away a Saturday to innovative music in the presence of P.S.1-worthy art.

You (well, Time Out readers in general) voted Warm Up the best club in the city in 2005 (rest assured: unlike Christo’s The Gates, it didn’t also appear on a worst list), and at $10 (which includes admission to the museum), it’s also priced better than most.

Plus, if a six-hour party isn’t enough P.S.1 for your liking, admission is free from noon to 2pm on Warm Up Saturdays. Or, if you’ve already lined up your party schedule, you can stream the music free from wps1.org for your own portable Warm Up.

New York can create a false sense of confidence—most of it seems so straightforward, laid out on a geometric grid. But the New Museum is out to mess with your head with Get Lost. Organized by Massimiliano Gioni while the New Museum constructs its new home on the Bowery (slated to be finished this year), Get Lost takes the form of various maps of the city created by international artists who each represent lower Manhattan in their own way.

Some of the pages are truly cartographical (albeit with varying degrees of accuracy), renaming streets for their famous residents, using restaurants as directional tools, or drawing the city from memory. William Pope.L whites out all of the “destinations” on a conventional map, marking safe houses instead. Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore’s version of lower Manhattan is not a map, but a sort of collage dominated by a clipped-out photograph of Joey Ramone. Cory Arcangel takes us away to Las Vegas by reprinting a Google map. In an environmentally friendly move, Jennifer Bornstein shares her tips on “How to Ride the Bus,” a flyer featuring instructions, landmarks, and an all-important list of good and bad buses (average driver temperament factors in).

Get Lost won’t explain confusing intersections like Waverly Place and Waverly Place. But it will get you to think about your city in ways those wallet-sized lower-Manhattan maps never will.

Get Lost is free and now available at various locations around the city.