Here are Ashlie Cotton’s gallery opening highlights for the weekend:
This weekend’s events get a jump-start tonight with a very striking screening at the Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building (5 E. 3rd Street) starting at 6PM. The screening is part of Ludlow 38‘s group show,“Into The Unknown,” which seeks to explore different artists’ use of archival film footage. Two Portugese documentaries will be shown, with an introduction by Joaquim Moreno, a Portuguese architect and curator.
The first screening is António Cunha Telles’s “Continuar a Viver” (1975), set at a housing cooperative in the fisherman’s village of Meia Praia. The second is João Dias’s “As Operações SAAL” (2009), which won the MIDAS prize at DocLisboa 2008. Both of the films, separated by more than 3 decades, discuss the work of SAAL, a radical experiment in participatory architecture after the 1974 Portugese revolution.
Another titillating show to check out this weekend is “Ozymandias” by artist Allyson Vieira, opening at Small A Projects (261 Broome) from 6-8PM on Saturday. Vieira, whose work is inspired by old legacies and empires, could have been an apprentice at a construction company with her chosen combination of materiels: drywall, plaster, and concrete. The artist has also published a book of drawings called Geometry and Democracy, that opens with the clever line: “Let no one unversed in geometry enter my door.” There will be a live octopus in the show, presenting an opportunity way too good to pass up.
If the octopus from Ozymandias leaves you wanting more, as I’m sure it will, then head on over to Invisible-Exports (14A Orchard), for their Saturday night opening from 6-8PM. Their highly anticipated show is “The Protective Motif” by artist Walt Cassidy, and this is his first solo show in NYC. Some of his 2D pigment prints resemble what could almost be 3D dreamcatchers, and his use of brass makes some of the pieces pop-out dimensionally. The results create Cassidy’s “own personal alphabet.” Interview Magazine recently did a studio visit with Cassidy, where they also discussed the upcoming show (read it here).
Another exciting event for LES galleries this weekend is a show from the combined forces of two separate galleries; LMAKprojects (139 Eldridge) and Stephen Stoyanov Gallery(29 Orchard) are hosting the exhibit, “Autoportrait contre nature” by Belgian artist Lieven De Boeck. The opening reception at LMAKprojects will be on April 3rd from 6-9PM, and the reception at Stephen Stoyanov Gallery will be on April 4th from 1-4PM. In one vein, De Boeck’s works are essentially non-portraits, devoid of any personal details and ominously empty of human features. In another, he relates to Walt Cassidy (see above) by dealing with the notion of letters, or rather the deconstruction of symbols and language.
Ashlie Cotton is a Lo-Down intern and Arts Contributor. She also lives in the LES and will be graduating from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU in May, where she studies Interdisciplinary Creative Arts and Psychology.
