Gallery Goer is a weekly roundup of gallery shows on the Lower East Side. Check out our top picks for shows opening each week that you won’t want to miss.
Saturday, March 28, 5 pm to 7 pm
Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space: Shifting Impressions
This exhibition in conjunction with City Souvenirs, a site responsive project that uses walking, clay and public participation to create connections between people and place. The show is a collaboration between two artists—Liene Bosquê and Nicole Seisler. Curated by Lynnette Miranda, Shifting Impressions features a objects and tools that visitors can physically handle, as well as a series of three public walks on the Lower East Side.
In pairing the gallery show with the walks, the artists invite participants to walk through the neighborhood and make direct impressions of the landscape with fresh blocks of clay. After participants have made marks in the clay, the artists will collect the objects. One side of the clay records specific architectural details, while the other retains the imprint of the hand, its subtle lines and fingerprints.
Within the context of the Lower East Side’s ongoing and rapid transformation, this show is particularly meaningful as the Essex Street Market, along with Cuchifritos, will move across the street to the Essex Crossing development in 2018. The show debuts as demolition on an original Market structure on the south side of Delancey St. has already begun, perfectly timed in the face of constant change in the neighborhood.
The show’s public walks are on April 11, 18 and 25. All walks begin at 4 pm from Cuchifritos Gallery inside Essex Street Market.
Through April 26, 2015 // Tues.-Sun. 12 pm to 6 pm // 120 Essex St.
Opened Recently:
James Fuentes: Debris
This fun, highly eclectic show features artists who happily appropriate found objects from everyday life, manipulate and copy them to prevent them from disappearing. Fuentes has included work by Darja Bajagić, David Wojnarowicz, Haim Steinbach, Lizzi Bougatsos, Nevine Mahmoud and Renaud Jerez. As a group, the works represent visceral assemblages illustrating portraits, diaries, and narratives.
David Wojnarowicz’s Cal (Factory Face), acrylic and collage on masonite, stares eerily at the viewer, abstract and figurative at once. The stark canvas pops off the wall, easily superseding most of the other paintings in the show.
Renaud Jerez’ TJS 1 is truly one of the most intriguing pieces in the show. This skeletal, robot-looking figure is made of burnt PVC pipe, aluminum, cotton, string, satellite cable, web cams, duct tape plastic tubing, polyester and denim clothing with rubber feet. I half expected the figure to blurt something out, Tourettes’-like, or take a step.
Through April 26, 2015 // James Fuentes, 55 Delancey St. // Wed.-Sun. 10 am to 6 pm
Tobi Elkin is a freelance writer and editor who lives on the Lower East Side. She works as a journalist at eMarketer, a digital marketing and media research firm. Follow her on Twitter at: @TobiElkin.
