Top NYC Exhibitions
Opening this Week
(June 24-28)

Renzo Piano: “Fragments” at Gagosian Gallery
June 27 – August 2
Opening: June 27, 6-8PM
522 West 21st Street
Equal parts library reading room, school classroom, and natural history gallery, the exhibition consists of twenty-four tabletop displays of scale models, drawings, photographs, and video. Each tells the involved, inspiring story of the design process of a single building, from museums, libraries, and airports to private residences.

“Reinventing Abstraction: New York Painting in the 1980s” at Cheim & Read
June 27 – August 30
Opening: June 27, 6-8PM
547 West 25th Street
This exhibition focuses on New York abstraction in the 1980s practiced by a generation of painters born between 1939 and 1949. Official accounts of the 1980s-the decade when most of these artists either emerged or solidified their approaches-tend to ignore the individualistic abstraction exemplified by these painters in favor of more easily identifiable movements and styles (New-Expressionism, Appropriation Art, Neo-Geo etc). Stanley Whitney and Mary Heilmann are amongst the list of painters being exhibited. Curated by Raphael Rubinstein.

“Junkies’ Promises” at Paul Kasmin Gallery
June 27 – August 16
Opening: June 27, 6-8PM
293 Tenth Avenue & 515 West 27th Street
This show is inspired by William S. Burroughs’ 1953 novel, Junky, a semi-autobiographical fiction of a heroin addict and dealer in ‘50s New York. “I became fascinated by the way Burroughs fictionalizes survival as a junkie, especially with minimal economic resources and using improvised strategies to reach a goal,” curator Iván Navarro said. “I realized that, metaphorically, this attitude is exactly the way many artists develop their work, at least the kind of industrious artists I am interested in.” The exhibition will feature over 15 artists, including Alfredo Jaar, Deborah Kass, and Pipilotti Rist.

“Mind is Outer Space” at Casey Kaplan
June 27 – August 2
Opening: June 27, 6-8PM
525 West 21st Street
“But, of course, music is terribly important also. In hearing, there is also the sense of touching, in the sense that the piano player touches the keys. Hearing has the most power. The king of Spain, who was a little insane, could only be brought to reason by listening to the very high voice of a certain male singer who was a castrato. Beauty of the ear kept him sane, well, perhaps really not sane, but at least not dangerous.”
-Louise Bourgeois in conversation with Bill Beckley, 1997.
Organized by Alice Conconi and Loring Randolph, this group exhibition is made up of over 15 artists including Louise Bourgeois, Trisha Donnelly, Marisa Merz, and Ricky Swallow.

“Minty” at Foxy Production
June 27 – August 2
Opening: June 27, 6-8PM, Nicholas Buffon performance, 7PM
623 West 27th Street
Curated by Ebony L. Haynes, the group exhibition features work by Nicholas Buffon, Ben Horns, Megan Marrin, Cassie Raihl, and Matt Savitsky.

Simon Fujiwara: “Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex)” at Andrea Rosen Gallery
June 28 – August 9
Opening: June 27, 6-8PM
525 West 24th Street
“Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex)” details the artist’s attempt to re-stage a lost photograph remembered from childhood of his bikini-clad British mother held in the arms of a former Lebanese boyfriend and taken on a beach close to the famous Casino du Liban outside of Beirut where she worked as a cabaret dancer in the late 1960s. Beginning as an attempt to simply reconstruct the photograph, the artist’s role as director – casting the models, designing the set and even the make-up selection – soon draws him into the labyrinth of larger social and political questions about racial profiling, exoticism, terrorism, and sexual identity.

FRIDAY

“On Nature” at Sean Kelly
June 28 – August 2
475 Tenth Avenue
Joseph Beuys, Olafur Eliasson, Laurent Grasso, and Alec Soth are just a few of the artists exhibited in this group exhibition.