Need a little distraction from the election? We’ve got a veritable labyrinth of art, as Reviews Editor Natalie Haddad puts it, to lose yourself in — not one but two guides of shows to see, both here and Upstate. In our neck of the woods, there’s Samuel Hindolo’s haunted whimsy, Tina Girouard’s poetic eclecticism, Emilia Azcárate and José Gabriel Fernández’s sumptuous abstractions, and much more. And up in the, you know, actual woods, we have Matthew Lusk’s suspended hardware assemblages, Sascha Mallon’s wolf-filled mythological worlds, and a doll exhibition that’s alternately quirky and horrifying.

If there’s one thing you can count on even as our country shifts tectonically beneath us, it’s the unfailing optimism of our Upstate correspondent (and, I learned by editing her guide this week, fervent Guns N’ Roses stan) Taliesin Thomas. I was particularly struck by her elegy to autumn, buried in her description of the decadently gothic work of ORT Project, in which she finds a blessing in this season’s mix of decomposition and abundance.

But if escapism isn’t your drug of choice, there are other avenues to solace, whichever way the election needle turns. Critic David Markus reviews a show of protest materials at NYU that he deems a haven of solidarity at the heart of a new McCarthyism. There’s exhaustion and melancholy there, he writes, but there’s also “the joy of building, dancing, and protesting together; the love necessitated by and born out of sustained collective action.” 

— Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor

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• At The Met, Jesse Krimes’s rebuke of the US criminal justice system and Anastasia Samoylova’s uncanny images of Florida stir a visceral response in an election defined by cognitive dissonance.

• An erotic puppet theater exploring the romantic lives and fantasies of artists with disabilities made its grand NYC debut this weekend. 

• Small-scale paintings and hyperrealism made a splash at the Art Dealers Association of America’s annual fair, the Art Show.

• One of the last standing meat markets in the Meatpacking District could be converted into an extension of the Whitney Museum of American Art per a plan announced by Mayor Eric Adams.

• The Studio Museum in Harlem received a $10 million grant from the Ford Foundation to endow its director and chief curator role, long held by Thelma Golden.

• Combining saxophone, piano, electronics, and their own voice, JJJJJerome Ellis will be performing excerpts of their 2022 work “Aster of Ceremonies” at the Kitchen this Thursday, Nov. 7. [thekitchen.org]

• Also on Thursday, Thomas Allen Harris is screening two of his films in a “mythopoetic feast” at the Maysles Documentary Center. [instagram.com]

• The world’s largest Japanese food festival comes to the East Village this Saturday, Nov. 9. [japanfes.com]

• Hyperallergic Senior Marketing Manager Alex Bowditch recommends Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off — which is exactly what it sounds like — at the Museum of the City of New York, because she’s got great taste (no pun intended). Opening Tues, Nov. 11. [mcny.org]

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