| Guerilla Girls and ex-Guerilla Girls, artist-poets and artist duos, late artist-activists and up-and-comers, artworks that exert quiet power and objects that don’t exist — we’ve got it all this week, with a stacked New York newsletter that augurs bounties to come. To be clear: We’ll now be rounding up notable shows weekly, to better track the pulse of this tachycardiac city. If there’s a theme to our eight reviews and pair of guides this week — that’s right, we work hard here— it’s the importance of populism against power. AX Mina takes us to Queens, where Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien meditate on the Escalante Massacre in the Phillippines in 1985, during which the government opened fire against peaceful protestors of the Marcos regime, and its attendant damage to both the environment and the psyche. Seph Rodney treks to Chelsea to meditate on the power plays of uncaring bureaucrats in Lubaina Himid’s paintings. Downtown, our Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian was struck by a nearly decade-old Guerilla Girls poster that remains chillingly relevant, and Reviews Editor Natalie Haddad felt much the same way about Judith Bernstein’s solo at Kasmin Gallery, in which she depicts strongmen as “dickheads, cockmen, schlong faces.” I love that she ended her review with a call to action: “Given the opportunity, she’ll gladly take [her work] to the greater public,” Haddad writes. “So, art institutions, the ball’s in your court.” In her monthly round-up of Upstate shows, Taliesin Thomas invokes a theory that the universe is “held in place by opposing binaries.” (She’s got a philosophy PhD, so she knows what she’s talking about.) Taking that to heart, our other reviews this week seem to hunker down rather than agitate, mirroring the introspective quiet of the artworks they analyze: Vartanian on the luminous, pearlescent paintings of Alexis Trice, John Yau on the hermetic devotion of Myron Stout. Even in something so simple as a black rectangle, the latter suggests, there is a world of attention to the repetition of mark-making, the level of pressure applied. Oh, and how could we forget? Happy February. Leave it to the ever-ebullient Thomas to offer an effervescent rather than sobering view on it all — dry January, after all, is over. “Let us,” she suggests, “indulge our ardor for art during these amorous days!” — Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor | | |
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 | | Make sure to check out shows by the Guerrilla Girls and Etel Adnan this week, along with a collection of imagined books and other great exhibitions. | Hrag Vartanian, Natalie Haddad, and Lisa Yin Zhang |
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| | | | | | | Judith Bernstein: Public Fears at Kasmin Gallery | | “Long before Donald Trump ran for office, Judith Bernstein used her art to condemn those who abuse power, from the museum to the White House, and to reveal them for who they really are: dickheads, cockmen, schlong faces, and, eventually, what she would call ‘death heads.’”
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| | |  | | | | Lubaina Himid: Make Do and Mend at the Flag Art Foundation | | “Simply by rendering these seated figures and placing the objects they move about on a table, [Lubaina Himid] sets up a power differential…. placing items on a table reduces them in scope, makes them manipulable, and abstracts them.”
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HAPPENING UPSTATE |  | | The exhibition-as-memoir of Linda Griggs, a group show as history lesson, Odili Donald Odita’s vibrant abstractions, and more. | Taliesin Thomas |
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CLOSING SOON |  | | | | Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930 at the Guggenheim Museum through Mar. 9 | | “The resulting show is pretty — pleasurable, even — and certainly pure and apolitical in its aesthetics. Unfortunately, that makes for an uninspiringly one-note exhibition.” |
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WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING? |  | -
A new trio of murals at the 68th Street 6 Train station by Hunter College professor Lisa Corinne Davis explores the art of maps. (Also in big news, the station is finally accessible.) -
Hundreds of tenants could be displaced from an iconic Chelsea building established by the late Gloria Naftali now that it’s on sale, likely against her wishes. -
There’ll be a seed exchange and nature park at Starlight Park in the Bronx tomorrow. (Wed Feb 5) [instagram.com] -
Hive Mind Books in Bushwick is inaugurating a monthly series for queer & trans writers. First up: writers, publishers, and book workers on art, craft, and business. (Wed Feb 5) [instagram.com] -
Simone Fattal will be in conversation with Negar Azimi at the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances to celebrate her new book. (Fri Feb 7) [cara.artsvp.com] -
Interference Archive’s inaugural skill share workshop series is about patches and their role in punk and DIY culture. (Mon Feb 11) [instagram.com] -
Valentine’s Day is soon and the preparations start now. Land to Sea is opening up applications to their speed-dating event in two weeks. [instagram.com] -
GenderFail is offering a 4-week hybrid critical theory and studio online course that starts next week. [instagram.com]
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