Great article by Time out:
Looking for some free art, culture vultures? Thought so. Which is why we found a bunch of gratis art shows at galleries and museums in NYC that won’t cost you a cent. Visit well-known institutions like the Pace Gallery and David Zwirner and still have money in your pocket for lunch at one of the best restaurants in NYC.
The Propeller Group, “The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music”
This three-person multi-mdeia collective consists of two Vietnamese artists—Tuan Andrew Nguyen; Phunam—and one American—Matt Lucero—who divide their time between Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh City. Their work often touches upon the history and culture of Southeast Asia, most especially Vietnam and its transformation over the 40 years since the end of America’s military intervention. This show includes a video delving into Vietnamese funeral customs as well sculptural blocks of ballistic gelatin, each trapping the collision of bullets fired from either end by the the signature rifles of the Vietnam War: The American M-16 and the Russian-supplied AK-47 used by the Vietcong and NVA.
James Cohan Gallery , Lower East Side Friday April 15 2016
Raoul De Keyser, “Drift”
Raoul De Keyser (1930–2012) was a Belgian painter noted for his deep engagement with the medium, expressed as subtle, highly nuanced works that flavored abstract compositions with hints of representational detail—especially evocations of landscape. He often worked on a small or modest scale, wrapping his canvases and works on paper in a veil of intimacy that invited the viewer’s careful study. The show here is organized around a group of paintings, collectively known as “The Last Wall,” that were the last completed before his death. They’re joined by a selection of works dating from the 1990s on.
David Zwirner , Chelsea Until Saturday April 23 2016
Tim Hawkinson, “Counterclockwise”
This show spans 20 years of work by this Los Angeles artist whose metier is creating elaborately mechanized sculptures and installations. They’ve included a stadium-size bagpipe and a school desk equipped with a contraption that continuously pens the artist’s signature on slips of paper as they get spat out on the floor. Hawkinson often engages in a kind of self-portraiture based on his body and its dynamics: One piece features a large color photo of is face, in which his mouth and eyes have been hinged, allowing them to change expression through the movement of computer-actuated cables. Eccentric and exacting, Hawkinson’s art is the product of one of the most idiosyncratic artistic minds working today.
Pace Gallery , Chelsea Until Saturday April 23 2016
Hedda Sterne, “Machines 1947-1951”
Sterne, a native of Romania, was one of the few female artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, and her involvement in the movement was significant enough to merit her inclusion in the famous group photo, “The Irascibles,” which appeared in the January 15, 1951 edition of Life magazine. She was the only woman pictured among a company of male artists that included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and others. Like many of them, she was initially inspired by Surrealism, with her work taking a pronounced abstract tack once she moved from Europe to New York in 1941. The series of paintings here—collectively known as “Machines”—date from the late 1940s and were prompted by her delight with the dynamism of her adopted city. The works undoubtedly reflect that enthusiasm with spirited all-over compositions evoking engine parts, city streets and household appliances.
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Van Doren Waxter , Lenox Hill Until Friday April 29 2016
Alexis Rockman, “Bioluminescence”
Alexis Rockman, “Bioluminescence”
Rockman, who has said his work was inspired by childhood visits to the American Museum of Natural History, emerged in the 1980s with fantastical paintings of flora and fauna, often portrayed in post-apocalyptic setting, limned in a style that married dire ecological warnings with magic realism. His career has included work for Hollywood, most notably the concept drawings he created for Ang Lee’s film of Life of Pi. His latest show plunges into the briny deep with images of bioluminescent sea creatures lighting up gouaches on black paper.
Carolina Nitsch Project Room , Chelsea Until Saturday April 30 2016
Serge Poliakoff
Serge Poliakoff (1900–1969) was a Russian emigre who fled his homeland after the Bolshevik Revolution and eventually settled in Paris. An abstract painter known for jigsaw puzzle compositions of irregular blocks of color and surface effects filling the picture plane, he was part of the postwar revival of the School of Paris. Needless to say, he was barely known on this side of the Atlantic, and even struggled for a while to make ends meet, where he supported a family by playing Russian folk music in Parisian nightclubs. Recognition finally came during the last 20 years of his life, and his work kicked into high gear. This show is his first in the U.S. in decades, and offers proof that the development of abstraction in the postwar era was far richer and more varied than conventional history allows.
Cheim & Read , Chelsea Until Saturday April 30 2016
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, “King of Lesser Lands”
Even for an outsider artist, the work of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein was strange. It wandered among several mediums, including painting, drawings, ceramics and sculptures. Oddest of all were Von Bruenchenhein's erotic pin-ups photos of his wife, Marie, who was ten years his junior. Those images, plus psychedelic botanical studies, ritual objects made of chicken bones and other works, were all part of an elaborate fantasy life the artist shared with his spouse, who often posed for him naked, wearing crowns and other headgear fashioned by her husband. He also wrote poetry, much of it, like his art devoted to Marie. Von Bruenchenhein's richly imagined world (over which he annointed himself king) contrasted sharply with the small, ramshackle house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he lived with Marie, and also belied his ordinary existence working the night shift in a local bakery. As with many figures of self-taught art, Von Bruenchenhein’s work was discovered only after his death in 1983—a body of work that bears witness to a passionate relationship between lovers that was also a form of performance art.
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Andrew Edlin Gallery , Chelsea Until Sunday May 8 2016
“Charles Bukowski & Walter Robinson: There’s A Bluebird In My Heart”
“Charles Bukowski & Walter Robinson: There’s A Bluebird In My Heart”
Known as the “laureate of American lowlife, Charles Bukowski is represented in this show by a framed printed copy of his poem, “The Bluebird,” a meditation on the manly art of suppressing your vulnerability—allegorized in Bukowski’s words as “a bluebird in my heart,” kept locked within himself him by alcohol and cigarettes. Both vices figure prominently in accompanying paintings by veteran artist Walter Robinson, whose work immortalizes life's necessities, guilty pleasures and agents of dependency—from Jack Daniel's and White Castle sliders to prescription meds and stacks of cash—rendered in a style recalling 1950s paperbacks covers. The hardboiled sensibility and dark irony of both artists is evenly matched here.
Owen James Gallery , Greenpoint Until Saturday May 14 2016
“Guðmundur Thoroddsen: Dismantled Spirits”
This Icelandic artist’s focuses on the deracination of male privilege by the forces of social change. His sculptures and works on paper ironically harken back to the phallocentric universe of Norse gods and mythological figures, represented here as men with long beards, who fight, preen, defecate and otherwise call attention to themselves within flat, empty spaces that often include images of dildos lording over the proceedings. The spirits of the poor saps running around Thoroddsen’s compositions are indeed being dismantled per the show’s title.
Asya Geisberg Gallery , Chelsea Until Saturday May 14 2016
“David Hammons: Five Decades”
David Hammons is one of the most important American artists today, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it. An artist of his stature would have been recognized by now in major museum surveys, but as one of the first African-American artists to have emerged in the context of ’60s Conceptualism, he has always remained elusive and apart from the largely white art world as matter of strategy. Not that he’s unknown or hasn’t received significant exposure, but this must-see look back at his 50-year career really belongs at MoMA or the Whitney. The fact that it isn’t is the artist’s own choice, but since it’s being mounted in a gallery venue, it does have the virtue of being free.
Mnuchin Gallery , Upper East Side Until Friday May 27 2016
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