A short list of the can’t-miss new exhibition openings (and closings) this week, by city. See last week’s list for other recent openings, and for a more comprehensive guide, see our Itinerary.
NEW YORK
Thomas Bayrle “Playtime”
New Museum
235 Bowery
OPENS: June 20
This large-scale celebration of the German pop artist’s oeuvre arrays more than 115 of his works from the 1960s to today, including his signature kinetic paintings, serial patterned textiles, and early computer-based experiments. Together, these visual investigations into technology, consumerism, and propaganda shed light on his astonishing critical prescience. Also opening on the same day is John Akomfrah’s “Signs of Empire,” the first survey of the Accra-born British artist to be held in America. The exhibition features four of his films, including his acclaimed 2015 video installation Vertigo Sea.
(Opening image: Thomas Bayrle, “A Pilsner, Please!,” 1972. Courtesy the artist.)
Jonathan Trayte “Fruiting Habits”
Friedman Benda
515 W 26th Street
OPENS: June 21
The London-based artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States reimagines domestic spaces and objects into an array of playful and alien forms. Trayte’s culinary and catering backgrounds are brought to the fore in this series of functional objects that blend the synthetic colors and materials of food packaging with vegetal motifs from the natural world. Read more about Trayte’s “Fruiting Habits” creations.
Ron Arad “Fishes and Crows, ‘85-’94”
Friedman Benda
515 W 26th Street
OPENS: June 21
Highlighting a significant period in the Israeli designer and architect’s career, this survey tracks his experimentation with industrial methods and materials in pieces such as “Tinker Chair,” the development of his subversive forms, and his then-emerging geometric clarity in furniture series including “Cone” and “Big Easy.”
“Seed”
Paul Kasmin
293 Tenth Avenue
OPENS: June 21
An expansive exhibition that features work from almost 30 artists (including Yoko Ono, Hein Koh, Cecily Brown, and Wangechi Mutu, among others), “Seed” is a thematic exploration of cosmic and mystic female archetypes. Curated by Art Production Fund cofounder Yvonne Force, this multigenerational and multinational exhibition includes works from a range of genres and mediums, including figural sculpture and painting, landscapes, abstraction, and symbolism. Just around the corner in its 515 W 27th Street space, the gallery also opens “Almost Solid Light: New Work From Mexico,” a new exhibition showcasing contemporary Mexican artists’s use of wood, concrete, and other repurposed materials.
“The Ashtray Show”
Fisher Parrish
238 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn
OPENS: June 22
Following the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, “The Paperweight Show,” last year, Fisher Parrish once again brings together a collection of small works by more than 80 contemporary artists and designers to celebrate the Brooklyn space’s one year anniversary. “The Ashtray Show” turns an artistic eye towards that most functional and oft forgotten object of smoking paraphernalia, the ashtray, bringing out the sculptural quality of this once-ubiquitous tabletop object.
“Readymades Belong to Everyone”
Swiss Institute
38 St Marks Place
OPENS: June 23
The third annual edition of Swiss Institute’s Architecture and Design Series recreates an urban cityscape, replete with works from more than 50 artists and including 17 new commissions. Housed in the Swiss Institute’s brand new building, the exhibition reflects the artistic lineage of the readymade, which has long confronted the increasingly mechanized and industrial nature of the modern urban experience.
“Glass of the Architects: Vienna, 1900–1937”
Corning Museum of Glass
1 Museum Way
Corning, NY
OPENS: June 23
Austrian glassmaking underwent a transformative period at the turn of the 20th century, when ideas, individuals, and cultures rallied around modernism. Surveyed here are 172 works by glass designers (then known as architects) such as Josef Hoffmann, Vally, and Koloman Moser, whose creations demonstrate the variety of techniques and aesthetics that revolutionized Austrian glass.
