If you’ve found yourself missing being immersed in inviting weather, stop by the innovative space Audio Visual Arts in the East Village for a synesthetic experience inspired by our closest star. Brooklyn artist John Andrew has installed a piece—The Now with Before and After—in the storefront gallery that combines intense chromatic immersion with a sound work synthesized from an interpretation of the sun’s surface activity. Simply standing on the sidewalk before the gallery’s window is enough to lift your mood. The show is up through Sunday, November 8.—T.J. Carlin

The comment most frequently made by visitors to the short-run exhibition “Room Tones” is that it’s what P.S.1 used to be like back in the day. Organized by a group of young artists, this show, housed in an empty convent on the line between Greenpoint and Williamsburg, capitalizes on the ambiance of crumbling decay in this derelict building to heighten the experience of four floors of work and enhance the sensoral qualities of pieces that draw on sight, smell and sound to provide an encompassing experience for the viewer. The photographs here cannot recreate the effect of watching a Mario Bros.–inspired animation in a chapel pew flanked by stained glass windows or approximate the slight discomfort of peering into a former nun’s closet now crammed with musty stuffed animals. Upstairs each of the artists has taken over a private room; many of the pieces have been tailored to be site-specific. What weighs in at this show is not just good work but a cross-pollination with the history of space, something we direly need in this era of sterile, standard galleries. See this show this weekend, the last of its run; it’s open Friday and Saturday from noon to 5pm.—T.J. Carlin

This weekend, a friend of mine and I were listening to Biggie’s Life After Death album and remarking on the chilling feeling that the legend presaged his own death through his work. Another live-fast-die-hard artist, whose subject matter took as subject the seamy underworld of youth drug subculture, is said to have left us today. Gawker is reporting that Dash Snow died of a heroin overdose last night at the age of 27. The photographer and enfant terrible, nephew of Uma Thurman, great grandson of the legendary collecting family the DeMenils and friend to was the subject of a major profile in New York magazine in 2007; he was known for his shock-value images of the streets, to which he escaped as a runaway in his early teens. His work, including disquieting collaborations with artist Dan Colen, was in the documentary vein of Nan Goldin as well as skateboarding pal Ryan McGinley, and was featured by the Saatchi Gallery and included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial.—T.J. Carlin

This thoughtful rejoinder was sent out by the newly reopened Triple Candie in response to feedback on their choice of exhibition for their fresh location:

A NOTE FROM TRIPLE CANDIE

On Friday, June 26, shortly after 9:30 p.m., we circulated an e-mail announcing the opening of our current show—“Maurizio Cattelan Is Dead: Life & Work, 1960–2009.” Twenty-four hours earlier, the world had learned of the death of two other celebrities—Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Not surprisingly, people who attended our opening reception that Sunday asked if the exhibition had been conceived of in response to these recent events.

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Here’s your art lineup for the next few days:

On Friday from 5 to 10pm, SculptureCenter continues its University of Trash  programming with a concert by Lucky Dragons, Zola Jesus and Wet Hair in the courtyard. For details on where to buy tickets, click here.

Also on Friday evening at SculptureCenter, L.A.-based artist Jim Skuldt presents a blog release party for HEY, YOU DROPPED SOMETHING, a cataloguing, itemization, and mapping of each piece of trash dropped by his four neighbors at his apartment building in East Los Angeles. We’ve seen his place out on the West Side; trust us, this will be good.

Don’t forget the outdoor dance-party extravaganza Warm Up on Saturday afternoon, in case you didn’t get enough Long Island City for the weekend.—T.J. Carlin

For some rooftop pleasure tonight, try Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon’s performance at X, Regular Tripping, which is based on urban folklore about the guy who ate too much acid and thought he was a glass of orange juice. Get this: As the story goes, if he were to spill he would die. Talk about a legend in your own mind. Aren’t you curious to know what happens next?

P.S.1’s Warm Up series starts this weekend too, on Sunday, in celebration of the winners of the Young Architects Program.

So we expect to see you out there, somewhere…—Team Art

You’ve made your requisite offerings to the sun gods and it finally stopped raining. So what are you going to do this weekend? We suggest you grab a unicycle/scooter/piggyback and head to any number of excellent art events that are happening all over town.

While it’s not outdoors, start the weekend off right with AMP, a music and performance series presented by Amanda Simms Hunt and Rashaad Newsome at Rush Arts Gallery. This one-night-only performance starts at 7pm on Friday and engages all sorts of experimental noise-making techniques, from comb-playing by Kenya Robinson to a piece by Moritz Wettstein that mixes in calls he receives on his cell phone in real time into the electronic music he’ll be making on site.

X-Initiative’s No Soul for Sale extends through the 29th and is on view 1–9pm daily; check our recent post for details. Don’t forget to lounge around on the roof.

Socrates Sculpture Park is hosting a three-day open-air marketplace, Makers Market, which features fine arts and crafts. Check here for dates and times.

And last but certainly not least, let’s not forget our friends over at Creative Time, who have worked so hard to bring us “This World & Nearer Ones,” a massive outdoor exhibit on Governors Island by more than a dozen young talents.—T.J. Carlin

Do you like participation with your art? Ever wanted to get an inside scoop on the process of making a painting? Like the idea of walking around a studio and seeing all that art crap lying around? These two events might work out for you:

ArtWalk09, taking place June 6 and June 7, 1–6pm in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn and Gowanus, includes a large number of studios and galleries open to the public; local businesses have also teamed up to offer specials and happy hours to artwalkers all weekend. Click here for a schedule of events and a list of participating venues.

The ever-popular Art Battles, a live-art event that takes place regularly, is teaming up with real-estate firm Alchemy Properties to present “Tthe Living Art Exhibition,” two weeks of live art being made during gallery hours, June 9–June 19, 11am–8pm daily, at the RedBull Space in Soho. Guests can vote on their favorite works in the expanding exhibition; the four winners will go on to perform in a show at Central Park’s SummerStage. Buy tickets here; they are a mere $10 in advance for a two-week pass.–T.J. Carlin

Among the range of the art world’s creative responses in the wake of the recession have been DIY exhibitions and alternative uses of space. In an interesting move within a traditional gallery structure, Michael Steinberg Fine Art has been hosting a series of one-week exhibitions called “New/space,” held in the project room. Check their website for details and upcoming shows.—T.J. Carlin

We all know you TONY readers have many talents; we’re willing to bet that you didn’t realize you’d make a great zombie. Think about it, though; ever catch your reflection in the subway window during your morning commute? Yeah, you know what we’re talking about. So we have a great line for your résumé: volunteer to be an extra for artist collective The Bruce High Quality Foundation’s movie about the end of the art world, Isle of the Dead, produced for Creative Time’s exhibition “Plot 9: This World and Nearer Ones.” You need to R.S.V.P. by June 1 by going to its website or e-mailing zombie.bhqf@gmail.com; beyond that, just show up at 11:45am at the Governers Island Ferry Terminal on June 7 and be ready to look dead and perform karaoke en masse. When you’re processing down the red carpet at the next Oscars, don’t forget to wave; don’t say we never did nothin’ for ya.–T.J. Carlin

Home Base, a public art project that invites international artists to respond to the notion of “home,” is in its last days of the 2009 version, which is being held in a vacant medical clinic on the Lower East Side. The New York Times recently reviewed this show, which is coming into its own in this climate of DIY art endeavors.

Click here for more details, opening hours and a schedule of programming through this Sunday, May 24, the last day of the show.—T.J. Carlin

Be sure not to miss the Brazilian artist’s fantastic installation, which goes on view on Thursday, May 14, at the Park Avenue Armory and will be up until June 14. Check out the preview above. Click here for details on how to visit.

A number of recent panel discussions have sought to project a way forward for artists and arts organizations impacted by the ebb in collectors and private donors. Last Thursday’s “(Alternative) Arts Funding for Sustainable Creative Practice,” organized by guerrilla bake-saler Tracy Candido at NYU, provided several examples of business models that source their local communities, hinge public services on profitable, private sector businesses, or just have their foundation’s fingers in many pies to minimize the impact of the bubble-break.

In the spirit of sharing, we’re reposting a number of the resources discussed here:

Creative Capital Foundation
Reminding us of their beginnings as young upstarts who funded artists in the wake of the NEA culture wars in the ’90s, Creative Capital has turned their decade of professional-development programming and workshops into an online database available to all.

Fractured Atlas
Providing affordable health care, funding, and business guidance for artists, FA supports their services through a profitable software business at the organization’s center. This financial base, and their focus on creating services that also generate income, ensure that they are relatively untethered to the caprices of donors and outside interests.

Creative Time
Creative Time plows ahead with their expansive public-art projects. Their “open door” program can lend a hand to those navigating the ins and outs of public-art projects and grant writing. Allowing occasional corporate-sponsored projects, CT offsets drops in donor money, while ensuring its freedom to continue sponsoring challenging, visionary projects.

InCUBATE (based in Chicago)
This collective’s Sunday Soup Brunches fund artists’ projects by way of a door charge. The ad hoc jury votes with its stomach. An upcoming project amounts to an artists bank, a kind of merry-go-round savings account that pays out the total monthly dues collected from all members to each artist in turn.

Feast
A Brooklyn venture based on the InCUBATE Sunday Soup Brunch model, Feast stays local in its practices, drawing on artists from the community, who munch on a seasonal, local repast and then vote on a project that will be fulfilled and presented at the next monthly gastronomic go-round.

Next event: Church of the Messiah, 129 Russell St between Driggs and Nassau Aves, Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Sat 9. 6-9p; $10-20, no one turned away.

WAGE (Working Artists and the Greater Economy)
This artists group advocates fair compensation for artists, who generally suffer from a “cultural discount” attributed to their services as their labor is assumed to be “intrinsically rewarding” and thus not deserving of a proportional wage.
Go to their site to support the Artist Museum Partnership Act 2009!

Additionally: check out these upcoming panels on Artists in the economy:
Wednesday, May 13th
The Field presents New Economy Smackdown

Saturday, May 16
NYFA’s The Low Down: Strategies for Artists During the Recession

—Brian Zegeer

Like what you see above? It’s just a sneak preview of artist James Alexander’s work, which will be on view today through May 19 at the National Arts Club. The gallery is open during the week Mon–Fri 10am–5pm; we suggest you get yourself to the opening tonight from 6 to 8pm. Organized by young curator Amanda Simms Hunt, these photographs depict Dubai, where the artist himself lives and works, in all of it’s rapidly changing splendor: a fascinating view on one of the most bizarre places in the world right now.—T.J. Carlin

As many of our favorite glass-fronted white cubes scuttle their Chelsea operations, pressured by exorbitant rents and stagnant sales, it’s a great time to take a harder look at those individuals and institutions harnessing their ambitions to unconventional structures and spaces less affected by the slump, as these ways of “thinking outside the box” are proving to have staying power. Whether art spliced with sustainable city planning or a call for artists to build their own structures that operate as ad hoc museums, the below projects are related in their relative freedom from or flaunting of contemporary market concerns.

“Unbuilt Roads”
e-flux, 41 Essex St between Grand and Hester Sts (212-619-3356). Subway: F, V to Lower East Side–Second Ave. A gallery presentation of the 1997 book project by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guy Tortosa, this show offers the unrealized proposals of 107 artists (Louis Bourgeois, Robert Rauschenberg, Jenny Holzer, the Chapman Bros., etc.) in blueprint pages spanning the gallery interior. Though it’s installed in a conventional white-walled context (e-flux’s new LES space), experiencing the show means entering the speculative environs generated by some of art’s more ambitious thinkers—there is a wonderful freedom in the fact that these vaulting ambitions are completely unrestrained by material tethers.

“Vertical Gardens”
Exit Art Underground, 475 Tenth Ave between 36th and 37th Sts (212-966-7745). Subway: A, C, E to 34th St. Through May 23. The third in an Exit Art series, SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), this show brings architects and artists together to present existing vertical farms, urban gardens and green roof projects, as well as speculations on a future of more sustainable urban planning—visions with a deliciously sci-fi effect. Free lectures on April 21 and 22, and an indoor composting workshop, are detailed here.

Matt Bua, “Architectural Cribbage”
(bhomepark.blogspot.com). Ongoing. Matt Bua’s “Architectural Cribbage” amounts to a platform for empowering people to define their own architectural surroundings, free from the normalizing strictures of building code. Through an ongoing open call, Bua organized an clearinghouse of hundreds of visionary architectural drawings (soon available online, which serve as potential designs for 12-by-12-foot structures built at Bua’s woodsy Catskills site, “b-home”). Artists are encouraged to install their own personal collections of odds, ends and artworks inside their visionary structures—an upheaval of gallery and real-estate conventions alike.—Brian Zegeer

The LES Business Improvement District (LES BID) office has teamed up with Artlog to create an evening of art, booze and fun for all to enjoy. This Saturday more than 25 galleries will join The New Museum in an art crawl that also includes a number of local bars and businesses; gallerygoers will enjoy free drinks at the galleries, as well as discounts at many venues, including Spitzer’s Corner and The Sixth Ward. The crawl will go from 6 to 8:30pm, with a number of different accompanying events, including a guided tour of the New Museum’s current show and an after-party at Gallery Bar. Tickets can be bought online here; TONY readers get a special deal on advance-purchase tickets ($10 instead of $15) by entering the promotion code timeout when registering.

Gallery participants include Canada, DCKT Contemporary, Eleven Rivington, Feature Inc. and Miguel Abreu, among many others.—T.J. Carlin

If you’ve been meaning to soak up the erudite rays of X initiative, a new project space spearheaded by gallerist Elizabeth Dee, pop around tomorrow night for a discussion with contemporary philosopher Sylvère Lotringer and a screening by artist Mika Tajima.

For a slightly more interactive experience, get thee down to the Lower East Side on Saturday night, where the online arts journal The Highlights will be hosting a party and exhibition to celebrate their second birthday and the launch of their latest issue. Peep the flyer above. Festivities start at 10pm at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center Inc.

Brooklynite Gallery will open a new show of street artists Miss Bugs and Joe Black, who have already hit the city up; see below for an image of a work near the gallery on Malcolm X Blvd by Joe Black. The opening will be Sat 4 starting at 6pm.

Finally, if you happen to be walking through Times Square this weekend, don’t forget to look up as you cross Broadway. In conjunction with Creative Time, painter Marilyn Minter will present a video trailer for her upcoming show at Salon 94 on the MTV screen hanging between 44th and 45th Sts. -T.J. Carlin

They’ve done it again! Word has certainly caught on, and ApartmentShow NY is on a roll, having pulled off another fantastic soiree in Williamsburg a week ago this past Sunday night. When I arrived, the apartment door swung open with a blast of hot air to reveal a completely naked, bearded and bespectacled man bearing uncanny resemblance to Jerry Garcia. He offered me a well-placed platter of freshly baked cookies–how could I refuse? This time around, there were plenty more people and loads of good art to be seen at the show, if you could manage to squeeze past anyone. All of the works on the walls were perfectly framed by the apartment’s original moldings, and the opening took on the vibe of a weird family reunion.

Stay tuned for the next event in this hot series. Sign up for ApartmentShow’s e-mails here.—Amanda Simms Hunt

Photographs by Denise Kupferschmidt

Looking for some raw DIY art energy? Look no further than two excellent events taking place this weekend.

ArtBattles, an annual event hosted by Danny Simmons, blends street cred with street art for an evening of live art by local up-and-comers. Competitors face off for more than an hour in front of a live audience to produce a piece of work that is then discussed by guest critics and voted upon by the audience. Tomorrow night’s event will take place at the excellent bar and venue (Le) Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street. There’s a giant dance party with DJs; come dressed to impress for a spring-formal type affair.

Got some art you want to swap? Take a look at Museum 52, which is moving to a new temporary location at 4 East 2nd Street in mid-April. To celebrate the closing of its current space, the gallery is hosting a series of interactive events over the course of the next weeks in which they turn the space over to an artist for a day. Tomorrow Peter Simensky is holding an art swap from 6 to 9pm in which all are free to bring pieces of work (or other items) to exchange; during the day from 11am to 6pm you can sell your work against the artist’s Neutral Capital currency. Click here for a schedule of events. Contact the gallery for further information.

If you liked our story on Apartment Show NY, we have a suggestion for how to spend this Sunday evening. See here.—T.J. Carlin