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

If you can find the time between your mad dash from Performa event to Performa event, here are some gallery openings to check out this weekend:

Thursday, November 5:
Sean Scully, “Recent Paintings” at Galerie Lelong, 6–8pm
Dan Flavin, “Series and Progressions” at David Zwirner, 6–8pm
Kristin Baker, “Splitting Twilight” at Deitch Projects, 6–9pm
Roger Ballen, “Boarding HouseÆ at Gagosian Gallery (980 Madison Avenue), 6–8pm
“Just what is it that makes today’s painting so different, so appealing?” at Gering & López Gallery, 6–8pm
Tracey Emin, “Only God Knows I’m Good” at Lehmann Maupin, 6–8pm
Kaari Upson at Maccarone, 6–8pm
Robert Bergman, “A Kind of Rapture” at Yossi Milo Gallery, 6–8pm
“The Map as Art” at Christopher Henry Gallery, 6–9pm

Friday, November 6:
Alyssa Phoebus, “To Have, to Hold” at Tracy Williams, Ltd., 6–8pm
Wallace Berman at Nicole Klagsbrun, 6-8pm, with a performance by John Zorn at 8pm
Tom Wesselmann Draws at Haunch of Venison, 6–8pm

Saturday, November 7:
Tomory Dodge, “Works on Paper” at CRG, 6–8pm
Tony Feher, “Blossom,” and Yoshihiro Suda at D’Amelio Terras, 6–8pm
Mike Kelley, “Horizontal Tracking Lines” at Gagosian Gallery (555 W 24th St), 6–8pm
“Cave Painting” at Gresham’s Ghost, 6–9pm
Moyra Davey, “My Necropolis” at Murray Guy, 6–8pm
“One Every Day: A Printeresting Curatorial Project” at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, 6–9pm
Liu Ye, “Leave Me in the Dark” at Sperone Westwater, 5:30–7:30pm

Get your bookworm butt off the couch next week and check out all these great art-book opportunities!

Stack them high at Phaidon
Phaidon—the publisher that regularly comes out with art books large enough to break your coffee table—is opening up their first stand-alone bookstore in the U.S. at 100 Wooster Street in Soho. Starting Monday, November 2, get your Vitamins P, D, Ph and 3-D (Painting, Drawing, Photography and Sculpture, that is), to complement your Ice Cream: Contemporary Art in Culture. With more than 100 artists per book, you are bound to leave satisfied!

A sweet and sour book signing with Peter Schjeldahl
Ever been curious to see what the enigmatic and wry New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl is like in person? Join Spoonbill & Sugartown Booksellers for a reading and book signing on Tuesday, November 3 at 8pm (218 Bedford Ave at North 5th St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn). Enjoy refreshments while Mr. Schjeldahl reads from his recent book, Let’s See: Writings on Art from The New Yorker.

Get out on the town, 1970s style, at Gagosian Shop
For those of you who have gazed longingly at the sleek art in Gagosian’s various galleries, wishing you could afford a piece of the action, your time has finally arrived! Gagosian has opened retail store at 988 Madison Avenue. On Wednesday, November 4 5–7pm, the store will host a launch party and signing by Bob Colacello for his new book, Out. This collection of photographs, taken in the ’70s and ’80s while Colacello was writing for Interview magazine and editing Warhol’s biography, chronicles the extravagant openings, parties and balls that were frequented by everyone from Robert Rauschenberg to Jack Nicholson to Henry Kissenger.—Emily Bauman

Attention, artists! The f(r)iction project is looking for submissions for it’s inaugural group art show, to be held this January at a project space in Williamsburg. Entitled Liminal Space, the exhibition will explore the concept of marginal spaces, or the space between.

Think you’ve got what it takes? E-mail an artist statement, bio and contact information to frictionproject@gmail.com no later than December 1. Online portfolios are preferred, but if you’re sending attachments, make sure they’re under 1MB each and include title, date, medium and dimensions. It goes without saying, but all entries must be original by the artist. Duh.

To learn more, head over to frictionproject.com.

Stressed about figuring out your costume for the weekend? Well, go where the walls are dressed up instead of the people (though there aren’t cobwebs and skeletons). Here are some of the many art openings happening this week:

Thursday, October 29:
R.M. Fischer at KS Art, 6–8pm
Peter Fischli & David Weiss at Matthew Marks Gallery (all three locations), 6–8pm
Olaf Breuning at Metro Pictures, 6–8pm

Friday, October 30:
“Untreated Strangeness: George Porcari, Jorge Pardo, Naomi Fisher” organized by Chris Kraus at Momenta Art, 7–9pm
“Barb Choit, Nagel Fades” at Rachel Uffner Gallery, 6–8pm
Dan Fischer at Derek Eller Gallery, 6–8pm
Nicole Eisenman at Leo Koenig Inc., 6–8pm
Carroll Dunham at Gladstone Gallery, 6–8pm
Daniel Buren, “To Cut Out: Situated Words 1969–2009″ at Bortolami Gallery, 6-8pm
Ivin Ballen, “Sleepless in Seattle at Winkleman Concert Hall” at Winkleman Gallery, 6–8pm

Saturday, October 31:
Eric Baudelaire, “Anabases” at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, 6–8pm

Sunday, November 1:
Tommy Hartung, “The Ascent of Man” at On Stellar Rays, 4–6pm

Photographs: Anna King

Remember this? Well, the results—more than 100 carefully drawn maps of Manhattan, as crafted by resident New Yorkers—were on display last night at the Dark Room, a new art gallery space on W 105th Street and Amsterdam. And they were pretty impressive: a collection of Manhattan-inspired memories that ranged from the cheery (”cracking open bottles of wine”) to the not-so-much (”chased by screaming homeless man”). Read more »

Are you spending all of your time posing in front of a webcam trying to get the perfect headshot in Photo Booth? Step out from behind the computer and get your butt down to 300 Nevins Street, in Gowanus, Brooklyn, because Studio Jourdes will take a professional headshot of you for only $5. This Saturday afternoon (3–6pm), come get a picture taken that actually makes you feel photogenic, and then stay for some short talks about the history of portraiture (6–7pm). These events, hosted by the art and culture magazine Cabinet, accompany David Levine’s exhibition “Hopeful,” which looks at the headshot as an artwork and artifact that exemplifies a genre of portraiture that breaks all the norms. These images represent people’s aspirations for their futures—for stardom, fame and glamour—but without the certainty they will come true. Join in this history by creating your own hopeful shot.—Emily Bauman

“Relics from [the] Other Realms”
This Friday from 6 to 9pm, the Barat Foundation in Newark opens up a porthole into Trenton Doyle Hancock’s world of creatures whose stories emanate from his mythic “mound”; while Taylor McKimens’s life forms of mush create a land that’s half cartoon and half slime; and Ryan Trecartin razzle-dazzles with makeup, sequins and in-your-face amorphous sexuality. These artists and more come together to offer glimpses into alternate planes that exist in their wild imaginations. New Yorkers who consider Jersey in itself to be another realm will  find the trek across the Hudson worthwhile for the opening reception.

Eyebeam Open Studios Fall 2009
If Chelsea is more your ‘hood, go there on Friday and Saturday between 3 and 6pm and check out the work of the fellows and residents at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center. Their state-of-the-art design, research and fabrication studio is home to more than 20 artists who work in video performance, wearable technologies, code and humor, party technology and sustainable design. Don’t worry if technology is a mystery to you; guided tours will be offered every hour.

“System:System”
This three-day event, featuring work by Abby Manock, eteam, Francesca DiMattio, Johannes VanDerBeek, Meridith Pingree, Mike Hein, Skyler Brickley, SOFTlab and many others, is hosted in the three-story building that formerly housed the nuns of St. Cecilia’s parish in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Reflecting the contingencies in the economy that have led the convent to be repurposed as a rotating performance, film and gallery space, this show explores how the parts of a whole tend toward unpredictability due to the dynamics of complex systems. The opening is Friday, 7–10pm at 21 Monitor Street (21 Monitor St between Herbert and Richardson Sts).

P.S.1 Fall Exhibitions Opening
Anyone who has been to one of its Warm Up bashes is aware that P.S.1 knows how to party. So join the museum in celebrating the beginning of its fall exhibition season and the end of its summer courtyard installation on Sunday between noon and 6pm. Get a last look at the Young Architects Program 2009: Afterparty by MOS, and an early look at the exhibitions “1969,” “100 Years (version #2, ps1,  nov 2009),” “Between Spaces” and “Robert Bergman: Selected Portraits.“—Emily Bauman

Tonight:
Rashaad Newsome: Standards, at Ramis Barquet, 6–8pm
Michael Joo at Anton Kern Gallery, 6–8pm
Teresita Fernandez at Lehmann Maupin, 6–8pm
Paul Chan: Sade for Sade’s Sake at Greene Naftali, 6–8pm
Joshua Smith at Art Production Fund, 7–9

Friday, October 23:
Nick Mauss at 303 Gallery, 6–8pm
Bill Viola: Bodies of Light at James Cohan Gallery, 6–8pm
Stephen Irwin at Invisible Exports, 6–8pm
Laura Owens at GBE (Gavin Brown’s Enterprise), 6–8pm
Matthew Ritchie: Line Shot at Andrea Rosen Gallery, 6–9pm

Saturday, October 24:
William Cordova at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., 6–8pm
Spencer Finch: The Brain Is Wider than the Sky at Postmasters, 6–8pm

Tuesday, October 27:
Richard Serra: Blind Spot & Open Ended at Gagosian, 6–8pm

The Obamas get to live my dream: handpicking an art collection from some of the most important museums in the country. But, as with everything they do, nothing is ever perfect (at least according to the press). A slight media obsession with the meaning of Ed Ruscha’s I Think I’ll… dominates the commentary.

The only conclusion that everyone seems to agree on is that this selection of 47 artworks is radically different from what was previously hanging in the White House. Josef Albers, Glenn Ligon, Richard Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko and Louise Nevelson are all represented, alongside works by artists who are relatively unknown, such as William H. Johnson, Alma Thomas, George Catlin and Jeri Redcorn. Heavy on modernist abstraction, the selection of works offers great fodder for the hungry media’s open interpretation. Whether it is that the works plot a course through American history highlighting minorities, or that the selection is disingenuously egalitarian in terms of representing minorities, these popular interpretations tend to reflect the views of the individual writers rather than offer any genuine insights into the administration (which is not surprising). For a full list of the 47 works, click here. To read an overview of the great White House art debate, see The Atlantic Wire’s recap.—Emily Bauman

Before Hugh MacLeod became a marketing guru, sought out for his understanding of how Web 2.0 can affect a business; and before he started Gapingvoid.com, one of the earliest successful blogs, MacLeod was an advertising copywriter in New York City. And like most people who come to the city in hopes of “making it,” MacLeod spent a lot of time in bars, in cramped apartments, in short-term relationships, soaking up the madness that is living here. Rather than write about his observations, though, MacLeod documented them in the form of cartoons on the back of business cards. His witty, painfully incisive vignettes slowly gained a fan base.

Fast-forward more than a decade and MacLeod has relocated to western Texas, where both space and time are plentiful. But the funny, maddening, intoxicating New York moments that MacLeod captures in his cartoons are as vivid and potent as ever—and his coterie of admirers has grown to an international following.

MacLeod recently launched the Gaping Void Gallery, where fans of his work can buy limited-edition silkscreened prints. In celebration, he got together with marketing guru Seth Godin (MacLeod designed a print based on Godin’s best-seller The Purple Cow), and threw a party at Lebanese restaurant Ilili on Fifth Avenue. The evening was less a gallery show or book signing than it was a rock star sighting, so devoted are MacLeod’s fans. But that’s the power of a blog, MacLeod might tell you. Or of New York.

Learn everything from kombucha brewing, Henna body art and screenprinting to DIY electronic audio, cooking with raw food and burlesque dancing at this daylong community-based learning workshop. Broken up into half-hour classes led by volunteers, the first Brooklyn Skillshare is a community-building event that takes advantage of the overwhelming amount of talented Brooklyn residents. After all, having more Brooklynites who can give a good massage or fix a bike is sure make the borough a friendlier (and happier) place!—Emily Bauman

Brooklyn Skillshare, Gowanus Studio Space, 119 8th St between 2nd & 3rd Aves, Gowanus, Brooklyn. Oct 10, 10am–6pm.

As every New Yorker knows, strange sights are a dime a dozen on 14th Street. So, on a block where only a man with aquamarine dreadlocks may stand out, it is easy to miss some of the gems that Art in Odd Places (AiOP) has to offer.

Michele Brody’s Tea House Productions, on the corner of 14th Street at Irving Place, is one of the many unobtrusive works in AiOP, an art exhibition of performances and interventions (running October 1 through 26) all along 14th Street. Housed inside a metal and Plexiglas coffee cart—the kind seen on almost every corner in Manhattan—the display in the windows comprises used teabags, instead of the regular fare of doughnuts and other assorted pastries. Brody invites pedestrians to join her inside, offering a cup of tea to anyone willing to stop and join her for a chat. In our conversation, I learned that Brody didn’t begin the project as a performance, but that it stemmed from her background in fiber studies, a fascination with tea stains and an interest in daily rituals. The works that inspired Tea House Productions—and the ones that come out of it—are the transcriptions of her conversations over tea, scrawled onto the dried teabags that were used.

AiOP offers many other ways to become part of the art, along with several subtle surprises demonstrating that art can be found in the details of a busy street. Go for a walk this month from the Hudson to the East River, or check out our slide show for a quick preview.—Emily Bauman

Tea House Productions will be repeated Oct 16–18 2–6pm, and Brody’s Tea Cart Stories will be on display at The Tenement Museum through December.

Starting today, catch three films by Shigeko Kubota that will indulge your love of Marcel Duchamp, your wanderlust and the anthropologist in your heart. These early videos—Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (1972), Europe on 1/2 Inch a Day (1972), and Video Girls and Video Songs for Navajo Sky (1973)—are being presented by Electronic Arts Intermix at X Initiative through October 17. They run the gamut from a documentary elegy of an infamous chess match between famous artists, to a self-guided tour of the arts undergrounds of Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris, to a diarylike record of Kubota’s time living on a Navajo reservation. Each running approximately 30 minutes, the films are presented in a loop during X Initiative’s open hours: Wed–Sun 11am–6pm.—Emily Bauman

Have you ever walked through Times Square, looked at all the honking-big video screens and thought to yourself, You know what would look cool? My artwork displayed up there! Well, guess what: Now is your chance to get your art vid shown amid the glamour and glitz of the fabled Crossroads of the World—and win a nice chunk of change to boot! The folks at Babelgum Metropolis, in association with Time Out New York, Scope International Contemporary Art Show and Perpetual Art Machine.com, are mounting the Metropolis Art Prize 2009, an open-call competition with a top prize of $20,000 and an opportunity to have your video included in “the world’s biggest art show.” The deadline for entries has been extended to October 25, so hurry here for contest details and a place to upload your video. Who says size doesn’t matter?

Want to enjoy the beautiful fall weather, see some art and get discounts on your drinks tonight? You know you do. This month’s First Thursdays Dumbo Gallery Walk, a self-guided tour of the neighborhood’s art scene, runs from 5:30 to 8:30pm, and there are maps posted to help you out at each participating location. Local bars and pubs sponsoring the event, such as Galapagos Art Space, reBar and Speak Low Cocktail Lounge, will be offering drink specials throughout the event.

The Dumbo arts community has been busy; last weekend was the Dumbo Arts Center’s 13th annual Dumbo Art Under the Bridge Festival. We had the chance to walk around and catch some of the action. We were particularly struck by Chin Chih Yang, who, standing stock-still and wearing a creepy grin, encouraged passersby to pile garbage onto him to create his Human Sculpture. Alexandra Halky tied herself up and lay on Plymouth Street’s train tracks, wriggling and writhing to escape the onslaught of a toy train, while Olek’s 100% Acrylic Art Guards, people dressed in full-body knit camouflage suits, were strategically posted throughout the street and the park. Interactivity seemed like the unofficial theme of the event, with the pathways between gallery spaces, restaurants, open studios and home decor stores lined with outdoor sculptures, garage sales and makeshift booths. See our pictures to get some visual snippets.—Emily Bauman

The next Dumbo Gallery Walk will be Thursday, November 5, 5:30–8:30pm.

We just heard about this really cool public art project: It sounds like a cartography version of PostSecret (in which people mailed in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard). “Map Your Memories” involves the distribution of a blank map of Manhattan. Onto it, New Yorkers are encouraged to write, sketch, or otherwise represent the experiences and places that make their city unique to them.

Its creator, Rebecca Cooper, a native of Queens (and assistant to author Adam Gopnik), has been planning the project, she says, about three years. She began late this summer by simply dropping the map, complete with instructions, in a few select locales in the city—down Broadway and across Houston, as well as Central Park. These, incidentally, are the only three locations drawn on the map itself: the rest is a blank slate. She then started handing out the map to folks on the street, who were initially suspicious (did she want money for coffee, or the train fare to Yonkers?). “When they found out it was an art project, they instantly cheered up”, she recalls.

They’re printed on funky, grainy art paper (Cooper made them herself in a letterpress in her basement), and sets out the following instructions:

Maps are more about their makers than the places they describe. Map who you are. Map where you are. Map the first snowfall or your favorite cup of coffee. Map the invisible. Map the obvious. Map your memories.

She realized, she said, while working on a larger art project that mapped the art institutions of New York, that smaller maps could in fact be more informative about the city than grander ones. The idea began to germinate when she read Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities, in which the two protagonists (Marco Polo and Kublai Khan) initially seem to be talking about two different cities but, by the denouement, the reader realizes they’re both talking about the same one (Venice). Cooper said she realized that no two New Yorkers experience life here in quite the same way.

Read more »

The New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem encourage you to see both the uptown exhibition of painter Hurvin Anderson and the downtown retrospective of Black Panther Emory Douglas. When you purchase a full-price ticket at one of the museums, simply bring either your New Museum admission ticket or Studio Museum admission button to the other institution and you’ll receive half-price admission. This offer is good during the entire month of September.

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

Fancy yourself an amateur architect? Ever boasted that, if you designed your own house,  you’d build a spot for the TV right in front of the can? The Guggenheim has hooked into our tendencies to make architectural fantasies. This is a repost of their call to vote for your favorite proposal in their Shelter competition:

Yesterday the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Google opened voting to determine the public’s favorite design among the top ten People’s Prize finalists for the Design It: Shelter Competition. The competition—an interactive, online challenge—received submissions from 68 countries, for a total of nearly 600 entries that met the competition requirements. Participants used Google SketchUp to create and submit designs for virtual 3-D shelters in a location of their choice anywhere on earth. Votes may be cast at guggenheim.org/vote through October 10, 2009.

Online voters can select a design by one of the top ten finalists for the People’s Prize. Finalists were preselected by students from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. In addition, a jury of architecture and design experts is reviewing all of the shelter submissions to choose a winner of the Juried Prize. The winners of both the People’s Prize and the Juried Prize will be announced on October 21,  the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Guggenheim Museum.