In Found Objects, at bitforms gallery nyc April 25–May 31, acclaimed new media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson works with assembly-line produced sex dolls to examine the cultural practice of representing women as objects (lost or found) and contemporary issues of projected fantasies and artificial women. The highlight of the exhibition is a re-staging of Edouard Manet’s “Olympia,” in which images of the notorious painting are continuously projected on the body of a sex doll made to resemble Olympia as closely as possible. Also on display are several digital prints in which the dolls appear to be emotionally involved in their predestined situations.
Now through May 4 at PARTICIPANT NYC, feast your eyes on the queer exhibit community of elsewheres, a suite of black and white photographs by Alice O’Malley (curated by her longtime friend and subject, Antony). O’Malley’s formal studio portraits of artists, performers and friends depict untraditional people whose defiant presence counterbalances the impending obsolescence of such individuals in New York City today. The Lower East Side has long been a place in which art and the avant-garde function as integral parts of urban life—O’Malley’s portraits provide an intimate look at the people who give it this character.
The recent history of Fresh Kills, the Staten Island landfill that became the resting place for the rubble of the Twin Towers, serves as a real world parable for a group of simultaneously destitute and monumental artworks in the new exhibit Fresh Kills, now through May 4 at Dumbo Arts Center. Curated by David Kennedy Cutler, Fresh Kills features provocative works by Jan Bunnig, Dan Colen, Rachel Foullon, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Carter Mull, Hannes Schmidt and Ruby Sky Stiler.
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