If you’ve ever though of using solar power to recharge your devices, this is now within reach. On Sunday, Flux Factory is offering an afternoon workshop in which participants will learn the basics of off the grid empowerment. The workshop will be led by Alex Nathanson, an artist, curator, organizer, and educator whose work spans video, sound, performance, and interaction design. Info According to the announcement, the workshop will cover basic electronic knowledge, hardware requirements, basic off grid solar circuit design, and how to determine your power needs. Students will learn to solder and use multimeters. The class is for artists, DIYer’s, makers, and anyone who isn’t a “professional” with a very basic understanding of electricity and a willingness to experiment. Everyone in the class will build a tiny solar powered USB charger, capable of powering anything that runs off of USB including MP3 players, bike lights, speakers, and cell phones. The class will conclude by examining the off­grid solar panel installed on Flux Factory’s roof. All materials will be provided. Students should bring a USB chargeable device and cable with them.
Introduction to Solar Power, Sunday, July 17, 1-5 pm. Flux Factory, 39-31 29^th Street, Long Island City, NY. Info 

Must See | Closing Soon

Sigmark Polke | Eine Wintereise, closing July 22. David Zwirner, 537 West 20^th Street, NY, NY. Info. Roberta Smith wrote, in the New York Times, Organized by Vicente Todolí, [the show is] a complete knockout of 31 works on canvas, printed fabric, clear plastic and semitransparent polyester, most of them dating from the 1980s. The show’s title, which translates as “A Winter’s Journey,” nods to Polke’s travels during the 1980s to climes tropical and chilly that affected his subject matter and sense of color. The works here highlight an apparent inability to make a bad painting, or at least a talent for ones whose loose but indelible touch, bracing wit and slapdash pictorial wizardry consistently taunt us with that possibility. [more] Below: Sigmar Polke, Magnetische Landschaft (Magnetic Landscape), 1982 (detail), courtesy David Zwirner.

Philip Guston Painter, 1957-1967, closing July 29 Hauser & Wirth, 511 West 18^th Street, NY, NY Info Also by Roberta Smith, in the New York Times: The exhibition is organized by Paul Schimmel, the former chief curator of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and a partner in Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, the gallery’s Los Angeles branch. It presents the inspiring tale of an artist refusing to give up, and not only illuminates a neglected phase but reshapes understanding of Guston’s career. The show indicates that Guston’sdevelopment was the reverse of other Abstract Expressionists’. His own arduous apprenticeship came only after he embraced abstraction, and it guided him back to imagery. [More]