Film Still from Magnificent Cake, this week at Socrates Sculpture Park

Summer in The City offers a feast of arts-related events—outdoors and in—across the boroughs. This week, for example:  

Wednesday, August 7

Screening: Rooftop Films presents: Dark ’Toons, 7 pm; Highlighted by De Swaef and Roels’ masterful This Magnificent Cake!, the films in this program utilize groundbreaking visual innovations, eerie sound design, and rhythmic scores to amplify the powerful emotions embedded in their deeply affecting personal and political narratives. Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Blvd, Long Island City, NY Info

Thursday, August 8

Performance/reception: Savannah Knoop | Tripod Sweep, 6-8 pm, continues through Sunday. Tripod Sweep is an interactive, durational performance that grapples with defining power, conflict, and intimacy within a set of given terms. The artist will approach individuals who enter the space with a movement borrowed from Brazilian jiu-jitsu called The Tripod Sweep, in which one attaches one’s own legs to the hip of another person, destabilizing the other’s two-legged base. Leslie-Lohman Museum, 26 Wooster Street, NY, NY. Info

Opening: Matthew Bede Murphy, Cynthia Alberto | If this is Paradise, 6-8 pm. Shelter, 179 East Broadway, NY, NY Info

Opening: Kenmin Lee | Redefining the Undefined, 6-8 pm. Shin Gallery, 68 Orchard Street, NY, NY Info

Opening: Intricacies | Fragment and Meaning; Ghulman Mohammed | Solo show, 6-8 pm. Aicon Gallery, 35 Great Jones Street, NY, NY Info

Opening: Priority Mail | 2019 Mail Art Biennial, 6-9 pm. Ground Floor Gallery, 343 5th Street, Brooklyn, NY Info

Performance: Devin Kenny | los giros de la siguiente, 6:30 pm. MoMA PS1, 46-01 21st Street, Long Island City, NY Info

Kyle Dunn, Lover’s Leap, 2019; from “Do You Love Me?” at P.P.O.W

Friday, August 9

Opening: MAD | Eight Artists, 6-9 pm. Assembly Room, 191 Henry Street, NY, NY Info

Opening: The Weight of the Temporary, 6-8 pm. Nars Foundation, 201 $6th Street, 4th Floor, Brooklyn, NY Info

30th Anniversary Screenings: Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, 7:30 pm, continues through Sunday. Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria, NY Info

Performances: Open Call 3, through August 25, various dates/times. Commissioned new work from New York-based emerging artists, the performances will feature 14 artists and collectives including Salsa Masala, an Indo-Latin fusion band, and the Illustrious Blacks, who have composed an electro-punk-funk opera. The Shed, 545 West 30th Street, NY, NY Info

Closing: 

Do You Love Me? | Six artists. P.PP.O.W., 535 West 22nd Street, NY, NY Info

Candy Jerigan | drawings. Greene Naftali, 508 West 26thStreet, NY, NY Info

Candy Jernigan, Installation view, To, From, Greene Naftali 

Saturday, August 10

Opening: Systems of Injustice | Clarissa Sligh, Carol Jacobsen, Mark King, Mahlot Sansosa, Philip A. Robinson, Isaac Aden, 6-9 pm. BronxArtSpace, 305 East 140th Street, Bronx, NY Info

Performance:  Pioneer Works presents: Kim Brandt | Graveyard Shift, 6 pm. Green-Wood Cemetery, 500 25th Street, Brooklyn, NY Info

Performance: Combo Chimbita and special performance by Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, 7:30-10 pm. Queens Museum, New York City Building, Corona Park, Queens, NY Info

From Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us, at the wiss Institute; photo: © Peggy Roalf

Sunday, August 11

Opening: Along a River of Sapphire Pools | Ltd. Ed. beach towels by seven artists, 3-7 pm. Selenas Mountain, 63 Woodward Avenue, Ridgewood, NY Info

Performance: Bang on a Can | Laraaji, 3-4 pm. Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, NY Info

Closing August 18

Jack Black’s America | 12 artists; curated by Randy Kennedy. Fortnight Institute, 60 East 4th Street, NY, NY Info

Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us \ installation by curator-auteur Harald Szeemann. Swiss Institute, 38 St. Marks Place, NY, NY Info