Thornton Dial Paintings 1990-1998 | Closing Friday, July 16

The work of Thornton Dial (1928–2016) delivers a deeply personal historical account of life in the United States. Born and raised in rural Alabama on a sharecropping farm, from a young age Dial would collect discarded and recycled materials to be worked into new objects, and meanwhile observed deep physical and philosophical lessons from his decades of experience working different jobs, including thirty years as a metalworker at the Pullman-Standard Company manufacturing railroad cars. 

Over time, Dial developed a highly sophisticated artistic vernacular and expressionistic mode that blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture as disciplines, and came to truly compete with the avant-garde. Dial’s artistic career was marked by his first exhibition of note, Ladies of the United States, presented in Atlanta in 1990 and well-received by audiences. 

Upon reflection, decades after this first show, Dial stated: ”I believe I have proved that my art is about ideas, and about life, and the experience of the world. I have tried to learn how to explain everything I have did. I tried to name everything that could be named about that experience, and if a person still see ignorance in me, he might just be looking into his own self.” 

Thornton Dial Paintings 1990-1998, presented by James Fuentes Gallery, in collaboration with The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and Family Collections. 55 Delancey Street, NY, NY Info

Thursday, July 15, 6-8 pm | Masked reception for the artists:

Viridian’s Fifth Annual International “30 Under 30”

Curated  by Vernita Nemec, director of Viridian Artists, the competition offered cash awards to the first, second and third place winners of this competition that brings the art of emerging and under-recognized artists forward. Please make your reservation for the opening atviridianartistsinc@gmail.com

 Zea Beckwith , Allison Burch , Mara Clawson , Chasity Colón , Hyunhee Doh , Alexandra Farber , Kelsey Gavin (3rd prize) , Elisabeth Henley , Devan Horton , Yasmine Iskander , Lauren Karjala ,  Lua Kobayashi (1st prize ) , Lucy Le Bohec, Rena McInerney Olk , Tiffany Nesbit , Autumn Nicole , Haley Smith (Honorable Mention) 
30 Under 30 continues through July 31 at Viridian Artists, Inc. 547 West 27th Street, #,632 NY, NY Info

Closing Sunday, July 18 at the Brooklyn Museum

Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And has set the Brooklyn Museum ablaze with the radical gestures and eccentric poetics of an incomparable artist. O’Grady’s rebellious spirit has roused the mainstream art world for close to 50 years, and this exhibition [her first retrospective] is no exception, reports Hyperallergic. 

Displaying hundreds of artworks from throughout her career, as well as archival documents, the show is extraordinarily thorough. This curatorial rigor is in part thanks to O’Grady’s own meticulous archival practice and collaboration with curators Aruna D’Souza, Catherine Morris, and Jenée-Daria Strand. These efforts coalesce as an exhibition that historicizes O’Grady as a prodigious figure of the conceptual, feminist, and Black American avant-garde, while simultaneously encouraging the viewer to enter the artist’s world and ponder her radical lessons. More

Lorraine O’Grady | Both/And, at the Brooklyn Museum until Sunday, July 18. 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY Info Lorraine O'Grady podcast on David Zwirner Dialogues 

Closing Monday, July 19 at OCDCHINATOWN

Four years ago, Colombian-born artist Camilo Godoy began inviting friends and lovers to pose nude in his studio. Although inspired in part by the vintage men’s porn magazine Amigo, Godoy chose to title his project with the gender-inclusive version of the Spanish word for “friends:” AMIGXS. 

The artist assembled the images in three issues of an offset-printed zine. Together, they convey an omnium gatherum of physical desire across gender and racial identities, sexualities, and body types. 

“The photographs of AMIGXS defy racial, gender, and sexual norms,” Godoy writes. “My work is informed by queer, Latinx, feminist, and Black perspectives. My photographs celebrate friendship and insist on love as a way of life to imagine different subversive ways of being.” More Above: Self-portrait with Brendan Mahoney, Carlos Martiel and Jorge Sánchez from AMIGXS, No. 1, 2017
Camilo Godoy, AMIGXS, at OCDCHINATOWN, 75 E Broadway, NY, NY Info

Jeanne Quinn / Hanging Garden at MS297

Jeanne Quinn creates large public installations in the 3D, working with the hard physicality of ceramics combined with ephemeral, temporary elements in ways that question our perception of materials and space. She writes, “Ceramics is hard, permanent, fragile, heavy, soft, and plastic; it is contradictory. Everyone knows its qualities; we use it when feeding and bathing ourselves, every day. We have a bodily understanding of this material. In its raw form, it is our landscape; refined, it fills our homes.”

In 2018 she completed Hanging Garden for the public lobby of the new MS 297, a focus school in Greenwich Village where over half the students have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). 

She writes, “A skill common in these students is extraordinary visual acuity. Rather than accommodating students with ASD, I wanted to engage their gifts. I designed the piece using mirror image symmetry rotated in 3 dimensions.…I imagined a child walking through that space day after day, realizing the pattern over time.

More about the artist at Mark Moore Gallery

Jeanne Quinn was recently interviewed for the podcast Vulnerability in Life and Art, produced by Sarah Sniderman in Montreal: https://spoti.fi/3vEo5A8

Thursday, July 15, 2021, 5:00 - 6:30 PM PDT: Professional Development

Summer is a good time for visual artists intent on snagging a good residency program to hone their presentation skills. If you are in this category, SFCamerawork has what you’ve been waiting for: Tomorrow, the latest in their Artist Toolkit Series, Creating Your Best Juried Show Submission is being offered by Ann Jastrab and Judy Walgren. 

Learn how to prepare and submit your photographic work for juried shows in our next Artist Toolkit event with Ann Jastrab and Judy Walgren. These two experienced jurors will share their insights on reviewing work and will offer tips and pointers on how to craft a winning submission that stands out. This event will also discuss FORECAST 2021 and answer commonly asked questions about the submission process. Register here

July 20 and July 27 \ SVA Brunch Lecture Series online

The School of Visual Arts Brunch Lecture Series continues with talks by two New York-based critics: 
July 20 - Seph Rodney, writer and critic, and opinions editor for Hyperallergic 
July 27 - John Yau, critic and poet, and a professor of critical studies in the visual arts department at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University who writes for Brooklyn Rail, among other arts publications.

Register here