Opening February 1: The Black Index at CUNY
The artists featured in The Black Index build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. Using drawing, performance, printmaking, sculpture, and digital technology to transform the recorded image, they question our reliance on photography as a privileged source for documentary objectivity and understanding. Their works offer an alternative practice—a Black index—that serves as a finding aid for information about Black subjects, but also challenges viewers’ desire for classification. Above: Alicia Henry, Analagous II, 2020

Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, 132 East 68^th Street, NY, NY Info

Opening February 2, 6:00-8:00 pm: David Byrne | How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic at Pace Gallery

This presentation of drawings by David Byrne sheds light on the artist and musician's distinct formal style and expansive visual arts practice. The show will include works from Byrne's dingbats series, which grapple with the attendant boredom, anxiety, and loneliness of quarantine as well as the inequities and injustices highlighted by the pandemic. Above: David Byrne, Tight Spot, 2011

Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street, NY, NY Info

Opening February 3: Jana Winderen | The Art of Listening: Under Water at Lenfest

Featuring underwater recordings from around the world, this immersive, site-specific installation is comprised of underwater recordings made by the Norweigen artist over many years in various locations, such as the Barents Sea around the North Pole, Iceland, Greenland, Thailand, the Caribbean, off the coast of Miami and most recently, New York City. 

The composition highlights the fragility of our ecosystems, made more so by the constant intrusions of human sounds underwater today. Cargo and cruise ships, seismic airguns used to test for oil, pile drivings, industrial activities, military sonars, jet skis, tankers, and fishing vessels generate underwater noise pollution that puts stress on aquatic life — impeding animals’ ability to hear each other, communicate, feed, mate, and navigate. 

Columbia University, Lenfest Center for the Arts, 615 West 129^th Street, NY, NY Info

Opening February 4, talk at 6:00 pm: David Butow | Brink at RIT’s City Art Space

Brink, a solo exhibition of photographs by David Butow that chronicles politics in the United States during the 2016 presidential election and the Trump administration, concluding with the January 2021 insurrection and its aftermath.

Curator Jenn Poggi will lead conversation with Butow about Brink at 6:00 pm Info
RIT City Art Space, 280 East Main St., Sibley Tower, Rochester, N.Y. Info

Opening February 5 ,1:00-5:00 pm: Native America | In Transition at Art on Hulfish

This exhibition curated by Wendy Red Star considers the wide-ranging work of photographers and lens-based artists who pose challenging questions about land rights, identity and heritage, and histories of colonialism.

“I was thinking about young Native artists,” says Red Star, “and what would be inspirational and important for them as a road map.” The exhibition and accompanying Aperture publication look into the historic, often fraught relationship between photography and Native representation, while also offering new perspectives by emerging artists who reimagine what it means to be a citizen in North America today. Above: Martine Gutierrez, Queer Rage, Dear Diary, No Signal During VH1’s Fiercest Divas, from the series Indigenous Woman, 2018

Art on Hulfish, 11 Hulfish Street.  Princeton, NJ Info

Closing February 5: John Chamberlain | Stance, Rhythm, and Tilt

Chamberlain developed his distinctive aesthetic and techniques early in his career, citing the time he spent on an aircraft carrier as a member of the US Navy in the mid-1940s as influential on his understanding of scale and perspective. By compressing metal to generate complex folds and textures, then welding disparate elements together, he arrived at an innovative variant on three-dimensional collage that emphasizes volume and mass regardless of overall proportion. 

Juxtaposing reflective surfaces with flaking paint and hard edges with exuberant curves, Chamberlain displays a fusion of technical mastery and formal verve that resonates with the exhibition title’s allusion to posture and motion. Above: Dearie Oso Enseau, 1992

Gagosian, 521 West 21st Street, New York, NY Info

Closing February 22: Acid Garden at Charles Moffett

The exhibition title is rich with layers of meaning that connect visual art with the larger culture. "Acid" could describe LSD or the "acid" hues of a painters' palette. Garden signifies fertility, earthly delights and landscapes Edenic or not. The exhibition imagery and titles invoke the creative realms of dreamlike surrealism and magic realism. And why not? A little detour from reality might suit many of us, especially after the last two years. Curated by Peter Hristoff and Judy Mannarino, the exhibition includes current SVA faculty members, Summer Residencies alumni and more. Above: Brandi Twilley, Flowers on the Floor (detail), 2018

Charles Moffett Gallery, 511 Canal Street, NY, NY Info

Continuing through February 27: The New York Puerto Rican Experience, 1973-74 at El Museo del Barrio

The exhibition centers on a single portfolio of 79 photographs by founding members of the Bronx-based collective, Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Roger Cabán, and Felipe Dante. Photo above by Filipe Dante

El Museo del Barrio, 1230 5th Avenue, New York, New York, 10029 Info

Just in from subscriber Ellen Weinstein [right[ Happy Year of the Tiger!