Using her mastery of technology and careful study of BPCA’s commitment to environmental sustainability, Shuli Sadé created an innovative, temporal installation that hopes to bridge the potential of technology and bring viewers close to nature in a new, site-specific augmented reality (AR) installation created for Battery Park City Authority (BPCA)..

“Behind the origin of this project is the wish to share the discovery of the incredible bird species that migrate to Battery Park City. There are similarities between birds’ navigation and the geolocation technology used to experience augmented reality. Birds’ navigational systems are still unresolved puzzles scientists aim to understand: whether it is the magnet in the Mourning Dove beak which pulls the bird towards the direction of the poles in time of migrations and birding, or shifts in climate and food which organizes huge bird flocks to get from one place to another.” – Shuli Sadé

Save the date: On Friday, May 6 at 6pm, an artist talk between Shuli Sadé and Mary Miss (co-creator of Battery Park City’s South Cove), will take place at the northwest corner of South Cove. Info

Thursday, April 28, 6-9 pm: Nari Ward | I’ll Take You there: A Proclamation, at Lehmann Maupin

Spanning two floors of the gallery and the building’s facade, the show debuts a range of copper panels, two large-scale sculptural installations, a video work, and new examples of the artist’s iconic shoelace works. Above: Nari Ward in his New York studio, 2022. Photo by Daniel Kukla

Across these varied media, Ward continues to confront issues surrounding race, gentrification, and community, while intentionally leaving the meaning of his work open to allow viewers to construct their own interpretations.

Learn more about Ward’s practice and new exhibition in his interview withThe Art Newspaper’s A brush with... podcast

May 4, 6-8 pm: Francis Bacon | Faces & Figures at Skarstedt

The exhibition brings together a group of masterworks spanning the 1950s to the 1970s featuring depictions of some of his most beloved friends, lovers, and muses—Peter Lacy, George Dyer, Muriel Belcher, and Henrietta Moraes—along with an intimate self-portrait and a portrait of Pope Pius XII. The exhibition traces poignant moments of loss and companionship through the perennial influences that have come to define Bacon's oeuvre.  

Left: Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Portrait, 1976

Bacon's raw images contort their subjects in such a radical manner that they permanently altered the genre of figurative painting in the twentieth century. Yet even while the figures twist and writhe in distortion, there remains a distinct sense of truth in his work. As Milan Kundera noted, "Looking at Bacon's portraits, I am amazed that, despite their 'distortion', they all look like their subject…. However 'distorted', these portraits are faithful. That is what I find miraculous."

Skarstdt Gallery, 20 East 79^th Street, New York, NY Info

Thursday, May 5, 6-8 pm: Andreas Gursky at Gagosian

Gursky’s large-scale photographs evoke the global flow of information, the chaos of contemporary life competing with the classical desire for order. He portrays the visual extremes of the present moment with an objective eye, capturing built and natural environments on a grand scale in richly detailed images of autobahns and cruise ships, mountains and waterfalls. While comparable in their scope to early nineteenth-century landscape paintings, Gursky’s works retain the precision of photography. Many have been digitally manipulated, and often reveal a sensitivity to the damaging effects of human systems on the natural world.

The monumental Eisläufer (2021, above) depicts frozen flood waters in Düsseldorf, Germany, recording their temporary transformation into a spot where locals gathered to walk, skate, and play hockey. In its timeless subject and composition, again engineered in part through extensive digital manipulation, the work evokes the paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and harks back to the visual language of Dutch landscape painting. The fact that the skaters are wearing masks and practicing social distancing, however, also roots it firmly in the era of COVID-19.

Gagosian, 541 West 24^th Street, New York, NY Info 

May 5 –12: Inaugural New York Art Week

Founded by over twenty leading organizations, museums, and auction houses, New York Art Week will highlight an unprecedented offering of global art market events and institutional exhibitions taking place in New York City. The main focus of this new collaborative project is to gather everything that these organizations have to offer into one central location. A new website includes a map of the offerings, as well as listings for special programming like talks, panels, and tours. Photo above from 2019 Independent Art Fair at Spring Studios

Four art fairs—Independent, TEFAF New York, NADA New York, and the Future Fair—will open simultaneously in the city. In addition, each of the world’s three major auction houses—Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips—are participating in New York Art Week, as are several museums across the city, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Queens Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum.

The other founding organizations include the Drawing Center, the New Museum, the Swiss Institute, White Columns, and Amant, the artist residency and exhibition space in Brooklyn last year.

The Queens Museum will also have a slate of exhibitions on view, including a new commission by Christine Sun Kim and the first New York institutional survey for Suzanne Lacy. Info

Thursday, May 19, 11am-2pm, TDC Typewalk with Paul Shaw, Greenwich Village

As part of The One Club for Creativity’s Creative Week 2022, join Type Director's Club to explore the famously Bohemian Greenwich Village. The Village, a largely residential area with very few tall buildings, will not have the same rich variety of lettering that can be found in Midtown or the Financial District. However, its wealth of cafés, restaurants, and nightclubs, along with the presence of New York University and some old churches guarantees an interesting mix of classical inscriptions, Art Deco neon signs, quirky Victorian inscriptions, stained glass lettering, ghost signs, and several hidden oddities. During this walk we will look not only at the obvious (such as commercial signs) for examples of fascinating lettering, but we will also scrutinize house numbers, cornerstones, attics, plaques, and more. Tickets