January 12, 6-8pm: CUT at Foley Gallery’s grand reopening

CUT, an exhibition featuring new work by Bradley Castellanos, Keith Maddy, and Billy Renkl, continues to explore and deepen the gallery's interest in cut, painted, and manipulated paper, which began with a window installation of work by Mia Perlman back in 2015.

Bradley Castellanos' work captures the feeling of coming upon the mysterious and unexplainable. Paintings and works on paper present surreal landscapes and supernatural, magical beings—conduits of art and creation, metaphors of the creative process. 

Keith Maddy's childhood love of coloring books provide endless source material for his new collages. Vintage Asian prints and folding screens become environments that create a playground of imaginary and dream-like landscapes where characters of all sorts, liberated from their vintage sorces, now festively parade and co-mingle in a celebration of life. 

Billy Renkl's series, Cover, a series whose title refers to the analog spread of ideas via the postal service, opens windows onto to the way that a letter can cover so much ground. It also refers to the ways in which stamp collectors identify an envelope as a "cover." Here, vintage European correspondence envelopes create a fertile ground for cut silhouettes of monochromatic flora, potted and placed, giving this "cover" a new destination.

Foley Gallery, 59 Orchard Street, New York, NY Info 

Thursday, January 12, 6-8pm: Karin Brukner and Wendy Moss | Assembly Required, at Carter Burden Gallery

This exhibition deconstructs a printmaking process using materials adhered to a rigid surface then inked and printed onto paper in its presentation of collagraphs alongside the plates used in the printing. Described by the artists as a kind of “printed collage”, this method of printmaking results in rich surfaces with varying textures, patterns, and shapes dependent on the materials used to create the plate. Above: collotypes and plates by Karin Bruckner

Collagraph plates large and small have been a focus in Moss's overall oeuvre and Bruckner enjoys the playfulness of working with the technique. Both artists employ the discarded and overlooked as supportive actors in their plays, such as paper coffee cups in Moss's work and disassembled boxes of all kinds in Bruckner's. Once these seemingly pedestrian materials get inked and sent through the press like any other printmaking plate, they transform. The plate ultimately becomes an art object in itself.

Carter Burden Gallery, 548 West 28th Street, #534, New York, NY [Masks required]  Info

Thursday, January 12, noon, online: Live Virtual Tour of Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces at the New Museum

Through Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces, the artist reimagines the function of a museum as a space for personal histories and spiritual convocations. Come together with fellow visitors for a close look and conversation focused on Gates's first survey exhibition in a New York museum. During this live, forty-five-minute Zoom tour led by Gallery Teaching Fellow Rosed Serrano, we will examine the objects, images, sounds, movements, and interpersonal relationships featured in the galleries, and investigate our own collective forms of knowledge.  Register

Thursday, January 12, 6:30-8:00pm: Tom of Finland at David Kordansky

Tom of Finland: Highway Patrol, Greasy Rider, and Other Selected Works, an exhibition of collages and drawings, including the complete Highway Patrol and Greasy Rider series from Tom’s Kake graphic novels. 

A masterful draftsman and prolific artist, Tom produced an expressive and extensive body of work in which masculine, empowered gay men are fully engulfed in intimate moments of unabashed ecstasy..Over the course of his career, as Tom’s audience and global reach grew, so did his commitment to the explicit depiction of gay erotica.

By sharing his work so broadly, especially during periods when public displays of homosexuality were heavily policed, Tom’s pictures extended well beyond the sexual to a more holistic and inherent understanding of—and equitable access to—pleasure. The exhibition offers a nearly complete glimpse into the transformative desire-driven approach to artmaking that has long distinguished the persona and vision of Tom of Finland.

Panel Discussion featuring Nayland Blake, Durk Dehner, Claire Gilman, and Brontez Purnell: Thursday, January 12 | 5 PM

David  Kordansky Gallery, 20 W. 20th Street, New York, NY Info

Thursday, January 12-Thursday, January 19: Out-FRONT Fest

Presented in partnership with The LGBT Community Center, Pioneers Go East Collective’s Out-FRONT! Fest. is a dance, film, and cross-disciplinary festival championing the voices of LGBTQ and feminist artists for a lively exchange of art and culture. Curated by Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Hilary Brown-Istrefi, and Philip Treviño, the week-long fest witnesses different generations of artists exploring bold performance modes each evening. Performances and films are free/donations welcomed. Above: Electric Blue by Pioneers Go East Collective

The LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY Info

Saturday, January 14, 6:30-9:30 pm: Life Drawing with Arcadia at El Barrio's PS109

Monthly life drawing with Arcadia is back! Celebrate the beauty of women of color in all shapes and sizes, with professional models nude or in costume. Bring your own drawing or painting supplies. Beginners welcome. Free snacks/beverages for sale. $20 at the door.

El Barrio’s Artspace PS109, 215 East 99^th Street, New York, NY @arcadias111_haven