Hot Times, Summer in the City…..you know the rest. Outdoor sculpture installations, white box summer group shows, workshops in unusual locations, special events on the city’s waterways--even just a ferry ride to the Rockaways, where art installations take over prime beachfronts. Following are some ideas for chilling out. Always check the info link as many galleries are now on summer schedules.

Special for designers: Exceptional Works |Josef Albers at David Zwirner

Just in from the gallery: We are pleased to present a rare complete set of Josef Albers’s Formulation: Articulation (1972)—the artist’s monumental portfolio comprising 127 screenprints that survey the essential ideas of his work. The portfolio is printed on sixty-six sheets of folded wove paper, all contained in two (2) original linen-covered portfolios and slip case. Each: 15 x 20 inches (38.1 x 50.8 cm). Edition of 1000. Published by Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York and Ives Sillman Inc., New Haven. Signed and numbered. Above: Installation view; photo courtesy of the gallery

Created by Josef Albers in 1972, the present work is a complete set of the two-volume print portfolio Formulation: Articulation, an expansive series of 127 screenprints printed on 66 sheets of folded wove paper. Albers spent roughly two years working on the prints, which are based on a range of works from throughout his life including sand-blasted glass works from his Bauhaus period, woodcuts from his time at Black Mountain College, and countless Variant/Adobe and Homage to the Square paintings, among others. Right: Josef Albers reviews a proof while working at Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles, 1962. 

A preface to the portfolio, written by its publishers, Norman Ives and Sewell Sillman, describes the content and concept of the volumes, stressing that the portfolio is “the realization rather than the reproduction of the essential ideas in Josef Albers's works.” They further explain, “Works have been selected from forty years of Albers’s search and offer an unusual opportunity for study of this significant artist’s direct participation in an original development of his own work.”

“When it comes to Albers’s printmaking enterprise in particular, the range of subject matter, style, method, and process make generalizations impossible. What is consistent is an enduring curiosity about medium and a willingness to explore new methods.... There is also frequently a sense of adventure and a whimsicality, a surprise at what the process yields.” —Brenda Danilowitz, art historian and chief curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, 2010

Complete set of one hundred and twenty-seven (127) color screenprints on sixty-six (66) sheets of folded wove paper, all contained in two (2) original linen-covered portfolios and slip case. Each: 15 x 20 inches (38.1 x 50.8 cm). Edition of 1000. Published by Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York and Ives Sillman Inc., New Haven. Signed and numbered

David Zwirner,  537 West 20th Street, New York, NY Info

Sunday, July 28, 3-6pm: Silkscreen Workshop, Rockaway Beach

This summer, the multi-generational Queens-based artist collective Mobile Print Power(MPP) and Public Art Fund will explore how residents and visitors alike experience Rockaway Beach. Through a series of hands-on open workshops, MPP will use their participatory design methodology and portable silkscreen printmaking carts to connect with communities along the beach and boardwalk. With their collaborative process, MPP will co-create new graphic works based on participants’ sense of place.

On July 28, MPP will invite participants to learn screenprinting and unpack their thoughts and ideas through drawings and words. MPP will then integrate responses into original screenprint designs for the final workshop on August 11, where attendees will print collaboratively created designs from the initial two workshops.

This program is curated by Gabriela López Dena, Associate Curator of Public Practice. No registration is needed. Audiences of all ages are encouraged to drop in! Registration allows us to send you an event reminder and share updates and alerts. Save the date: Sunday, August 11, 2024, printmaking workshop at Rockaway Beach Boardwalk, 81 - 84 St

Rockaway Beach, Boardwalk @ 60 Street, Queens, NY Info

July 25, last chance for Mary Heilmann | Daydream Nation at Hauser&Wirth

This show, curated by artist Gary Simmons, explores Mary Heilmann’s ongoing interest in drawing as a form of transcribing memory. The exhibition celebrates Heilmann’s talent for distilling complex images and ideas into deceptively simple geometric forms and abstract gestural marks. Through rarely and never-before-seen works on paper from the 1970s to early 2000s, this presentation reveals how drawing functions as a form of daydreaming—of conjuring the sights, sounds and events of her past travels or her imagined future—in Heilmann’s creative process.

The exhibition features a new mural-like installation that reimagines and expands an existing work into a new form of expression. Heilmann’s seventh wall drawing to date, this installation was developed in conversation with her friend and former student Simmons, who frequently explores the monumental scale of this medium in his own work.

Hauser & Wirth, 542 West 22^nd Street, New York, NY Info

Continuing: The Swimmer at Flag Art Foundation

The Swimmer, an expansive group exhibition inspired by John Cheever’s 1964 short story of the same name features works by artists Henni Alftan, Harold Ancart, Leonard Baby, Conrad Bakker, Burt Barr, Dike Blair, Martin Boyce, Katherine Bradford, Vija Celmins, Zoe Crosher, Nancy Diamond, Elmgreen & Dragset, Tony Feher, Elizabeth Glaessner, Robert Gober, Wayne Gonzales, Jim Hodges, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Roni Horn, Ludovic Nkoth, Amy Park, Jack Pierson, Alessandro Raho, Calida Rawles, Ed Ruscha, Melanie Schiff, Cindy Sherman, Cynthia Talmadge, Deanna Templeton, Paul Thek, and Stephen Truax.

Published in The New Yorker in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, John Cheever’s The Swimmer is emblematic of mid-century America’s changing perception of its own relationship to class, idealism, and failure, evergreen issues as relevant today as sixty years ago. Cheever’s protagonist, Neddy Merrill—who “might have been compared to a summer’s day”—embarks on the novel adventure to swim home by way of his affluent neighbor’s swimming pools. What begins as a carefree midsummer Sunday devolves into something altogether different and nefarious; Neddy’s life and his grip on reality disappear, pool by pool, the closer he comes to finishing his journey and returning home… whether that’s the same day or perhaps many years later. 

FLAG’s exhibition similarly confuses time and unfolds through a series of disappearances in bodies of water—in pools, lakes, and oceans—through serial works that concern loss and losing oneself. Navigating themes inherent in The Swimmer and Cheever’s broader oeuvre, including alcoholism, grandiosity, loss of innocence, selective memory, privilege, sexuality, etc., the exhibition trains an eye to the crumbling of an American dream, set against the glittering backdrop of a string of swimming pools. The ninth floor of the exhibition closely aligns itself with Cheever’s narrative and features a variety of painting, photography, and sculpture in which the body is suggested, but not depicted, positioning the viewer as the “swimmer” in space.  The exhibition’s tenth floor focuses almost exclusively on the figure—the body in water—and explores night swimming, locating the pool as an intimate, self-contained site for mystery and experimentation.

Flag Art Foundation, 545 West 25^th Street, New York, NY Info

Continuing through August 9: Cycles of Return at Wing On Wo 

This just in from Hyperallergic: Wing On Wo & Co, the oldest store in Manhattan’s Chinatown, run by fifth-generation owner Mei Lum, also operates as a storefront gallery and, through the W.O.W. Project, a cultural space for activism against the neighborhood’s gentrification. Currently, the store’s window gallery features the work of Vivian Chiu and Jing Huang in Cycles of Return, a show that contemplates migration and memory. 

Chiu, who has roots in Hong Kong, presents towering wooden vases crafted from the store’s shipment crates, while Huang’s nature-inspired clay sculptures recall the landscapes of Guilin, her mountainous hometown in southern China. Flanking the shop’s entrance, the works embody deeply personal thoughts on the pain, loneliness, longing, discovery, and excitement that constitute the diasporic experience. And don’t forget to go inside and check out this charming store. —Hakim Bishara

Wing On Wo & Co, 26 Mott Street, New York, NY Info

Wednesday, August 21, 6:20-8:30 pm: Sunset Boat Tour, Pier 83

NYC’s Green Economy Action Plan aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. This tour will highlight transformative projects such as the New York Climate Exchange on Governors Island, industrial building decarbonization at Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the Climate Innovation Hub at Brooklyn Army Terminal. 

Andrew Kimball, President and CEO of NYC Economic Development Corporation, Clare Newman, President and CEO of the Trust for Governors Island, Matthew Harrison, Senior Vice President of Development at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Alice Shay, Principal and leader of BuroHappold’s Cities team will provide expert commentary on the initiatives that will fulfill our city’s climate goals. Learn more. Tickets

Pier 83, 12^th Avenue, just south of the Intrepid, New York, NY Map

Continuing through August 24: New Voices | Ritual at Print Center

Drawing attention to everyday objects, concerted repetition, and artistic process, this exhibition considers the fundamental but often unrecognized role that ritual plays in our everyday lives. Combining traditional print media with sculpture, fiber, assemblage, and installation, the exhibition examines both the ordinary acts we carry out each day, as well as more formal gestures tied to ceremony or observance. Here, the intersection of art-making and lived experience prompts the artists to ask: in an uncertain and ever-shifting cultural landscape, how does ritual ground us and make sense of the world?

Works by Ruben Castillo, Andrew Gonzalez, Elnaz Javani, Naomi Nakazato, Jonathan Sánchez Noa, and Kate VanVliet.

Organized by Olivia Shao, Burger Collection & TOY Meets Art Curator at The Drawing Center, with Robin Siddall, Exhibitions and Programs Coordinator at Print Center New York. Above: Jonathan Sanchez Noa, Untitled (cabeza N'ko); Connecticut broadleaf tobacco, coir, abacá, sealing wax on cinder block; photo courtesy of the artist

Print Center New York, 535 West 24^th Street, New York, NY Info