Saturday, June 20 starting 6pm: Solstice Celebration at Noo Arts/Kingsland Wildflower

What happens when you cross contemporary choreography with Nintendo’s Pikmin, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and a cutthroat game of The Floor is Lava? You get New York movement artist Karley Wasaff’s newest interactive creation, Growing Takes Time.

Until recently, the intersection of performance art and digital subculture has struggled to break past the spectator barrier. But Wasaff has completely dismantled it by turning her audience into working "astronauts". They physically guide a cast of PIKMII dancers through a high-stakes arcade of childhood anxiety games in this tender/aggressive and deeply collaborative experiment in spatial politics and conflict resolution. This interactive performance bridges the gap between raw, floor-bound grappling and a highly curated, 3D-printed digital art gallery. Don’t forget to wear sneakers.

Alongside the arcade, explore a digital art gallery installation in collaboration with Josh Sauceda, with visuals that extend the Growing TakesTime universe.

Noo Arts, 520 Kingsland Ave, Greenpoint, NY Info

The Black Mirror Experience at The Shed

This summer, the conversation surrounding the accelerating disruption of human autonomy takes a tactile, yet virtual, leap forward. The Black Mirror Experience™ has made its United States debut at The Shed in New York’s Hudson Yards, fresh off winning the Special Jury Prize in the Immersive Competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.

Produced by Banijay Live Studio alongside VR pioneer Univrse, the 60-minute hybrid production inspired by Charlie Brooker's acclaimed Netflix sci-fi series totally steps away from passive screen-gazing. Instead, it transforms small groups of six participants into active protagonists within a physical-meets-virtual showroom. You are invited to the launch of "LifeAgent"—a humanoid robot engineered to learn your personal desires and predict your choices. 

By utilizing your face scans and voice data to map a personalized avatar before you even cross the threshold, the production holds up a mirror to our quotidian surrender to the digital landscape. This is a visual and sensory testimony to the psychological space we inhabit today—where the line between the human animal and the predictive algorithm is increasingly, beautifully, and [sometimes] terrifyingly blurred.

Through September 6 at The Shed, 545 West 30th Street, New York, NY Info/Tickets

Saturday, June 20, 2026, 4:00-10:00 pm: Creatures of the Canal Bioluminescent Block Party 

If you’ve spent any time tracking how contemporary art seamlessly collides with community activism, you know that the Gowanus Canal is an ecosystem completely its own. This weekend, the neighborhood’s dark waters serve as the perfect, high-contrast canvas for the Creatures of the Canal Bioluminescent Block Party. This free, public festival celebrates the official reopening of the historic Carroll Street Bridge with glowing creature costumes, floating art installations, and community paddling.

The pavement along the waterway will fill with glowing, custom-fabricated creature costumes, community-led paddle parades, and towering inflatable art sculptures that look less like public monuments and more like deep-sea organisms adrift in urban terrain. It is a masterclass in how local artists turn environmental awareness into urgent, tactile visual storytelling.You can secure an advanced RSVP via the event organizer platform at the Van Alen Institute. Click for the full lineup, detailed schedule, and registration.

Fred Tomaselli | Blooms Disrupted at James Cohan Gallery 

Tomaselli, a master proponent of alternative perceptions, now delivers a masterclass in visual disruption that is impossible to turn away from. His latest reinterpretation of nature feels less like a traditional white-cube viewing experience and more like a high-stakes wrestling match between the serenity of the natural world and the unrelenting static of the daily news cycle. 

Entering this installation, one is immediately greeted by the artist’s signature, deliriously dense maximalism. But there is a sharp conceptual pivot here. Tomaselli has fully married his painstakingly layered resin paintings with his ongoing New York Times collage interventions. The result is a body of work that pulses with an internal, almost electrical light, trapping our collective cultural anxiety directly beneath a polished, crystalline surface. Tomaselli’s calculated manipulation of distance demands that the viewer constantly shift between the macroscopic and the microscopic, the actual and the invented.

From afar, Blue Olana, 2025 (above) presents as lush and unashamedly beautiful botanical landscape—a recognizable nod to the grand vistas of Frederic Edwin Church. The compositions hum with a vibrant, rhythmic life that feels like an intentional antidote to the gray reality outside the gallery doors. Up close, the illusion shatters. The seemingly organic vines, leaves, and botanical geometries reveal themselves to be a complex web of hand-painted details and obsessively clipped photographic reproductions. The physical depth of the artificial resin medium employed creates the sense of a floating space, trapping these fragile botanical moments in a state of permanent suspension, forcing the viewer to question the validity of their own visual acuity. 

Through June 27 at James Cohan Gallery, 48 Walker St, New York, NY Info

Friday, June 19, starting 2:30 pm: Watch party for the USA vs Australia match at Rizzoli

In celebration of the World Cup and the recent launch of The FIFA World Cup Pop-Up Book edited by Daniel Melamud, Rizzoli Bookstore and Rizzoli International Publications are delighted to invite you to a festive day in the bookstore’s salon, with a special screening of the USA team match at 3pm. Complimentary soft drinks will be provided.

PLEASE NOTE: The event is free of charge, but RSVPs are required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 2:30 pm.

Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, NY