Mike Kelley’s Memory Ware exhibition, on view at Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Gothamist.
Season 8 artist Theaster Gates has been busy! Just last week it was announced that he and the Rebuild Foundation are transforming a bookstore into a bar, creating a lumber mill for Chicago’s dead ash trees, and starting a workforce training program for un- and underemployed people across the South Side. Also in art news this week:
- The School of the Art Institute of Chicago announced a $2 million endowment of Nick Cave’s professorship, who is now the school’s Professor of Fashion, Body, and Garment.
- Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler were selected to represent Switzerland at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
- And an invitation from Marina Abramović found in John Podesta’s leaked emails sparked accusations of satanism, all because she called a dinner she was hosting a “Spirit Cooking.” Abramović told Artnews, “It was just a normal dinner…We just call things funny names, that’s all.”
Events & exhibitions
NYC
- Ai Weiwei 2016: Roots and Branches—an exhibition in three parts—opened on Saturday at Lisson New York and Mary Boone Gallery’s uptown and Chelsea locations, concurrent with the artist’s Laundromat exhibition at Deitch Projects. [Read a review in The Art Newspaper.]
- A new exhibition of work by Mike Kelley opened last week at Hauser & Wirth’s 69th Street gallery. Titled Memory Ware, it’s the first exhibition in fifteen years devoted exclusively to the two- and three-dimensional works from the artist’s Memory Ware series. [See artworks from the exhibition in Gothamist’s slideshow.]
- Also at Hauser & Wirth, a new exhibition by Paul McCarthy titled Raw Spinoffs Continuations is opening this Thursday, November 10 at the gallery’s 18th Street location.
- This is also the last week to see Arlene Shechet’s Turn Up the Bass at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. The exhibition closes this Saturday, November 12.
Chicago
- Diana Thater‘s exhibition The Sympathetic Imagination (filmed at LACMA for Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 8) has travelled to the MCA Chicago, where it will be on view through January 8, 2017.
London
- November 9 – 19, London Coliseum—William Kentridge is directing a new production of Austrian composer Alban Berg’s modernist 20th century masterpiece Lulu (1935) for the English National Opera. The artist is using his own work as part of the set and production design.
- William Kentridge also has a solo exhibition open at Whitechapel Gallery titled Thick Time through January 15.
- This is the last week to see Tala Madani’s exhibition Shitty Disco at Pilar Corrias. The new body of paintings represents the artist’s “metaphysical nightclub,” and closes this Friday, November 11. [Read a review in The Guardian.]
- Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA)’s sixth solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman is on view at the gallery’s two locations on Old Burlington Street. Titled …and the wall fell away, the exhibition closes this Friday, November 11.
Sydney
- Nick Cave’s Heard is being performed for the first time in Australia this week! The collaborative performance will be coming to the Pitt Street Mall on Thursday, November 10 at 5pm, and Carriageworks on Saturday, November 12 at 10am and 12pm.
It’s impossible to include all the incredible exhibitions and art events happening this week in a single post. If there’s something you feel should have been included in today’s roundup, leave a comment below!