The Twin Cities' 5 must-see art exhibitions this weekend

It's that time of the week again: Almost the end of it! This week I mastered the art of a standing desk, learning its up-and-down ways, and am now beginning to wonder if in fact sitting and standing are one in the same #deepthoughts. For more on that, just check out these tweets where I continue to riff on office thoughts. Anyway, who cares about work when there's art!!!! Here's what I'm looking forward to this weekend.

OPENING – Ryan Fontaine and Kristin Van Loon, "Repetition is Change, Ecstatic/Restrained"

HAIR and NAILS (2222 ½ E. 35^th St, Minneapolis, MN 55407)

Exhibition info: https://hairandnailsart.com/

Saturday, April 22, 7-10PM

Artists Ryan Fontaine & Kristin Van Loon co-run the contemporary art gallery Hair & Nails. This weekend, for the last show of their first season, they're closing things out by doing a show together. "Repetition is Change, Ecstatic/Restrained" considers different ideas of repeating images and concepts. "The show title is a little bit of a take on John Cage's idea of repetition as a form of change," says Fontaine. "It's somewhat of an ambiguous abstract show." Viewers can expect epoxy resin and three-dimensional molds that aim to question and engage the question of what is painting?

OPENING -- Samual Weinberg, "Side Stories"

Exhibition Information: http://www.sadiehalieprojects.com/upcoming

Saturday, April 22, 7-10PM

Sadie Halie Projects is located in a garage right down the street from Hair & Nails. It's also the location of artist Samual Weinberg's exhibition 'Side Stories.' The characters in Weinberg's decollage-like paintings are pictures in moments of obtrusive self-reflection or bizarre destruction, with an element of emoji-ified insanity. The title of his upcoming exhibition reminds me of Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from Wayside School, a book that I'd like to re-read post-4/20.

Still image from The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music, 2014. The Propeller Group. Gift of funds from Nivin MacMillan 2016. © The Propeller Group, 2014

OPENING – "New Pictures: The Propeller Group, Reincarnations"

Saturday, April 22, 2pm artist talk, 3:30pm public reception

Exhibition Information: https://new.artsmia.org/exhibition/new-pictures-the-propeller-group-reincarnations/

For "New Pictures: The Propeller Group, Reincarnations," an exhibition opening Saturday, Ho Chi Minh City-based collective the Propeller Group will screen "The Living Need Light, the Dead Need Music," a meditation on Vietnamese funeral rituals. The 25-minute film will run continuously opposite an arrangement of funereal objects that appear to be staging a procession of their own. Read more about the exhibition in this Q&A I did with curator Yasufumi Nakamori for Star Tribune.

Arrington de Dionyso, "Maenads at the Million Woman March" (2016), acrylic ink and acrylic paint on paper

PERFORMANCE -- Arrington de Dionysio, THIS SAXOPHONE KILLS FASCISTS

Friday, April 21, 7-10pm

Exhibition Information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1828012037478409/

Artist/Musician Arrington de Dionyso drifts through the Twin Cities for a couple of days with his trance-y tunes, landing at MirrorLab, a studio and project space. On Friday night he's part of a show called "Breakaway~InternationalNoveltyGamelan~JZSP!" with other bands Breakaway (darkwave/witch house/neofolk) and John Zuma Saint Pelvyn. Dionyso's album THIS SAXOPHONE KILLS FASCISTS is much needed in this current political climate. Fun scary fact: Not long ago, Dionyso was a target of harassment both on and offline by the alt-right because of his very, very tangential and completely absurd connection to the rumors that set off #PizzaGate. Viva America.

Gregory Fitz, "Aurora Borealis" (2016). Acrylic on foil faced polyisocyanurate foam, 42x48"

ONGOING – "First Thought, Best Thought: Paintings by Greg Dickerson and Gregory Fitz"

Exhibition Info: http://gallery.stkate.edu/exhibitions/first-thought,-best-thought-paintings-by-greg-dickerson-and-gregory-fitz