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. 35th 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"
Sadie Halie Projects (3653 25th Ave South, Minneapolis, MN 55406)
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"
Minneapolis Institute of Art (2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55404)
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
Mirror Lab (3402 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55407)
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"
Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St Catherine University, Visual Arts Building (2004 Randolph Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105). Hours: 8am-8pm Mon-Fri, 8am-6pm Sat-Sun
Exhibition Info: http://gallery.stkate.edu/exhibitions/first-thought,-best-thought-paintings-by-greg-dickerson-and-gregory-fitz
Greg's paintings are guided by intuition. Gregory's are not. It's rather apt that two guys with the same name who both paint would show work in the Twin Cities. Their works make sense together, but they are certainly not copies or even mirrors of one another. In fact, while Greg works more with anthropomorphic imagery, Gregory tilts toward abstraction. This exhibition is curated by Carol Lee Chase.
