Other of Pearl
Only open Fridays-Sundays each week.
In this exhibition Jenny Kendler (b. 1980) tells the story of the histories that form the origin stories of the current climate and environmental crisis. The oyster and whale are central players in an ecological entanglement between human and nonhuman beings, waterways, and flows of capital.
Focusing on our relationships with these two very different beings, Kendler illuminates the ways in which capitalist systems are often founded upon the bodies of others. The artist confronts contemporary environmental issues — climate change, ocean noise, chemical pollution, biodiversity loss, and sea level rise — while pointing towards the cultural structures that have allowed these catastrophes to occur.
On view at Governors Island, this is Kendler’s first solo exhibition in New York City, transforms the magazine of Fort Jay into a space for slow exploration. Here viewers encounter seven intimate and delicate works, including a handblown glass instrument where you can sing in the voice of a whale and pearl sculptures grown inside oysters. At the conclusion of the exhibition, the pearl sculptures will be auctioned to raise funds to help create a new oyster reef — redistributing resources in a gesture of ecological restoration — in partnership with the Billion Oyster Project.
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2. Acky Bright: Studio Infinity
Opens Friday, October 4
On view at Japan Society this exhibition showcases the artist’s unique kawakakkoii (cute and cool) style of illustration and product design. Conceived as Acky Bright’s design studio, the exhibition offers visitors an exceptional opportunity to meet the artist, witness his freestyle “live drawing,” and participate in making a series of manga-style murals. Performative and interactive, the exhibition evolves as Acky Bright makes intermittent appearances in the gallery.
The presentation features two new painting series by Acky Bright, KBK-18 and Ah-Un, that each draw inspiration from traditional Japanese art and theater. Underscoring the impressive range of his contemporary art practice, the show highlights Acky Bright’s promotional campaigns designed for major companies, including his WcDonald’s paper bags, YOASOBI x Vaundy’s FRIES BEAT 2024 music video, and Squid Games coloring book illustrated for Netflix.
3. Raque Ford: A little space for you right under my shoe
Presented on the building facade on Horatio Street across from the Whitney and the High Line is a newly commissioned work by multimedia artist Raque Ford (b. 1986).
In Ford’s billboard project, the words “A little space for you / right under my shoe” waver across a collage of shoe prints and other graphic shapes. Excerpted from an original poem by the artist, the text invokes the conflicted feelings that can come with romantic longing and desire for connection with others, when holding someone close can teeter on crushing them.
Ford plays with the scale and site-specificity of the billboard, as the imposing image of stomping shoes hovers over the pedestrian viewer below. True to much of Ford’s work, there is an edged sweetness here; something that may seem “cute” on the surface is belied by an apprehensiveness and ambivalence that registers on multiple levels.
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For the fourth High Line Plinth commission, Iván Argote presents Dinosaur (2024), a colossal, hyper-realistic sculpture of a pigeon cast in aluminum. The meticulously hand-painted, humorous sculpture challenges the grandeur of traditional monuments celebrating significant historical figures, instead choosing to canonize the familiar New York City street bird. Posed on a concrete plinth that resembles the sidewalks and buildings that New York’s pigeons call home, Dinosaur reverses the typical power dynamic between bird and human, towering 21 feet above the Spur, over the countless pedestrians and car drivers that travel down 10th Avenue.
Dinosaur, like the pigeons that inspired it, bears witness to the city’s evolution and confronts us with our ever-changing relationship with the natural world and its inhabitants. The oft-overlooked and derided creatures that seem to over-populate the city first arrived in the US via Europe, likely in the 1800s. They were kept as domesticated animals and were most notably used as reliable message carriers. Pigeons have an internal GPS, known as “homing,” that allows them to always find their way back home. This skill once made the bird indispensable in war—they served as military messengers in both World War I and World War II, saving hundreds of soldiers’ lives by transporting messages quickly to both the trenches and front lines. Many of these pigeons received gallantry awards and were celebrated as war heroes, before technology eventually rendered them obsolete.
4. Iván Argote Dinosaur
LAST CHANCE
Closes Sunday, October 6
The Morgan Museum & Library is celebrating its 100th year with a series of exhibitions devoted to promised gifts, including twenty-eight drawings from the holdings of New York–based collectors Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard.
The selection comprises drawings from the seventeenth to the twentieth century that exemplify the sense of wonder that underlies the Eveillards’ collecting practice. The exhibition includes a study for Rembrandt’s first masterpiece; Greuze’s virtuoso depiction of a young cook made for his friend Jean-Georges Wille; Delacroix’s intimate portrait of Jenny, his confidante and caretaker; and a striking watercolor landscape by Cézanne.
Also in the gift are significant works by major artists such as Rubens, Guercino, Jordaens, Watteau, Géricault, Constable, Degas, Renoir, Seurat, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, Vuillard, Bonnard, and Gris, including many rarely seen drawings.