Weekend Cheat Sheet: May 7 - May 13, 2018

A short list of the can’t-miss new exhibition openings (and closings) this week, by city. See last week’s list for other recent openings, and for a more comprehensive guide, see our Itinerary.

For a list of the most noteworthy art and design fairs happening this week, and throughout the month of May, see our guide »

NEW YORK

Hao Liang “Portraits and Wonders”
Gagosian
980 Madison Avenue
OPENS: May 8

This exhibition of new works by Hao Liang marks the artist’s first show in the United States. The 35-year-old rising star is considered one of the foremost contemporary artists working in traditional Chinese ink painting today, with the pieces on display—including a panoramic thirty-two-foot silk scroll and a diptych portrait—demonstrate how he deploys ancient techniques and themes to explore contemporary thoughts and ideas.

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Carl Andre & Lynda Benglis
Paula Cooper Gallery
534 W 21st Street
OPENS: May 10
In celebration of its 50th anniversary year, the gallery hosts a double-header spread across two rooms. In the larger room, Carl Andre’s floor sculpture “Copper Blue Lattice, New York,” 1990, made up of 65 copper and limestone tiles laid in a grid arrangement, and his poetry piece “100
 Sonnets,” composed of a repeating word organized in a square block. In the smaller room, Lynda Benglis presents new works in ceramic alongside early floor pieces of brightly pigmented poured latex and a selection of wall pieces in wax.

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Marcello Lo Giudice, New Works
Opera Gallery
791 Madison Avenue
OPENS: May 10
One of the key movers in the second wave of European gestural art, the Italian painter unveils 15 new paintings and six previous works—all of which are sumptuously textured and saturated abstract creations suffused with light and energy.

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“Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”
The Met
1000 Fifth Avenue
The Met Cloisters
99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park
OPENS: May 10
The ongoing discourse between fashion and the practices of Catholicism forms the theme of the 2018 Costume Institute Benefit and the heart of this two-venue show. The Met Fifth Avenue arrays some 40 ecclesiastical robes and accessories, many never before seen outside of the Vatican. Uptown at the The Met Cloisters, more than 150 ensembles—largely womenswear, designed by the likes of Cristóbal Balenciaga, John Galliano, and Donatella Versace—are exhibited alongside medieval art, positioning fashion design within the wider context of religious art production. See our preview of the show »

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“Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color”
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
2 East 91st Street
OPENS: May 11
Exploring how color and color perception have been codified, manipulated, and employed to dazzling effects by artists and designers from antiquity to present day, this exhibition brings together 190 objects—including texts on color theory, psychedelic posters, Pantone decks, and vivid, 3D-printed sculptures—that illuminate the endless visual possibilities of a polychromatic palette.

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ELSEWHERE

“Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier”
Design Museum
224-238 Kensington High Street
London
OPENS: May 10
Before his passing late last year, the Tunisian-born designer conceived of this exhibition tracing his lauded career in couture. More than 60 handpicked garments—ranging from his 1980s form-skimming creations to his richly textured 2017 collection—are assembled here, interlaced with stories from his life, career, and collaborative relationships with the likes of Naomi Campbell and Grace Jones.

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Tal R “: this is not Detroit”
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
4454 Woodward Avenue
OPENS: May 11
In this multipart installation, the Danish artist sets out a meditation on Detroit as a place and an idea through seven large-scale paintings, rendered with washes of blue and abstract shapes, and a 52-page newspaper based on his impressions of the city, which will be distributed for free at the show.

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“Outliers and American Vanguard Art”
National Gallery of Art
Washington, D.C.
CLOSES: May 13
This exploration of how outsider art has challenged the boundaries and understanding of the mainstream art paradigm assembles 250 works by folk and self-taught artists such as Horace Pippin, Christina Ramberg, and Joseph Yoakum.

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Jeffrey Gibson “Like a Hammer”
Denver Art Museum
100 W 14th Ave Parkway
Denver
OPENS: May 13
The contemporary artist’s first-ever museum presentation examines how his complex, multidisciplinary practice has dovetailed with his Native American heritage and identity. About 65 works, including some of his figurative paintings, beaded sculptures, textural wall hangings, and videos, are gathered here in a showcase of his striking visual vocabulary and distinctively modern voice.

(Opening image: Jeffrey Gibson, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” 2015. Photo: Peter Mauney. Courtesy Jeffrey Gibson Studio and Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles, California.)

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“Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth”
The Broad
221 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles
CLOSES: May 13
Stocked with more than 100 of Johns’s seminal paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings, this retrospective sheds light on the innovative materials and techniques, pop images, and themes that frame the six-decade practice of this towering figure in American art.

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