The New Yorker - February 17-24 2020

10 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020

including irregular lattices that evoke the
veins on a leaf and rippling patterns that con-
jure water. The most spine-tingling example
of the delicately trippy, almost holographic ef-
fects that Hamanaka achieves is “Windows in
a Foreign Shore,” from 2019, whose apertures
suggest both craggy caves in a cliff face and
the façade of an uncanny skyscraper.—Johanna
Fateman (Through Feb. 22.)

Farah Al Qasimi

Public Art Fund
CITYWIDE For most people, public transporta-
tion in New York City disproves a cliché: it’s
about the destination, not the journey. It takes
the mind of an artist to see a bus route and
think of a party. When the Public Art Fund
invited this Emirati photographer to conceive
of a project for spaces (usually reserved for
advertisements) on a hundred bus shelters
across the five boroughs, she came up with
“Back and Forth Disco,” a series of seventeen
effervescent color pictures, taken in neigh-
borhoods throughout the city. Whether she is
documenting a chandelier in a Yemeni-owned
bodega in Ridgewood, Queens, or two men
in a barbershop run by Palestinians in Bay
Ridge, Brooklyn, Qasimi puts a jubilant spin
on living between cultures, as so many New
Yorkers do. The pictures arrive as a gorgeous,
if inadvertent, retort to the newly increased
restrictions of Trump’s travel ban. In a city of
immigrants, Qasimi reminds us that every here
is also an elsewhere.—A.K.S. (Through May 17. )

Jackie Saccoccio

Van Doren Waxter
UPTOWN A good abstract painting can seem
inevitable—less made than materialized, like
a Helen Frankenthaler stain or the squalls of
Joan Mitchell. For thirty years, this American
painter has been collaborating with chance
on her compositions, pouring oil, scumbling
dry pigment, dragging one canvas across an-
other, and rattling, turning, and otherwise
performing her surfaces until the results make
the laws of gravity appear moot. In “Femme
Brut,” Saccoccio’s new show (which continues
at Chart, in Tribeca), the artist introduces an
old-fashioned technique: drawing directly
onto her paintings, with oil pastel, in furious
cursive bursts. Several of these big, ambitious
pieces, including “Le Puits Noir (Concave)”
allude to the landscapes of Gustave Cour-
bet—a suggestion, perhaps, that the only
distinction between realism and abstraction
is how an artist handles her paint.—A.K.S.
(Through March 14.)

“Acquired on eBay”
Algus
DOWNTOWN Low-budget collecting—the re-
sult of the gallerist Mitchell Algus’s online
research into artists of mysterious origins and
minor reputations—is the generative curato-
rial premise of this wildly eclectic exhibition.
The stark landscape “Gray Day,” from 1927, by
Aline Meyer Leibman, whose paintings were
championed by Alfred Stieglitz, was acquired
for just two hundred and twenty-five dollars
on eBay. A 1958 canvas featuring a lithe figure
in a fantastic forest, by the African-American

Surrealist James Wilson Edwards, was dis-

covered at an estate sale, and Raoul Ubac’s

1938 photographs of mannequins designed by

Max Ernst and Salvador Dali were obtained

from an art dealer’s storage space, which was

“dispersed by a relative,” according to the

exhibition checklist. This dense arrangement

of bargain treasures makes a point about the

irrational vagaries of the art market, but more

interesting are the surprising social, sexual,

and aesthetic connections that Algus draws

through his savvy juxtapositions and with the

display of related books and ephemera.—J.F.

(Through Feb. 23.)

“Souls Grown Diaspora”

Apexart

DOWNTOWN This lively, jam-packed exhibition,

curated by Sam Gordon, features ten Afri-

can-American artists, most of whom are self-

taught. About half of them are performers,

too: music fills the gallery. Highlights include

tracks by the jazz singer Stephanie Crawford,

whose lovely still-lifes of flowers and of boxes

of chocolates occupy one wall. Other works

range from the speculative (Raynes Birk-

beck’s canvases referencing extraterrestrial

narratives) to the political (Dapper Bruce

Lafitte’s detailed cartographic drawings of a

post-Katrina New Orleans). But assemblage is

one shared theme, as seen in the mixed-media

portraits of the Reverend Joyce McDonald,

which incorporate clay, beads, African textiles,

and, in one particularly beautiful piece, alu-

minum foil. Curtis Cuffie, who is best known

for his elaborate public installations in the

East Village, is represented here by smaller

works, such as a shard of lucite held in a vise.

In bringing these remarkable works into the

same easy conversation, Gordon undercuts

stale assumptions about so-called outsider

artists while establishing a vibrant alternative

lineage.—J.F. (Through March 7.)

1

NIGHTLIFE

Musicians and night-club proprietors lead

complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in

advance to confirm engagements.

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra

Village Vanguard

Until the sixties, Monday nights were a jazz

wasteland, as most clubs would shutter to cool

off after the weekend. But then the polymathic

brass man Thad Jones and the drummer Mel

Lewis formed a big band in order to kick off

the week in style at the Village Vanguard.

Fifty-four years later, the group, now dubbed

the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, has outlived both

its founders and numerous star soloists, yet it

has lost none of its vigor or tonal lustre. As is

now the custom, the durable ensemble gets a

full week to celebrate its remarkable longev-

ity.—Steve Futterman (Feb. 11-16.)

Jonah Parzen-Johnson

Nublu 151

Jonah Parzen-Johnson milks the baritone sax-

ophone not only for its air of loneliness but

also for its less fabled comedic undertones:

his music can conjure an image of somebody

dancing alone—forlorn but with a goofy swag-

ger. On his new LP, “Imagine Giving Up,”

Parzen-Johnson accompanies himself on an

analog synthesizer, which he commands with

his feet onstage. With each drone and sput-

ter of the synth, he drifts away from his jazz

background toward a less defined terrain that

suggests Brian Eno, film soundtracks, and

the spaces between.—Jay Ruttenberg (Feb. 12.)

Dawn

Mercury Lounge

Though Dawn Richard might be best known

as a member of the pop group Danity Kane,

she’s had several different lives as a musician.

Last year, on her album “new breed,” she went

back to the beginning, drawing on her child-

hood in New Orleans to stitch a patchwork

of electric R. & B. that’s as poignant as it is

eviscerating. When she calls out powerful

men who have demeaned her, on the track

“Spaces,” she embraces the most primal ver-

sion of herself: “The girl from the nine said

fuck them.”—Julyssa Lopez (Feb. 13.)

Cosmodelica + Love Injection

Public Records

Colleen (Cosmo) Murphy is one of d.j. cul-

ture’s most diligent scholars, having col-

laborated with the late David Mancuso on

his latter-day loft parties in London. Here,

Murphy has fitting company in Paul Raf-

faele and Barbie Bertisch, who publish the

charming monthly fanzine Love Injection.

All three tend toward loose grooves, melodic

lines overlapping into Op-art patterns, and a

rangy floridness that seems designed to help

dancers shake their psyches as much as their

limbs.—Michaelangelo Matos (Feb. 14.)

Joanne Brackeen

Mezzrow

Though female jazz instrumentalists now ap-

pear on bandstands and in recording sessions

more often than they used to, it’s imperative

to acknowledge the time—not so long ago—

when a gifted pianist such as Joanne Brackeen

could make news just by virtue of her pres-

ence on the male-dominated scene. Brackeen,

who received an N.E.A. Jazz Masters award

in 2018, remains a formidable post-bop im-

proviser and composer; her skills will be on

view in this duet with the responsive bassist

Ugonna Okegwo. Also playing: Once a spe-

cialist in early jazz piano, Ehud Asherie has

since broadened his scope; he performs, Feb.

21-22, with a trio that includes the drummer

Willie Jones III.—S.F. (Feb. 14-15.)

Classixx

Elsewhere

The limpid saxophone solo, redolent of eight-

ies High Street fashion, will always have a

place on the dance floor if the Los Angeles duo

Classixx has anything to say about it. Michael

David and Tyler Blake’s relaxed disco stomp

and heavily filtered hooks emit the bawdy

suavity of Parisian house; in December, they