MONDAY, APRIL 9
Artist Talk: “Subjective Histories of Sculpture: Josephine Meckseper”
Josephine Meckseper’s elaborate installations, photographs and videos explore the relationship between politics and consumer culture, particularly with respect to fashion and advertising, and the homogenizing effects of capitalism. Ms. Meckseper is next up in this lecture series, organized in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, which aims to present histories that question convention and offer alternative ways for understanding the evolution of sculpture. —Rozalia Jovanovic
SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, 7 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11
Opening: Lorraine O’Grady, “New Worlds,” at Alexander Gray Associates
Lorraine O’Grady’s second show at Alexander Gray features a new video work alongside her 1991 photo series “BodyGround,” which has been re-formatted in 2012. The video, Landscape (Western Hemisphere), is a surrealistic depiction of the artist’s hair transformed into landscape over the course of 18 minutes. —Michael H. Miller
Alexander Gray Associates, 508 West 26th Street, Suite 215, New York, 6-8 p.m.
THURSDAY APRIL 12
Performance: Lil B at the New Museum.
The popular, critically acclaimed and weirdly prolific rapper Lil B hits the New Museum as part of its “Get Weird” series. — Dan Duray
The New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, 6:30 p.m.
FRIDAY, APRIL 13
Opening: Tony Matelli, “Windows, Walls and Mirrors,” at Leo Koenig Inc.
Tony Matelli takes over both Koenig galleries for his fourth solo show at the gallery. Known for his deceptively lifelike sculptures, Mr. Matelli will present a sculpture called Josh (2010) that shows a young man in shorts, slowly levitating from the ground, his head stuck strangely to the floor. It’s a Duane Hanson gone beautifully surreal. Also on view will be some of the artist’s “Mirror Paintings,” which he makes by drawing various messages in urethane affixed to mirrored glass. The resulting works look as though someone has scrawled messages by clearing away dust. “I like this idea of seeing yourself beneath all these layers of other people’s touch,” the artist told R.C. Baker recently. —Andrew Russeth
Leo Koenig Inc., 541 and 545 West 23rd Street, New York, 6–8 p.m.
Performance: Grouper and Julianna Barwick at the Guggenheim Museum
As part of its Divine Ricochet series, the Guggenheim focuses on two young women–Grouper (the alias of Liz Harris) and Julianna Barwick–who perform solo and create long-form ambient sound collages, Ms. Harris with tape loops and found recordings, Ms. Barwick with her voice. If you’ve never heard music performed live in the Guggenheim rotunda, “divine ricochet” is a pretty good description of what you can expect. —M.H.M.
Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, $27, doors at 8:30 p.m., performances begin at 10:00 p.m.
SATURDAY, APRIL 14
Opening: Malick Sidibé at Agnès B. Galerie Boutique
French fashion designer agnès b. celebrates the one-year anniversary of her downtown gallery with a show devoted to the work of legendary Malian photographer Malick Sidibé, whose remarkable portraits of people and documentation of parties in pre-independence Mali (before 1960) and the decades that followed are alternately fragile, handsome and pleasure-suffused triumphs of the medium. —A.R.
Agnès B. Galerie Boutique, 50 Howard Street, New York, 6–9 p.m.
Screening and Conversation: Adam Curtis and Hans Ulrich Obrist
For the closing of Adam Curtis’s exhibition “Adam Curtis: The Desperate Edge of Now,” which was curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and designed by Liam Gillick, the filmmaker will give a talk interpolated with film footage. Though he’s not an artist, since the early ‘90s Mr. Curtis has created films and documentaries for the BBC, which use historic fragments recorded on film and video reassembled in an attempt to reflect on the present. After the talk, Hans Ulrich Obrist joins the filmmaker in conversation. —R.J.
e-flux, 311 East Broadway, New York, 5 p.m.
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, APRIL 14 AND 15
Performance: MoMA PS1 Salutes Kraftwerk
Techno pioneers Juan Atkins and Francois K pay tribute to Kraftwerk at PS1 this weekend, a warm-up for the Warm Ups as the weather, er, becomes higher in temperature. It’s not the MoMA retrospective, but it’s probably the best you’re going to get. —D.D.
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, 3-6 p.m.
