Intimacy in Art and Curating: These 10 Art Picks Will Bring You Closer Than Ever Before

We've got 10 intimate, close nit shows in this week's round up. The artists of "Cura" hone in on their curatorial practices, allowing it to be less fixed and more fluid. Robert Lansden zones in on his repetitive, obsessive patterned drawings for his upcoming show at Robert Henry Contemporary and Chris Romero brings on a mind bend through a group of artists in NURTUREart's "Brain Scratch." Look closer, feel closer.

This intimate solo exhibition by artist Keren Benbenisty takes on a guardian-like task in displaying the image of the sphinx—an iconic safeguard of ancient times. A figure known for riddles, Benbenisty showcases the sphinx speaking in gurgling water and posing riddles in hand-drawn reCAPTCHA code. A closer look at the combined words and images can reflect the sentiments and intentions behind them; while the online CAPTCHA technique detects non-human activity, “Kamil” leads us to use critical reasoning to understand the subject and to therefore succeed where a computer cannot.

“In Every Direction: Robert Lansden” (Image courtesy of Robert Henry Contemporary)

Robert Lansden gets obsessive with 12 new works for “In Every Direction," his third show at Robert Henry Contemporary. Feeling algorithms and communicating them through drawings in gouache, watercolor or ink on paper, Lansden focuses on logistics instead of aesthetics. For all intent’s purposes, Lansden strives to be free of direct aesthetic decisions in his work. Evident is the lengthy amount of time it takes to produce each highly detailed work, as well as the tension and intimacy it takes to make each repetitive undulation and mark-laden abstraction.

If you missed Benjamin Heller’s “Waterlines” performance before, this Friday night presents another chance to experience it before the “Nightlight” exhibition closes. This repeat performance will be in response to Miya Ando’s “Obon” glass sculpture and Marc Egger’s glow-in-the-dark paintings. Bushwick Daily arts contributor Terri Ciccone witnessed the intimate water dance on October 1st and told us about it first-hand as she was pulled in to participate after the gallery lights went out.

The performance will take splash this Friday at 7:00 pm inside Fresh Window Gallery at 56 Bogart.

Curator Chris Romero will bend your mind in “Brain Scratch” – creating a harmonious reality with an intimate group of artists whose works will stump and alter your perception. You might scratch your head in perplexity! In both fantastical and realistic environments, hyperrealistic dystopian images cross through by video artist Katie Torn, while Snow Yunxue Fu’s images prove more confrontational with digital manifestations of the metaphysical.

In a complementary cluttering to Snow and Katie’s work, Ryan Whittier Hale questions the effects virtuality on identity and behavior through manipulated photo, video and sculpture. Siebren Versteeg integrates historical genres of painting with computer generated imagery, as he investigates digital aesthetics to question the formal conventions of art.

Chasm—it's a new gallery inside 56 Bogart! Friday night's arrival show "Astray" will take neighborhood gallery-goers on a photo media journey through cinematic landscapes and evocative abstractions. A bunch of contributing Aussie artists are in on this new journey, collaborating with curator and creative director Jess Holburn. This eclectic group showing of symbols and journeys unites emerging and established artists who share a common longing for being elsewhere... for going astray with their creative prosperity.

Totemic arrangements and life-sized food emojis leave the digital space and occupy Honey Ramka for “DEMS TOAD” by Elizabeth Ferry. Grinning and glowing, these anthropomorphic paintings and sculptures stare and intimately confront the viewer with a “kind of primitive-futuro magic” and according to Ferry, may trigger pareidolia.

Another intimate group showcase comes together in Los Ojos’ “Rational Exuberance” where conceptual and emotional constructions surface alongside an overall theme of abstraction uniting the assemblage of works. Acrobatic rope evokes the organic and primal in Andrew Bearnot's sculptural structures, setting contrast to Doron Langberg's large scale oil paintings of evocative and intimate scenes of domesticity. An ease of abstraction slips in with Emmy Thelander’s variation of found objects while wood, bronze and plaster form from Andy Wilhelm bursts of kinetic energy.

Bushwick-based artists Lucia Love, Jen Hitchings and Sessa Englund will exhibit at Williamsburg’s Firework Gallery in “Cura”, the first rendition of the series. Examining the position of artists that curate, “Cura” which stems from the Latin meaning to care for tells of “a new generation of artists have started performing the role of curator, caring for the work of their peers and creating new collaborative environments.” Englund, Hitchings and Love have shown by curating shows in Bushwick and beyond just how inseparable their artistic practices are from the act of curating.

Swiss artist Daniel V. Keller debuts new works adopting the architectural tropes of the roadside park or nature-walk. “ATTRACTIONS” explores the man-made structures that delineate a site within an otherwise natural landscape, as a mediated space for visitation, leisure or spectating. Handrails, garbage bins, picnic tables, and the standardized brick-box bathrooms that dot the roadsides of the civilized world serve as the basis for Keller's sculptural works, fragmented and transformed into their own uncanny objects.

INTERSTATE presents two distinct exhibitions of macabre and ghastly realms. In Oskar Nilsson’s “Rehearsal,” a mix of pop, cartoon and macabre take shape within lush, fairytale-like paintings. Nilsson presents darkness at the moment before climax or calamity in his works, with a close-nit tension and thirsty indulgence in horror guised amid his playful subjects.

For “Beyond the Pale,” a group of artists were given the task of rendering a ghost and illustrating the ways in which they feel haunted by memories of past wrongdoings or unfulfilled desires. Their contemporary works will surround a central piece by William Ruthven Wheeler–his 1870 double-portrait of Mary Rosanna and Mrs. David Brooks (pictured above). The back story reveals that in Wheeler’s portrayal of the woman and infant, one was in fact a ghost, having passed away before the piece was completed. It provides an intimate look into combating misbelief and making someone or something seem alive.