Mercer St; Grand St

What is up with the weather in New York? It’s a coin toss between gloriously warm spring and frigid snowing-4-inches winter, and it’s NOT COOL. If you’re as tired of the yo-yo as I am, you might try to escape to the desert via Ronald Feldman Gallery. There, eco-oriented artists Helen Mayer Harrison & Newton Harrison enable you to, sort of, hike the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Their 40-foot aerial view is a breathtaking sight. But before you can revel in the sunshine too freely, you are forced to confront the Harrisons' exploration of the effects of global warming on the mountain range over time. Soak up their aerial images and digest their watershed maps and text-enhanced photographs. You might find yourself inspired to take quicker showers and buy a SIGG bottle.

While the Harrisons invite you to look and learn, Massimo Grimaldi’s show at TEAM makes you want to keep your distance. The centerpiece of this show is a pair of huge, vibrant digital prints quarantined behind a plexiglass barrier, which holds two slithering, hissing snakes. I am terrified of snakes. I could barely concentrate on anything while they remained in my periphery, but somehow it made me look closer at the art. Grimaldi presents cold, sleek technological juxtaposed to impoverished, tender photographs. His intension is to “consider the value of the aesthetic marketplace and its position within the larger global economy,” which is totally admirable, but I was left so emotionally spent by this show all I could think was, “I really want one of those new iMacs.”  I’m just saying, they’re pretty awesome.

Ingredients:
Venues: Ronald Feldman; TEAM
Artists: Helen Mayer Harrison & Newton Harrison; Massimo Grimaldi
Streets: Mercer St; Grand St
Eats: (starving artist)
Map: