Alli Conrad
Hugo Ciappi
Kevin Bray
Theo Rosenblum
Younguk Yi

A carefully-planned menu can be a work of art; an elegant, measured experience with each course delivered with precision and intent. A group show is often more like a banquet, spoiled for choice but without focus or depth. We sought to provide more, so that you could sink your teeth into six new artists in three mini-shows; however, as global shipping permits, these dishes will have to be coursed out, plated and served throughout the month.

The theme of our menu is time, and debuting this weekend is the appetizer course. Theo Rosenblum is always cooking up something highly experimental and though we did pass on the “Stool Stool” made of illusionistic excrement, we are happy to offer two sculptures and a wall relief that use black humor to address the passage of time. If the aging pumpkin doesn’t appetize, the infinite hot dog might.

Alli Conrad exhibits four new paintings of playfully posed feet. In shiny Mary Janes or Buster Browns, they are ambiguous in age, catalogue-ready but coy in purpose. We feature this artist in our current group show in L.A. but thought New York should have a taste as well.

Also in the center room is a substantial mini-show by Younguk Yi, first to arrive from Korea (somehow). These meticulous and exacting paintings are deeply uncanny as the artist uses a type of digital cubism to show us many positions superimposed in one. There is something arachnid in all the eyeballs, a hint of body horror amongst the proliferating digits and limbs. But let his happily-wagging dog tail reassure you: the artist is experimenting like Futurist Giacomo Balla’s painting “Dog on a Leash” (1912) and with the same brashly optimistic view of technological progress.

Primo piatto next week is the Italian artist Hugo Ciappi with three large works from Florence that instruct us a bit on how to be human. You would think we would have it down by now! Stretched out across the painted vignettes, we can learn “how to be a painter”, “six types of hug” or the curious “evolution of the hat”.

Main course the following week is heavy: a gigantic Kevin Bray video sculpture filling the center of the main room. This piece, like Younguk’s paintings around it, looks at digital cubism using 3D printing, video and audio to make a dynamic, clanging beast endlessly chopping away with an axe. Each frame of this motion is elaborated at once, as the video plays across the white surface of the sculpture. You can see the chef’s intention with this special pairing of movement, technology and fractured time.

The dessert course will have to remain a surprise, so check back as the menu progresses to see what comes out of our kitchen.