David Armstrong’s Probing Gaze

The lensman David Armstrong, who was based successful Brooklyn and died successful 2014, astatine sixty, has ne'er looked arsenic bully arsenic helium does close now, successful a big, smartly installed retrospective astatine Artists Space (through May 23). That’s partially due to the fact that this is the archetypal clip we’ve been capable to grasp his vocation arsenic a whole. The exhibition, though it includes landscapes, still-lifes, and nudes, is titled “David Armstrong: Portraits,” due to the fact that that’s wherever the accent lies. With much than ninety works, the galleries are thronged with beauties, galore of whom garbage to beryllium pinned down to a gender. Still, men thin to snag the astir attention, if lone due to the fact that they instrumentality Armstrong’s tender, probing regard with affection and plentifulness of heat. Desire defines the enactment and is intolerable to divorcement from our effect to it.

Without overplaying Armstrong’s cardinal relation successful the Family of Nan (Goldin; they were lifelong friends and collaborators), the curators Kelly Taxter and Jay Sanders are cautious to crushed the amusement successful his past of books and exhibitions. The soft-focus colour landscapes and interiors from his 2002 book, “All Day Every Day,” had looked insignificant and imitative astatine the time. Here, ringing the main galleries similar establishing shots successful aged movies, they suggest a satellite fading into memory—a misty past with small meaning for the present. On the different broadside of the scale, successful a vitrine astatine 1 extremity of the space, are a radical of 5 tiny scrapbooks. Only a fewer unfastened pages are disposable (more are included successful the show’s catalogue), but they’re arsenic tantalizing arsenic a peek into a friend’s diary—and impervious that pictures successful abstracted bodies of enactment were being made simultaneously.

That everything-at-once attack explodes crossed a full partition astatine the other extremity of the gallery. Here, a collagelike installation of photographs, framed and unframed, colour and black-and-white, abut and overlap crossed twenty-seven feet. The undertow of nostalgia—a tribute to the mode we were—is overwhelmed by the solemnisation of a tone that has ne'er seemed much alive.—Vince Aletti

About Town

Off Broadway

At the commencement of “The Adding Machine,” the narrator (Michael Cyril Creighton) announces what viewers are going to see: “a heartwarming communicative astir modern beingness crushing the quality spirit,” thereby mounting the ironic tone. He is himself an addition, introduced into Elmer Rice’s 1923 play by Thomas Bradshaw, who has revised the substance for this New Group production, directed with flair by Scott Elliott. Thank God for the flair, due to the fact that the characters are satirically tedious. Mr. Zero (Daphne Rubin-Vega) spends his days crunching numbers and his nights henpecked by his woman (a droll Jennifer Tilly), until he’s unceremoniously replaced by the titular machine. The stylishly designed amusement conjures a satellite wherever capitalism supplants each ideals but its own: ruthless optimization.—Dan Stahl (Theatre astatine St. Clement’s; done May 17.)

Art

What to telephone objects that bespeak some the three-dimensionality of sculpture and the aboveground play of painting? Leonardo Drew’s uncategorizable works are made from dried and formed insubstantial pulp—leaking with fleshy, integrated texture—that the creator reconfigures into jagged, rough-hewn sprays of abstraction which protrude from the frame. Some of these are arranged into much staid compositions of geometric bands of color, portion others crook and bulge into shapes evoking the baroque ruination of junk-yard findings. The insubstantial suggests a substrate connected which to constitute but besides seems to posit itself arsenic its ain benignant of language, a haywire syntax made of excess and spillage.—Zoë Hopkins (Pace Prints; done April 25.)

Art

Édouard Vuillard was 1 of those painters whose astir evocative work—a premier enactment of which tin beryllium seen successful “Édouard Vuillard: Early Interiors”—tends to beryllium small. It’s astir arsenic if the limitations of a scaled-down canvas got the creator going successful ways that galvanized his bonzer usage of color, and consciousness of scale, adjacent further. Looking astatine specified beauties arsenic the bonzer “The Flowered Dress” (1891) and the mind-blowing “The Lady of Fashion” (circa 1891-92), you marvel not lone astatine the power of Vuillard’s manus but astatine what made home beingness and pistillate garments truthful fascinating to the artist: their details accidental arsenic overmuch astir the interior beingness of the wearer arsenic they bash astir the cloth.—Hilton Als (Skarstedt; done April 25.)

Sophisti-pop

In 2005, erstwhile the vocalist Niia Bertino was seventeen, she was recognized arsenic 1 of the apical high-school jazz singers successful the country. The granddaughter of an Italian opera singer, Bertino, known onstage arsenic Niia, was soon discovered by Wyclef Jean and, successful 2007, featured connected his deed azygous “Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill).” What initially felt similar a meteoric emergence tapered disconnected into a dilatory burn. She performed “James Bond” themes with an orchestra successful 2011 earlier débuting, successful 2014, with the EP “Generation Blue”; her archetypal medium arrived 3 years later. You tin perceive each of her accrued acquisition successful 5 albums she has released since, easing done their elegant popular accumulation with jazzy vocals.—Sheldon Pearce (Blue Note; April 28-29.)

Dance

For the past 2 decades, Tiler Peck has been 1 of New York City Ballet’s astir dazzling dancers; much recently, she has revealed herself to beryllium an agile choreographer arsenic well. Her 2nd ballet for her location institution uses Édouard Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole,” a sweeping, melodic circuit de unit that doubles arsenic a showcase for solo violin. (The virtuoso Hilary Hahn volition execute connected galore dates.) The outpouring play besides includes the institution première of Christopher Wheeldon’s moody 2002 ballet “Continuum,” acceptable to Ligeti soft pieces, and it closes with a week of performances of the comedic “Coppélia.” On May 24, that work’s plucky heroine volition beryllium danced for the past clip by the arsenic plucky Megan Fairchild, who is retiring aft twenty-five years with the company.—Marina Harss (David H. Koch Theatre; April 21-May 31.)

Movies

David Lowery, who directed “A Ghost Story,” returns with different shade story, “Mother Mary,” with the feeling of a filmed play, starring Anne Hathaway arsenic the titular popular star, who’s been offstage for a fewer years, and Michaela Coel arsenic Sam, a manner decorator who utilized to marque the singer’s costumes. Though they’re agelong estranged, Mary barges successful connected Sam to inquire for a caller formal for a performance comeback; their tense dialectical wrangle successful Sam’s churchlike workplace is the bulk of the film. Brief flashbacks to Mary’s earlier concerts are simply informational; different flashback, to a séance astatine which Mary yielded to self-harming mysticism, is acold much consequential, starring to unit successful Sam’s studio. The resulting catharsis—spiritual and sentimental—is some flimsy and fascinating.—Richard Brody (In wide release.)

Bar Tab

Taran Dugal samples experimental cocktails successful Long Island City.

Cocktail bars run by the “Anna Karenina” principle: large ones are each alike; mean ones are mean each successful its ain way. Take 25 Hours, successful Long Island City, for example, which is freighted with a depressing ambience that is adjacent parts chemistry laboratory and subterranean grotto. On a caller weeknight, 2 first-timers stopped by with precocious expectations: 25 Hours, which opened past November, is the brainchild of Ray Zhou, a erstwhile caput of R. & D. astatine the hep Lower East Side barroom Double Chicken Please. The drinks present correlate with antithetic hours of the day—plus an further “twenty-fifth hour,” which, according to Zhou, is “more of a mind-set, a futuristic benignant of thing.” The extent of thought that went into the paper was not reflected successful the space; the visitors recovered themselves successful a tiny country with exceptionally acheronian lighting, a partition of haphazardly mounted clocks of assorted shapes and sizes, and modernist chrome furnishings that made the already bleak interior adjacent little inviting. They took seats beside a monstrosity of acheronian grey plastic, affixed to a wall, designed to look similar a sheer stone face. “This indispensable beryllium what Purgatory feels like,” 1 of the visitors whispered. Thankfully, their cocktails were person to heavenly. The 17:00—a foamy substance of mezcal and pineapple, topped with habanero tincture—packed a sweet-and-sour punch, and the 23:00, made of rum and barley-tea-infused whiskey, arrived with biscotti, for a sugary reprieve betwixt sips. Their past bid of the night, the 19:00, was besides the astir experimental: a crisp premix of grape juice, herb water, gin, and blue-cheese liqueur, with a pungent aftertaste. Drinks downed, the guests’ gazes landed connected the horological partition successful beforehand of them. It was time, they decided, to caput out—after all, the clocks were ticking.

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