Press

“This year, the festival formerly known as the Bushwick Art Book & Zine Fair is being held in Queens, so let’s just call it BABZ Fair. Occurring on the same weekend as BookCon, this fair is its indie counterpart, and will feature eclectic offerings from over 100 publishers. Among those exhibiting and presenting are Williamsburg comics shop Desert Island; Jeremy Nguyen, the Bushwick satirist whose comics have landed in the New Yorker; Greenpoint comic artist Tony Wolf; Brooklyn-based Maga Books (no relationship to Making America Great Again); and Bushwick bookstore and sexy chess host Molasses Books. Wendy’s Subway, the non-profit library and writing space that moved from Williamsburg to Bushwick a year ago, will host feedback sessions for those who want to bring in-progress work. Should you want to self-publish that work, Red Hook art-book publisher Small Editions will be leading a bookbinding workshop.”

– Daniel Maurer, Bedford and Bowery

“Last month, the Observer highlighted The 15 Best Metal Bands in NYC with sludge-metal crushers Bassoon leading the way. Not only will you get your chance to see Bassoon inflict its Melvins’y damage on May 2 at Gold Sounds, but the night before protean bassist/composer Stuart Popejoy shows off his avant-jazz chops as he joins forces with guitarist Brandon Seabrook and Talibam! drummer Kevin Shea for free-improv fireworks at Gowanus’ jazz hub, ShapeShifter Lab.”

–Brad Cohan, OBSERVER

“SUNN O))) at Knockdown Center (March 17, 8 p.m.). With its members dressed in hooded cloaks and shrouded in smoke from fog machines, Sunn O))) puts on concerts that can feel like bizarre cult rituals. And to fans of heavy metal’s many subgenres, they are. Since the late ’90s, the group’s founding members, Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, have spurred a rise in experimental metal in America thanks to their own record label, Southern Lord, which has also released excellent albums by experimental-noise bands like Pelican and Boris. For this concert, brace yourself for overwhelming guitar drones, which Sunn O))) conjures with instruments tuned so low, they just might reach the Earth’s core.”

–Giovanni Russonello, New York Times

“The Knockdown Center brings you Art is Labor: A Day of Creative Advocacy and Critical Imagination. This one day event is being hosted by Get Artists Paid, an international alliance formed online in 2016 to address ongoing exploitation in the art world, and MAMI, a curatorial initiative started by Dyani Douze and Ali Rosa-Salas that foregrounds the voices of womxn of color. The day consists of a super informative and helpful AF lineup of discussions and workshops that address challenges and barriers that come with being a young artist. Topics covered include healthful eating on a budget, internet security, managing student loan debt, making sense of the art commissioning process, and more. Plus there will be an ART IS LABOR marketplace selling goods by local qtpoc artists. Hosted at the Knockdown Center on April 23.”

–Hannah Nussbaum, Milk.xyz

“A few weeks before Christmas last year, a bit of history was made at a former door factory in New York’s industrial district of Maspeth in Queens. Inside the 50,000-square-foot warehouse—now a performance space called the Knockdown Center—750 fans of Latin pop converged under twisting LED spotlights as DJs Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez and Jose Marquez fed their mixes though the gut-punching PA system. Off the dance floor, a wall-sized installation of classic salsa albums stretched into the distance, offering the opportunity for selfies, while a nearby pop-up shop did a brisk trade in caps, T-shirts and hoodies.”

–Robert Klara, ADWEEK

“The spacious Knockdown Center will be hosting a very interesting collaboration between a visual artist, a composer, and a choreographer that reimagines T.S. Eliot’s modern epic poem, “The Waste Land.””

–Katarina Hybenova, Bushwick Daily

“It was heartening to see The New York Times give such prominent billing to this Bardo Pond show, held at Maspeth’s somewhat-remote but welcoming Knockdown Center this past weekend. If the use of the phrase “noise rock” to describe the band was reductive in extremis, it at least got at the notion that Bardo Pond shows are loud, distortion-drenched, hallucinatory affairs. But give a listen to Under the Pines, which the band played in full at this show to celebrate its release, and vocalist Isobel Sollenberger features more prominently for much of this journey, at least compared to past pairing with the Gibbons brothers and Clint Takeda’s guitar attack. A vocalist is almost always a critical component of a band’s sound, of course, but it feels like Sollenberger is a more confident and featured presence than she’s been at any time in their long career.”

–NYC Taper

“It’s only fitting that the massive Maspeth (say that five times fast) Knockdown Center is opening a grand total of 4 exhibitions at once this Saturday, seeing as they certainly have the space for it. Whether you’re looking for “architectural minimalism,” robotics manipulating objects to create a constant theater performance, or vast art stretching over walls to the point where you have to change how you move through space, there will be surely something to catch your eye. Rounding out the bunch is Liliya Lifenova’s performance installation Flight Over Wasteland, happening earlier in the day at 3 pm.”

–Cassiy Dawn Graves, Bedford + Bowery

“So begins ‘The Waste Land,’ T.S. Eliot’s 1922 poem that’s considered a landmark of Modernism and has inspired countless artists working across media and decades. The latest creator to be moved by it is Liliya Lifanova, who first encountered the poem several years ago and has since been “patiently and persistently writing the score, hand-crafting the sculptures, performative objects, paintings, drawings, and garments that will ‘frame’” her new project, Flight Over Wasteland, which debuts at the Knockdown Center this week.”

–Jillian Steinhaur, HYPERALLERGIC

“‘Form as a goal always ends in formalism,’ Ludwig Mies van der Rohe once said, suggesting that formalism is an obsession with the possibilities of art with little respect for the politics that surround it. That’s the titular formal complaint this show makes, offering in the process a group of works that tarnish the formalism that artists once considered sacred. Curated by Dana Kopel and Rachael Rakes, the show considers formalism’s value to young artists today. Among the artists featured is Mario Navarro, who here will show leftover materials from construction sites as though they were formalist objects. Aria Dean, Female Background, Christopher Hanrahan, and Megan Pahmier will also have works in this show.”

-ARTNEWS