Shows to See in the US This February

Shannon Ebner

kaufmann repetto, New York

7 January – 19 February

A Forecast Reference Evapotranspiration (FRET) report offers a prediction about the rate at which water that has fallen to the ground – ending up on the land itself, on bodies of water or taken up by vegetation – will via either evaporation or transpiration (being drawn through plants) return back into the sky. Used to help forecast different kinds of drought, these reports are imperative to the management of water resources. In the context of the world’s increasing focus on the potential for future climate catastrophe (one element of which might be the Earth creeping towards a permanent drought), the title of Shannon Ebner’s new exhibition at kaufmann repetto, ‘Fret Scapes’,  has a ring of existential alarm. — Svetlana Kitto 

Bassera Khan

Brooklyn Museum, New York

1 October 2021 – 10 July 2022

There are few artists as materially inventive as Baseera Khan. It’s a quality that shines through their first solo museum exhibition, ‘I Am an Archive’, at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. (The show is held in conjunction with Khan’s receipt of the UOVO Prize for Emerging Artists.) Every element of their practice – which spans performance, video, installation, photography and sculpture – is shot through with meaning. — Aruna D'Souza 

Blondell Cummings

Art + Practice, Los Angeles

18 September 2021 – 19 February 2022

The first museum exhibition dedicated to the works of dancer, choreographer and video artist Blondell Cummings – who passed away in 2015 – is a tribute to her long and illustrious, yet often overlooked, career. Presented by Art + Practice, in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute, ‘Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures’ highlights the artist’s multidisciplinary practice and innovations in modern dance. — Tiffany Barber

Florian Hecker

The Fitzpatrick-Leland House, Los Angeles

21 November 2021 – 13 March 2022

Sound has the ability to mark borders and claim territories: radiating from its point of emission, sound fills the air with both audible and spatial volume.  Knowing this, we build spaces to house our sounds: environments for optimal listening. The Fitzpatrick-Leland House in Los Angeles, which serves as the venue for Florian Hecker’s exhibition ‘Resynthesizers’, would probably not deserve this description. Nevertheless, Rudolf Schindler’s famous theoretical reduction of architecture, as realized in this building that overlooks the neighbourhood of Laurel Canyon from high up on Mulholland Drive, resonated – if not sympathetically, then intriguingly – with the sound forms that Hecker introduced into it. — Jan Tumlir

^{Main image: Baseera Khan, Braidrage, 2017-ongoing, performance at Participant Inc., New York, 2017. Courtesy: © the artist and Simone Subal Gallery, New York; photograph: Maxim Ryazansky}