The Brooklyn Rail

Rudolf Polanszky, Zu einer Semiologie der Sinne [The Semiology of Sin], 1976. Hand-colored Super 8 film with music. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Krinzinger. “Daidalon refers to the Greek myth of the inventor and artist Daedalus, father of Icarus, and Icarus’s tragic decision to fly using his father’s artificial wings. He flew too close to the sun, his wings.

Katarina Zhu in Bunnylovr (2025). Courtesy Bunnylovr LLC. Bunnylovr (2025) Written and directed by Katarina Zhu Rebecca is late to everything and perpetually broke. She’s the kind of girl who looks flawless in a paper-thin slip dress, nipples showing through, despite having unwashed hair and wearing no makeup. By day, she works as a personal assistant in a stuffy Upper East Side brownstone, sometimes making personal charges on her employer’s credit card.

The Painting is a Door Museum Franz Gertsch March 21–August 30, 2026 Burgdorf, Switzerland Paradaidha Kunsthalle Darmstadt March 29–August 30, 2026 Darmstadt, Germany Two comprehensive retrospective exhibitions of Robert Zandvliet’s work are currently on view at the Museum Franz Gertsch in Burgdorf (curator: Andreas Fiedler) and at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt (curator: León Krempel), which, in addition to earlier works, focus primarily on key groups of works and individual pieces from the last...

Filmmaker Carrie Hawks and Programmer Brian Ratigan celebrating DarkRoom’s three year anniversary in March, 2026. Courtesy Non Films. DarkRoom Freddy’s Bar Every fourth Tuesday Brooklyn It’s a funny time to be a film-lover in NYC: We’re watching the Hollywood dream factory die from the opposite coast, while cinema culture is (somewhat) thriving over here. Across the city, attendance at independent and repertory theaters, especially among young moviegoers, is plentiful.

Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman in I Want Your Sex (2026). Courtesy Magnolia Pictures. I Want Your Sex (2026) Directed by Gregg Araki Written by Karley Sciortino and Gregg Araki Black Bear Pictures Since the late eighties, Gregg Araki has been goosing audiences out of their comfort zones with catty humor, art-pop surrealism, and plenty of sex. This July, the ribald queer provocateur is back on the big screen after a twelve-year sojourn to television, and he’s got a lot to say about 2026.

Celestial Observations Diane Rosenstein Gallery May 30–July 11, 2026 Los Angeles This focused exhibition was my introduction to the work of Terran Last Gun and, among more important things, it snapped me out of the far-from-enthusiastic response to nearly all of the emails and PDFs I receive touting the next great thing.

Word count: 2797 Paragraphs: 38 Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026). Courtesy Mubi. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun In the half decade since We’re All Going to the World’s Fair earned writer/director Jane Schoenbrun their laurels as cinematic queer soothsayer for the digital age, their work has blended intimate portraiture with queasy, hypermodern dissociation.

The Stationary Traveler Galerie Sardine May 15–July 18, 2026 New York Touching on themes of beauty and vanity, pleasure and mortality, The Stationary Traveler is a selective survey of twenty-two paintings and two sculptures of modest scale by Farrell Brickhouse, now in the fifth decade of his career. Dating from 1997–2025, these works present moving testimony to his career-long pursuit of authenticity of expression, relatively small objects that jump scale in their absorptive power.

Tatiana Desardouin & K’niin Abbrey/Passion Fruit Dance Company in RESONANCE, Performance Mix Festival, Abrons Arts Center, New York, 2026. Photo: Elyse Mertz Photography. New Dance Alliance 40th Annual Performance Mix Festival Abrons Arts Center June 4–7, 2026 New York The 40th Annual Performance Mix Festival is nothing if not generous in scope.

Gellért Szabó. Photo: Nils Brinkmeier. Moers Festival May 21–25, 2026 Moers, Germany The Moers Festival may well be one of the globe’s most anarchic, weirdness-drenched, chaos-driven music weekenders, continually reshaping itself to refresh creativity, and to unhinge its loyal acolyte attendees. Fortunately, the organizers maintain a high degree of time-control and logistic deftness, to facilitate the exterior appearance of random improvisation, crazed happenstance, and all-are-welcome sonics.