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Art work (foreground) by Helen Evans Ramsaran / Courtesy La Mama Galleria / Welancora Gallery
Downtown New York is the Walt Whitman of places: it contains multitudes and contradicts itself. If you think it begins and ends in lower Manhattan, Sam Gordon wants to open your mind. The artist-curator organized the inspired polyphonic group show
“Downtown 2021,” at La Mama Galleria, to propose that the downtown spirit may be best reflected at galleries many of them artist-run in Brooklyn and Queens. (The exhibition is on view Fridays and Saturdays, through Feb. 20.) Works by about thirty painters, ceramicists, photographers, choreographers, filmmakers, and installationists advocate for the outer-borough spaces that have shown them, from the nonprofit feminist coöperative A.I.R., established in 1972 and now housed in Dumbo, to Zak’s, which the young sculptor-to-watch Zak Kitnick began as a lark in his studio, in 2015. (The show includes a handsome, if gnomic, game table by Kitnick