Justine Kurland’s Photographs Keep Us on Edge

For much of her career, the progressive artist Kelela has toyed with the idea of genre in an intuitive way, hardwiring electronic music into the DNA of an R. & B. sound. Across several records, she has conscientiously adapted her music to fit its context, letting both margin and intention dictate its immediate form. Her latest album, “new avatar,” ventures further, blending shoegaze and grunge into her existing palette. Influenced by her days in Washington, D.C.,’s indie scene, the record compels her practice toward a more guitar-driven substratum of her intersectional songcraft, seeking to expand the parameters of what “alternative” can even mean.—Sheldon Pearce (Brooklyn Paramount; Oct. 9-10.)

Art

We’ve stepped into some kind of deep, three-dimensional painting: in the exhibition “You Red the Shirt Off My Back,” Eric N. Mack leads us through layer after layer of fabric, cutting a nimble economy of angles and gestures across the gallery floor. Huge swaths of cloth play between differing registers of opacity and transparency. The shape most prevalent in the gallery is caused by gravity, the parabolic curve of fabric sinking toward the ground: cloth is tempted to droop and fall, weight traces a line in the air, the physics of lightness and heaviness become formal elements. In several of the pieces, Mack drapes fabric from steel armatures that resemble bodies. The works lay claim to our own bodies, their drapery becoming adornments sweeping from limb upon limb.—Zoë Hopkins (Paula Cooper; through Oct. 24.)

Off Broadway

In “Elf Lyons Is the Woman on the Edge,” Lyons, a virtuosic physical performer who trained as a clown, uses the breakup, via WhatsApp, of her engagement as a starting point for her latest show, which débuted at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. With smoke wafting from the décolletage of her cocktail dress, a bewigged Lyons, balancing on her toes like a life-size doll (a feat of arch endurance with a payoff), runs at a rapid clip through genres of performance and registers of emotion. She channels a Hitchcockian lady in distress and riffs on the movie “Apollo 13”; there are two banana phones and a brilliant running bit about the opera “Pagliacci.” The show is a genuine, absurd, and furious exploration of love and heartbreak.—Mengfei Chen (SoHo Playhouse; through Oct. 18.)