We’ve all played the word association game when it comes to Asbury Park, New Jersey. There’s Springsteen and The Stone Pony and that one episode of The Sopranos where Tony winds up talking to the fish. But the beautiful thing about Joe Maloney’s work is that it manages to drill down deeper, exposing the ambient town beneath – the sights, the sounds, the circuit, the community. Here we see a choral ensemble singing at sundown on the boardwalk, there a grown woman riding the midway carousel, still reaching for that golden ring. The majority of photographs included in this exhibit were taken during 1979 and 1980, each of them snapped between Seaside Heights and Asbury Park. The timing is ideal, what with a slew of multi-million-dollar gentrification projects suggesting that – despite Sandy and slumlords and a variety of other sinkholes along the way – Asbury Park may possibly, finally, be ready for its close-up again.

(Asbury Park at The Jersey Shore runs through August 16th @ Rick Wester Fine Art, Free, 526 West 26th Street.) 

Five More For The Offing: 

• Summertime @ Jenkins Johnson Gallery (Free, through 8/30, 521 West 26th Street)
• Everyday Epiphanies featuring various artists @ the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Free with suggested donation, through 1/26, 5th Avenue at 82nd Street)
• Present Perfect by James Viscardi @ Ana Cristea Gallery (Free, through 8/3, 521 West 26th Street)
• Anne-Lise Coste @ Eleven Rivington (Free, through 8/9, 195 Chrystie Street)
  
• personal, political, mysterious featuring various artists @ FLAG Art Foundation, (Free, through 9/7, 545 West 25th Street, 9th Floor)