Non-Specific Objects Carves Niches for Difference from Universality @ Capitain Petzel in Berlin

The title of Non-Specific Objects acts as a counterpoint to the ideas expressed in Donald Judd’s canonical 1964 essay Specific Objects. Seeing as Judd characterized specific objects as separate from either sculpture or painting, they were precisely themselves, emphasizing the very materiality of a specific object that lacked expressive or symbolic content, especially to embodied subjectivity. This universal space, which aimed to be all-encompassing, did not make room for gender, racial, and sexual difference. The artists in this exhibition work against the hegemonic universal, creating space for difference in their works by means of abstraction, referencing bodies both literally and metaphorically.

The selection of works collectively embodies the contemporary lived experience of those who occupy spaces outside the normative. While they often do not overtly mirror the human form, the works represent humanity through a lens of abstraction and resistance, inviting viewers to confront themselves and experience bodily otherness. From alienation and embarrassment to intimacy and desire, the artists offer both the possibility of self-reflection and shared moments of humor.

In focus is the abstracted body – be it the intimate nature, materiality, and particularities of the individual human body, the collective body that is built on shared historic experience, the extended and amplified body in an age of relentless augmentation, or the body that eschews realistic painterly modes of representation, opting for formally abstract or heavily stylized, sometimes nostalgic renditions of humanity. The diverse set of artistic practices does not adhere to strict principles of representation, but continually references the human, sometimes clearly and often obliquely. It highlights objects that refuse human form but relate to the human by embracing abstraction.

Non-Specific Objects is on view through February 24th at Capitain Petzel, Karl-Marx-Allee 45, 10178 Berlin.

Students At The European Institute Of Design In Milan Are Innovating Inclusivity

In their first semester of the 20/21 academic year, students of the European Institute of Design in Milan were asked to design in an inclusive way with gender, disability, ethnicity, and age in mind. Conducted by professors Mia Vilardo and Riccardo Polidoro, partners of Studio Elitre, the inclusive design course asked students to create original products capable of satisfying everyone's needs.

In terms of gender inclusiveness, the REN proposal goes to intercept the needs of those who do not identify with one of the two sexes and of those who feel unique through what they choose to wear: a mix of garments and accessories that reflects the person without distinction between man and woman. On the disability front, there are those who have imagined a fashion brand " for anyone who feels wrong or not fully represented ". JFMP - Joy for mistaken people (proposed by Penelope Bazzani, Michela Polo, Jennifer Rossi, Federica Santangelo) subverts the rules and looks at things in a different light, working specifically on blindness and low vision.

On the path of ethnic inclusion, the To.get.there - Rebirth project instead works conceptually to "unite" what is at the deepest roots of human experience, what unites all cultures (both physically and spiritually). This translates not only into the choice of fabrics made from elements present in nature, but also into the reuse, grinding and processing of industrial and production waste to obtain, with the appropriate binders, new design materials.

Good taste and being able to be inspirational have no age: thus, the working group on the ageless theme (Simone Ricetti, Alice Marchetti, Alessandra Natalino, Martina Sagliaschi) imagined AMAS, a range of accessories perfect for all seasons of the life.

 
 

"AN ALL COLORED CAST" By Hank Willis Thomas @ Kayne Griffin Corcoran In Los Angeles

An All Colored Cast is an exploration of color theory, popular culture, the development of Pop Art, Color Field painting, Minimalism, and the Hollywood film industry. In this new body of work, Thomas examines the portrayals of gender, race, and identity through the lens of film, performance, and color motion pictures.

Using color theory and screen color calibration charts as an aesthetic starting point, Thomas re-examines the language surrounding “color correction” and “white balance” in order to demonstrate the charged language of color, particularly around the time of desegregation and the proliferation of Technicolor in America.

An all Colored Cast is on view throughout March 7, 2020 at Kayne Griffin Corcoran 1201 S La Brea Ave. Los Angeles, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Michal Heiman Presents "Hearing" @ The American Jewish University In Los Angeles

One of the most influential artists in Israel today, Michal Heiman navigates the worlds of photography, archival practice, critical theory, psychoanalysis, diagnosis, gender, and performance in her work. In this exhibition, her first solo show on the west coast, Heiman will continue to excavate the histories of discarded, forgotten women that have been trapped in asylums in London and Venice, or women who were denied of their legal rights in 19th-century Massachusetts. Michal invites audiences to insert themselves in these untold histories. The artist regards the gallery as a transitory workspace, in which materials from the archive she created, combining documents, visual materials, and testimonies, will be revealed in preparation for a courthouse proceeding. Hearing is on view through April 7 at Platt & Borstein Galleries at American Jewish University, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles. Photographs by B. Neimeth for Arts at AJU

Kirsten Stoltmann and Jennifer Sullivan Presents Female Sensibility @ Five Car Garage In Los Angeles

”Female Sensibility“ is a two person show with LA based artist Kirsten Stoltmann and NY based artist Jennifer Sullivan. The title for the exhibition is inspired by Lynda Benglis’s 1973 video Female Sensibility which simultaneously acknowledges and parodies ideas around being categorized as a woman artist or defined artistically through gender. Stoltmann and Sullivan have continued aspects of this strategy in their own work through fore-fronting not just the female body and gaze, but their own specific bodies, emotional lives, and experiences, in favor of exploring the layers of meaning around self-representation and gender identity. In their work, there is a both a revised valuation of characteristics often assigned as feminine such as emotion, intuition, sensuality, and relationships, as well as a resistance and subversive attitude towards the limiting roles that women are expected to fulfill.

Female Sensibility is on view through March 1, 2020 @ Five Car Garage, Santa Monica, LA. Email info@emmagrayhq.com for address. photographs courtesy of Five Car Garage

Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon @ ICA In Los Angeles

For her first solo museum presentation in Los Angeles, Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette (b. 1984) will reimagine the Eagle Creek Saloon, the first black-owned gay bar in San Francisco, established by the artist’s father Rodney Barnette, founder of the Compton, CA chapter of the Black Panther Party. From 1990–93 Barnette’s father operated the bar and offered a safe space for the multiracial LGBTQ community who were marginalized at other social spaces throughout the city at that time.

Barnette engages the aesthetics of Minimalism and Conceptualism through an idiosyncratic use of text, decoration, photographs, and found objects that approach the speculative and otherworldly. Barnette’s recent drawings, sculptures, and installations have incorporated the 500-page FBI surveillance file kept on her father and references to West Coast funk and hip-hop culture to consider the historical and present-day dynamics of race, gender, and politics in the United States. Using materials such as spray paint, crystals, and glitter, she transforms the bureaucratic remnants from a dark chapter in American history into vibrant celebrations of personal, familial, and cultural histories and visual acts of resistance. The New Eagle Creek Saloon is a glittering bar installation that exists somewhere between a monument and an altar, at once archiving the past and providing space for potential actions. During the run of the exhibition at ICA LA, the installation will be activated by performances, talks, and other social events. The New Eagle Creek Saloon is on view through January 26, 2020 at ICA LA 1717 E. 7th Street, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Sarah Lucas Presents 'Au Naturel' @ Hammer Museum In Los Angeles

Over the past 30 years, Sarah Lucas has created a distinctive and provocative body of work that subverts traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Since the late 1980s, Lucas has transformed found objects and everyday materials such as furniture, cigarettes, vegetables, and stockings into absurd and confrontational tableaux that boldly challenge social norms. The human body and anthropomorphic forms recur throughout Lucas’s works, often appearing erotic, humorous, fragmented, or reconfigured into fantastical anatomies of desire. Au Naturel is on view through September 1 at the Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the Hammer

Lorna Simpson Presents "Darkening" @ Hauser & Wirth In New York

Debuting a suite of new large-scale paintings, Lorna Simpson’s Darkening finds the artist returning to and building upon themes and motifs at the center of her practice: explorations focused on the nature of representation, identity, gender, race, and history. For more than 30 years, Simpson’s powerful works have entangled viewers in an equivocal web of meaning, drawing upon techniques of collage through the use of found materials, often culled from the pages of vintage Jet and Ebony magazines. In ‘Darkening,’ Simpson continues to thread dichotomies of figuration and abstraction with vast and enthralling tableaux that subsume spliced photos and fragmented text, abstracted beyond comprehension. Equally arresting and poetic, the paintings engage viewers with layers of paradox, capturing the mystifying allure of an arctic landscape in inky washes of blacks, grays, and startling blues. Darkening will be on view through 26 July at Hauser & Wirth 548 West 22nd Street, New York. photographs courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

New Museum Presents "Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel" The First American Survey Of The Artist's Oeuvre

Over the past thirty years, Lucas has created a distinctive and provocative body of work that subverts traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Since the late 1980s, she has transformed found objects and everyday materials such as cigarettes, vegetables, and stockings into disorienting, confrontational tableaux that boldly challenge social norms. The human body and anthropomorphic forms recur throughout Lucas’s works, often appearing erotic, humorous, fragmented, or reconfigured into fantastical anatomies of desire.

Initially associated with a group known as the Young British Artists (YBAs), who began exhibiting together in London in the late 1980s, Lucas is now one of the UK’s most influential artists. This presentation, which takes place across the three main floors of the New Museum, brings together more than 150 works in photography, sculpture, and installation to reveal the breadth and ingenuity of her practice. The exhibition addresses the ways in which Lucas’s works engage with crucial debates about gender and power, along with the legacy of Surrealism—from her clever transformations of everyday objects to her exploration of sexual ambiguity and the tension between the familiar and the absurd.

“Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel” features some of Lucas’s most important projects, including early sculptures from the 1990s that substitute domestic furniture for body parts and enlarged spreads from tabloid newspapers from the same period, which reflect objectified representations of the female body. Alongside the photographic self-portraits that Lucas has produced throughout her career, the exhibition features biomorphic sculptures including her stuffed-stocking Bunnies (1997–ongoing) and NUDS (2009–ongoing), the Penetralia series (2008–ongoing), and selections from her installations at the Freud Museum in London (2000) and the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015). These works, which complicate inscribed codes of sexual and social normativity, have never before been shown together in the US. Lucas has also created new sculptural works for the exhibition, including This Jaguar’s Going to Heaven (2018), a severed 2003 Jaguar X-Type—the car’s back half burned and its front half collaged with cigarettes—and VOX POP DORIS (2018), a pair of eleven-foot-tall thigh-high platform boots cast in concrete.

Au Naturel is on view through January 20, 2019 at the New Museum 235 Bowery New York, 10002. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Adrian Piper's 'Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016' Opens @ Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

Adrian Piper: Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016 is the most comprehensive West Coast exhibition to date of the work of Adrian Piper (b. 1948, New York). It is also the first West Coast museum presentation of Piper’s works in more than a decade, and her first since receiving the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist at the 56th Venice Biennale of 2015 and Germany’s Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 2018. Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, this expansive retrospective features more than 270 works gathered from public and private collections from around the world, and encompasses a wide range of mediums that Piper has explored for over 50 years: drawing, photography, works on paper, video, multimedia installations, performance, painting, sculpture, and sound. 

Piper’s groundbreaking, transformative work has profoundly shaped the form and content of Conceptual art since the 1960s, exerting an incalculable influence on artists working today. Her investigations into the political, social, and spiritual potential of Conceptual art frequently address gender, race, and xenophobia through incisive humor and wit, and draw on her long-standing involvement with philosophy and yoga.

For this exhibition, the Hammer is partnering with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) to present Piper’s work What It’s Like, What It Is #3, a large-scale mixed-media installation addressing racial stereotypes. Adrian Piper: Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016 in on view through January 6 at Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles. photographs by Summer Bowie


Debut Performance Of Maceo Paisley's Untangling Manhood @ PAM

On May 25, 2018 PAM hosted the debut performance of Untangling Manhood, Maceo Paisley investigates gender through embodied inquiry, juxtaposing identity and social constructs. Using movement, language, and audience interaction, Paisley guides us through a narrative that goes beyond making art, inviting audiences to confront themselves in the process. photographs by Lani Trock

Jill Di Donato Takes On Gender, Sexual Reassignment Surgery, Sex Tapes and The Pleasure of Having a Clit In This Cultural Meandering on Womanhood in the 21st Century →

We don't mean to get heavy on a Monday, but Jill Di Donato's essay is just too good and too informative not to start your week off with. Starting with Lynda Benglis' massive faux member in Artforum to the discovery that her own sex tape was previewed in public to a bunch of strangers, Donato explores female sexuality, gender, and what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. She talks to photographers like Ricky Powell and Richard Kern to find the answers. Click here to read.