Lizzi Bougatsos + Kim Gordon x Penny Slinger @ Blum & Poe In Los Angeles

Lizzi Bougatsos and Kim Gordon perform sonic improvisation to the projections of artist Penny Slinger's early experimental silent films from 1969. After returning from a Gang Gang Dance Japan tour last winter, Bougatsos found herself emerged in the films of Jane Arden, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Penny Slinger, part of an experimental feminist film series curated by Alison Gingeras and Nicoletta Beyer at the Anthology Film Archives. She began writing text while watching the Slinger films in the theater, and thereafter asked her friend Kim Gordon to perform a sonic reaction. The two artists improvised to the films teetering on the elemental, surreal, metaphysical, and distinctly feminine raw poetry of the sublime unconscious -- an almost Artaudian parallel for the unconscious leadings of the nature of improvisation in art and life, shared in the three practices of Bougatsos, Gordon, and Slinger. photographs by Julia Nicoletti

Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s @ Blum & Poe Gallery In Los Angeles

Blum & Poe’s Parergon, a selected survey exhibition of Japanese art of the 1980s and ‘90s, curated by Mika Yoshitake. Focusing on the themes of abject politics, transcending media, performativity, and satire and simulation, this show will present the work of over twenty-five visual artists including Kodai Nakahara, Tatsuo Miyajima, Kazumi Nakamura, Yukie Ishikawa, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, and Yukinori Yanagi in an array of media spanning painting, sculpture, duration performance, noise, video, and photography. Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s will be on view until March 23 at Blum & Poe Gallery, 2727 La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Sam Durant "Build Therefore Your Own World" @ Blum And Poe Gallery In Los Angeles

Blum & Poe presents Build Therefore Your Own World, an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Sam Durant. The title is excerpted from a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay. Durant continues his excavation of marginalized American histories, unearthing counter storylines to the historical canon. In this exhibition he proposes a hybridized cross-pollination between the iconic nineteenth century transcendentalists like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott, with African writers such as Phillis Wheatley and Lucy Terry Prince, along with abolitionists like Frederick Douglass. Further developing his theses from a recent three-month long public art project in Concord, MA entitled The Meeting House, Durant transforms relics from this politically loaded site of American history into a prescient presentation of culturally charged artworks. Sam Durant "Build Therefore Your Own World" will be on view until February 18, 2017 @ Blum and Poe Gallery in Los Angeles. 

Private Opening Of High Times, Curated By Richard Prince @ Blum & Poe Gallery In Los Angeles

Blum & Poe presents a collaboration between artist Richard Prince and the paragon of marijuana counterculture press, High Times magazine. Well known for his penchant for outsider aesthetics and subculture iconography, Prince works with High Times for the first time, lending original compositions from his Hippie Drawings series of the late 1990s/early 2000s for the September 2016 special Trippy issue. These drawings exemplify Prince’s practice of investigating the American collective unconscious and pursuing dualities – he mines the marginalized and commonplace, and then filters this content through a discerning, expressive, and painterly tradition. Extraterrestrial, polychromatic figures wielding joints smirk at their viewer; wild and joyful gestures that recall the artwork of children or channel the renderings of a psychedelic trip – Prince says of this series, “Being funny is a way to survive.” In conjunction with the launch of the special issue, Prince has curated a collection of historical High Times covers traversing the publication’s history from 1974-2014. The artist’s practice of gleaning inspiration from news and popular media well documented, here Prince selects covers from the magazine’s archives that reflect certain subjects commonly found in his oeuvre. On the occasion of the special edition issue launch, rolling papers designed by the artist will be produced, along with a marijuana strain. This presentation has been organized in cooperation with Green St. Agency. High Times opens July 26 and runs until July 30 at Blum & Poe Gallery in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper