Read our Interview of Nicole Wittenberg Ahead of Her Debut Exhibition @ Fernberger Gallery in Los Angeles →

Nicole Wittenberg, Midsummer Morning 3, 2023. Image courtesy of Fernberger Gallery.

Garnering inspiration from riotous Fauvist material, Nicole Wittenberg intertwined herself with the world of art from the moment she saw Matisse’s Woman with a Hat. Rooted very confidently in her own intuition, Wittenberg has pursued interests related to her own gestural forms without much hesitation. Her artistic philosophy can be summarized by the kind of unbending compromise that turns heads and makes the world worth looking at. Imbued with synesthetic coloration, the work she portrays is embedded in its own unquantifiable emotional scale. She fearlessly plays with the kind of aggressive coloration that’s capable of conveying its own story, and her viewers get to reap the benefits. Nicole Wittenberg’s Jumpin’ at the Woodside is on view at Fernberger Gallery, a new gallery in Los Angeles. Well known for her erotica work, Wittenberg has garnered well-deserved attention for her experimentation with the body in space. After a shift in interest from figural forms to the entity that houses them, her focus turned to the landscape art we get to witness in Jumpin’ at the Woodside. Read more.

Underground Museum Hosts Rick Lowe Artist Talk As Part Of USC Roski's Public Lecture Series Social Practice Course

Rick Lowe is one of nearly a dozen artists invited to give lectures as part of USC Roski's *Culture in Action: Conversations in Social Practice Art. In this series students, international visitors and guest speakers consider an evolving practice in a seminar based on questions each participant brings to the classroom. What conditions apply to critical art practice in the public realm and how do these relate to the urban, social and political? What is the relationship between art and democracy? What is the long-term sustainability of community-based socially engaged art? How do informal pedagogic, public address and dialogic strategies apply to students’ own practices in art, design, theater, intermedia, cinema, communications and urban planning, among others? MA and Ph.D. candidates from schools outside of Roski are especially encouraged to apply to support their specific professional development goals. The course includes intimate conversations, public lectures, field trips, group dinners and an opportunity to study alongside Norwegian artists and curators. This intensive experience is a collaboration between Roski School of Art and Design and KORO, Public Art Norway in Oslo. For more information and full schedule of events visit Roski. photographs by Lani Trock

Watch The Online Premiere of Soil: An Exploration Of Manipulation, Dependency, and Objectification

Soil is the debut film by Mathilde Huron & Julian Feeld. It was shot on Fuji Super 16mm film in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of Southern France and scored by Pontus Berghe, ex-member of Thieves Like Us and current member of Thunder Tillman, with featured actors Joe Rezwin, Liza Journo & Sati Leonne Faulks.

A young filmmaker with mixed intentions sets out to document the friendship between a fifteen-year-old Parisian girl and a homeless alcoholic on the verge of death. Between documentary and fiction, Soil is an exploration of manipulation, dependency, and objectification. This experimental psycho-thriller — a mix of documentary and fiction — was screened in Paris, Tokyo and Los Angeles. 

A Special Screening of Becky Johnston's 1979 Featurette Sleepless Nights With Maripol @ MoMA

New Cinema cofounder (and Hollywood screenwriter) Becky Johnston recently described her little-seen featurette Sleepless Nights as “an East Village reinvention of the Otto Preminger movie Laura” that plays “fast and loose with the noir detective genre.” The film was screened at MoMA along with a short discussion between Johnston and Maripol on the making of the film and it's lasting cultural almost 40 years later. photographs by Annabel Graham

A Cinematic Portrait of Chanel’s Paris in Rome Métiers d’Art Show at Cinecitta with Spoken Word by Jean-Luc Godard

If all roads lead to Rome, then which roads lead to Paris? For Chanel’s 13th Métiers d’Art show, Karl Lagerfeld took to the back lots of the famous Cinecittà film studios in Rome to show the luxury brand’s pre-fall 2016 collection. Since Lagerfeld’s reign at Chanel, his Métiers d’Art shows have become legendary:  a rodeo in Dallas (Paris in Dallas), a barge in Shanghai (Paris in Shanghai), a hotel in Salzburg (Paris in Salzburg) – the list goes on. The shows aren’t just bombastic gestures of wealth; their intention is also to celebrate the artisans around the world that contribute to the work of Chanel’s collections, from lace to buttonry to embroidery. But Lagerfeld’s decision to create a vintage Parisian set on Teatro No. 5, replete with bistro tables, a boulangerie, a cinema, a metro station, three weeks after the terrorist attacks in real Paris, had a deeper, more poetic and darkly coincidental meaning. The show, planned well before the attacks, was a cinematic love letter to Paris. Lagerfeld remarked: “I wanted to create a homage to Paris. The best Paris, the most romantic Paris and to nostalgia for an idealized version of the city that never really existed.” The Cinecittà, otherwise known as Hollywood on the Tiber, was built by Benito Mussolini in 1937 in a scheme to revive the Italian film industry – later, such classics as La Dolce Vita and Satyricon were filmed there. In Dustin Lynn’s own cinematic portrait of Métiers d’Art show, set to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd and a spoken word piece by film legend Jean-Luc Godard, a modern Rome and a modern Paris clashes with a make-believe, Charles de Gaulle-era Paris. Then there are the models walking the runway, the high fashion, and the after party – just to remind us that it is all just fantasy. 

The Kid Stays In the Picture: Read Our Convo With The Illuminating Star Of Jake Hoffman's First Film, Asthma, Which Premiers Today In New York City →

In the following interview, Autre has a casual conversation with Benedict Samuel – star of Jake Hoffman's first film Asthma – over the phone while on his way to a cemetery in Australia to have his portraits taken for this feature. We talk about the weather, his acting style, how he prepares for an intense role like that of Gus, working with Iggy Pop, and why redemption and hope are precious things in which to hold on. Click here to read the interview and see our amazing exclusive editorial featuring photographs by Elvis Di Fazio shot in a cemetery in Sydney, Australia. 

British Artist Phil Collins (Not the Singer) Rooftop Drive-In Movie Theater On View Now In Ramallah, Palestine

You are sitting in a car. Not your own car. You actually have no idea whose car this is. All you know is that it was lovingly placed on the rooftop of a historic building, here in downtown Ramallah, Palestine. And that you’ve been watching a 1970s Egyptian Western. A French political musical. An experimental program of artists’ film and video. The smell of popcorn fills the air, and the radio dial is a little buttery with your greasy fingerprints. Cinema Sayyara! is a rooftop drive-in cinema by the artist Phil Collins, commissioned by the 5th Riwaq Biennale. It is the latest rendition of Collins’s Auto-Kino!, which was rolled out in Berlin five years ago. The new film program for Ramallah has been collectively selected by artists, and filmmakers whom Collins invited as guest programmers, as well as by residents of the Beit Saa neighborhood. The project runs only for four weeks and offers a maximum of 21 seats per night. But if you live nearby, you can watch the program from the street, your balcony or your favorite cafe by using a standard 98.9 FM frequency to tune into the soundtrack on the radio.

Mike Kuchar 'Saints and Sinners' @ François Ghebaly

François Ghebaly presents a Banquet of Beefcake celebrating Satyrs, Stone Age He-Men, Sugar Daddies, and Bawdy Buccaneers, drawn painted, digitized, and hosted by underground cartoonist and movie maker, Mike Kuchar. Saints and Sinners is on view until February 14 at François Ghebaly Gallery, 2245 E Washington Blvd, Los Angeles. photographs by Jason Levins