"Portraiture as Social Commentary" Showcases the Genre's Explosive Social Capital @ Persons Projects in Berlin

 

Zofia Kulik
Land-Escape I (2001)
silver gelatin print, 180 x 150 cm

 

Persons Projects’ latest group exhibition, Portraiture as Social Commentary, not only highlights the different aspects of the genre but also links together a variety of artistic perspectives. A portrait is a painting, a photograph, a sculpture, or any other representation of a person in which the face and its expressions are predominant. They reveal the presence of the subject viewed from the perspective of the artist – a merger of contrasts between what’s projected by one and perceived by another. These images become mirrors of many faces that reflect both the political and cultural undercurrents relevant to the time period in which they were conceived.

Portraiture as Social Commentary is on view through January 27th, 2024, at Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 34–35, 10969 Berlin.

Lost Narratives Are Excavated As A Form of Restitution in The Struggle of Memory @ PalaisPopulaire in Berlin

As Milan Kundera writes in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979), “the first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history… The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” The artists in this exhibition are concerned with remembering, reconstructing, reimagining, and restoring. Part 1 of The Struggle of Memory focuses on how memories are embodied, presenting artworks that probe in different ways how the body absorbs, processes, stores, and recalls experiences. Part 2 explores how memories are inscribed, bringing together artworks that draw our attention to the traces of history in the natural and built environment while proposing alternative, sometimes subversive strategies of looking at the past. The show, curated by Kerryn Greenberg, features work by Wangechi Mutu, Kara Walker, Samuel Fosso, Anawana Haloba, Mohamed Camara, Berni Searle, Lebohang Kganye, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Mikhael Subotzky.

Part 1 is on view through September 18th; part 2 is on view October 6th through March 11th at PalaisPopulaire, Unter den Linden 5, 10117 Berlin.

Melike Kara, My Beloved Wild Valley @ Arcadia Missa in London

Artist Melike Kara’s first solo exhibition in London, “My Beloved Wild Valley,” is now on view at Arcadia Missa. For this exhibition, Kara’s figures are encircled with signifiers of place; perhaps locating their identities as connected to the heritage of the artist herself, as well as outside of being read simplistically through the body. These figures are read through their landscapes and histories. Markers of site and culture, such as sunflowers and the setting sun, speak of history as identity, a more complex matrix from which to map a sense of self, one made from ghosts. The presence and characters of Kara’s figures are created through the interaction they have with one another on the canvas and the placing of them within contexts, signifiers, or even areas of negative space.

“My Beloved Wild Valley” is on view through July 31 at Arcadia Missa 14 – 16 Brewer Street, First Floor
Soho, London. photographs by Ollie Hammick. courtesy the artist and Arcadia Missa, London

Punch, Curated By Nina Chanel Abney @ Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles

Punch, curated by artist Nina Chanel Abney, features thirty-three artists who examine contemporary culture and society through the lens of figuration. The exhibition focuses on artists primarily from Los Angeles in Abney’s circle who explore connections and disconnections between culture and subculture, figuration and abstraction, and the physical and the digital. The pieces featured in the exhibition contain references to art historical precedents such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, as well as street art, while integrating elements of design, graffiti, cartoons, and satire. Using painting, sculpture, and performance as acts of defiance, these artists explore how they can create figurative and abstract representations with visual punch while portraying a society immersed in new media and pop culture.

Punch, Curated by Nina Chanel Abney is on view through August 17 at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles 925 North Orange Drive, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch

Liz Johnson Artur: If you know the beginning, the end is no trouble @ South London Gallery in London

Liz Johnson Artur’s first solo show in the UK presents new sculptural works incorporating photographs selected from her substantial archive of images documenting the lives of people from the African diaspora. While Artur has taken photographs across Europe, America, Africa, and the Caribbean for more than three decades, this exhibition focuses on images that capture the richness and complexity of Black British life in London.

Liz Johnson Artur: If you know the beginning, the end is no trouble is on view through September 1 at the South London Gallery 65-67 Peckham Road, London. photographs courtesy of the South London Gallery

The Skirball Cultural Center Presents Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite in Los Angeles

Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite is on view now at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The exhibition features over forty photographs of black women and men reclaiming their African roots with natural hair and clothes. This is the first-ever major exhibition dedicated to this key figure of the second Harlem Renaissance. In collaboration with the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios (AJASS) and Grandassa Models, Brathwaite organized fashion shows featuring clothing designed by the models themselves, took stunning portraits of jazz musicians, and captured the black arts community in a series of behind-the-scenes photographs. Brathwaite’s work challenged mainstream beauty standards while celebrating black beauty, instilling a sense of pride throughout the community. On view through September 1 at the Skirball Cultural Center 2701 N Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles. photos courtesy of the Skirball Cultural Center

Autre Magazine Two Day Takeover At Owl Bureau In Highland Park

Autre magazine celebrated its Spring 2019 issue with a two day takeover at Chandelier Creative’s West Coast outpost, Owl Bureau, a former pharmacy in Highland Park. The takeover started with an event on Saturday evening and daytime gathering with a lecture from fire ecologist Richard Minnich. Cocktails were provided by Madre Mezcal. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

"Metropolitan Sets" by Mattia Biagi Presented by 1st Dibs at The BADD House in Los Angeles

Metropolitan Sets is a collection of featured pieces from Mattia Biagi, a series of sculptural furniture that expresses his personal investigation of dichotomies: life and death, nature and civilization, preservation and transformation. Shop the collection here. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Presentation of Yazbukey Fitness Club Spring Summer 2019 During Paris Fashion Week

A lithe group of dancers, acrobats and contortionists graced the stage for the high-voltage presentation of Yazbukey Fitness Club – surrealist designer, Yazbukey’s full-throttle spring/summer 2019 collection. Her latest works inspired by the current obsessions with fit culture, fitspo, and the like are a welcome alternative to the dominating athleisure forces as of late. photographs by Flo Kohl

Sexy Beast Benefit For Planned Parenthood Los Angeles Hosted By Andy Richter @ The Theatre at Ace Hotel

The second edition of Sexy Beast, supporting Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA), was hosted by Andy Richter at the historic Theatre at Ace Hotel. Works by Barbara Kruger, Marilyn Minter, Julie Mehretu, Ed Ruscha, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Sterling Ruby were up for auction to support PPLA.  photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

The First "Nonobject(ive)" Summer Happening @ The Broad Museum in Los Angeles

The Broad museum’s Nonobject(ive): Summer Happenings series kicked off last Saturday. The program was inspired by the museum’s first special exhibition, Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life. The late-night series animated important influences of leading contemporary artists through music and performance, fluctuating between happenings, salons and productions. The first program featured the lush beauty of Perfume Genius’s orchestrations and the ever-changing masked choreography of Narcissister. In the spirit of Cindy Sherman’s photographs, performance collective Mutant Salon transformed visitors’ hair, make-up and minds in a lavish pop-up beauty parlor and hive for creative collaboration and self-care. Lotic created dark beats in The Broad’s distinctive architecture, and Cindytalk performed electronic soundscapes that blended rhythmic dissonance with ethereal vocals. The event included same-night access to the full museum, including the Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life special exhibition. photographs by Dicko Chan

Love Is Something Heavy: Read Our Interview With Multimedia Artist Sara Rahbar Before Her Presentation of New Work During the NADA Art Fair →

Sara Rahbar is an artist who bravely transverses borders and permeates boundaries. Though often labeled an “Iranian American artist” (her family fled Iran in 1982 during the beginning of the Revolution), she prefers to relocate herself in a collective humanity. Transcending genre, her work ranges from photography and paint to textiles and sculpture. Rahbar’s work reflects this permeability, combining seemingly antithetical ideas – American flags sewn together with traditional Persian fabrics, hearts made out of military backpacks – in a beautiful and generative juxtaposition. Click here to read more. 

Read Wolfgang Tillmans' Statement On His Pro-EU Campaign

Dear Friends, I’m sure you are also following with horror the rightwards drift and anti-EU sentiment brewing across Europe. The Dutch referendum should be the final wake-up call, alerting people to the real risk of the UK’s EU referendum resulting in a victory for Leave. The official ‘Remain’ campaign feels lame and is lacking in passion. It also lacks an active drive to get voters registered – and with the deadline already falling two weeks before the referendum, this should be an urgent priority. I want to get involved and actively campaign. In particular, I want to work towards maximizing turnout among younger voters by focusing on the first, crucial step: voter registration – the deadline for which is June 7! So anyone who hasn’t registered before this date has no chance of having a say, no matter how strongly they feel about the issue. So the really crucial date is June 7. Everyone’s grannies registered their vote long ago, but students no longer get automatically registered by their unis. This is because of a new law brought in by the Conservatives that makes it possible for them to disenfranchise up to 800,000 students, who as a group tend to move around a lot more and so drop off the voter register easily. I feel that we have reached a critical moment that could prove to be a turning point for Europe as we know and enjoy it – one that might result in a cascade of problematic consequences and political fall-out. Firstly, the weakening of the EU is a goal being actively pursued by strongmen like Vladimir Putin and European parties on the far-right that are funded by Russia (a little known fact). Furthermore, Brexit would provoke calls for referendums in many other countries and could effectively spell the end of the EU. It’s a flawed and problematic institution, but on the whole it stands for a democratic worldview, human rights and favors cooperation over confrontation. It could prove to be a one-in-a-generation moment. Can you imagine the years of renegotiations for undoing treaties, and all the negativity that would surround that. In the past weeks myself and assistants at my London and Berlin studios and Between Bridges worked on these texts and designs. Please feel free to share these posters, they work as print your own PDFs, or on social media, or in any other way you can think of. I consider them open-source, you can take my name tag off if more appropriate. Let’s hope for the best - but hope may not be enough. Click here to download Tillman's campaign posters. 

Daba Dubai: Read Carbon 12's Suggestions On Where To Stay and What To Eat and Drink In Dubai During Art Week →

When most people think Dubai, they think money, flash, grandeur and excess. In fact, there is a theory that the word Dubai literally means “money” – from an old Arabic proverb, "Daba Dubai,” which translates to, “They came with a lot of money.” However, over the last few years, Dubai has become a major force in the art world with galleries, such as our friends at Carbon 12, that are popping up in the industrial region of Dubai known as Al Quoz. Click here to read more.