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.

Read A Conversation Between Paul Reubens & Nadia Lee Cohen From Autre 15: Losing My Religion →

 

Autre Magazine, Vol. 2 Iss. 15 F/W 2022: Losing My Religion

 

Paul Reubens is one of the most brilliant comedic talents of our era. His character, Pee-wee Herman, a maniacal man child with a famous red bowtie, hypernasality, and a predilection for mischief, is a Saturday morning cartoon come to life. Invented on the stage of The Groundlings, Pee-wee Herman is equally iconic and archetypal as Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. Socially defective with the decency to wear a suit, both characters are rife with hilarious contradictions, and both characters are perfect representations of their respective zeitgeists. Whereas the Tramp was a silent and prophetic emblem of the forthcoming economic devastation of two global wars, Pee-wee may as well have been a louder-than-bombs manifestation of the late-capitalistic dreamscape of the 1980s. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton’s directorial debut) and later Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which aired on CBS and saw an average of ten million viewers per episode, was a fantasy of talking furniture in a supersaturated world that harkened back to 1950s diners and primetime dance competitions, a satirization of Post-War Americana as a frenzied pastiche. This pastiche was a siren call for rising artist and photographer Nadia Lee Cohen, who also trades in the currency of alter egos and the milieu of consumerist reverie through the lens of humor. Raised in the English countryside, a self-professed wild child, the technicolor stagecraft of Hollywood had an irresistible allure. Her solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, which was an unabashed sensation, included two large bodies of work from two sold out monographs published by IDEA Books. Women includes over 100 portraits of a diverse cast of female characters fictionalized by Cohen, at work and at play, all under the banner of Los Angeles’ disparate socio-economic milieu. Reminiscent of movie stills, the images are freeze frames in moments of action, repose, or seductive enchantment. In her most recent series,  HELLO, My Name Is, Nadia utilizes extensive prosthetics and makeup to embody a vast array of characters inspired by found corporate name tags—each character has an invented story, thoughts, dreams, and desires. It is a Hitchcockian character study of self-portraiture. Jean Baudrillard talked about this escape from the self in an age of simulation and hyperreality: "Never to be oneself, but never to be alienated: to enter from the outside into the form of the other." Both Paul Reubens and Nadia Lee Cohen take immense pleasure in this metamorphosis. Currently in production is a two-part HBO documentary on the life of Paul Reubens, directed by Matt Wolf (Spaceship Earth) and produced by the Safdie Brothers. In a time of shapeshifting realities and alternative facts, a time when we don’t even recognize the reflection in our mirrors, what can two masters of disguise teach us about who we really are? Read more.

Tolia Astakhishvili's "The First Finger (Chapter II)" @ Haus Am Waldsee

photography by Frank Sperling


Tolia Astakhishvili (*1974 in Tbilisi, Georgia) transforms the Haus am Waldsee with an expansive installation that constitutes her solo exhibition The First Finger (chapter II).

Her works follow the structures and narratives of existing buildings, conjuring up real and imaginary stories through temporary installations and alterations. In her exhibition The First Finger (chapter II), Astakhishvili examines the physical composition of Haus am Waldsee by exploring its architectural layers and peripheral areas. Through architectural interventions, she condenses the spaces of the former home into an arresting and fragile environment in which the domestic sphere is reimagined. Architecture doubles here as both a protective shell and as something that appears to be exceedingly precarious.

In addition to structural interventions, drawings, paintings, text, and videos, the exhibition includes new collaborative works with Zurab Astakhishvili, Dylan Peirce, and James Richards, as well as contributions by Antonin Artaud, Alvin Baltrop, Kirsty Bell, Nat Marcus, Vera Palme, Andreas Rousounelis, Judith Scott, Ser Serpas, and Giorgi Zhorzholiani.

The First Finger is realised in two chapters: chapter I at Bonner Kunstverein, curated by Fatima Hellberg (March 25–July 30, 2023), and chapter II at Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, curated by Beatrice Hilke (June 23–September 24, 2023).

Ancient Futures by Lio Mehiel During Outfest Film Festival 2022

LA based actor, filmmaker and conceptual artist Lio Mehiel presents a new multidisciplinary project Ancient Futures at Outfest Film Festival 2022 in Los Angeles 15-24 July. Exhibited at the Directors Guild of America in West Hollywood, the three part pop-up art presentation is a celebration of trans beauty, expressed through a single-channel video installation, a photo essay, and a sculpture series brought to life by Lio Mehiel, a transmasculine, Puerto Rican and Greek actor, filmmaker, and artist. The centerpieces of the presentation are four stone sculptures of trans and gender non-conforming (TGNC) bodies, which will be featured atop plinths, cast by the talented, multidisciplinary artist Holly Silius. The models include Lio Mehiel (WeCrashed, Apple+), photographer and artist A. Klass, actor Sydney Mae Diaz (Generation, HBOmax), and Emmy nominated actress and creator Rain Valdez (Razor Tongue). photos by Liam Woods

Embodied Resonance: Read Our Interview Of Pop Sensation Mandy Harris Williams →

 
 

Mandy Harris Williams is a renaissance woman working across more media than one could reasonably hyphenate. On social media, in her monthly #brownupyourfeed radio hour on NTS, and with her myriad published essays, she challenges us to consider critical theories on race, gender, sexuality, and above all, privilege. She dares us to meet the most divisive aspects of our charged political culture with a caring ethic that prioritizes those most deprived of our love and compassion. Offline, her DJ sets are like a blast of Naloxone to the automatic nervous system with the power to reanimate the rhythm in even the shyest of wallflowers. After studying the history of the African diaspora at Harvard and receiving a masters of urban education at Loyola Marymount, Harris spent seven years as an educator in low-income communities. From there, she expanded her educational modalities to include a conceptual art practice, musical production informed by years of vocal training, and a lecture format of her own dialectic design. These “edutainment” experiences are one part college seminar, one part church sermon, and one part late-night talk show with a heavy dose of consensual roasting. It’s a Friar’s Club for an intellectual, intersectional, and internet-savvy generation. These performances draw us in with their vibey bass lines and hooks before they throw us under the quietly segregated bus that we’re still struggling to rectify. Mandy and I sat by the fire one lovely winter night in Los Angeles to talk about the contours of fascism, algorithmic injustice, her latest film for the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and her upcoming residency at MoMa PS1.Read more.

Read Our Interview Of Photographer and Filmmaker Lewis Khan → →

 
Blurry image of a dark street with a blue haze over the image. In the foreground is a bright lamp with a passer-by a few steps ahead.
 

British Photographer and filmmaker, Lewis Khan, uses London as one of his many creative resources. The city has great sentimental importance to the native South Londoner, who has lived on Bonnington Square for most of his life. Tucked away behind the traffic of Vauxhall, the square is one of 300+ housing cooperatives in London, owned and run by its tenants. It has a unique and fascinating history that owes much to the squatters who moved in during the 80s as a preventative measure to avoid demolition of the residential buildings. The community set up a wholefoods shop and vegetarian café, which is still there to this day. Read more.

Read Our Interview Of Filmmaker Jim Longden On His Debut Short Film →

TEAC STILL AUTRA 5.jpg

The London-based artist Jim Longden has released his debut short, To Erase a Cloud. Shot on 16mm film, the twenty-minute piece is “a sort of crash-course to the introductions of filmmaking.” To Erase a Cloud delves into the harsh realities of grief, as well as the uncomfortable realities of our social media-driven culture. The poet and actor Sonny Hall, a good friend of Longden, plays the painfully tormented, reckless and broken main protagonist, John Little.

The opening scene shows Little living a depressing existence in his dirty apartment; drinking dregs of empty beer cans and lighting half smoked fags as the early morning sun seeps in. We catch Little staring at his reflection in a cracked mirror; a symbol for his fractured state of mind and the result of his self-inflicted isolation spurred on from the loss of his mother. Read more.

Hollywood's Greatest Hits: John Waters Solo Exhibition @ Sprueth Magers In Los Angeles

 
 

Hollywood’s Greatest Hits marks John Waters’ first solo exhibition with Sprueth Magers. Featuring a selection of works, most of which have never been seen before in LA, the series sheds light on the artist’s decades-long, wide-ranging art practice, and in particular, his humorous and irreverent takes on the movie industry. The over 30 works on view encompass videos, photographs, sculptures and installations that skewer film tropes and culture while also offering cutting, but loving, critiques of mass media, celebrity and insider art-world knowledge.

In the early 1990s, Waters began shooting photographs straight from his television screen. The results were grainy, arty-looking images that he pieced together into evocative photomontages, creating storyboard-like sequences read from left to right. These playful acts of appropriation and juxtaposition, which transform favorite or forgotten films into what Waters calls his "little movies," create condensed stories or testimonies that offer narratives the original directors never intended.

Hollywood’s Greatest Hits is on view through May 1 @ Sprueth Magers 5900 Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles

Digital Mourning: A Solo Exhibition By Neïl Beloufa @ Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan

The French-Algerian artist, Neïl Beloufa, is one of the leading voices of the past decade and a keen observer of our times, offering vivid representations of the world through films, videos, installations, and sculptures. 

Avoiding direct judgments and forceful declarations, Beloufa successfully conveys a reality that, in its subtlety, is often awkward to behold, focusing on highly topical issues such as power relationships, the technological control, the perils of data collection, as well as on a possible collapse in the management of a pandemic. 

Digital Mourning is on view through July 18 @ Pirelli HangarBicocca Via Chiese 2 20126 Milan

Anatomy Of A Scene: Christiane F. and Her Band Of Misfits Run Through The Europa Center In Berlin

Christiane F. (Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo) is a 1981 German biographical drama film directed by Uli Edel that portrays the drug scene in West Berlin in the 1970s, based on the 1978 non-fiction book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (We Children from Zoo Station), transcribed and edited from tape recordings by Kai Hermann and Horst Rieck. The film features David Bowie as both himself and the soundtrack composer.

Watch "Dirty Girls" A Short Documentary About Teenage Angst In The 1990s

Shot in 1996 and edited in 2000, this is a short documentary about a group of 13-year-old riot grrrls in Los Angeles who were socially ostracized at their school by their peers and upperclassmen. Everyone in the schoolyard held strong opinions about these so-called "dirty girls," and meanwhile the "dirty girls" themselves aimed to get their message across by distributing their zine across campus. Directed by Michael Lucid. Music: "Batmobile" by Liz Phair.

"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

Gagosian Presents MAN RAY "The Mysteries of Château du Dé" in San Francisco

During his storied career, Man Ray, a multidisciplinary artist with a rare breadth, worked in a variety of mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, film, poetry, and prose. While for him photography and painting were paramount, his work in early film and cinema is often overlooked.

Man Ray’s first experience in making film was in New York, in 1920, when he worked with Marcel Duchamp on an unsuccessful attempt to create a three-dimensional film. After moving to Paris, in 1921, his diverse experimentation in the medium of photography eventually led him back to the moving image.

the exhibition also includes objects, drawings, and photography. Moving fluidly between media, Man Ray often made several iterations of a work—photographing it, assembling and disassembling, or making multiples—reproduction being crucial to his concept of the art object. Throughout his vast body of work, Man Ray alluded to relationships between the real and the fictive, the literal and the imaginative, with a deft mastery over the liminal territory between the abstract and the figurative form.

The Mysteries of Château du Dé will be on view throughout February 29, 2020 at Gagosian 657 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery

The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain @ Wende Museum in Los Angeles

Working under the radar of the authorities that defined acceptable art, radical women artists in the former Eastern Bloc challenged both socialist and bourgeois ideals and power, as well as a male-dominated canon. Their work was innovative, and the sheer act of making it was a risk. Yet even today, little is known about these courageous and critical artists.

The Medea Insurrection introduces viewers to multifaceted, multifarious work by artists including sculptor and textile artist Magdalena Abakanowicz (Poland); photographers Sibylle Bergemann (East Germany), Evelyn Richter (East Germany), Zofia Rydet (Poland), and Gundula Schulze-Eldowy (East Germany); mixed-media artists Orshi Drozdik (Hungary) and Anna Daučíková (Czechoslovakia); painter and graphic artist Angela Hampel (East Germany); sound and performance artist Katalin Ladik (Hungary); conceptual artist Natalia LL (Poland); and painter and graphic artist Karla Woisnitza (East Germany).

The Medea Insurrection is on view through April 5, 2020 at the Wende Museum 10808 Culver Boulevard. photographs by Dany Naierman courtesy of the museum.

Richard Serra: Forged Rounds @ Gagosian In New York

Photo: Silke von Berswordt. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.

Four new works from Richard Serra’s Rounds series fills the entire West 24th Street gallery. Each forged steel sculpture is composed of multiple -ton elements of differing diameters and heights. Bisecting the West st Street gallery space will be Reverse Curve, a sculpture measuring feet long and feet high. Originally conceived in for a public project in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Reverse Curve is finally being realized for the first time. In conjunction with these exhibitions, Gagosian and Anthology Film Archives will present a three day retrospective of Serra’s films and videos from October 17 through 19, drawn from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, Joan Jonas, and Stiftung Situation Kunst. This is the first time that all of the artist’s film and video work will be shown together. The screening on October will be followed by a panel discussion between curators Søren Grammel, Chrissie Iles, and Jeffrey Weiss, moderated by art historian Benjamin Buchloh. Additional screenings of the full program will take place on October 20 and 23. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Julian Rose. Forged Rounds is on view through December 17 at Gagosian 555 West 24th Street, New York.

Marilyn Minter Presents "My Cuntry 'Tis of Thee" @ Simon Lee Gallery London

In Marilyn Minter’s video work, “My Cuntry 'Tis of Thee” (2018), women write the word ‘cunt’ into condensation on a glass pane. As the women articulate each letter, their features are gradually revealed as the steam hiding them dissipates. Minter reclaims one of the most widely acknowledged offensive words by providing the women in her video the chance to, quite literally, write it away from its degrading associations. The artist’s debut exhibition with Simon Lee Gallery and her first solo presentation in the UK in thirty years explores feminism and sexual politics through images that dismantle Western culture’s hierarchies of censorship and misogyny. “My Cuntry 'Tis of Thee” is on view through July 13 at Simon Lee Gallery 12 Berkeley St, Mayfair, London. photographs courtesy of the artist and Simon Lee Gallery London.

Tao Of Maceo: Read Our Interview Of Multi-Disciplinary Artist & Behavior Economist Maceo Paisley →

What does it mean to be a twenty-first century renaissance man? For Maceo Paisley, a wide range of disciplines comes together in a positive feedback loop that supports his indefatigable exploration of human behavior. Using embodied inquiry, he investigates his own identity and presents his findings in performance and film. A prolific writer of prose, he just released his first book Tao of Maceo, which takes inventory of his personal beliefs and aims to define his perspective more acutely. Stepping off the stage, he cultivates community through his Chinatown gallery, Nous Tous and a multi-pronged community practice/social innovation agency called Citizens of Culture. Click here to read more

"FOCUS: Agnes Martin" @ Lévy Gorvy In London

FOCUS: Agnes Martin is an exhibition that places the artist’s sole completed film, Gabriel (1976), in conversation with an intimate selection of her abstract paintings. A screening room and adjoining gallery of paintings creates an immersive, meditative environment that highlights the relationship between Martin’s work and her conception of joy. “I thought my movie was going to be about happiness,” Martin commented on the production of the film, “but when I saw it finished, it turned out to be about joy–the same thing my paintings are about.” The exhibition will mark the second of the FOCUS series, which encourages sustained contemplation of landmark artworks by artists rooted in the gallery’s program, alongside related selections from their oeuvres. FOCUS: Agnes Martin will be on view through April 13 at Lévy Gorvy 22 Old Bond Street, London. photograph courtesy of the gallery

Une Journée Au Lac; A Fashion Editorial shot by Edoardo De Ruggiero

Stylist: James Valeri
Model: Mariam Eya (Supreme)
Casting: Alexandra Sandberg
Make Up: Karin Westerlund
Hair: Franco Argento
Stylist Assistant: Stacy Guetta
Photo Assistant: Talo Buccellati
Executive Producer: Benoit Dreyfus
On Set Production: Fabien Jallot and Pierre Goldberg