Daniel Arnold: New York Life Is Sustained by Forward Motion @ New York Life Gallery

Attuned to moments in the city that many fail to notice, Daniel Arnold: New York Life documents the personalities who rush, stumble, and idle through every sidewalk, subway, bodega, park, beach, and ferry throughout the five boroughs. From his vantage point—a camera perched on scaffolding in the rain or nestled to his torso amidst a crowd—he creates a time capsule of the city that is simultaneously unsentimental and imbued with sublime oddity. 

Arnold’s photographs feature a broad cast of characters improbably brought together on the street. People who appear archetypal or stereotypical at first glance are revealed for their idiosyncrasies—exposing the uncanny nature of unassuming subjects. Through his candid lens, metropolitan scenes steeped in cliché are distilled back into the raw, bizarre, humorous, and miraculous.

In Arnold’s universe, there is no right moment, wrong moment, or perfect shot; there is only the impulse to load a new roll and take the next picture. His work is sustained by this forward motion. While each image is an index of a particular place and time, the breadth and scope of Arnold’s photographs form a composite image of city life today. In New York, Arnold has found an infinite muse


Daniel Arnold: New York Life is on view through December 22nd @ New York Life Gallery  167-169 Canal Street, Floor 5, New York,

Ahmet Öğüt Presents "A:PPOINTED D:IRECTORS" @ A:D: Curatorial in Berlin

Jump Up! , 2022 Ahmet Öğüt

Ahmet Öğüt
Jump Up! , 2022 
Installation, with 3 selected works from the museum collection,  3 trampolines 

A:PPOINTED D:IRECTORS by Kurdish-Dutch artist, Ahmet Öğüt at A:D:Curatorial deals with institutional critique as well as a number of sociopolitical precarities, questioning the role of art institutions and artists themselves.

“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”

—International Council of Museums, August 24th, 2022

This recently approved new definition of the museum by ICOM is very aspiring, yet still, some objectives are far from reality. Therefore, it is the role of art professionals to find new strategies to achieve these objectives. How may we balance our roles between addressing urgent issues and not falling back into the complicit patterns of the art world? Sometimes smaller institutions can enable strategies to experiment with new formats more easily.

Topics such as museum collections, exhibition displays, public interactions, and institutional representations are addressed throughout the show, using both playful and challenging strategies. Visitors can immediately become part of the show with the installation Jump Up! by jumping on small trampolines to see selected works, which hang above eye level. Another work, No Institutional Abuse Zone, marks the area but also tries to put the same standards and parallels between human affairs and artist-institution relationships. Resulting from a google search, Appointed Curators is a collection of closely cropped portraits underscoring the prevalence of curators who choose to represent themselves with arms crossed. Those who assume this posture are often perceived as being angry, closed off, or feeling overwhelmed. This ironic take on self-representation reminds us of the importance of care, transparency, and a welcoming culture in art institutions. A:PPOINTED D:IRECTORS will be on view from October 9th - December 15th at A:D: Curatorial: Kurfürstenstraße 142, 10785 Berlin.

portrait by Ateş Alpar

Ahmet Öğüt
Appointed Curators, 2022 
250cm x 200cm 
poster 

Rakeem Cunningham Presents Hero @ Ochi Projects In Los Angeles

 
 

In his first solo exhibition with Ochi Projects, Rakeem Cunningham plays and poses alone in his studio, exploring a multitude of selves informed and surrounded by a multiverse of niche subcultures. Each portrait is a declaration of subjectivity and existence—proof of self-validation and an ongoing healing journey that expands upon an outdated definition of hero.

Triggered by the designation of essential workers as heroes while being treated as disposable this past year, Cunningham paused to reflect upon his relationship to this loaded word. As a queer youth of color, he idolized heroes that didn’t look like him. Lazy metaphors—green or purple villains dressed in evil black—reinforced false dichotomies and ultimately white supremacy.

Hero is on view through June 26 through August 7 @ Ochi Projects 3301 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019

Theodore Boyer & Grant Falardeau Present Aleph and The Rock @ H I L D E LA

Aleph & The Rock, a two-person exhibition of painting and sculpture by Theodore Boyer & Grant Falardeau is on exhibition January 13th through February 24 at H I L D E L.A. 

Life's A Gasssss: Oliver Clegg Talks About His First Solo Exhibition In the US, Making Art For Sigmund Freud's Desk and The Information Age →

Click here to read the full interview. 

X: Sex And Dying In High Society @ These Days LA Gallery in Los Angeles

This exhibition is a celebration of the seminal and quintessential Los Angeles punk band X. Formed in 1977 at the dawn of the DIY punk movement in Los Angeles, X was a definitive sound in the first wave of the Los Angeles punk scene. Playing relentlessly, they graced the stages of all the legendary clubs of the times—The Masque, The Hong Kong Café, Cathay de Grande, The Whiskey a Go Go, Club 88, The Starwood, and Madame Wong’s. In 1979 their song Los Angeles was released on the Dangerhouse compilation YES LA and immediately became a city-defining anthem. Thirty-seven years and countless classic songs later, X continues to play shows to devoted fans around the world. X: Sex And Dying In High Society will be on view until March 26 at These Days LA Gallery, 118 Winston Street, 2nd FL Los Angeles, CA

Mark Bradford's "Be Strong Boquan" at Hauser and Wirth in New York

The color palette used by Los Angeles-based abstract painter Mark Bradford for the work in his stunning new show at Hauser & Wirth, Be Strong Boquan, is different than the palette that comes to mind when I think of his other work. While some paintings make strong use of the dark and austere colors most associated with his work, there are also bright pinks and yellows. Despite the vivaciousness of these colors, there is still a physical menace that emanates through them. Walking through the exhibit, I was reminded of that indescribable feeling that courses through your body just before you realize that you are full-blown sick: goosebumps on your arms, chills running through your spine, the inability to make a fist, a feeling of faintness. Click here to read the full review. 

Barbara Kruger 'Early Works' Show Extended @ Skarstedt

Skarstedt gallery in London has extended its exhibition of seminal early works by American artist Barbara Kruger. The exhibition features Kruger’s large-scale black and white photographs, overlaid with provocative captions in bold Futura type. This group of works, selected from the 1980s, examines the cultural constructions of power, identity and sexuality through their juxtaposition of text and imagery. Barbara Kruger 'Early Works' will be on view until April 25, 2015 at Skarstedt Gallery, 23 Old Bond Street, London. 

MATTHEW STONE / RULES FOREVER (PART II)

In Stone's last exhibition at Union Gallery Forever Rules (Part I), Stone presented a single sculpture in the center of the gallery and 3 photo-collage works on wood. The sculpture and also main focus of the exhibition was an oak and birch floor-based sculpture, a structure entirely hand built by the artist, titled “Forever Rules”. The sculpture was formed in part by an open sided, oak dodecahedron, its pentagonal facets creating a complex, net-like form. In Plato's divine geometry, the dodecahedron is described as a perfect solid. Historically it has been attached to the concept of a fifth element, namely Ether (Aether) or Universe. It has represented the perfect mediation of the infinite and the finite, the sphere and the cube.  For his second part exhibition Rules Forever (Part II), Stone will continue honoring Plato and will present a much larger sculptural element comprising four oak structures, but instead of a large photographic nude, cut into hundreds of wooden squares that passes through the structure, as in the show before, the artist has decided to cluster the structure with photographic collages, printed directly onto birch plywood. These digitally collaged configurations of torso and limb, show bodies intertwined and connected. Unmistakable as Stone's work, the gestures and classical poses of his languorous figures are intersected by areas of new color, cut, if only to reconnect, along unnatural, directional and geometric bias. On view until July 30 at the Union Gallery in the UK. www.union-gallery.com