Traces On The Surfaces Of The World Group Show @ GAVLAK Los Angeles

Traces on the Surfaces of the World brings together six international artists whose works stage the anxious encounters between human bodies and inanimate objects that define a world reformed by an all-encompassing fear of contagion. In “Human Traces on the Surfaces of the World,” Judith Butler parallels the invisible passage of a virus from bodies to objects to other bodies, to the similarly invisible machinations of socio-political paradigms that dictate who must assume the risk of contact, and by extension which lives are expendable. Artists and theorists have for decades romanticized the notion of dissolving the distance between art objects and those who experience them: this exhibition probes the dimensions of a reality in which this longed-for contact has become especially fraught. Exhibiting artists include Cristine Brache, Henry Chapman, Alex Chitty, Gisela Colón, Amalie Jakobsen, and Dean Sameshima.

Traces on the Surfaces of the World is on view through April 24 @ Gavlak 1700 South Santa Fe Avenue, Suite 440 Los Angeles

 
 

Andy Warhol: From A To B And Back Again @ Whitney Museum Of American Art In New York

Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again positions Warhol's career as a continuum, demonstrating that he didn't slow down after surviving the assassination attempt that nearly took his life in 1968, but entered into a period of intense experimentation. The show illuminates the breadth, depth, and interconnectedness of the artist’s production: from his beginnings as a commercial illustrator in the 1950s, to his iconic Pop masterpieces of the early 1960s, to the experimental work in film and other mediums from the 1960s and 70s, to his innovative use of readymade abstraction and the painterly sublime in the 1980s. His repetitions, distortions, camouflaging, incongruous color, and recycling of his own imagery challenge our faith in images and the value of cultural icons, anticipating the profound effects and issues of the current digital age. From A To B And Back Again is on view through March 31, 2019 at Whitney Museum Of American Art 99 Gansevoort Street New York. photographs courtesy of Whitney Museum Of American Art

ART REVIEW: Jonny Negron @ Chateau Shatto Gallery in Los Angeles

 
 

From afar, Jonny Negron’s paintings at Chateau Shatto are not unlike tastefully illustrated advertisements for some unnamed tropical paradise. Look closer at these picturesque scenes, though, and it becomes clear that “Small Map of Heaven” documents waters engulfed with trash, beachgoers undergoing trauma, and a faded pink bathroom as a site for tears.

The Puerto Rican born, Brooklyn-based artist references the delayed response to the destruction in Hurricane Maria’s wake. An abundance of flora envelops the gouache paintings. Although beautiful, these omnipresent plants swarm and tighten their grip on whatever is in their way, suggesting nature’s revanchist desires in an era of climate change.

Negron, who has a background in comic book illustration, cites Japanese woodblock prints, or ukiyo-e, as inspiration. In Generator, a submerged spectre faces a Champion generator on the ocean floor, peering at the one device, now useless, that could have saved it’s flesh and bones. Hints of the 18th-century artist Maruyama Okyo’s woodblock prints of yurei (ghosts) come to mind.

Like the apprehensive face in Paul Gauguin’s gouache painting Breton Girl By the Sea, the windswept shore and balmy night in Bonus reminds us that often no setting, no matter how idyllic, can brighten whatever internal issue eats at us. The cartoonishly-chiseled man, eyes focused nowhere, sits on the beach in a daze.

A man weeps in a cloying bathroom in To Live and Die in LA, grasping the same plants that have been present in the other waterlogged paintings as puddles of water sparkle on the tile floor. Los Angeles, too, experiences destruction--albeit from fires due to forest encroachment and rampant home-building.

Water is always present throughout “Small Map of Heaven”--although it can offer relief from the debris and destruction on land, it is also the source of such peril.

“Small Map of Heaven” runs from July 14th - September 1st, 2018 at Chateau Shatto (1206 S. Maple Ave, Suite 1030, Los Angeles, CA, 90015)

Liam Casey is a freelance writer, researcher and DJ from Los Angeles. In addition to being a contributor for Berlin Art Link, he also has a background in housing and urban planning, co-developing a think-tank on Los Angeles’ housing crisis. He is also a co-organizer and resident of the queer collective Bubbles.

Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Robert Crumb "Drawn Together" @ David Zwirner Gallery In New York

David Zwirner presents the gallery’s first exhibition of the collaborative work of Aline Kominsky-Crumb and R. Crumb in its 525 West 19th Street location. Both pioneers of underground and alternative comics, Kominsky-Crumb and Crumb have created a groundbreaking portrait of their shared lives and creative collaborations over the past four decades. In their ongoing “Aline & Bob” comics, the two artists have rendered their innermost thoughts, fears, and fantasies alongside the day-to-day realities of family life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, each in their own distinctive style. The exhibition, a version of which was previously on view at the Cartoonmuseum Basel, will present an extensive selection of collaborative ink drawings from throughout the run of “Aline & Bob,” as well as solo works by both artists in a variety of media. Robert Crumb And Aline Kominsky-Crumb "Drawn Together" will be on view until February 18, 2017 at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Tadanori Yokoo: 49 Years Later at Albertz Benda Gallery In New York

49 Years Later is the title of the solo exhibition of Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo at Albertz Benda. The newly opened Chelsea gallery exhibits the artist’s never-before-seen paintings that focus on two major themes, the swimmer, an ongoing investigation of the artist, and the dancing couple, borrowed from old Hollywood.  The artist builds on his early iconography; he started his investigation of the swimmers in 1966, and becomes a plagiarist of himself. The crossing figures reappear in different color pallets, with different backgrounds and in different themes, their mouths aggressively distorted in the action. The position of the swimmers can be seen as a natural predecessor to the dancing couple. Similarly to the swimmers the dancing couple gets further lost in abstraction with each painting. The swimmers faces melt into each other while the dancers are covered in different patterned blankets.  49 Years Later will be on view until December 19, 2015 at Albertz Benda Gallery, 515 W 26th St, New York, NY. photographs by Adriana Pauly