crosslucid Manifests Human Stories through Artificial Intelligence in Dwellers Between the Waters @ ACUD Galerie in Berlin

‘Dwellers Between the Waters’ (2023) is conjured as a series of hybrid rituals that mediate the space between physical presence, trauma, memory, healing, and virtuality. Polyphonic in its artificially intelligent framework, Dwellers Between the Waters could be experienced as a happening that is chanted by various elemental entities such as waters, winds, earth, air, algorithm... as well as poetry, history, magic, human and more-than-human creatures. This happening of digital rituals questions the singularity of humanist perception of reality. Co-performing with artificial intelligence, it attempts to create alternative epistemologies and outlooks on (so-called) reality through rendering multi-focal narratives and embedding the psycho-magical practice in forms of living ‘sigils’.

Combing artificial intelligence with the practice of magic and alchemy, Dwellers Between the Waters seeks possible solutions in response to the traumas of the contemporary anthropos, and examines how artificial intelligence, in terms of artistic practice, remains integral to our contemporary condition, that is, the ever-evolving climate crisis and the sixth extinction of species coupled with wars, inflation, and capitalist exploitation. By evoking, cultivating, and connecting various forms of consciousness in the virtual realms, Dwellers Between the Waters invites the ‘dwellers’ who inhabit in and among ‘realities’ to share their stories and experiences, which then feed back to (so-called) reality as evolving strings materializing across both physical and virtual domains to bring novel perspectives for further changes.

Dwellers Between the Waters is on view through October 8th at ACUD Galerie, Veteranenstraße 21, 10119 Berlin.

Immaculate Heart of Margaritaville, A Group Exhibition Curated by Devendra Banhart @ Nicodim Los Angeles

Curated by Devendra Banhart, “A prayer for my four-to-six nuclear families, for my ever-expanding universe of friends and lovers, for consciousnesses that may or may not exist beyond our postmodern El Dorados and Shangri-Las where dead dreams go to die twice:

May this sea moss gel cool the fire within in me that burns with unfiltered desire for epiphany in a pornographic desert;

May we all find a Six Flags for our unmet oral and spiritual needs;

May we all discover a Cartier diamond bracelet in the Bloomin’ Onion we snuck into the hot yoga session at the Cheesecake Factory;

May we all find comfort within our own place in Margaritaville—that sacred temple, that archetype for a freedom that exists somewhere between legitimacy and artifice that urges us to leave behind the very sacred temple that is selling us the dream to leave it all behind;

May we all attend the vernissage for Immaculate Heart of Margaritaville and bask in the ordinary magic, this orgy of authenticity buried in the most profane of structures.”

–Adapted from Out of Body: The Bortz Metzger Memoirs, R. Driblette, editor. Penguin Books Ltd, 2002

Immaculate Heart of Margaritaville is the top floor of the romantic wing of the capitalist nightmare, a fever dream manifested during a midday nap on a bed of ashwagandha-tipped nails with an ecstatic, honest, and truthful international coterie of artists, many of whom have never shown in the United States before.

In celebration of the closing, noted, lubricated, hole-istic tantric gurus Devendra Banhart and Ben Lee Ritchie Handler will lead the gallery in a guided meditation. Please bring a yoga mat and a clear head. The event will double as release party for a limited-edition t-shirt for the exhibition. July 29 from 3–6. Space is limited, please arrive a bit early.

Immaculate Heart of Margaritaville is on view through July 29th at Nicodim, 1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, #160, Los Angeles, CA 90021

Derek Fordjour's Magic, Mystery & Legerdemain @ David Kordansky Gallery In Los Angeles

To enter Derek Fordjour’s deeply visceral first solo exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery is to suspend disbelief. Behind mysterious curtains, old-fashioned turnstiles, and gallery corridors, the past, present and future merge into a fantastical tableau of interstitiality and multimedia, from painting to sculpture to a live magic show. Magic is the theme and in these works we feel the power of illusions, the power of disappearance and the ultimate power of reappearance. The title of the show, Magic, Mystery & Legerdemain, is taken from the semi-fictionalized autobiography of turn-of-the-20th-century illusionist Black Herman. Herman’s act included Asrah levitation where a participant, usually an assistant, is levitated under a cloth and then rendered invisible, only to materialize later somewhere in the audience. His routine covered the standard canon of tricks, like making rabbits appear from hats. But one of his signature acts was having himself buried alive in an outdoor area called "Black Herman's Private Graveyard,” and then exhumed three days later to finish his show. Black Herman’s magic and Fordjour’s artwork are metaphysical, or perhaps psychological, analogies to the Middle Passage, the Bermuda Triangle of the Black Diaspora, and the disappearance and reappearance of Black bodies across the globe. The legerdemain, or sleight of hand, of the Black experience. In a new suite of paintings, Fordjour wows us with his brilliant and exuberant use of artifactual materials like newspaper and cardboard that force us into current cultural realities as if to say, “Tada!” with a wave of his magic paintbrush. There is Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson in his Lakers jersey, reaching for an orange in the land of plenty, standing next to a Rolls Royce, the Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament nearly middle-frame. There are also devotions to other Black magicians, like the Armstrong family, which consisted of J. Hartford Armstrong, known as the “King of the Colored Conjurers” and his daughter Ellen, who was one of the first female Black magicians. Or Goldfinger and Dove, a husband and wife duo who performed at Los Angeles’ Magic Castle. And, of course, Henry Box Brown, a magician and former slave who sent himself via USPS in a wooden crate to abolitionists in Philadelphia. The works are rife with breadcrumbs, easter eggs, and not-so-secret ciphers that celebrate Black cultural output through the lens of magic, both figuratively and literally. Fordjour’s largest painting to date, Meu Povo, which spans across eight panels, explores a carnival procession in real time, including rituals and dance inspired by Afro-Brazilian folklore, as part of a new series mapping Black migration. Magic, Mystery & Legerdemain is a thunderclap of an exhibition, proving that Fordjour is one of the most important voices and painters of our current surreality.

Magic, Mystery & Legerdemain is on view through May 7 @ David Kordansky Gallery 5130 W. Edgewood Place Los Angeles. Click here to read a conversation between Derek Fordjour & Torkwase Dyson from our FW2020 Sitting Issue.

 
 

An Exclusive Sneak Preview Of Doug Aitken's First North American Survey "Electric Earth" @ MOCA Los Angeles

Doug Aitken "Electric Earth" is the artist's first North American survey. From his breakthrough installation Diamond Sea (1997) to his most recent event-based work Black Mirror (2011), the exhibition unfolds around the major moving-image installations that articulate his thematic interest in environmental and post-industrial decay, urban abandonment, and the exhaustion of linear time. Conceptualized as an entropic landscape suspended between city, broadcasting machine, and labyrinth, the exhibition is punctuated by the signs, sculptures, photographic images, and altered furniture—all unbound from vernacular language and culture—that Aitken has conceived over the years. The exhibition will also include Aitken’s less exhibited collages and drawings, as well as his work with architecture, printed matter, artist’s books, and graphic design. The exhibition’s logic incorporates that of the nomadic cultural incubator, cross-continental happening and moving earthwork Station to Station (2013), which, like so many of Aitken’s works, embraces a collaborative spirit across disciplines and beyond walls to reimagine the nature of what a work of art can be and of what an art experience can achieve. Doug Aitken "Electric Earth" will open on September 10 and run until January 15 at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Jon Rafman's Insane Ultra-Futuristic Major Solo Exhibition At the Zabludowicz Collection in London

For his first major solo exhibition in the UK, Canadian artist Jon Rafman has transformed the spaces of the Zabludowicz Collection into a playful series of new installations that immerse visitors within his video and sculptural works. Emerging from his interest in the relationship between technology and human consciousness, Rafman’s works examine ideas of desire – its simulation and enactment. The exhibition will be on view at the Zabludowicz Collection until December 20, 2015. photographs by Thierry Bal