Egan Frantz "Paintings" @ Team (gallery, inc.) In New York

Good paintings, those with intrigue, appeal and tension, ask us to hold competing and simultaneous understandings in mind, and contend with synchronized yet oppositional forces. At odds with the unexpectedness and complexity of Egan Frantz’s works is an effortlessness, an instinctive ease, vital in producing an image that is at once seemingly familiar and impossible to place. This is a show of new images, adamantly straightforward yet enigmatic, that manifest a proprietary power and charged presence. Paintings is on view through October 5 at Team (gallery, inc.) 83 Grand Street, New York. Photographs courtesy of Team (gallery, inc.)

Mark Verabioff's Poolside Drive-by @ Team (bungalow) In Venice Beach

Long before the current administration’s ascendancy, the wheels had been turning in favor of hostile mechanisms of control. The blatant aggression and fascist broism of the present, however, have thrown into stark relief how identity and the gaze of another can be weaponized and internalized. Mark Verabioff’s practice is borne of the conjoined dynamics of identity and imaging and proposes self-definition as a position of resistance that can challenge cultural and political power structures. Existing at the intersection of autobiography and community, Poolside Drive-by is the mapping of an internal topography that tells us much about the artist’s choices and frames of reference, but also describes the kind of world in which he finds himself. Vulnerable, humorous, both reverent and irreverant, the work is grounded in Verabioff’s appropriative processing of cultural products and pushes against strictures of authorship, authority, and objectification. The show’s title, Poolside Drive-by, juxtaposes positions of blithe passivity and ruthless retaliation; when they go low, kick ‘em while they’re down.

Pooside Drive-by is on view through February 10 @ Team (bungalow) 306 Windward Avenue Venice, CA 90291. Image courtesy of the artist and team (bungalow). Photo: Jeff McLane.

Ryan McGinley "Early" @ Team Gallery In New York

Team Gallery presents a show of early work by Ryan McGinley. The photographs on view in this exhibition were made by Ryan McGinley in New York City from 1999 to 2003, a period defined by hopelessness for many Americans – synonymous with the onset of the Bush Era, 9/11 and its aftermath. These vérité images, which pre-date his famed “road trip” series, capture the exploits of the artist’s social circle, members of an outlaw creative community based in New York’s Lower East Side. This body of work – a significant addition to the legacy of American subculture photography forged by the likes of Peter Hujar, David Wojnarwicz, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Nan Goldin – is characterized by McGinley’s idiosyncratic admixture of hopefulness and self-awareness, as well as his unembarrassed disclosure of the melodrama of youth, its inextricably intertwined joy and heartbreak: the artist shows us his debauched, frequently naked friends, laughing and weeping, taking drugs and having sex, tagging walls and pissing off roofs. Ryan McGinley "Early" will be on view until April 1 at Team Gallery, 83 Grand Street, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Torbjørn Rødland "Venetian Otaku" At The Team Gallery Bungalow in Los Angeles

When you head to a newsstand and pick up a copy of Art Forum, you'll find one of Torbjørn Rødland's incredibly haunting images: a naked blonde haired, blue eyed baby staring at you, almost posing for the camera with a frightening, bewildering cognizance. This is what Rødland's images do to you - they make you slip into an awkward feeling of warm wonder. Right now, you can catch a solo show of work by Los Angeles-based, Norwegian photographer Rødland, entitled Venetian Otaku, at Team Gallery's quaint and cozy bungalow in Venice Beach, California. "For this exhibition, Rødland presents six photographs from his oeuvre. His immaculately staged images contain an eerie blend of the sensual and cerebral, of harsh precision and bizarre idiosyncrasy, giving them a mesmerizing unheimlich quality. His unorthodox treatment of frequently recognizable and firmly quotidian subjects – human bodies, food items, household objects – confound familiar cultural material." Torbjørn Rødland "Venetian Otaku" will be on view until November 8, 2015 at the Team Gallery Bungalow, 306 Windward Avenue, Venice, California. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Bad Boys Bail Bonds Adopt A Highway Group Exhibition at Team Gallery In New York

Team (gallery, inc.) is pleased to announce Bad Boys Bail Bonds Adopt A Highway, a group exhibition of sculpture, drawings, photographs, paintings, and video by fourteen Los Angeles based artists and practitioners. The exhibition will take place in both gallery spaces and run from 28 June through 31 July, 2015. Team Gallery is located at 83 Grand Street, cross streets Wooster and Greene, and at 47 Wooster Street, cross streets Grand and Broome.

10 Art Shows To See In Los Angeles Right Now

1. Forbidden Fruit, a solo exhibition of neon and sculptural works by Patrick Martinez at New Image Art 2. Rainbow Body, a solo exhibition of rainbow splashed canvases by Millie Brown on view at 8473 Melrose Place 3. A Lil Taste of Cheeto in the Night, Parker Ito crams in canvases and sculptural renderings at Chateau Shatto 4. Grounds and Figures, Diana Al Hadid shows her mylar sculptures at OHWOW 5. Jerry Hsu presents some of his 'Nazi Gold' for A Love Like Mine Is Hard to Find at Slow Culture 6. Tomoo Gokita shows some of his strange and beautiful portraits for Besame Mucho at Honor Fraser 7. Andrew Gbur shows some of his Face Paintings at the Team Gallery bungalow in Venice Beach 8. Alien Flowers, an exhibition of exciting works by Joseph Arthur at Gallery Go 9. Glen Ligon says goodbye figuratively and literally at his exhibition ending this week at Regen Projects 10. Eric Stanton and foot fetishist Elmer Batters (long dead) get weird at the Taschen Books gallery 

Ryan McGinley's Animals

Team Gallery in New York presents Ryan McGinley's Animals which consists of the artist's color studio portraits of live animals with nude models. The exhibition is his first made up exclusively of selections from this growing, and ambitious, body of work. The artist visited various sanctuaries, zoos, and rescue establishments across the United States, erecting a mobile studio wherever possible and working with a number of pre-eminent animal trainers. The animals are not mere props in photographs of people; on the contrary, McGinley considers them the subjects of these images. There exists both tension and tenderness between the models and wild animals, as they claw, clutch, nibble, and hug one another. These photographs are studies in animal bodies, their strangeness and seductivity. Animals will be on view concurrently with McGinley's Grid show both Team Gallery locations in NYC from May 2 to June 2, 2012.