LYNDA BENGLIS Retrospective at the MOCA Los Angeles

This is Lynda Benglis' first retrospective in 20 years–this one held at the MOCA Los Angeles.This travelling exhibition spans the range of Lynda Benglis's career, including her early wax paintings, her brightly colored poured latex works, the Torsos and Knots series from the 1970s, and her recent experiments with plastics, cast glass, paper, and gold leaf. It features a number of rarely exhibited historic works, including Phantom (1971), a dramatic polyurethane installation consisting of five monumental sculptures that glow in the dark, and the installation Primary Structures (Paula's Props), first shown in 1975. Alongside her sculptural output, Benglis created a radical body of work in video, photography, and media interventions that explore notions of power, gender relations, and role-playing. These works function in tandem with her sculpture to offer a pointed critique of sculptural machismo and suggest a fluid awareness of gender and artistic identity. They also contribute to an understanding of the artist's objects as simultaneously temporal and physically present, intuitive, and psychologically charged. On view until October 10 at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. 

[ART] DAVID NOONAN

The Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis is currently organizing the first solo presentation of the work of London-based Australian artist David Noonan in an American museum. Since emerging in the early 2000s, Noonan has developed an international reputation for works that incorporate photographic imagery of costumed performers, groups of figures from utopian collectives, and other elements of theater and stagecraft in collaged, painterly, or sculptural formats. In doing so, he encourages us to consider how documentary images of events and happenings might be transformed into fiction, while suggesting the significant roles that theatricality and performance have played in our recent cultural history. This exhibition will present a survey of recent works in a variety of media as well as numerous new works created especially for this presentation at CAM. The main gallery spaces will feature examples of large-scale works featuring evocative photographic images from various sources such as books about experimental theater or puppetry, as well as Japanese textile designs, all screen-printed onto different fabrics which are layered and stitched together. Noonan’s process of creating these works gives the images a shadowy sense of mystery, while the layering of the figurative and abstract imagery creates a tension between abstraction and representation. The exhibition is set to open on September 9 and will run until January 8. www.camstl.org

David Mach DIE HARDER

David Mach, Die Harder, Courtesy of the Artist

LONDON – David Mach, famed for his dynamic large scale collages, sculptures and bold installations, launches his major new project to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible in 2011 with the installation of a massive coathanger crucifixion figure, suspended from steel supports, outside St Giles Church in Edinburgh. This is the first of four coat hanger crucifixion figures, including a contemporary sculptural version of Calvary, which will be displayed in the exhibition at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre in the summer of 2011. Central to the project will be a large-scale limited edition artist’s version of the King James Bible. Various elements from the project – collages and coathanger sculptures -will be on show throughout the UK in the coming year.

The late LUCIAN FREUD & DAVID DAWSON in Beijing

The current exhibition at Faurschou Gallery in Beijing presents British painter Lucian Freud and his assistant David Dawson, who is himself a painter and a photographer. The exhibition juxtaposes one of Lucian Freud’s principal works – the masterpiece David & Eli (2003-4) – with ten photographs taken by David Dawson at Lucian Freud’s studio between 2004 -2006, giving us a unique glimpse into the every-day life of one the late great artist. On view until August 14, www.faurschou.com

[ART] In The Labyrinth

The exhibition by Àngels Ribé at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, covers a period of her production from 1969 to 1984. This period is particularly significant for it marks the appearance of a new aesthetic model that would have a fundamental influence on the creation of new ways of conceiving the artistic practice. The associative and symbolic functions of art are renegotiated: the artwork ceases to be an autonomous entity, as was the norm in the modernist tradition, and its meaning becomes dependent on an interchange with the spectator. In this way, the ambiguity and the multiplicity of references and readings that are an intrinsic part of the work of art are revealed. Àngels Ribé, having begun her artistic career at that time and within those parameters, consolidated a language of her own that has continued until today through various supports and media.  In the labyrinth. Àngels Ribé, 1969-1984 in on view until October 23. www.macba.cat

Richard Phillips: Point of Purchase

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"My pictures involve a kind of wasted beauty - that's always been a thread in my work."  - Richard Phillips

Richard Phillips' tongue in cheek, slightly pornographic, gritty, but oxymoronically glossy paintings have made him an artist among elite of pop art's Mount Olympus that includes the like of Evelyne Axell  and pop art's Zeus Andy Warhol. Richard Phillips was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1962 and now lives and works in New York.  On view for another week at John McWhinnie bookstore in East Hampton, NY is Point of Purchase, "the first full-scale presentation of [Richard Phillips'] commercial interventions." John McWhinnie: "Phillips extends his brand of artmaking into the non-gallery world, colonizing commercial space, manipulating products and displays, from album covers and posters to designer handbags and beach towels." On view until August 8 www.johnmcwhinnie.com

Drawn Blank: Bob Dylan to Show Paintings at the Gagosian

Gagosian: "A committed visual artist, Bob Dylan has only recently begun to exhibit his works publicly. Firstly, a collection of multi-media watercolors and gouaches, The Drawn Blank Series, was exhibited in Germany’s Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in autumn 2007. His latest works on acrylic and canvas, The Brazil Series, are currently on exhibit at The National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen." Bob Dylan is set to exhibit artwork at the Gagosian Gallery this September.

Sigmar Polke: Photoworks

Leo Koenig Inc. (NYC), in collaboration with Winckler Fine Arts, Berlin, presents the opening of "Sigmar Polke: Photoworks 1964-2000". "Widely acknowledged as one of the most important creative forces to emerge from post World War II Europe, Sigmar Polke was an artist of incredible unpredictability. From the very beginning, and throughout his career, Polke resisted the idea of an identifying “signature.” In his practice, the artist incorporated techniques borrowed from mass marketing and commercial realms into a proscenium of images that overlap and resonate over time.  Over the course of his life, Polke made thousands of photographs and the selection of works for this exhibition keenly highlights the integral role that photography had played in the artist’s larger oeuvre.  Also included is an eerie selection of photographs taken at the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, and a series of photograms in which Polke experimented with, among other untried techniques, the effects of radioactive materials on the photographic process. On view until September 3 at Leo Koenig NYC. www.leokoenig.com

[source: fashion copious]

THE ROAD OF HOPE - YOKO ONO

Photo: Annie Leibovitz

Congratulations to Yoko Ono who is the winner of the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her efforts in spreading world peace.  An awards ceremony is scheduled together with an exhibition commemorating the presentation of the award to Yoko Ono at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. "It is greatly anticipated that this commemorative exhibition will help communicate, from Hiroshima to the world, the messages of Yoko Ono that are rich with the inspiration of the abolition of nuclear weapons and the creation of a world without war, and it is thought that the exhibition will have a great effect on garnering attention to this Hiroshima Art Prize across the globe." The 8th Hiroshima Art Prize: THE ROAD OF HOPE - YOKO ONO 2011,  Saturday July 30th to Sunday October 16. www.hcmca.cf.city.hiroshima.jp

To Love the Glove....

Armor glove–a collaboration between jeweler Shaun Leane and Daphne Guinness–encrusted  with 18-carat hand cut diamonds.  Guinness: "The detail in its design is hugely symbolic. The birds with which it is embellished denote freedom from the material world. The gold from which it is molded was thought to have magical powers. Like the knights of my childhood daydreams, this beautiful glove is resilient and beautiful, strong despite its finery."

LIEKO SHIGA: CANARY

Galerie Priska Pasquer in Cologne, Germany presents the 'Canary' series by Japanese artist Lieko Shiga, for which she won the 'Infinity Award (Young Photographer)' from the International Center of Photography, New York, in 2009. In 'Canary', Lieko Shiga combines personal accounts of people and local myths with her own personal memories, feelings and experiences to create fantastic, often perplexing scenarios. The works interact to form a complex, dramatic tableau that vacillates between dreams and reality. On view until July 30. www.priskapasquer.de

TOMOKO SAWADA: Reflection

The Rose Gallery in Los Angeles presents the surreal self portraits of Japanese artist Tomoko Sawada. For her latest series, entitled Reflection, Sawada "....tackles the issue of identity by questioning the boundary between one’s own appearance and the self-image reflected in a mirror. The dual images in each photograph are presented like twins and while they bear a striking resemblance to one another, a closer inspection reveals how different they truly are." On view until September 17. www.rosegallery.net

Magic for Beginners

Olaf Breuning, Emmanuelle 2009

Jesse McLean, Magic For Beginners 2010, 20 min video

Ten artists are a part of a group show entitled Magic For Beginners at P.P.O.W. Gallery in NYC–including Bas Jan Ader and Olaf Breuning. "Their works concern themselves with an intensely personal present tense, with lives lived and documented in real time. These works are inward, solipsistic, and in some instances, similar to an occult experience or an exercise in ritualized revelation." Magic for Beginners  is on view from July 28 to August 27. www.ppowgallery.com

[STRANGE FUTURE] Numerically Controlled Posters

Matt W. Moore, the brain behind MWM Graphics–a design and illustration studio based in Portland, Maine–just released his numerically controlled poster series; a collaboration between engineer Aaron Panone, Paper Fortress Films, and MWM Graphics. Aaron Panone, who engineered the jig explains, "Vector graphics are converted into a tool path and then a machine language which controls a 3-axis CNC Machine retrofitted with a special fixture that holds a marker [a sharpie] and mimics hand pressure during the act of drawing. Thirty-three mechanical drawings in three designs were produced using this process." Each drawing comes with one of the Sharpies used.

www.mwmgraphics.com