Jeff Koons in SWITZERLAND

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The Fondation Beyeler is presenting the first exhibition ever devoted by a Swiss museum to the American artist Jeff Koons. This extensive presentation focuses on three central series of works – The New,Banality and Celebration – which represent crucial stages in Koons’s development and lead to the nucleus of his thinking and creative activity. Koons’s equally spectacular and subtle works are repeatedly concerned with themes such as innocence, beauty, sexuality and happiness. These reflect his conception of an art that is accessible to every viewer. Koons will be on view at The Foundation Beyeler until September 2, 2012.

KON TRUBKOVICH: Leap Second

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With his Los Angeles debut, Moscow born New York based artist Kon Trubkovich reveals his most personal work to date. A new series of paintings, works on paper, and a sound piece translate psychological underpinnings through elegantly complex methods. The television static, weak transmissions, and tenuous connections he depicts suggest that somewhere behind all the noise and disruption there is a broadcast confirming our existence and interconnection. Prominent in the exhibition are a group of large-scale portraits of the artist’s mother, culled from just one second of home video, which documented the final party she threw in the U.S.S.R before the family immigrated to the U.S. Defining a transitional moment of flux, these works illuminate the difficultly of tracing the past and express our elusive connection to the concept of origin. Through oil on linen, Trubkovich visually describes the sensation of relating to a person or physical location that no longer exists, or at least not as remembered, and aims to parse latent recall into a tangible codex. Leap Second is on view at OHWOW Gallery in Los Angeles, with an opening reception tonight and will be open until June 23, 937 North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA

Yayoi Kusama: Hong Kong Blooms in My Mind

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Sotheby’s announces an exclusive selling exhibition of works by Yayoi Kusama in their brand new gallery space in Hong Kong. The exhibition, entitled Hong Kong Blooms In My Mind, showcases seminal works in a variety of mediums and from a range of important dates in the artist’s oeuvre. On view from May 19 to  May 30, 2012

James Franco's Rebel Opening This Weekend in Los Angeles

MOCA presents Rebel, conceived by James Franco with Douglas Gordon, Harmony Korine, Damon McCarthy, Paul McCarthy, Terry Richardson, Ed Ruscha, Aaron Young and more. Rebel will be on view from May 15 through June 23, 2012, at JF Chen, a newly emerging contemporary art and design space, located at 941 North Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038. Photograph by Adarsha Benjamin 

Nude Man Forsblom & Jay Johnson @ Gagosian Opening For Richard Avedon In New York

New York’s spriteliest interior designer, Brock Forsblom, became so inspired at the opening of Richard Avedon: Murals & Portraits last Friday night, he stripped naked to pose in front of the Warhol gang. He in turn inspired hundreds of photographs taken by the mob-scene crowd, which included fellow interior designer Jay Johnson, twin brother to Warhol’s former partner Jed Johnson, and one of the original Avedon subjects. In these large-scale murals and the smaller, related portraits of the 1960s and 1970s, Avedon sought to depict the spirit of the times, a spirit that clearly lives on.

See the exhibition at Gagosian’s West 21st St. Gallery, New York. On view through July 27. photographs by Temo Callahan

Agnès Varda in China

Agnès Varda is displaying her works at the Hubei Museum of Fine Arts  and the Museum of Fine Arts of Wuhan until May 6 2012. She is displaying several installations, including a portico in bright red in which she has installed her photographs. Agnès Varda is a visual artist and film-maker famous for films such as Cléo from 5 to 7 which made her a burgeoning member of the Nouvelle Vague film movement. However, in the eyes of the Chinese, where she is above all else is a photographer, the same photographer who travelled through the country under Mao, in 1957. The result of this trip is a collection of photographs which have never before been displayed: smiling families wearing Mao suits, female dockers bent under their burdens. The snapshots depict China before the repression.

Helen Shumaker @ The DeYoung

The tremendously talented actress and performance artist Helen Shumaker performing at the DeYoung Museum as part of a series of events called Our People curated by Monique Jenkinson (aka Fauxnique) with a group of performers, most of whom she knows through the queer club scene, to create a dance/installation inspired by the work of Jean Paul Gaultier—"his icons, his fetishes, and a light-hearted, humanistic irreverence." Photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre. 

Takashi Murakami Opens Berlin Gallery

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Takashi Murakami opens a gallery in Berlin. The Japanese artist and his company Kaikai Kiki are calling the gallery Hidari Zingaro (named after the Edo period sculptor). The gallery opens in June, but is previewing the space tomorrow to coincide with Berlin's Gallery Weekend and will be marked by an all-day live Manga painting event by Mahomi Kunikata (picture above), known for her explorations of "the otaku culture of sexually explicit manga." Dieffenbachstraße 15, 10967 Kreuzberg, Germany

Liberatum Hong Kong

Liberatum Hong Kong International Festival of Culture opens today and runs through the weekedend. Participants include Khalil Fong, Daniel Wu, Rossy de Palma, Wing Shya, Nobel Laureate Sir VS Naipaul, Paul Schrader, Rosey Chan, Terence Koh, Pharrell Williams, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Mike Figgis, OMA Partner – Architect, David Gianotten and many others.

Warhol in Flowers

American photographer William John Kennedy’s exhibition of newly published prints of Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana is believed to be the only such images in existence capturing the artists with their works, among them Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe and Indiana’s LOVE. After almost half a century in storage, a select number of the nearly forgotten images were carefully chosen, and are now being published for the first time as a collection. On view now until May 29 at Site 109 Gallery in NYC.