Venus Over Manhattan

Venus Over Manhattan, a new exhibition space created by art collector and writer Adam Lindemann, opened to the public in New York City on May 9, 2012 with the inaugural exhibition À rebourswhich is on view now. Including several dozen works of art spanning the 19th century to the present. The exhibition takes its title from Joris-Karl Huysmans’ 1884 anti-novel “À rebours” known in English either as “against the grain” or “against nature.” This tale of fin-de-siècle decadence tells the story of the Duc Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric aristocrat who recoils from the manners and values of conservative Parisian society and flees to the countryside to immerse himself in art collecting and exotic fetishism. À rebours at Venus over Manhattan explores the notion of “against the grain” through a selection of more than 50 works including African fetishes. The artists represented range from Odilon Redon – the favorite of the book’s protagonist – to Henri Fuseli, Gustave Moreau, Felicien Rops, and the like of Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and the late Dash Snow. À rebours will be on view at Venus Over Manhattan until June 30th, 980 Madison Avenue, 3rd Floor.

Blue Daze With Yves Klein

Yves Klein, who once claimed the entire sky as his greatest artwork, patented his own pigment of blue, and used live naked women to paint some his most ingenious masterpieces, was arguably the most brilliantly creative artist of the 20th century.  On the 50th anniversary of Yves Klein’s death, two masterpieces by the artist will be offered in Christie's Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction, London on 27 June. This follows the outstanding result achieved at Christie's New York last May when the legendary FC 1 (Fire-Color 1), painted only a few weeks before his death at the age of 34, using fire and his unique color of blue, sold for $36,482,500 (£22,619,150), setting a new world record for the artist at auction. Up for auction: Le Rose du bleu (RE 22), painted with illuminating rose cadmium and by far the largest pink sponge relief ever created and included in all the artist’s major exhibitions over the past 50 years, Relief éponge bleu (RE 51), the ultramarine blue sponge relief previously owned by Lucio Fontana, and Anthropométrie (ANT49).

Richard Phillips: First Point

Premiering today as part of Art Unlimited at Art Basel 2012, pop artist Richard Phillips’ short film entitled First Point featuring Lindsay Lohan. Richard Phillips has been exploring the production of film and photographic media as a means of expanding beyond the appropriation strategies that have defined his work in the past by painting unique portraits from his own films which he stages and shoots himself.  He completed his first two films, Lindsay Lohanand Sasha Grey, in the spring of 2011 for the Commercial Break film project presented concurrently to the Venice Biennale. First Point–Phillips' third film—is a collaboration between the artist, Lindsay Lohan, and the legendary surf filmmaker Taylor Steele. The film visits two locations: a private beach surf compound and Malibu's iconic Surfrider Beach, accessible to the public, which boasts some of California's most perfect waves. First Point presents a postmodern take on the surf film genre through an abstract framework of imagery in which the actress engages in cinema performance tropes inspired by contemporary film noir. Presented by Gagosian Gallery, First Point will premier as part of Art Basel's Art Unlimited which will see its invitation only, VIP release today and a public opening on June 14 until June 17.

Julien Langendorff: Sniffing Glitter in the Afterworld

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Artist Julien Langendorff, a Paris-based artist and musician will be having a solo show at Agnès b.’s Galerie du Jour in Paris. Julien Langendorff’s installations, paper cut-outs collages, drawings, collages and films have been exhibited in numerous galleries in New York, Tokyo and Europe since 2005. Sniffing Glitter in the Afterworld will be on view from June 9 to July 21 at Agnes B' Galerie Du Jour, 44 Rue Quincampoix 

Dan Colen in New York & Paris

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Dan Colen will be having two exhibitions of his unique artworks presented by the Gagosian Gallery in both New York and Paris. On view now publicly for the first time outside the famed Seagrams Building in New York, Dan Colen’s sculpture, entitled Cracks in the Clouds (2010), consists of 13 motorcycles kicked over in a row. Originally shown in the artist’s Poetry exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, the bikes were custom-built and painted to replicate those Colen photographed outside the Hells Angels club on East 3rd Street.  And coming up on June 12, Dan Colen's first solo exhibition in Paris, Out of the Blue, Into the Black is a eulogy in three parts comprising paintings, installation, and a sculpture. The title conflates two songs that open and close Neil Young’s 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps: “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” and “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)", with its famous line “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” which Young wrote in reference to his personal fears of becoming obsolete and, correspondingly, to the then-recent deaths of Elvis Presley and Sid Vicious, and which was invoked many years later by Kurt Cobain in his suicide note. Similarly, Colen has used the lyrics here to evoke a fear of the erosion of influence, to point to the ways in which death inflects celebration, and to remind us of what we try to hold on to, even as it eludes our grasp. Cracks in the Clouds will be on view until September 30, 2012 and Out of the Blue, Into the Blackwill be on view from June 12 to July 28, 2012 Gagosian Gallery, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris.

New World Hoarder

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Spoke Art Gallery presents New World Hoarder, an exhibition featuring new work by Los Angeles based artist Casey Weldon. For his San Francisco solo show debut, Weldon will be debuting fantastical and beautifully painted images meant to inspire, question, parody, and evoke laughter.New World Hoarder takes you on a surreal adventure ripe with four-eyed animals, majestic woods people, and chalk full of acerbic pop culture jabs. On view until June 23, 2012 at Spoke Art Gallery, 816 Sutter Street, San Francisco 

Yoko Ono: TO THE LIGHT

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To The Light, a major exhibition of celebrated artist Yoko Ono, on view later this month in London, reflects upon the enormous impact that she has made on contemporary art, exploring her influential role across a wide range of media. This exhibition, her first in a London public institution for more than a decade, includes new and existing installations, films and performances, as well as archive material relating to several key early works. Ono's continuing interest in the relationship between the roles of artist and viewer is evident throughout the exhibition. A number of works in To The Light position both artist and viewer as agents of change. For example, a series of instruction pieces written especially for the Serpentine Gallery can be completed physically or mentally by the viewer, while the large-scale installation AMAZE transforms the viewer from the observer to the observed. To The Lightwill be on view from June 19 to September 9 at the Serpentine Gallery in London, Kensington Gardens, London

40 Years of Camp

Ken Weaver, AB Astra Lumina (To the Stars Light), 2007, Oil pastel on paper, two panels

Opening today, Schroeder Romero in New York presents the exhibition Summer Camp featuring James Bidgood, Brice Brown, Tom of Finland, Scott Hunt, Heather Johnson, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Cary Leibowitz/Candyass, Jean Lowe, Robert Mapplethorpe, Uzi Parnes, Carl Plansky, John Waters, and Ken Weaver representing over forty years of work about and within ‘camp’ culture and aesthetic—an aesthetic, according to Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp (1964), focused on artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess. Summer Camp will be on view from June 7 to August 12, 2012 at Schroeder Romero, 531 West 26th Street New York NY

SCREW YOU

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SCREW YOU, curated by David Platzker of Specific Object, shines a light on the intersection of counterculture publishing, tabloid pornography and the art world which occurred in the creatively fertile years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. SCREW YOU draws its title and inspiration from the notorious pornographic tabloid Screw: The Sex Review, which came onto the New York scene November 29, 1968. Nestling porn and fine art side by side between the sheets, content ranged from spreads of large breasted women illuminating such erudite articles as “The Art of Buying Dirty Books” to centerfolds conceived by and featuring artist Yayoi Kusama. Issues of Screw throughout the late 1960s and the early 1970s embraced a cultural breadth spanning art, advertising and editorial. Contributors from the realm of visual culture included leading movers and shakers Dan Graham, Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.While Screw, Kiss, Pleasure, and Kusama’s own tabloid, Kusama’s Orgy of Nudity, Love, Sex Beauty, played to the strengths of the genre, contemporaneous periodicals such as New York Review of Sex and Politics, Other Scenes, The East Village Other and artist Les Levine’s Culture Hero favored a merging of literature and art in addition to its pansexual content. Notable contributors to these loftier publications included the writers Gregory Battcock, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski and artists Brigid Berlin, R. Crumb, John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg, Carolee Schneemann, Bob Stanley, Walasse Ting, and Tadanori Yokoo, along with many others working in the realm of sex and sexual identity. SCREW YOU will be on view at Susan Inglett Gallery 31 May to 13 July.

Bittersweet Moments in Blazing Colors: Caro Niederer in NYC

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Hauser & Wirth New York will present an exhibition of eighteen new paintings by Caro Niederer – the first New York solo show for an internationally admired Swiss artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, tapestries, photography and video. Caro Niederer. Paintings will open to the public on June 27th and remain on view at the gallery through July 27th, 2012, Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street New York NY

Yayoi Kusama for Louis Vuitton

Princess of polka dots Yayoi Kusama has teamed up with Louis Vutton for a special capsule collection. The collection, entitled Infinitely Kusama, is set to be unveiled on July 10, conveniently timed with Kusama’s major retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York. The goods will be available in Vuitton’s 461 stores starting July 11, with a second line arriving in October.

DESTE & Barneys New York Public Art Collaboration

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Beginning June 6, 2012 the Barneys New York Madison Avenue flagship store’s windows will be transformed into dymamic vitrines for a public art exhibition organized in collaboration with DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, based in Athens, Greece. Conceived by DESTE’s founder, the internationally admired collector and patron Dakis Joannou, and Barneys Creative Director Dennis Freedman, this exhibition will present five ambitious site- specific installation projects by prominent artists in different disciplines. Each of the artists has participated since 2007 in destefashioncollection-- a DESTE Foundation special initiative devoted to investigating, interpreting and celebrating the complex relationships between art, fashion, and the culture at large. On view through July 4th, the project at Barneys New York will be the first U.S. presentation of destefashioncollection. The five participating artists are M/M (Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak) Paris; photographer Juergen Teller; artist Helmut Lang; poet Patrizia Cavalli; and filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari.

Song Kun: A Thousand Kisses Deep

The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, China presents an exhibition of new work by Song Kun, one of China’s most prominent young female artists. Song Kun: A Thousand Kisses Deep, opened yesterday. Hung salon-style across the twin walls of UCCA’s Nave, the exhibition features a new cycle of 28 shimmering paintings, technical studies of drifting light evoking a sinister, sensual beauty and the dual themes of carnality and spirituality. Paired with an immersive video installation, this presentation showcases the latest practice of one of China’s most interesting young painters. Song Kun: A Thousand Kisses Deep is on view until July 15 at the The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art,  798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China