Jonas Mekas: Reminiscences of a Displaced Person

James Fuentes gallery presents an exhibition of photographs by Jonas Mekas. Images out of Darkness recounts the years that Jonas Mekas and his brother Adolfas lived in Wiesbaden, Germany , in a displa ced persons camp. In 1944, a rrested by the Nazi’s a s they fled Lithuania, the brothers were placed in a forced labor camp where they worked in a machine factory.The brothers escaped and were detained near the Danish border where they hid on a farm for two months until the end of the war. After the war, they lived in displaced persons camps first in Wiesbaden and then in Kassel/Mattenberg. Between 1946-48 Mekas studied philosophy at the University of Mainz, the brothers immigrated to New York City in 1949 with assistance from the UN. Two weeks a fter his arrival in New York Jonas borrowed money to buy his first Bolex camera and began to record brief moments of his life. Mekas is considered a pioneer of diaristic cinema and a "god father to American avant-garde cinemat, his commitment to life as subject continues to this day and he has had exhibitions in major cultural institutions across the world. Images out of Darkness marks Jonas Mekas’ first visual essay. Jonas Mekas: Images Out Of Darkness, Images of A Displaced Person, Post War Germany 1945 to 1949 will be on view until October 28 at James Fuente Gallery, 55 Delancey Street, New York

Thomas Bayrle on the Highline Billboard

As part of the High Line's continued monthly installations of artist's works on their billboard on West 18th and 10th Ave, this time they present conceptual artist Thomas Bayrle's American Dream, taken from a 1970 drawing by the artist, the image depicts a classic Chrysler sedan, generated through hundreds of warped stars featuring the car company’s iconic logo. On view until October 31, 2012.

Doug Aitken's Altered Earth On View This Month in Arles

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Incorporating film, literature, data visualizations and sound design, artist Douglas Aitken's Altered Earth invites the user to piece together fragments of the landscape of the region of Camargue France. The site-specific work has been developed into an application for the iPad by Meri Media.The films themselves, of which there are seven, are devoid of narrative or plot, showing Carmague's salt pans, wild horses, and decaying architecture. The LUMA Foundation, which commissioned the work, calls it "a work of land art for the electronic era." Altered Earth will be on view this month projected on the walls of an old train station in Arles, France. 

Jeff Koons : Humankind Before All

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Jeff Koons has had a busy summer. A troika of career-reaffirming exhibitions have just been taking place throughout Europe : the Fondation Beyeler in Basel has produced a retrospective of his works centered around three principal groups of works (“New,” “Banality,” and “Celebration”); the Schirn Kunsthalle and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, both in Frankfurt, have been focusing on the two major arteries of Koons’ artistic production : his painting, and his sculpture, exhibited simultaneously, but in two separate Frankfurt venues. Now, another impressive exhibition of Jeff Koons’ art is about to open: at Almine Rech Gallery in Brussels. This is an event for many reasons: this is the first Koons exhibition in Brussels since 1992, when Made in Heaven was revealed to the Belgian public. More importantly, the present exhibition crowns this summer’s harvest : it concludes, recaps, but also expands again, on this extraordinarily rich and fecund season of exhibitions of Koons’ oeuvre. Jeff Koons : Humankind Before All will be on view from October 10 to November 17, 2012 at Almine Rech Gallery, 20 Rue De L'Abbaye Abdijstraat, Brussels

Richard Hamilton's Late Works

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This highly personal exhibition by one of Britain’s most influential artists traces an intriguing path leading to his unfinished and unseen final work, Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu – a painting in three parts.Up until his death at 89, Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) was planning this major exhibition of recent works conceived specifically for the National Gallery and including work never before seen by the public. The exhibition as a whole encapsulates many of the significant directions Hamilton’s art had taken over recent decades, when his international reputation soared. Richard Hamilton: The Late Works is on view from October 10 to January 13, 2013 a The National Gallery,Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN

Hue & Cry Curated by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld

Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld hosts a one night only selling exhibition in collaboration with Sotheby's. Entitled  Hue + Cry, Roitfeld says about the exhibition: "In a networked age of following and sharing — of “pinning,” tweeting,” and “liking” virtual images of fleeting consequence — Hue & Cry strives to lead with the first embodied principles of painting and sculpture. Always physical and tactile, the tools remain simple, the colors a vivid spectrum, and the results infinitely variable as each of the twenty artists gathered here strives to ignite their own interior light." Artist such as Nicolas Pol and abstract sculptor Robert Melee, among others, will be on view. Hue & Cry will be on view October 5, 2012 at Sotheby's S2 Gallery, 1334 York Avenue, New York

Wolfgang Tillmans Neue World Exhibition and Book

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Tillmans's latest project sets its sights on the world. Over the period of more than two decades, Wolfgang Tillmans has explored the medium of photo-imaging with greater range than any other artist of his generation. From snapshots of his friends to abstract images made in a darkroom without a camera or works made with a photocopier, he has pushed the photographic process to its outer limits in myriad ways. For this collection of photos, his fourth book with Taschen, Tillmans turned away from the self-reflexive exploration of the photography medium that had occupied him for several years by focusing his lens on the outside world—from London and Nottingham to Tierra del Fuego, Tasmania, Saudi Arabia, and Papua New Guinea. He describes this new phase simply as “trying out what the camera can do for me, what I can do for it.” The result is a powerful and singular view of life today in diverse parts of the world, seen from many angles. Says Tillmans, “My travels are aimless as such, not looking for predetermined results, but hoping to find subject matter that in some way or other speaks about the time I'm in.” The exhibition Wolfgang Tillmans: Neue Welt / Wolfgang Tillmans. New World will be on show at the Kunsthalle in Zurich until November 2012. The  monograph will be available on October 30, but is available for preorder now. 

Luc Tuymans' Allo! At David Zwirner London

David Zwirner presents an exhibition of new paintings by Luc Tuymans, which will inaugurate the gallery’s first European location on 24 Grafton Street in Mayfair, London. The Belgian artist joined David Zwirner in 1994 and this marks his ninth solo show with the gallery and the first in London since his 2004 retrospective at the Tate Modern. Tuymans is widely credited with having contributed to the revival of painting in the 1990s. His sparsely colored, figurative works speak in a quiet, restrained, and at times unsettling voice, and are typically painted from pre-existing imagery which includes photographs and video stills. The present exhibition comprises a series of paintings entitled Allo! While an initial source of inspiration was Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), the visual reference for the works was the final scene in the 1942 film The Moon and Sixpence, which itself is an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s eponymous novel from 1919. The plot is loosely based upon the life of Paul Gauguin and revolves around a stockbroker who leaves his job and family to become an artist, eventually settling in Tahiti. Following his death several years later, his doctor travels to the primitive studio he left behind and discovers his paintings—swirly, colorful landscapes and nudes—moments before the late artist’s Tahitian widow sets fire to everything. Luc Tuymans: Allo! will be on view from October 5 to November 17, 2012 at David Zwirner Gallery, 24 Grafton Street, London.

Mike Kelley Exhibition in Los Angeles

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Perry Rubenstein Gallery announces Mike Kelley: Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, the second autumn exhibition in the new Los Angeles gallery. One of Kelley’s most significant works, this room-sized installation has never before been exhibited in Los Angeles.Early in his career, Kelley began incorporating found thrift-store stuffed animals and household cleaning products into large installations which challenged viewers with contrasting feelings of delight and repulsion, empathy and confusion. Consisting of a thirteen-part hanging plush sculpture surrounded by slick, geometric wall reliefs which fill the room with a subtle chemical pine-scent, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellitesembodies. the fullest and most dynamic iteration of this significant component of the artist’s practice. Mike Kelley (1954 – 2012), who committed suicide this year, was a central figure and beloved colleague and mentor in Los Angeles’ vibrant visual art community for decades. Mike Kelley: Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites will be on view from November 2 to December 15, 2012 at Perry Rubenstein Gallery, 1215 N. Highland Avenue, Los Angeles.

Maurizio Cattelan Exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery

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Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (b.1960) is known as the art world’s agent provocateur, using what seem to be stunts to address universal themes around the nature of dogma, power and death. A new solo display, currently on view at Whitechapel Gallery in London, includes one of his earliest works - a miniature family kitchen featuring a squirrel that has committed suicide. Bidibidobidiboo (1996), after the fairy godmother’s song in Disney’s Cinderella, encapsulates Cattelan’s acerbic wit and his melancholic worldview. This exhibition is a part of a series of exhibitions presenting the Collection Sandretto Re Rebaudengo from Turin. The exhibition opened yesterday and is on view until December 2, 2012, at Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London.

Andreas Slominski's Sperm Exhibition in New York

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Anyone care to see a panther's semen on a pair of sandals? Andreas Slominski's Sperm comprises the semen of humans and animals splashed on the walls and floors of Metro Pictures gallery in New York. The theme of the exhibition is that of touch, specifically the moment sperm fuses with the ovum and fertilization occurs. As the foundation of existence, Slominski identifies touch as one of the most important forces in our world. “Sperm” represents both a shift in focus and continuation of Slominski’s engagement with this notion of the instant of contact, which has been a key element in the traps that have been a signature aspect of his work for more than 25 years. The elaborate and often hidden processes that go into Slominski’s exhibitions and works have long been the poetic and brutal crux of his practice. Sperm is on view until October 27, 2012 at Metro Pictures Gallery, 519 West 24th Street

Object(ing): The Art/Design of Tobias Wong

The Museum of Vancouver is pleased to present the first time solo exhibition of internationally acclaimed Vancouver-born artist Tobias Wong who committed suicide in 2010 at the age of 30. Wong’s work defied categorization, as he engaged with a range of art processes from installations, performances, and furniture making to product and fashion design. He was cheeky, playful, witty, and clever. He appropriated, manipulated, manufactured, mass-produced, and re-issued objects, pouring new meanings into them. Like many pioneers, his art both seduced and upset. Object(ing): The Art/Design of Tobias Wong opened yesterday and is on view until February 24, 2013 at The Museum of Vancouver. 

Marc Molk: The Blue Sky Upon Us May Well Fall Apart

"Divination is a noble ambition, an infinite nostalgia. The power of predictions, be they good or bad, is the same as the power of memories, be they faded or vivid. Clairvoyants promise a blue sky, several times a day, to anyone. But we all know that the blue sky upon us may well fall." It is this presage esthetics that pervades Marc Molk’s first solo show in Paris.The artist, whose lives are many, goes for the neglected art of allegory in a spiritualist register, where melancholia has put on golden clothes, ball garments. His mixed technique explores various states of pictorial matter, from large nuanced colourwashes to thick highlights. Often, he puts on a certain degree of naivety to tackle disenchantedly sentimental subject matters. Marc Molk: The Blue Sky Upon Us May Well Fall Apart is on view from September 27 to November 3, 2012 at Da End Gallery, 17 rue Guénégaud, 75006 Paris.