James Clar's Iris Was a Pupil on View At Carbon 12

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Carbon 12 gallery in Dubai presents the solo exhibition of the American multi-media artist James Clar, Iris was a Pupil, which opens today. As the title clearly suggests it, the new works are about the sensation of visual stimuli, the constant challenge of finding new viewpoints, and the demand to keep seeing things from fresh perspectives. “Iris was a Pupil” (also the title of a song by techno legends Autechre) also calls the connotation of synaesthesia to mind. The theme of crossing borders is always present in the work of Clar, who lives and works between New York and Dubai: not only in the sense of redefining the physical limitations and boundaries of media (mediums), but also in the metaphysical sense of investigating subjects such as nationalism and globalism in the age of social technologies. Here, he takes a step further, blurring the lines between dreams and reality, synthetic and real. Iris Was a Pupil opens today November 5 and will be on view until December 8, 2012 at Carbon 12, Warehouse D37, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai

FAILE in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

While in town for the unveiling of a new permanent sculpture in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Brooklyn-based artistic collective FAILE worked with local Mongolian artists on a mural. They stenciled an image of a young girl clutching a skateboard – a nod to the quickly modernizing nature of Mongolia contrasted by its vast unpaved landscape – on the wall of an archway located in the central university district of Ulan Bator. Each Mongolian artist worked on customizing the girl’s dress in their own style. The emerging Mongolian artists are recent finalists of the Tiger Translate Festival and were selected by a prestigious panel of judges that included the National Arts Council. 

Rene Ricard Exhibition @ Highlight Gallery in San Francisco

Highlight Galleryin San Francisco presents “new paintings and not so new” by the American poet and painter Rene Ricard. On view are numerous works created over the past decade by Ricard are presented. The paintings consist of oil on linen with hand-painted poems in Ricard’s signature font over “poison green” canvasses and over figurative paintings taking inspiraton from various photographic sources. Ricard has served as mentor, muse, inspiration and critic for the New York City art scene for the past four decades. He was also a seminal figure in Andy Warhol's factory appearing in many of his films. In 1981, he wrote the cover article “Radiant Child” in Art Forum magazine, and he since then has been credited in helping Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring transform from underground figures to art stars. The exhibition will be on view until December 9 at Highlight Gallery, 17 Kearny Street  San Francisco, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Joseph Beuys Iphigenie @ Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

One of Joseph Beuys' most powerful action events was Titus Andronicus/Iphigenie, performed on 30 May 1969 in the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt, for Experimenta 3. Wearing a fur coat, Beuys appeared on a darkened stage with a shining white horse. He used the myth and the drama of Iphigenia to draw attention to the freedom and the creativity of the individual. Here, William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (1589-92), with its excessive violence and cruelty, reminiscent (in the context of this performance) of Nazi crimes, is linked with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris (1779), in which Iphigenia – the personification of humanity – redeems her brother Orestes through her love and her forgiveness. Joseph Beuys Iphigenie is on view now until January 27, 2013 at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 69 avenue du Général Leclerc 93500 Pantin

Nippon-ismes @ Galerie Da-End in Paris

From 
the 
10th of 
November
 to 
the 
28th 

of
 December 
2012,
to 
mark
 the 
month
 of
 photography,
 the 
Da‐End
 Gallery 
is
 showing ‘NIPPON‐ISMES’ an
 exhibition 
which 
brings 
together
 seven 
photographers
 from 
different
 generations
 whose 
works, 
from 
either 
a 
journalistic
 or
 visual 
approach
 to 
the
 medium,
 all 
question 
contemporary 
Japanese
 identity
 and 
culture.

Grey Area for Helmut Lang

Fashion label Helmut Lang has teamed up with online shop and gallery Grey Area in collaboration with artist Shelter Serra (nephew of sculptor Richard Serra) for a series of installations called Engine Blocks which will be on view at Helmut Lang boutiques November 1 to January 17. Stores will also offer several gift items curated by Grey Area, which specializes in artist-designed objects including James DeWoody’s note cards, Michelle Lopez’s Band-Aid rings and Serra’s Fake Roley bracelets.

John Baldessari New Exhibition at Marian Goodman

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Marian Goodman Gallery in New York presents an exhibition of new works by John Baldessari titled Double Play which is on view now. The exhibition consists of a new series of paintings on canvas in which Baldessari engages us in his strategic and diverse practice of selection and montage, removal and assembly, ‘taking an image to make an image’. In this series, he draws on the art historical canon, rather than photography and film, to juxtapose the part and whole, to contrast and weigh language, image, and color, and to interrupt context in order to arrive at new relationships, narrative allusions, or an enigmatic totality. “I am always looking to invert priorities, to make the unimportant important, leaving images out and letting [us] fill in the blanks”, says Baldessari. Double Play will be on view until November 21, 2012 at Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th Street, NY, NY

Sandy Kim at The Hole Gallery

Curated by Kathy Grayson and Tim Barber a new exhibition entitled Attachments brings together a group of young artists who explore the depths and boundaries of the photographic medium. Widely varied in their practices, these artists add unique perspectives to their ever-expanding and mutating photographic dialog. Photographers include Sandy Kim (above), Tim Barber, Asger Carlsen, Jason Nocito and more. Attachments is on view through November 3, 2012 at The Hole Gallery, 312 Bowery, NY, NY. photograph by Ona Rygelis

Art Show Aboard Historic Sunken Ship

An art show featuring new works by David Murcko (above), Derek Skorupski, Grace Lumpkin and Philip DiWilliams will be on view October 25 aboard the historic lightship "Frying Pan," an old US Coast Guard ship built in 1929, abandoned for ten years and sunk in the Chesapeake Bay for 3 years and brought back to NYC in 1989. The Frying Pan is at Pier 66, West 26th Street and Hudson River (near Chelsea Piers).

Johannes Wohnseifer's Water From A Melted Ice Sculpture

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Johann König, Berlin presents Water From A Melted Ice Sculpture that will mark Johannes Wohnseifer's sixth solo exhibition in the gallery. In a conceptually rigorous, yet poetic manner seven new series of works address the spheres of politics, production, publicity and privacy. Wohnseifer is able to melt these areas together while their supposed discernment is not gone lost in favor of mutual reflection. On view from October 27 to to December 22 at Johann König, Dessauer Straße 6-7, 10963 Berlin

Jeremy Kost's Fame Paintings On View in Paris

Jeremy Kost’s celebrity paintings–silkscreened on large-scale canvases from Polaroid images–are paired here with Polaroid facsimiles by Andy Warhol from the 70s and 80s. Both artists share an inquisitive lust to understand fame in all its dramatic guises and extravagant poses. Occasionally they share a subject–Liza Minnelli, Dolly Parton, Keith Richards–though Kost approaches these iconic individuals from a very different perspective. In some cases they are obscured or abstracted; occasionally disembodied, as with Madonna’s head, which appears to float on a sea of silver, or Grace Jones, who dissolves into a beautiful haze of flowers and tapestries. By translating his original photographs into these slick yet gritty canvases, Kost has given his unique vision a new sense of monumentality. In these works, which came from his Polaroid photographs, celebrity is both celebrated and complicated. We see the mobs of paparazzi themselves, clamoring for a shot, and the polarized finish of the paintings themselves is simultaneously glamorous and anti-glamor–just as Beyonce here appears both as a superstar and a sort of monster, caught in the camera’s flash. Like his forbearer Warhol, Kost is a participant in the world he depicts and also somewhat of a voyeur, diligently capturing all the madness and the romance of celebrity, all the while translating a sense of intimacy and access. Jeremy Kost: Always The Center of Attention will be on view until November 18 at Galerie Nuke, 11 Rue Saint Anastase, 75003 Paris, France