A New Group Show Will Explore The Beautiful Art of Cuban Concretism

Who knew that concrete could be so damn beautiful. Coming up this week, David Zwirner will be presenting a comprehensive exhibition of paintings and sculptures by the Cuban group of abstract painters Los Diez Pintores Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters), which was active from 1959 to 1961, at the gallery’s London location. Concrete Cuba is the first presentation in the United Kingdom to highlight the origins of concretism in Cuba during the 1950s, and will include important works by the eleven artists who were at different times associated with the short-lived group:Pedro Álvarez, Wifredo Arcay, Mario Carreño, Salvador Corratgé, Sandú Darié, Luis Martínez Pedro, Alberto Menocal, José Mijares, Pedro de Oraá, José Ángel Rosabal, Loló Soldevilla, and Rafael Soriano. Concrete Cuba will be on view from September 5 to October 3, 2015 at David Zwirner, 24 Grafton Street London

Lucas Price "Dumb Poetry" at Lazarides Rathbone in London

Lucas Price makes his debut appearance at Lazarides Rathbone with a major new solo exhibition entitled Dumb Poetry. Using a combination of photorealism, hard-edged abstraction and text, the London-based artist has created a new series of paintings, drawings and sculptures. The exhibition deconstructs the traditional still life and opens up an intuitive line of enquiry into the complex relationships between object and language. Price's latest paintings combine a series of loaded objects, including basketballs, tyres and fire extinguishers, alongside short bursts of open-ended language. From his earliest paintings the artist's work has incorporated the use of text and in these most recent works this idea is again brought into play alongside a series of harshly-lit sculptural forms. Lucas Price "Dumb Poetry" will be on view until September 10 at Lazarides, 11 Rathbone Place, London, W1T 1HR.

Doug Aitken's Station to Station Monograph Tells The Story of a Nomadic Cross-Country Cultural Happening

This illuminating new book tells the story of Doug Aitken's Station to Station project, a nomadic happening that crossed North America by train and continues to explore creativity in the modern landscape. Doug Aitken's Station to Station project is a high speed road trip through modern creativity. Over a 23-day period, the project crossed North America by train presenting a series of cultural interventions and site-specific happenings that took place in ten cities between New York and San Francisco. The train, designed as a moving, kinetic light sculpture, was at the center of it all, housing the constantly changing group of creative individuals and broadcasting experiences to a global audience. Over one hundred unique projects took place during the journey, created by today's leading contributors in contemporary art, music, literature, and culture. This volume presents the ideas that emerged from Station to Station. Stunning full-color illustrations and multiple conversations with Aitken onboard the train document the journey from East to West. Click here to purchase the book. 

The Little House A Multi-Sensory Experience by Moral Turgeman

"The Little House" is an installation experience by Moral Turgeman with sound by Joe McKee that is on view now at MAMA gallery. This is the first time the true to size mirrored house is shown to the public after a nine-month construction period - with tunnels that lead to a cavernous and cozy interior where you will be able to put on headphones and delve into a binaural sound therapy bath. The Little House can be experienced for a limited time at MAMA Gallery, 242 Palmetto St, Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Sara Clarken

A Studio Visit With Sculptor and Site-Specific Installation Artist Galia Linn

Galia Linn’s sculptures are translators and communicators of nature’s mysterious and often untranslatable language. As a site-specific installation, they stand as symbolic guardians in the face of nature’s intrinsic fragility, especially in the face of human disregard. Each sculpture is a totem, inspired by relics of the Neolithic era, that communicate deeply complex philosophies about our relationship with nature on a primal and subconscious level. Based in Los Angeles, Galia Linn grew up in Israel,  on the very axis of ancient and modern civilizations. Water, oxygen, fire and earthen clay are manipulated in random orders and machinations to develop her works, which seem almost like timeless artifacts. Autre was lucky enough to pay a visit to Linn's studio to experience her works. Like an excavation site, Galia Linn's work can be touched, peered inside and meditated with – with the intention that the viewer will walk away with a transformative understanding that we are not separate from nature, but a part of nature. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

"HA HA! BUSINESS!" Group Show Tries to Make Sense of the Hyper Connected Digitial World With Humor @ Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

"The art world is now a global business, of course, as is just about everything else. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Skype have become our new living room, our church, our megaphone—and, some would argue, our toilet, too. And, it seems everyone wants to sit on the throne and be heard. Life is now "all news, all the time" and humor is the unifying force that allows us to look in the mirror, if for no other reason than to get a quick reality check and, hopefully, a little truth. HA HA! BUSINESS! continues my quixotic interest in making sense of it all. Yes, this is definitely a funny business! Ha ha." Text by Luis De Jesus on his group show on view now featuring the likes of Valerie Blass, Lex Brown, Josh Remes, and more. HA HA! BUSINESS! will be be on view until August 15, 2015 at Luis De Jesus gallery in Los Angeles. Photographs by Sara Clarken 

"Take It Easy" Is Georgian Artist Tamuna Sirbiladze's First Solo Show In The United States @ Half Gallery In New York

"Take It Easy" is Georgian artist Tamuna Sirbiladze's first solo show in the United States. A new set of unstretched banners teetering between the figurative and the gestural include oil stick pigeons, elongated noses and Matisse vases. These vibrant works hang over jungle-green walls mirroring the murals of Balthus at the Villa Medici in Rome. Earlier this year, Tamuna presented larger oil stick paintings from this same series in a group show at Secession in Vienna, curated by Ugo Rondinone. Tamuna is based in Vienna and was married to the late Austrian artist Franz West. Take It Easy will be on view until September 3, 2015 at Half Gallery in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

"Hot in Here" All Girls Summer Group Show At Sunday Gallery In Los Angeles

Adi Rajkovic curates a week long exhibition called Hot In Here, a group show featuring 40 female artists, such as Molly Matalon, Arvida Bystrom, Logan White and more, at Sunday Gallery in Los Angeles. Hot In Here will be on view until August 6th, 2015 at Sunday Gallery, 4308 Burns Avenue. photographs by Natalie Yang

Austere: A One Night Only Exhibition Held At A Former Accounting Office In Los Angeles

Austere, a one night exhibition curated by Shyan Rahimi and Cedric Aurelle, took place in a former accounting agency located on the 20th floor of the only office tower along Santa Monica’s Ocean Ave, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the city of Los Angeles. Alongside aerial views and unique sunsets, the vacant office provided the starting point to an exhibition that addressed a contemporary world whose reality proceeds from the economic speculation of global players and political decisions of supra-powers. With the background of a fictional reinterpretation of this reality by the media, the exhibition convoked images, texts and stories that present a critical approach to contemporary narratives of a post-capitalist world stuck between global fears and dream-industry.  Artists included were William Cordova, Zoe Crosher, Lauren Elder, Sam Kenswil, Bradley Michael Kronz and more. photographs by Sara Clarken

Mark Flood Gives An Obscene and Depraved Lesson On How To Become An Artist @ The SFAQ [Project] Space

It’s clear that Houston based artist Mark Flood has a love/hate relationship with the art world – with the scales often leaning toward the latter. It feeds him, clothes him and allows him to make his work, but what he hates is the politics, the obsequiousness of collectors, the hyperbole of the press, the endless “bad” art, and the rusty, death defying latter good artists put themselves through to get to the top. These are allow things Flood is exploring in Some Frequently Assked Questions – a show that is on view now at the exciting SFAQ [Project] Space in the gritty Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. A perfect place to stage Flood’s vitriol, but nonetheless it’s a brilliant, must-see show that may be one of the best of the year. Some pieces of note are two triptychs smattered with memes that read as a how-to-guide for making it to the top of the art food chain – the images are gruesome, pornographic, horrifying tidbits plucked from the netherweb – stand back and it spells out LOL and KEK, which is a World of Warcraft translation of the former. Some Frequently Assked Questions will be on view until August 15, 2015 at the SFAQ [Project] Space, O'Farrell, 441 O'Farrell St, San Francisco, CA. Text and photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Douglas Gordon and Tobias Rehberger "After the After" @ MACE In Ibiza

Museu d'Art Contemporani d’Eivissa (MACE) present a collaborative exhibition of works by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon and German sculpture Tobias Rehberger - this is not the first time they have shown together. At the centre of After the After is a work comprising two parts based on the same section of film of two men engaging in sexual intercourse. Rehberger has constructed a large ‘tile painting’ depicting the upper half of the men, their faces and torsos, displayed on the terrace wall on the exterior of the museum. In the interior space of the museum, Gordon and Rehberger present directly collaborative sculptures and film works, many of which suggest feelings of abandonment and neglect. The exhibition title, After the After, considers Ibiza’s status as an iconic place of hedonism, parties and decadence while examining the ‘after-point’ that occurs when this ultimately comes to an end, a time of emptiness and paranoia when one should not be left alone. After the After will be on view until October 4th, 2015 at MACE. 

Read Our Interview With Interdisciplinary Artist Eric Parren on Genetically Manipulating E. Coli For the Sake of Art and How Rave Culture Inspired His Practice →

Eric Parren on the swell of a new wave of artists that are borrowing from the forces of science to create major artistic statements. Parren, an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, combines facets of art, science, technology and investigates the human connection with deeply complex notions about the technologies that shape our future – often without our knowing – such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and space exploration. The works are often deeply sensory experiences dealing with modes of perception and the physics of light and sound. For instance, Parren has genetically manipulated the e. coli bacteria, which are naturally occurring in the intestine, to light up red, green and cyan – he then filmed them with a time-lapse laser-scanning confocal microscope. With the visuals of dancing bacteria, like microscopic ballerinas, he played an algorithmically composed composition based on the biosynthetic pathways of the e. coli’s genome. Click here to read the full interview. 

Marcel Breuer's Gorgeous Stillman House Hits the Auction Block This November

On November 19th Wright presents The Stillman House by Marcel Breuer at auction. A masterpiece of modern architecture and art—with murals designed by Alexander Calder and Xanti Schawinsky—this sale represents a rare opportunity to own a house by one of the world’s most important modernists. Estimate: $2,000,000–3,000,000. Click here to learn more. 

Night Gallery Presents "Sunset Strrip" @ The Battery Social Club in San Francisco

Los Angeles based Night Gallery collaborated with the Thomas Moller and Matthew Bernstein, directors of the art program at The Battery Social Club in San Francisco to present a group show called "Sunset Strrip" featuring artists like Derek Boshier, Mira Dancy, Sojourner Truth Parsons and more. "In the 60s the Sunset Strip was dirrty. Dirrty in the trash that covered the avenues and dirrty in the deals that went down between hustlers on the street and those in cars. Dirrty hands shook behind asbestos walls while polyester fabrics brimmed with dirrty sweat and car exhaust. Today Sunset Strip is very different, operating more like a television commercial through which you drive. Massive billboards consume your visual attention leaving little else to be absorbed.The new strrip has moved southeast. It runs through downtown Los Angeles,  beginning at the Fashion District and ending at Dames-N-Games. This is Night Gallery’s neighborhood." Sunset Strrip will be on view until October 11, 2015 at the Battery Social Club, 717 Battery St, San Francisco, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Not Fleshy Enough Performance at Faith Holland's Solo Exhibition @ Transfer in Brooklyn

Faith Holland is young, and shaking things up. Her exhibition at Transfer in Bushwick, ‘Technophillia,’ presents a strong palette that suggests an examination of the modern links between tech and sex. The centerpiece of the exhibition, entitled ‘Visual Orgasms,’ features a series of looped images emblematic of the co modifying of sex. Her ‘Ookie Canvas’ canvas abstractions are composed of ejaculations selected from porn and lenders’ own photographs. Holland’s work resonates easily as it focuses on two of literally everyone’s primary obsessions: technology and sex. Along with Giovanna Olmos, Holland hosted “four performances on the digitally mediated body’ last Friday night. Alexandra Marzella, who was featured in Autre last week, performed an interpretative dance that was both mentally stimulating and sexually provocative. Not only is her work interesting, she is also a good dancer overall, and the performance worked on two levels. Shireen Ahmed presented a play in which she handed a script to two audience members (both guys, as it turned out) in which the lines read as text conversations between a series of pairs of people. The texts were sexual in nature, emblematic of the over-sharing commonly found in private text messages. Monica Mirabelle choreographed a group dance with one man and several women wearing close to nothing and gyrating in unison. The uniformity reminded me of Vanessa Beecroft on a smaller scale. But unlike Beecroft the movement was more of the focus, rather than the bodies. Finally, curator Olmos gave her performance of unique performance art. Olmos gets held upside down and blows bubbles into a glass of milk, and some chewed skittles held a prominent position in the performance. It is nice to see that New York’s art world is not as dead as some people think it to be, and that there is such strong camaraderie and shared ideals amongst a group of very young artists. photographs and text by Adam Lehrer. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Katherine Bernhardt: Fruit Salad @ Venus Over Los Angeles

Venus Over Los Angeles presents, Katherine Bernhardt: Fruit Salad, a large mural covering the exterior walls of the L.A. gallery; a public iteration of her signature wildly colorful still life patterned paintings. Fruit Salad will serve both as Katherine Bernhardt’s first foray into executing a public mural, and as a prelude to her upcoming solo exhibition at Venus Over Manhattan in September. Katherine Bernhardt’s recent series of paintings offer vibrant portraits of objects that exemplify the casually quotidian in acrylic and spray paint. She covers her canvases with a painterly hodgepodge of commodity items such as fruit, cigarettes, junk food, and objects of New York’s day-to-day that float against richly colored, striking backgrounds that themselves seem to push forward and demand the viewer’s attention. The patterns emerge without source material, purely from the artist’s thoughts and imagination, and driven by her experiences. With this in mind, the pieces become part of a larger portrait of the artist herself to be pieced together by the viewer. The often times random assortment of objects relate to one another in a way that is presumably deeply personal to Bernhardt herself. In fine Los Angeles fashion, the exhibition will be on view indefinitely. photographs by Sara Clarken 

Aki Sasamoto Food Rental Performance On The High Line at the Rail Yards In New York

New York-based Japanese artist Aki Sasamoto’s work affects the viewer on many levels. Her creations, sculptures that serve utilitarian and aesthetic purposes, are superb enough to warrant museum attention by themselves. But Sasamoto’s work really is about the performance. Her singularly silly performance style is underlined by real human truths. But aside from all the wisdom and beauty that is found in Sasamoto’s work, it’s also really funny. Perhaps that is why her public performance on the New York City Highline, ‘Food Rental,’ worked so well: though a certain art-centric crowd (including NY Mag art critic Jerry Saltz) was in attendance, there was also what seemed to be a gathering crowd of passing tourists. These people were perhaps not aware that they were witnessing the newest performance by one of the most important contemporary artists in the world, but they certainly laughed a lot. Click here to read the full review. Text and photos by Adam Lehrer

Read Our Conversation With the Last of the Great Actionists, Hermann Nitsch →

Photograph by Luci Lux

Herman Nitsch is considered the last of the great ‘Actionists.’ Together with fellow Austrian artists Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, he developed what would become one of the most violent and “depraved” artistic movements of the 20th century. In reaction to a complacent post-war society, Nitsch aimed for realism…shocking, brutal realism, which he insists is only a mirror to man’s own innate brutality and thirst for violence and defilement. His performances, which are held under the title of The Orgies Mysteries Theater, were so shocking and real, that he has been arrested multiple times and even exiled from his own country. His action performances, or “aktionens,” vary in length – sometimes they last several days – but they always convey a sense of pagan ritual, replete with human and animal sacrifices, copulation, blood drinking and bloodletting, disembowelment, intestines spilling from carcasses, dance, music, and audience participation. In one filmed performance, held in Germany in 1970, you can find Nitsch disemboweling a goat, removing the intestines, forcing participants to drink the blood, placing a female participant on a crucifix and then inserting his penis into her vagina through the entrails. Autre was fortunate enough to have a chat with Hermann Nitsch from his studio in Vienna – our conversation ranged from development of The Orgy Mystery Theater, how the artist embraces his work in the face of possible jail time, the success of his current show in Palermo and what he likes to do for fun. Click here to read the full conversation. 

Paddle 8 Benefit Auction Exhibition Organized by Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner Gallery in New York

Digital auctioneer Paddle 8, an agency that combines the high-octane excitement of an auction house with today’s most advanced technology, offered a dizzying selection of pieces last night at David Zwirner. Offering pieces by some of our favorite artists including Richard Prince, Chris Ofili, Oscar Murillo, Raymond Pettibon, Dustin Yellin, Dave Eggers, Enoc Perez, Suzan Frecon, and many more, A Benefit Auction for 826NYC drew a crowd of both powerful collectors looking to build on their collections as well as art students and lovers just looking for a reason to see a vast array of beautiful work. Click here to see our five favorite pieces from this auction. The exhibition and auction will run until July 31, 2015 at David Zwirner Gallery in New York and you can bid online here. text and photographs by Adam Lehrer