"I wanted to create an existence that is located at the balancing tip of this razor. The very borderline that divides love and violence. To paint joy and harmony with a cast of a shadow; a dawning horror." Click here to read our full review of Kamil Franko's Love & War, which is on view now until November 7, at the New Release Gallery, 60 Mulbery Street.
Last weekend, 303 Gallery presented Jacob Kassay's presentation of new work at R.M. Schindler's Fitzpatrick-Leland House at the peak of Mulholand Drive in Los Angeles. Commissioned in 1936 as a model home by developer Clifton Fitzpatrick, the Fitzpatrick-Leland house underwent numerous modifications by previous owners until being acquired by Russ Leland in 1990, who restored much of its original design. In a site layered with a history of iterations and mixed uses, Kassay presents a group of raw stretchers from his ongoing series of irregularly shaped remnant paintings, which emerge from the residual textiles leftover from the production of other paintings and from the studios of fellow artists. While Schindler's house was originally built solely for display, these works take shape from excess material typically omitted from use and view. These discards are recouped as blueprints for paintings, where each remnant is given a wooden support that follows its discrete profile and contours, reversing the conventional procedure of producing paintings where surface is trimmed to fit its substrate. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
For her solo show at Grimmuseum, Alona Rodeh is presenting the fourth and final episode of her exhibition series Safe and Sound. The first was a large-scale sound and light installation linking club culture and safety regulations in architecture, presented at Künstlerhaus Bethanien; the second presented a variation on the same project at Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. The third episode—currently on view—is a multichannel sound work and a monumental homage to the notorious Israeli "Iron dome” at Petach Tikva Museum of Art. The last episode, at Grimmuseum, is the most abstract of them all. Issues of vandalism, security and law enforcement were present in the artist’s previous works but, since moving to Berlin two summers ago, she has been closely following the local (as well as general) boost in various audiovisual methods of safety and security in the city, and their adaptations into popular and subcultural aesthetics. Taking an informal path, her investigations reached deep into questions of involuntary reactions to origin and skin tone, the nature of being alarmed, the unwritten borders of authorities’ control, effectivity of pro-active self protection, social hierarchy of personal safety and more. Safe and Sound will be on view until October 17, 2015 at Grimmuseum in Berlin.
Ace Gallery hosted a major live performance event, Technicolor Happening, debuting a collaboration between artist Ben Jones and fashion designers Brian Wolk and Claude Morais as well as the world premier of an original composition by David Utzinger entitled Apollonian Gasket, and a Ping-Pong performance by model, actress and table tennis champion Soo Yeon Lee. Ben Jones "A Technicolor Happening" will be on view until October 3, 2015 at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills.
Moran Bondaroff, formerly OHWOW gallery, presents Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was. Named after Kenny Rogers’ hit song about psychedelic experience, van Woert adopts this title to reference the subtext of previous work; work centered around artificial substance and an intoxicated landscape. Beyond hinting at altered states, the title refers to his new works, which assess the human condition from an observant, sober vantage. With this quote in mind, van Woert considered the roots of American civilization: “When the white man came he had the bible and we had the land. They gave us the bible and told us to close our eyes and pray. When we opened our eyes we had the bible and they had the land.” Appropriating cigar store Indian figures, the artist carved historic white faces over the existing Native American caricature visages – murderous faces, such as Andrew Jackson and Buffalo Bill, graft the decorative stereotype. The works also reference the 1985 bombing of the house where communal black liberation group MOVE held their office, through various silkscreens burned with the news headlines. Just Dropped In To See What Condition will be on view until October 10, 2015 at Moran Bondaroff, 937, N. La Cienega, Los Angeles.
BHQFU, New York’s freest art school, presents REAL ERSATZ, an exhibition by Betty Tompkins and her first New York solo show since 2009. In her new body of work Tompkins plays with the idea of the real, the fake and the area in-between. Using both digital prints and paintings of the same image she explores the interaction that these different mediums have with each other. The exhibition will open a conversation between photorealism and technology as well as the experience of medium, scale and color in contemporary art. Recognized for her exploration into sexuality and her controversial ‘Fuck’ paintings of the 1970s, this exhibition marks a new direction in Tompkins work whilst celebrating her as a transgressive icon. Real Ersatz will be on view until October 18, 2015 at FUG, 431 E 6th St, BSMT, New York, NY. photographs by Tenlie Mourning
Seth Bogart is most well known for being the lead singer of the incredible gay punk band Hunx and His Punx (buy every single album here), but Bogart is also a visual genius on top of being a musical genius. His new show, which looks more like the set of Pee Wee's Playhouse if Pee Wee really was a pervert, entitled The Seth Bogart Show, is a must see installation that is on view now at the 356 Mission Gallery in Los Angeles. Pictured above, Bogart poses in his "plastic look" that takes over 2 hours to squeeze into. Photographs by Suzy Poling
MAMA Gallery twists itself into a temporary coil, experiencing an equally unexplainable impulse to spiral briefly into the form of the Cerebral Vortex. This multi- sensory group exhibition features work from eight highly cerebral artists, like Jonathan Bepler, James Franco, Henry Hopper, Galen Pehrson, Luckey Remington, Angeline Rivas, Adam Tullie, and Double Diamond Sun Body. Cerebral Vortex will be on view until October 31, 2015 at MAMA Gallery, 1492 Palmetto Street, Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper and Sara Clarken
German-born artist Bettina WitteVeen, a self-described “Buddhist and pacifist,” believes that war and violence are not the innate genetic traits that we are so often lead to believe that they are. On the contrary, she believes that human violence is an aberration of the human spirit. “I’m a very strong believer that we are not actually hard-wired towards war,” says WitteVeen. “I believe we need to understand war to abolish it and that we can.” Click here to read the full review.
When you head to a newsstand and pick up a copy of Art Forum, you'll find one of Torbjørn Rødland's incredibly haunting images: a naked blonde haired, blue eyed baby staring at you, almost posing for the camera with a frightening, bewildering cognizance. This is what Rødland's images do to you - they make you slip into an awkward feeling of warm wonder. Right now, you can catch a solo show of work by Los Angeles-based, Norwegian photographer Rødland, entitled Venetian Otaku, at Team Gallery's quaint and cozy bungalow in Venice Beach, California. "For this exhibition, Rødland presents six photographs from his oeuvre. His immaculately staged images contain an eerie blend of the sensual and cerebral, of harsh precision and bizarre idiosyncrasy, giving them a mesmerizing unheimlich quality. His unorthodox treatment of frequently recognizable and firmly quotidian subjects – human bodies, food items, household objects – confound familiar cultural material." Torbjørn Rødland "Venetian Otaku" will be on view until November 8, 2015 at the Team Gallery Bungalow, 306 Windward Avenue, Venice, California. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
David Zwirner is pleased to present its first exhibition with Wolfgang Tillmans since he joined the gallery in 2014. On view will be over one hundred recent works installed by the artist, spanning a comprehensive selection of the major themes and processes in his oeuvre. The show also presents the United States debut of Instrument, a new, split-framed video. Bringing together pictures taken across the world of friends and strangers, as well as the natural and built environment, the present exhibition addresses one of the main questions explored in Tillmans’s recent practice: as photography becomes increasingly ubiquitous, and as ever higher resolution yields unprecedented views of our surroundings, how do pictures continue to shape our knowledge of the world? The artist proposes that there is still a space for perplexity, mystery, and emotional relevance. Click here to read our full review of this exhibition. Wolfgang Tillmans "Polymerase Chain Reaction" will be on view until October 24, 2015, at David Zwirner gallery, 525 and 533 West 19th Street in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer
David Zwirner presents an exhibition of recent and new work by German artist Isa Genzken. On view will be two and three dimensional assemblages from the past two years by the artist, who is widely recognized for her significant, pioneering contribution to contemporary sculpture. With a career spanning four decades, Genzken’s works draw upon everyday material culture, including design, consumer goods, the media, architecture, and urban environments. In addition to sculpture and installation art, her prodigious oeuvre includes paintings, collages, drawings, films, and photographs, and frequently incorporates seemingly disparate materials and imagery to create characteristically complex, enigmatic works. Drawing loosely on the legacies of Constructivism and Minimalism and often involving a critical, open dialogue with Modernist architecture, her interest lies in the way in which common aesthetic styles come to illustrate and embody contemporary political and social ideologies. The exhibition will be on view until October 31, 2015 at David Zwirner gallery, 519 West 19th Street, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer
Maccarone gallery presents “Basic Perversions,” an exhibition of new paintings by Alex Hubbard. Comprising eleven large-scale works in pigmented urethane, resin, and fiberglass, this exhibition inaugurates the gallery’s new 50,000 square foot West Coast complex at 300 South Mission Road in the Downtown L.A. Arts District. The exhibition also coincides with the release of the artist's first comprehensive monograph, entitled Eat Your Friends. "Basic Perversions" will be on view from September 19 until December 19, 2015 at Maccarone Gallery, 300 South Mission Road, Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor joined forces today when they walked out of London to support the some 60 million refugees in the world today. The walk started at 10 am from the Royal Academy of Arts where Weiwei's retrospective has just opened to Stratford. The action will be carried out in cities across the world. photograph by Anish Kapoor
Matthew Barney: River of Fundament is Barney's first major solo museum exhibition in Los Angeles. River of Fundament is one of Barney's most challenging and ambitious projects to date, and his largest filmic undertaking since the renowned, five-part Cremaster film cycle. The film, written by Barney in collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, tells a story of regeneration and rebirth inspired by Ancient Evenings (1983), Norman Mailer's sprawling, provocative novel set in ancient Egypt. The presentation at MOCA comprises the epic length, operatic film and approximately 85 works inspired by or made in conjunction with the film, including large-scale sculptures weighing up to 25 tons, drawings, and storyboards. The exhibition also includes Barney's Water Castings, a new group of sculptures on view for the first time. Overall, the works in the exhibition intertwine history and mythology with the contemplation of fundamental human drives—such as sex, violence, and power—that have continuously propelled civilizations. Matthew Barney "River of Fundament" will be on view until January 18, 2016 at MOCA, 52 N Central Ave, Los Angeles
Autre was invited to the preview of the amazing new Broad Museum in Los Angeles designed by Diller Scofidio and Renfro. Housed in a structure enveloped in a coral reef-like outer shell, the Broad's immersive art collection sits in a bath of diffused light as you take a journey through multiple artistic movements - from California conceptualism to pop art to some of the finest contemporary artists of the last decade. After five years of intensive of construction, the Broad is a formidable force not only in the artistic and cultural atmosphere of Los Angeles – it also sets a bar for museum institutions worldwide. The Broad is set to open on September 20, 2015. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Gagosian Beverly Hills presents an exhibition of sculptures and paintings by Urs Fischer. Constantly searching for new sculptural solutions, Fischer has an uncanny ability to envisage and produce objects undergoing psychic transformation in a bewildering range of materials. As its title suggests, this exhibition is conceived around fully functional fountains, “active sculptures” that transform the galleries into humid and energized places through which viewers can wander, as if in a town square. The lumpen fountains are cast in bronze from hand-built clay models; the rims of the water basins are powder-coated white, while the base is left as raw roseate metal. In one gallery, a sort of roughly formed, almost naturalistic blowhole spouts water, splashing merrily and drowning out all other sound; in the other, water hisses from a misting ball, and spills down over two tiered basins. A third fountain, also in cast bronze and delicately powder-coated in parts, is a human skeleton arched across a chair over which a draped garden hose gently flows—the latest in Fischer's lexicon of darkly humorous vanitas. Urs Fischer "Fountains" will be on view until October 17, 2015 at Gagosian Beverly Hills.
Lisa Yuskavage’s select showcase of “trouble causing” oil paintings opened this past week at Brandeis University’s The Rose Gallery. Yuskavage noted that “the first thing I do is paint the eyes looking at you,” a technique that encapsulates the intensely surrealistic, animated life in her paintings. Unabashedly female, and verging erotic, Yuskavage’s works certainly speak for themselves. Lisa Yuskavage "The Brood" can also be found as a monograph (purchase here) – the exhibition will be on view until December 13, 2015 the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts. photographs by Tenlie Mourning
LAXArts presents an exhibition of work by Melanie Schiff (a series of photographs entitled Pains), Zoe Crosher (from her LA-Like: Prospecting Palm Fronds series), a sculpture installation of Vessels by Galia Linn and a modular wall sculpture by Mark Hagan. These exhibitions will be on view until October 24 at LAXArt, 7000 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, C. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Night Gallery presents present its first exhibition “In Reality” with LA based artist Yuh-Shioh Wong. Through her intrinsic understanding of the natural world, Wong’s paintings communicate the inherent structure of things- through shape, color, and lineand how they connect to one another and to human experience. Yuh-Shioh Wong "In Reality" will be on view until October 12 at Night Gallery, 2276 E. 16th Street, Los Angeles.
