Devonté Hynes and Ryan McNamara “Dimensions” Performance at the Pérez Art Museum Miami

Last week, during Art Basel Miami, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) commissioned a collaborative performance between musician Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange) and artist Ryan McNamara. The performance on PAMM’s terrace included an original multi-part composition by Hynes, an internationally-acclaimed musician and producer, and sculptural elements and choreography by McNamara, a celebrated performance artist. Presented within the global context of Miami Art Week, the performance was an allegory of Miami’s history as a place of fantasy and fragmentation. photographs by Scout MacEachron

8 EZ Steps by Gusmano Cesaretti at These Days in Downtown Los Angeles

"Eight pinups in a portfolio laced with perfume. Wallet-sized: a barber's New Year's gift slipped into the hands of loyal customers. The secret currencies of men in suits. The kid searches his father's jacket pocket for the prize. Any thumbnail memento promises to make real his world of fantasy. He smells the perfume. In his studio, an artist photographs a friend. The photographs are transferred to screen prints. Her body is abstracted in close-up, her figure fractured by halftone dots. Glossiness is displaced by the rough grain of uncoated paper. A fuzzy sensation becomes direct. The coy touch gets confrontational. Gratification becomes something less certain. As the kid finds pleasure in obscenity, the artist finds it in disorientation and dissonance. They agree on the urge. Peeking and seeing are two different acts, but no one should refuse the right to look. Satisfaction only takes a few steps." A poem by Sam Sweet. 

These never-before-displayed photographs by Italian-born Los Angeles photographer Gusmano Cesaretti represent a departure from the gritty, black-and-white documentary pictures and portraits of Los Angeles subcultures for which he is mainly known. By contrast, this 1979 series delves into the artist’s experiments in abstraction and eroticism. Cesaretti took a progressive series of eight tightly cropped black & white photographs of a woman shaving her pubic hair. He made traditional silver gelatin prints which were then turned into high contrast half tones eliminating any grey scale from the images and rendering them purely in black and white. He furthered the mutation by running the halftones through a mid-70s photocopy machine and adding only the color red or green to the images. The result was a combination of pop art and abstraction, producing a voyeuristic view of an intimate, yet anonymous, grooming ritual. Gusmano Cesaretti "8 EZ Steps" will be on view until January 17, 2016 at These Days in Los Angeles. You can also purchase a monograph of the works here. 

 

All Or Nothing: Read Our Candid In-Depth Conversation With Writer, Artist, Former Lover and Muse of Robert Mapplethorpe, and Cultural Survivalist Jack Walls →

When Ryan McGinley, Dash Snow, and Dan Colen formulated a new downtown NYC rebel art scene in the late ‘90s, they all uniformly cited one artist as a massive influence: Jack Walls. The trio was hell bent on having Walls become a mentor of sorts to them, perhaps even a father figure, and eventually Walls relented. Through the process, an entirely new generation of art weirdoes found themselves interested in the work of Jack Walls. He was the subject of a solo exhibit at RARE this past summer, while another exhibition Paintings, Et Cetera opened up at Basilica in Hudson. Though Walls claims to have no interest in the “antiquated system” that is the art world, the art world is surely interested in him. Click here to read our in-depth conversation with Jack Walls here. 

A Private Walk Through Of The Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) On The Occasion of Art Basel 2015

On the occasion of Art Basel Miami 2015, the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) gave the media a private glance at some of their current exhibitions and special projects. Highlights from the tour include a large mid-career retrospective by artist Nari Ward, which includes mixed-media collages, photography, assemblage, sculpture, interactive works, video, and architectural installations. Other highlights include Bik Van der Pol's aviary, entitled Speechless, which houses five parrots that are taught to mimic phrases from T.S. Elliot’s seminal 1922 poem, “The Waste Land,” comparing landscape devastated by war to the ecological devastation of today. Nari Ward: Sun Splashed will be on view until February 21, 2016 at Perez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd. photographs by Scout MacEachron

Getting Afreaky: Check Out Our Interview and Studio Tour Of The Mystical Creative Force of Nature That Is The Haas Brothers →

The Haas brothers seem like mystical ambassadors from the future. However, they are not here to portend of doom and gloom, like the current headlines may lead you to predict. Indeed, the future looks pretty bright according to Nikolai and Simon Haas – fraternal twins who make high-end sculptural objects that only the very lucky can afford, but are almost talismanic in their complexity and humorous in their intentional simplicity. The materials the brothers use mimic natural and rare phenomena in nature. This gives their work a sexual energy that takes phallic and vaginal forms, replete with folds and shafts and rounded curves that could make the prudish contingent quite sensitive. Put the work together and it looks like a combination of Maurice Sendak's menagerie of Wild Things and Dr. Seuss on too many tabs of acid. Click here to read the interview and see more pictures. 

Linda McCartney and Mary McCartney: Mother Daughter Opening @ Gagosian Gallery in New York

Exhibited together for the first time, the photographs of the late Linda McCartney and her daughter Mary explore the connective tissue of family, common experience, and a love of the photographic medium. Their images are highly instinctual, rather than analytical; as well they reveal a great ability to capture fleeting moments of intimacy. Spanning three decades, works by the photographers are organized to reveal the almost symbiotic harmony between them. The exhibition is a treasury of moments derived from relaxed interactions with family, a dazzling array of celebrities—Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Kate Moss, Rihanna—and everyday life. Evident is a shared sensibility between mother and daughter in how they establish an emotional rapport with their subjects and exact a sense of their true selves. Rather than distinguishing between works by Linda or Mary, the installation proposes their vision of the world as one. Linda McCartney and Mary McCartney: Mother Daughter will be on view until December 19, 2015 at Gagosian Gallery, 976 Madison Avenue, New York. photographs by J Grassi (Patrick McMullen Company)

Nick Zinner "601 Photographs" @ Lethal Amounts In Los Angeles

Nick Zinner, guitarist for New York based band Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the hardcore band Head Wound City, is currently exhibiting his photographic work in the Los Angeles gallery Lethal Amounts. “601 Photographs” consists of 601 images taken over the course of 15+ years on and off tours with various musical projects over 6 continents. Voyeuristic and documentarian at the same time, the images capture a wide spectrum of moments; from crowd shots and hotel beds, to intimate portraits and situational snapshots. “601 Photographs“ is a continuation of large-scale exhibitions that Nick has previously shown in New York City, Mexico City, San Francisco, and Tokyo. "601 Photographs" is on view now at Lethal Amounts, 1226 W. 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Lucia Ribisi

Anja Salonen "Future Bodies" @ As It Stands Gallery In Los Angeles

Anja Salonen's Future Bodies questions the limits of painting in the virtual age. While aware of their historical context, Salonen's paintings are heavily reliant on a post-analogue visual language, and explore the interaction between body and virtual. Salonen's “Avatars,” digital personas which are uniform, ambiguous, androgynous, and intangible, interrogate identity in the internet era, where the distinctions between self and mask, real and virtual, become increasingly nebulous. In control V, referencing the work of Edouard Manet, Salonen brings attention to the ways in which female bodies continue to be appropriated, fractured, revised, distorted, censored, and objectified in the digital era. Alluding to traditions of painting in which women’s bodies were used by male artists as blank slates on which to further visual representation, Salonen calls upon the viewer to question what has changed and what has remained invariably the same in depictions of women and female sexuality in the 21st century. Future Bodies is on view now at As It Stands Gallery, 2601 Pasadena Ave, Los Angeles.

Norman Reedus Photography Exhibition @ Voila! Gallery in Los Angeles

Norman Reedus is showing his photographs at Voila! Gallery in Los Angeles. The images consist of dark captures of Reedus' macabre world and dark sense of humor - obviously inspired by his role in the Walking Dead. Using costars and Russian prostitutes as models, the photographs have an almost tableu vivant quality reminiscent of Joel Peter Witkin.  The exhibition will be on view until December 31, 2015 at Voila! Gallery in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE