Uprooting Sculpture As We Know It: Read Our Interview With Artist James Capper On Scorching New Paths For An Old Art Form →

James Capper looks a bit like a mad scientist. He is standing in the middle of a park holding a comically large box with buttons and joysticks on it. It’s raining and everything, including Capper, appears to be sinking in to the grass. His hair and clothing are soaked; his expression part exasperation, part intense focus. The box is attached to a Mini-Cooper-sized, spider-like machine that Capper is controlling. The machine raises and lowers it’s legs, taking chunks of grass with it. A small crowd gathers to watch. “I didn’t expect all the rain,” Capper says to no one in particular. Click here to read more. 

Full Moon Group Show At Spinello Projects In Miami's Little River District

“Full Moon” reflects a specific time on the lunar calendar characterized by mystery, magic, and mayhem. The Full Moon is understood, both within vernacular and occult cultures, to be a time of transition, of letting go, and of reaching full potential. A symbolic, purifying gesture is undertaken during this phase of the Lunar Cycle, whereupon old identities, attitudes, and behaviors are shed in favor of more vibrant, more vital possibilities. All ten Spinello Projects represented artists will participate: Farley Aguilar, Kris Knight, Aramis Gutierrez, Sinisa Kukec, Manny Prieres, Santiago Rubino, Naama Tsabar, TYPOE, Agustina Woodgate, and Antonia Wright. Special live performances by past collaborators will include Psychic Youth, Inc. and Franky Cruz. Full Moon will be on view until January 9, 2015 at Spinello Projects, 7221 NW 2nd Ave Miami, FL

Beatriz Monteavaro "Nochebuena" @ Locust Projects In Miami

Locust Projects presents Nochebuena, a new immersive installation by Cuban-born, Miami-based artist Beatriz Monteavaro. The exhibition is centered around memories of family gatherings in the artist’s childhood home, with a focus on the celebrations surrounding Nochebuena (Cuban Christmas Eve). Monteavaro’s work is influenced by the English Punk Rock music scene, science fiction and horror movies, and the fantasy environments of Disney Theme Parks. She has adapted and transformed some of her existing paintings, drawings and sculpture for this installation, which are presented in combination with new sculptural pieces, seasonal decorations, and special lighting. Beatriz Monteavaro "Nochebuena" will be on view until January 9, 2015 at Locust Projects, 3852 North Miami Avenue, Miami Florida

Raymond Pettibon Creates A Limited Edition Tote Bag To Support The New York Public Library

This season, MZ Wallace teamed up with artist Raymond Pettibon to create a tote bag that benefits the New York Public Library. 100% of the proceeds will go toward enhancing the library’s special collections. Click here to purchase. photograph by Brad Elterman

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.