Ivar Wigan "The Gods" Opening @ Little Big Man Gallery In Los Angeles

Scottish Photographer, Ivar Wigan, presents a series of images taken around the street culture associated with the urban music scene of the American South. Captured on the urban fringes of multiple cities—predominately from Miami, Atlanta and New Orleans—the images are a defiant celebration of a marginalized and often demonized culture, here raised to iconographic status and suffused with a sense of admiration and empathy. The Gods will be on view until June 19, 2016 at Little Big Man Gallery, 1427 E. 4th Street

Our 10 Favorite Magical Objects From The Enigmatic Mind of Architect and Designer François Dallegret →

Design is important because it reinvigorates our everyday objects with new life. A good designer does not just make a bed; he makes a bed into a crucifix made out of sot polyurethane. A good architect does not just redesign a basement; he turns the basement into a drugstore/nightclub. We are speaking of the multi-talented architect and artist François Dallegret. The French-born, Montreal-based designer studied architecture at the famous Beaux-Arts in Paris before he tired of their strict, conformist imaginations of what spaces and objects might look like. Since the 60s, Dallegret has been experimenting with futuristic and imaginative concepts and materials, creating multifunctional furniture, strange machines, walking cakes, jumping spheres, electrical and inflated garments, and more. On the occasion of the architect's latest exhibition in Los Angeles, here are ten of his most whimsical and fantastic creations. Click here to read more. 

Exclusive Preview Of "Kienholz: Five Car Stud" @ Fondazione Prada in Milan

Milan’s Fondazione Prada presents “Kienholz: Five Car Stud”. The exhibition brings together a selection of artworks by Edward Kienholz and his wife Nancy Reddin Kienholz, including the well known installation that gives the show its title. A self-taught artist from Washington State, Edward Kienholz’s work was described by Germano Celant as “making no attempt to sublimate the meanness and tragedy of life, its condition of loneliness and triviality, but on the contrary using them as a way of highlighting a low and popular universe in which the wasted and the dirty, the depraved and the filthy, represented a new and surprising beauty”. The exhibition features numerous installations and tableaux created by the couple between the early late fifties and the nineties, often directly representing death, violence, war and various kinds of social injustices. Looking at them makes the viewer feel uncomfortable and powerless but, at the same time, turns him into a participating witness as the urge to meticulously explore the details take over: Voyeurism and the power of crude beauty win over the common sense of morality. The main installation, “Five Car Stud”, catapults the viewer into a nightmarish situation, plunging him into a dimension of extreme violence. It recreates a dark, isolated environment, illuminated merely by the headlights of four cars and a pick-up truck,  at the center of which lies an African–American man, surrounded by five white men wearing Halloween masks. The aggressors grab his arms and legs while one of them prepares to castrate him. A woman is forced to watch, shocked and powerless, and a frightened little boy witnesses the scene from the backseat of his father’s car. This work was defined by Kienholz as the representation of “The Burden of Being American”. The exhibition will be on view until December 31 2016 at Fondazione Prada, Largo Isarco 2, Mila. Text and photographs by Sara Kaufman

Anish Kapoor Stainless Steel Sculptures @ Lisson Gallery in Milan

For his first exhibition in Milan’s Lisson Gallery, Anish Kapoor presents a new series of fourteen steel sculptures, stainless and polished, twisted through an unspecified number of degrees. These small scale twists - thirty centimeters by height - are shown for the first time as an entire group, placed together in a room, interacting with one another and with the public by creating fluid reflections, which disrupt and dismantle any stable imagery: their original pre-twisted form becomes impossible to detect and the space around them turns into a surreal mixture of reality and reflection, continuously changing according to one’s vision and perspective . The artist has referred to similar sculptures as “non – objects”, losing themselves almost completely because of their unidentifiable geometry and their highly reflective material. One larger twist (100 cm) is placed outside on the terrace. Just like in some of his best –known works such as the Cloud Gate in Chicago’s and the C-Curve at the Chateau De Versailles, Anish Kapoor once again explores the idea of the curve. In this particular case his twisted forms somehow provide an optical vision of the universe by warping the light on its way through space and tilting our intuition to one side, presenting to the viewer a distorted vision of reality which is totally subjective to his point of view. The exhibition will be on view until July 22nd at Lisson Gallery Milan (via Zenale 3, Milan). text and photographs by Sarah Kaufman

Read Our Interview With Iconic Fashion Designer and Artist Christophe Coppens On Leaving The Fashion World Behind For Art →

One might expect someone with the credentials of Christophe Coppens – internationally acclaimed avant garde fashion designer, official milliner for the Belgian Royal Family, former theatre actor and director, burgeoning artist – to be radically unapproachable. Instead, Coppens shakes your hand warmly, orders iced tea at an outdoor café, talks about his love for cheap avocado toast and the 20s style bungalows in Silverlake. Perhaps this is why Coppens jumped the brutal, fast-paced, capitalist boat of the fashion industry circuit five years ago, abandoning his label to pursue art. Click here to read more. 

Carsten Höller "Doubt" @ Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan

In his works, Carsten Höller investigates the nature of human experience. His settings dismantle not only the traditional concept of art work but also the very idea of experiencing an exhibition or a museum. Visitors are put into a condition of disorientation and confusion, which turns out to be an incredibly productive state of mind. The loss of every certainty is precisely the condition which inspired this particular exhibition: “Doubt”. The “Doubt” starts from the very beginning, when the visitor is asked to choose between two opposite directions (“Y”), both of them leading into long pitch black corridors (“Decision Corridors”). At this point, after having walked through complete darkness for several minutes, the viewer finds himself in the perfect physical and mental condition to access the main room, where all sort of interactive works are placed, from flying machines to carousels, video art and interactive Aquariums, giving the surreal idea of an amusement park. Höller named it “Radical Entertainment”, aiming to reflect both on art as a form of entertainment as well as on fun itself being a dominant aspect in our lives. From the main room once again two different corridors lead to another space, where the exhibition ends with one last work, “Two roaming beds”, which recreates the concept of doubt and uncertainty experimented in the very first part. Carsten Höller "Doubt" will be on view until July 31, 2016 at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Via Chiese 2, 20126 Milano. text and photographs by Sara Kaufman

Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection @ The Whitney Museum of American Art In New York

Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection offers new perspectives on one of art’s oldest genres. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s holdings, the more than two hundred works in the exhibition show changing approaches to portraiture from the early 1900s until today. Bringing iconic works together with lesser-known examples and recent acquisitions in a range of mediums, the exhibition unfolds in eleven thematic sections on the sixth and seventh floors. Some of these groupings concentrate on focused periods of time, while others span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to forge links between the past and the present. This sense of connection is one of portraiture’s most important aims, whether memorializing famous individuals long gone or calling to mind loved ones near at hand. Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection will be on view until February 12, 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York

Elmgreen and Dragset "Van Gogh's Ear" @ Rockafeller Center in New York

This spring, artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset will transform the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center with a large-scale new work. Van Gogh’s Ear is a sculpture, which takes the form of a swimming pool sitting upright. On view until June 3, 2016 at 5th Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets. photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Dodging a Bullet: Read Jeffrey Deitch's Words On Artist Tom Sachs On The Occasion of His Solo Exhibition →

“How did these get here!?” I was shocked to see a pile of stickers on my gallery reception desk in the Spring of 1996 with the outrageously provocative phrase “Nuke the Swiss” printed above a red cross. “They were left there by that funny guy who comes in here all the time,” my staff explained. A few weeks later, I was there when the culprit walked in, smirking as he handed me a fresh stack of Nuke the Swiss stickers. His engaging manner somehow neutralized the egregious content of his free art. This was my first introduction to Tom Sachs, who twenty years later, still visits during his walks around the neighborhood, and who continues to perfect his fusion of radical conceptual performance, Modernist idealism, bricolage and provocation. Click here to read more. 

Nataal Presents "New African Photography" Group Show At Red Hook Labs in Brooklyn

Nataal presents the group show New African Photography in association with Red Hook Labs. The exhibition features six artists - Atong Atem (Sudan/Australia), Delphine Diaw Diallo (Senegal/France/US), Kristin-Lee Moolman (South Africa), Lakin Ogunbanwo (Nigeria), Namsa Leuba (Guinea/Switzerland) and Owise Abuzaid (Egypt). The work of these selected photographers, both emerging and internationally recognized, express the diversity of narratives informing Africa’s rich visual language today. Encompassing documentary, fashion and portrait photography, the exhibition will explore multiple themes that challenge accepted notions of belonging and identity, the everyday and the fantastical; the past and the future; the public and the private. New African Photography will be on view until May 15, 2016 at Red Hook Labs, 133-135 Imlay St, Brooklyn, New York. photographs by Scout Maceachron. 

Last Chance To Sign Up To Have Your London Airbnb Transformed by Yayoi Kusama

Tate Modern and Airbnb are partnering with world-renowned artist Yayoi Kusama, to transform an Airbnb listing into a living piece of art…and you could be part of it. Airbnb hosts with a private room or entire home located in the Greater London area will have a chance to invite the work of Yayoi Kusama herself into their home, and see their spare bedroom transform into an art installation that will surprise, delight and inspire their guests. This once-in-a-lifetime prize also includes tickets for the winner and a friend to the Tate Modern extension opening party on 16 June 2016. Click here to enter. 

Allen Jones "A Retrospective" @ Michael Werner Gallery in New York

Michael Werner Gallery in New York presents an historical survey exhibition of works by Allen Jones. Organized by Sir Norman Rosenthal, the exhibition includes paintings and sculptures from the 1960s to the present day and is the first comprehensive showing in New York of this celebrated and controversial British artist. Allen Jones "A Retrospective" will be on view until June 4, 2016 at Michael Werner Gallery, 4 East 77th St, New York. 

Jean-Michel Basquiat "Words Are All We Have" @ Nahmad Contemporary In New York

Nahmad Contemporary presents its first exhibition dedicated solely to Jean-Michel Basquiat, organized by guest curator and preeminent Basquiat scholar Dr. Dieter Buchhart. Centering on the critical function of language in the work of Basquiat, this comprehensive exhibition will illuminate the artist’s pioneering incorporation of literary and musical elements into his work. Most often identified with both the formal and stylistic aspects of Neo-Expressionism, Basquiat’s linguistically complex paintings place him within the trajectory of the Beat Generation writers and the evolution of jazz and hip-hop. Jean-Michel Basquiat "Words Are All We Have" will be on view until June 11, 2016 at Nahmad Contemporary, 980 Madison Avenue