Billy Al Bengston's Motorcycle Paintings Exhibition @ Venus Over Manhattan in New York

Venus Over Manhattan gallery is exhibiting both old and new works by legendary L.A. artist Billy Al Bengston. The show features 12 paintings from the “B.S.A Motorcycle” series from the 60s, where various motorcycle parts are isolated and presented on the canvas against abstract backgrounds. These paintings made Bengston a voice to be reckoned with in the Pop Art movement and appeared in the 1974 American Pop Art exhibition at the Whitney. Also included in the exhibition is the original motorcycle that inspired the series. Bengston’s new works that are on display feature his signature Chrevron motif in piercing blue tones. In true Pop Art manner, he originally painted the Chevron logo with lacquered spray paints, being one of the first artists to trade in the traditional oil on canvas back in the 60s. In his new pieces, however, Bengston comes full circle by using acrylic on canvas and leaving the glossy Pop Art behind for a softer finish.  The exhibition will be on view until November 2, 2016 at Venus Over Manhattan in New York. text and photographs by Helena Calmfors

Tamara Santibañez "Landscapes" @ Slow Culture Gallery In Los Angeles

Slow Culture presents artist Tamara Santibañez's first Los Angeles solo exhibition, “Landscapes.” As a multimedia artist and well-respected resident amongst many at Saved Tattoo New York. Tamara embodies more than meets the eye from the canvas of her on clients to the canvas of her paintings. Known for representations of objects such as handcuffs, whips, chains and leather, she moves to educate her audience in the scope of BDSM culture, that these objects and materials signify more than subversive notoriety or sexual innuendo. Tamara’s diverse forms of art and authorship in totality have created social mindfulness and aim to defeat ignorance in the eyes of fear and judgement. Landscapes will be on view until October 22, 2016 at Slow Culture in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Private Opening Of The "Human Condition" Group Show Curated by John Wolf At A Former Hospital in Los Angeles

Human Condition is an immersive, site-specific exhibition that features the work of sixty emerging and established artists in a uniquely challenging space: a former hospital in West Adams, previously known as the Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center. Curated and produced by the Los Angeles-based art advisor John Wolf, Human Condition invites artists to re-contextualize the hospital’s functional history—over 40,000 square feet of it—as a venue to explore what it means to be human. Human Condition is a unique opportunity to experience artwork outside the confines of a typical art space. In using the skeletal remains of the hospital and its discarded medical supplies, artists and viewers are encouraged to explore the notion of what we leave behind—from objects to human history. Human Condition opens to the public on October 1, 2016 and runs through November 30, 2016. Address: 2231 S Western Ave. Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

An Exclusive Preview Of The Unseen Photo Fair in Amsterdam

Unseen is an annual international photography fair and festival based in Amsterdam, founded in 2012 by Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, office for cultural business development Platform A, and creative agency Vandejong. Welcoming 53 galleries from across the globe, Unseen focuses on new photography, highlighting the most recent developments by presenting emerging talent and new work by established artists. As a fair, Unseen brings together leading figures in the industry with artists, curators, collectors and photography enthusiasts, creating an exchange of dialogue, artistic expression and ideas. Complementing the fair, on-site at the historic Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, is a three-day speakers programme jam-packed with lectures and debates at the Unseen Living Room, as well as a celebration of the printed world of photobooks at the Unseen Book Market. The Unseen Photo Fair will run from September 23 to September 25, Herengracht 213, 1016 BG Amsterdam, Netherlands. photographs by Sara Kaufman

Tom Sachs "Space Program: Europa" @ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts In San Francisco

Tom Sachs and his team of astronauts set their sights on the next frontier of space exploration in Space Program: Europa. Targeting Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, this expansive sculpture exhibition offers an unprecedented view into Sachs’ extraordinary artistic output and advances his quest to find extraterrestrial life with bricolaged sculptures. The exhibition will fill YBCA with everything his astronauts need to successfully complete their voyage—including the Mobile Quarantine Facility, Mission Control, the Apollo-eraLanding Exploration Module (LEM), and special equipment for conducting scientific experiments—immersing the audience in a universe of sculpture occupying the entire downstairs galleries in addition to YBCA’s public spaces. Sachs has also created a new site-specific installation, Logjam CaféLogjam Café will be open to the public as a neighborhood coffee shop, occasional bar, and OCD rehab center, where visitors can experience firsthand the artist’s obsession with the tools of his craft. Space Program: Europa will be on view until January 17, 2016 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. photographs by Annabel Graham

Daniel Arsham "Circa 2345" @ Galerie Perrotin in New York

Galerie Perrotin presents Daniel Arsham’s first solo show with the gallery in New York. The exhibition will feature sculptural pieces, breakthrough use of color as well as a large scale installation. Daniel Arsham’s sculptural works are poetic constructions made up of juxtapositions of form and material: a 16mm film projector rendered in ash and hydrostone, or a 20th century iconic guitar, formed out of white glacial rock dust, its crumbling areas integral to its haunting beauty. Transforming compressed elemental materials such as stone, crystal and ash into carefully chosen important cultural artifacts, Arsham offers a brief glimpse into our current culture and its signifiers, as if seen far off into the future. Daniel Arsham "Circa 2345" will be on view until October 22, 2016 at Galerie Perrotin in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Abraham Cruzvillegas "Autoconcanción" @ Regen Projects In Los Angeles

Regen Projects presents an exhibition of new sculptures by Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas. Cruzvillegas' practice deals with history and the construction of the self in reference to economic, social, political, and historical conditions. Employing various means to create open-ended strategies of production and reception, Cruzvillegas gives objects a new life and context, generating shifts in meaning and interpretation, meanwhile demonstrating how concepts and relationships can be constantly inverted and transformed. He explores economies of the makeshift, hand-made, and the recycled, and often incorporates site and elements of a particular location within the context of a work, exhibition, or project, creating a connection between Mexico City and the location in which the artist is working. His practice examines the way in which one constructs or reconstructs histories from information, illustrating how ideas are often a dialogic conflation of many people, places, and times. Improvisation and assemblage are core aspects of his practice, which is informed by, and connected to ideas of survival economics, labor economies, and the ready-made. Abraham Cruzvillegas "Autoconcanción" will be on view until October 22, 2016 at Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard Los Angeles, CA

Jordan Nickel AKA POSE At The Opening Of His Solo Exhibition "Frankly" At The New Library Street Collective Gallery In Los Angeles

Detroit-based gallery Library Street Collective opens a new LA outpost with a solo exhibition from artist Jordan Nickel, AKA POSE. The exhibition, entitled Frankly, will be on view until October 11, 2016.  asphotograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Jean-Pascal Flavien and Mika Tajima Exhibition @ Kayne Griffin Corcoran Gallery In Los Angeles

Kayne Griffin Corcoran presents a two person exhibition featuring Jean-Pascal Flavien and Mika Tajima. While making very different work, both artists investigate social relationships to built environments and attempt to expose the constructed nature of these designed systems. The artists postulate in various forms such as architectural interventions or deconstructions of design objects, all in relation to the human subject. This exhibition is centered around spaces of possibility that exceed ideological and functional determination – beyond structures that constrain social behavior and ways of living. This is realized in hypothetical, metaphorical, and physical manifestations by both artists. Public and private structures are tested by each artist in a search for potential and failure. The exhibition will be on view until October 29, 2016 at Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles.

Brian Kokoska "Trauma Sauna" Featuring Chelsea Culprit, Erik Frydenborg, and Ben Stone @ Ashes on Ashes in Los Angeles

Trauma Sauna presents a new series of paintings by Brian Kokoska within an installation of sculptures by Chelsea Culprit, Erik Frydenborg, and Ben Stone. Kokoska’s paintings, built from layers of drawing and color blocking, deny any illusion of depth and instead focus on an almost-flat rendering of imaginative scenes inhabited by androgynous figures, mystical creatures and frolicking devils. Crescent moons, stars, bones, genitals, flora and fauna are among the motifs that obsessively reappear, often anthropomorphized and evoking anxieties of sex, ecstasy and death. Accompanied by their morbidly playful and poetic titles, Kokoska’s paintings are gestural interpretations toward a fleeting experience or unknown place that is intentionally left murky and resistant to any one definitive perception by viewers. Trauma Sauna will be on view until October 22, 2016 at Ashes On Ashes Gallery, 2404 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

"More Than A Muse" Group Show Featuring Larry Clark, Sandy Kim, Ryan Mcginley, and Dash Snow @ 65 Ludlow in New York

“More Than A Muse” aims to explore those relationships between artist and subject that exceed creative companionship and are based on inextricable, emotional ties. These relationships are those of parents, lovers, siblings and friends- those who have a visceral and often complex connection to the artist. The photographs then are more than standard depictions of beauty or intrigue but unfiltered glimpses into the intimate lives of two beings through the eyes of someone emotionally invested. The subjects are shown in their rawest form as they are photographed intuitively by the artist. This show is unique in that both photographer and muse will be recognized as artists. This is to further show the muse as more than simply the vision. They are the vehicles by which it comes to life. The symbiotic relationship is the basis of the work; it would not exist without the other. More Than A Muse will be on view until September 18 at 65 Ludlow in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

The Weeping Line Group Show Presented by Alter Space @ Four Six One Nine in Los Angeles

Alter Space presents The Weeping Line, a three-person exhibition featuring San Francisco-based Koak, Los Angeles-based Mattea Perrotta and Chicago-based Mindy Rose Schwartz. The Weeping Line will be on view until October 8 at Alter Space at Four Six One Nine 4619 W Washington Blvd Los Angeles.

An Exclusive Sneak Preview Of Doug Aitken's First North American Survey "Electric Earth" @ MOCA Los Angeles

Doug Aitken "Electric Earth" is the artist's first North American survey. From his breakthrough installation Diamond Sea (1997) to his most recent event-based work Black Mirror (2011), the exhibition unfolds around the major moving-image installations that articulate his thematic interest in environmental and post-industrial decay, urban abandonment, and the exhaustion of linear time. Conceptualized as an entropic landscape suspended between city, broadcasting machine, and labyrinth, the exhibition is punctuated by the signs, sculptures, photographic images, and altered furniture—all unbound from vernacular language and culture—that Aitken has conceived over the years. The exhibition will also include Aitken’s less exhibited collages and drawings, as well as his work with architecture, printed matter, artist’s books, and graphic design. The exhibition’s logic incorporates that of the nomadic cultural incubator, cross-continental happening and moving earthwork Station to Station (2013), which, like so many of Aitken’s works, embraces a collaborative spirit across disciplines and beyond walls to reimagine the nature of what a work of art can be and of what an art experience can achieve. Doug Aitken "Electric Earth" will open on September 10 and run until January 15 at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper