"Concrete Island" Group Exhibition @ Venus Los Angeles

"Welcome to Concrete Island: an overlooked city within a city, an entropical paradise where leisure is lean. Careen off the highway and into the cushion of your airbag to arrive at this bleak no man’s land, where you’ll be marooned in plain sight. No one will hear your cries against the tide of commuter traffic lapping at the shores of our deserted island, nestled between two lanes of howling interstate. This vestigial location is your vacation destination, boasting all the sights and specificities of any cultural petri dish. Come and brave this new world. This here and now – this moment – could last forever." Concrete Island, the first curatorial effort of Aaron Moulton, brings together over thirty mostly LA-based artists who have worked around the theme of JG Ballard's book Concrete Island (1974). Ballard’s tale reinterprets the contemporary city as a savage ecosystem where survival is an avant-garde condition. The protagonist is thrown from his urban reality to be marooned on a desert island in the middle of the city. The character is forced to endure a Robinson Crusoe-esque journey emulating humankind’s will to survive in the face of adversity. Concrete Island will be on view until May 13, 2017 at Venus Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

A Preview Of The 2017 Whitney Biennial @ The Whitney Museum Of American Art In New York

The 2017 Whitney Biennial, the seventy-eighth installment of the longest-running survey of American art, arrives at a time rife with racial tensions, economic inequities, and polarizing politics. Throughout the exhibition, artists challenge us to consider how these realities affect our senses of self and community. The Biennial features sixty-three individuals and collectives whose work takes a wide variety of forms, from painting and installation to activism and video-game design. The 2017 Whitney Biennial will be on view from March 17 to June 11, 2017 at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Highlights From "The 14th Factory," A 3-Acre Art Installation by Hong Kong-Based Artist Simon Birch in Los Angeles

The 14th Factory is a monumental, multiple-media art installation that will transform an empty industrial warehouse near downtown Los Angeles into a mythic universe created collaboratively through video, installation, sculpture, sound, paintings, and live performance. The 14th Factory weaves together elements of popular culture–science fiction, punk music, graphic novels, and film–with critical re-examinations of social and historical narratives, especially interconnections between East and West. Conceived by Hong Kong-based British artist Simon Birch, the vision of The 14th Factory is to create a new, independent paradigm for socially-engaged art, a kind of guerilla action where art occupies and re-energizes underutilized or even derelict urban spaces and gifts them back to the community in the form of a transformative experience. Click here to learn more about the project and find visiting times. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

What I Loved: Selected Works from the ‘90s @ Regen Projects In Los Angeles

Regen Projects presents a group exhibition entitled What I Loved: Selected Works from the ‘90s. The 1990s marked a pivotal moment in American history and contemporary art. It was a time of economic recession, the first Gulf War, the Los Angeles riots, 24-hour news, the advent of the Internet and the dot-com bubble, and the fall of Communism. Regen Projects, which opened in 1989, developed alongside and in response to these events and established a roster of artists whose work expressed the zeitgeist of the times. What I Loved takes its name from Siri Hustvedt’s 2003 novel, which looks back at the constellation of relationships and events in the New York art world circa 1975 to 2000 through the eyes of an art historian and critic. Similarly, this exhibition revisits these formative years and brings together a group of artists who came of age during this time, and whose work became part of the critical discourse for addressing issues of race, gender, sexuality, identity politics, globalization, and the AIDS crisis, among others. Artists featured in the exhibition include Matthew Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rachel Harrison, Mike Kelley, Toba Khedoori, Karen Kilimnik, Byron Kim, Liz Larner, Glenn Ligon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Marilyn Minter, Catherine Opie, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, Jack Pierson, Lari Pittman, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Gary Simmons, Wolfgang Tillmans, Kara Walker, Gillian Wearing, Lawrence Weiner, Sue Williams, and Andrea Zittel. What I Loved: Selected Works from the ‘90s will be on view until April 13, 2017 at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

A Sneak Preview Of Kerry James Marshall's 35-Year Retrospective "Mastry" @ MoCA In Los Angeles

MOCA presents a 35-year retrospective of painter Kerry James Marshall, co-organized by the MCA Chicago, MOCA, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art under the leadership of MOCA’s Chief Curator Helen Molesworth. Marshall’s figurative paintings have been joyful in their consistent portrayal of African Americans. The now nearly 600 year history of painting contains remarkably few African American painters and even fewer representations of black people. Marshall, a child of the civil rights era, set out to redress this absence. “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters,” Marshall has said, “and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility. You can’t move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it. That determined a lot of where my work was going to go…” Kerry James Marshall "Mastry" will be on view from March 12 to July 3, 2017 at MoCA in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Ryan McGinley "Early" @ Team Gallery In New York

Team Gallery presents a show of early work by Ryan McGinley. The photographs on view in this exhibition were made by Ryan McGinley in New York City from 1999 to 2003, a period defined by hopelessness for many Americans – synonymous with the onset of the Bush Era, 9/11 and its aftermath. These vérité images, which pre-date his famed “road trip” series, capture the exploits of the artist’s social circle, members of an outlaw creative community based in New York’s Lower East Side. This body of work – a significant addition to the legacy of American subculture photography forged by the likes of Peter Hujar, David Wojnarwicz, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Nan Goldin – is characterized by McGinley’s idiosyncratic admixture of hopefulness and self-awareness, as well as his unembarrassed disclosure of the melodrama of youth, its inextricably intertwined joy and heartbreak: the artist shows us his debauched, frequently naked friends, laughing and weeping, taking drugs and having sex, tagging walls and pissing off roofs. Ryan McGinley "Early" will be on view until April 1 at Team Gallery, 83 Grand Street, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Highlights From The Preview Of Desert X Biennial In The Coachella Valley Featuring 16 Artists

Desert X is an International contemporary site-specific art exhibition taking place throughout the Coachella Valley, featuring 17 artists, from February 25 to April 30. Highlights include Richard Prince's "Third Place" and Doug Aitken's "Mirage." Click here to learn more about Desert X. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Urs Fischer "The Kiss" @ Sadie Coles Gallery In London

Urs Fischer’s 2017 exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ centers on a large-scale replica of Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss, cast in white Plasticine. The famous image of embracing lovers will morph and fragment over the course of the exhibition through the interventions of visitors, who will be free to remould the Plasticine at will. The image of an entwined couple also appears in a group of four new paintings, in which the artist uses classic movie stills as stock visual formulae – found images to be disrupted and redeployed. Urs Fischer "The Kiss" will be on view until March 11, 2017 at Sadie Coles in London. photographs by Mazzy-Mae Green

Creepy Crawl These Days "Raymond Pettibon Flyers" From The Collection Of Bryan Ray Turcotte @ These Days Gallery In Los Angeles

Creepy Crawl These Days "Raymond Pettibon Flyers" is an exhibition of over 130 original punk flyers from the late 1970s through mid-80s either created by or utilizing the artwork of influential artist Raymond Pettibon for bands such as Black Flag, Minutemen, Sacharine Trust, Circle Jerks, Wasted Youth, Throbbing Gristle, Red Cross and Descendents. Culled from the archives of sub-culture historian, archivist and collector Bryan Ray Turcotte, these unintentional pieces of art speak to us on many levels. Not only do they afford a look at the early work of this now-legendary and highly acclaimed artist, but they also offer a glimpse into the era’s underground DIY hardcore music scene. These DIY advertisements, torn and frayed, rescued from countless telephone poles and walls, suffering staples, tape and paste are physical representations of the 20th century’s most influential music scene and its most revered artist. The exhibition will be on view until February 26, 2017 at These Days in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

A Preview Of Jason Rhoades 'Installations, 1994-2006' @ Hauser Wirth And Schimmel in Los Angeles

Hauser Wirth & Schimmel presents ‘Jason Rhoades. Installations, 1994 – 2006,’ the first major Los Angeles exhibition devoted to the politically charged, darkly exuberant art of Jason Rhoades. Comprised of six major works spanning the artist’s career, this exhibition constitutes a long-overdue, comprehensive survey in his adopted city. While Rhoades’ groundbreaking installations found early recognition in Europe and New York, the artist spent the entirety of his career in Los Angeles, where he lived and worked until his untimely death in 2006 at the age of 41. The exhibition at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel is conceived to share and celebrate his unwavering vision of the world as an infinite, corpulent, and lustful universe of expressive opportunity. Assertively pushing against the safety of cultural conventions, Rhoades broke accepted rules of public nicety and expanded the frontiers of artistic opportunity through unbridled, brazenly ‘Maximalist’ works. In short, Rhoades brought the impolite and culturally unspeakable to the center of the conversation. Jason Rhoades 'Installations, 1994-2006'  will be on view until February 18, 2017 until May 21, 2017 at Hauser Wirth and Schimmel in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

"Serialities" Group Show Special Preview @ Hauser & Wirth In New York

Beginning 15 February, Hauser & Wirth will present ‘Serialities,’ a group exhibition organized with Olivier Renaud-Clément which examines notions of seriality and repetition, and ways in which artists explore linear and non-linear narratives through iterations. On view through 8 April, the exhibition includes photographs, drawings, and sculptures by Yuji Agematsu, Carl Andre, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Liz Deschenes, Isa Genzken, Eva Hesse, Roni Horn, On Kawara, Robert Kinmont, Louise Lawler, Zoe Leonard, Sherrie Levine, Sol LeWitt, Paul McCarthy, Roman Opalka, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, August Sander, Karin Sander, Mira Schendel, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Ian Wallace, and Mark Wallinger. photographs by Adam Lehrer