Witch Women @ Thank You For Asking in Los Angeles

Witch Women, the first group show at Thank You For Asking, features 8 female artists and visually embodies the spirit of this unique gallery. The show was born out of a desire for connection and trust among women, to heal wounds from the past, and to rebuild the coven by listening to eternal female intuition. Each artist chosen for this show presents work that has a distinct, vibrant, and empowered feminine energy. Curated by and featuring works from Jade Wolf and Rebecca Holopter, Witch Women also features artists Deedee Cheriel, Nikki McCauley, Amanda Faber, Kim Baise, Samantha Wilson, and Jade-Snow Carroll. Thank You For Asking is the creation of artist Jade Wolf, a new kind of gallery and event space focused on art, spirit, and humor. Beyond featuring artists and creators, this space holds movie screenings, art workshops, and weekly healing classes, including Multi-Dimensional Breathwork, Kundalini Yoga For Creativity, and The Best Experience: A journey through movement, breath, sound, and meditation.

Witch Women will be on view through March 27th at Thank You For Asking 8663 Venice Blvd, LA CA 90034. Call or email for appointments. photographs courtesy of Cynthia Alexandra

SISSΓ’N: COTTON [Phase 1] @ Wilhardt & Naud

Sisson exhibits their sixth body of work, COTTON, divided into two parts, Phase 1 is the first in this series.

Beginning in 2018 with a bag of gossypium (cotton) seeds delivered by mail from their uncle, these seeds sparked a dialogue between the artist and their partner. Those conversations were the catalyst to COTTON.

The body of work in this installment includes paintings, a tapestry, and quilts that the artist learned to make in Mississippi under the mentorship of the Gees Bend masters.

The artist explores the changing shape of slavery’s influence through a plant, tended to by enslaved millions who built America’s superpower economy and shaped its cultural, systemic, and social landscapes.

The plant provided an entry point, through which the artist could develop and explore a personal and direct relationship. Over a year and a half, they grew more than 600 cotton plants on the roof of their home and studio. The remainder of the recently devastated crop are now presented as living sculptures.

SISSΓ’N: COTTON [Phase 1] is on view throughout February 16, 2020 at Wilhardt & Naud 1667 North Main Street. Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Lani Trock

Peter Hujar & Paul Thek @ Mai 36 Galerie in Zurich

Peter Hujar and Paul Thek met in 1956. Until Hujar's death, the two artists remained close friends - a strong connection on both a spiritual and artistic level, which influenced the artistic work of both artists.

The life and art of Peter Hujar (1934-1987) are closely connected to New York. He moved in the intellectual environment of avant-garde dance, music, art and drag performances. Originally coming from the field of commercial photography, Hujar became more interested in depicting real life from the early 1970s onwards and from then on photographed people, animals and plants, still life, landscape and city, with the portrait taking a central place in his work.

Paul Thek (1933-1988) was an American sculptor and painter. Besides the sculptures and installations for which he is best known, he also created paintings and drawings. In the early 1960s Thek travelled to Europe, where he created extraordinary environments that were shown in important international exhibitions. In them, elements from the fields of art, literature, theatre and religion were intertwined, broadening the concept of work at the time and questioning the perception of art and life. 

The group exhibition will be on view throughout March 14, 2020 at Mai 36 Galerie Raemistrasse 37, Zurich, CH. photographs courtesy of the gallery

601Artspace in New York Presents "How shall we dress for the occasion?"

Acceleration is accelerating. We are faster, stronger, better. We are digital. We are artificial. We are intelligent. We don’t have enough space but we have enough experience. We are connected, we are loud, we are confident. We have all the info we need.  We have time. We manipulate time. We know the past, we know the future. We are the future, but somehow, we can’t even predict the weather. If the world has become wretched and damaged, if humanity is futile, β€œhow shall we dress for the occasion?”

This exhibition, featuring artists Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Deniz Tortum, Kathryn Hamilton and PΔ±nar Yoldaş, considers our obsession with future scenarios and how we try to make sense of  personal mortality, technological progress and environmental collapse, simultaneously. Are we experiencing the β€œend of the future” or the β€œend of  history”? How do we fight the accelerated passage of time? Why do we take measures to undo the effects of time? How does it feel to worry not only about our personal time but how much time the generations to come will have on earth? How do we think about the relationship between value and time, when there is an expiration date to humanity’s existence on earth? How shall we dress for the occasion? invites the audience to contemplate our multiple, contradictory experiences of time.

How shall we dress for the occasion is on view throughout March 22, 2020 at 601Artspace 88 Eldridge St. New York, NY. photographs courtesy of Etienne Frossard

Vaughn Spann: The Heat Lets us Know We're Alive @ Almine Rech In New York

The common-sense theory of language is that it says what it means. Or that it means what it says. Perhaps there’s a difference; perhaps not. Put simply, it comprises statements that are either true or false, and questions that help ascertain whether statements are true or false. Because truth, in the end, is what language is supposed to be about. The learned-sense theory of language is that it is a social construction, it changes according to who you are, with whom you are conversing and according to all the experiences they have accumulated, it changes through history, it changes with geography, it changes according to context. These days, everyone knows that language is a very slippery thing. That’s what happens when you try to express an infinity of ideas with a limited set of symbols. On one level, Vaughn Spann’s art explores much of the same territory, no more so than in his current exhibition, The Heat Lets us Know We’re Alive.

The Heat Lets us Know We’re Alive will be on view throughout February 22, 2020 at Almine Rech 39 East 78th Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY. photographs courtesy of Almine Rech

Peres Projects Presents Maelstrom by George Rouy in Berlin

Rouy’s approach to the body and his overall pursuit of painting is one of contradiction, harmony, and perpetual transformation, criss-crossing gender, form, and disposition. His work is a fever dream of amorphous and fluid embodiments depicting rhapsodic portraits of 21st century desire that is continuously refilled with physical dissonance, mystery and secrecy, ecstasy and turmoil.  

Each work is liberated from established ways of being and becoming which examine the essence and meaning of encounters, drawing equally from the here-and-now, the internet and the machine, as well as more primordial expression and classical demands of color and form. The human figure has always preoccupied artists; its story dominates the history of art. In its imagination and in its image-making, we find clues as to how artists have engaged with the political and socio-cultural conditions and sentiments of their moment. Now we are in a time of renewed and committed interests in figurative painting, Rouy uses the figure as a multi-sided prism to examine and interrogate the contemporary crucibles of gender, fiction and technology. 

Maelstrom will be on view throughout February 14, 2020 at Peres Projects Karl-Marx-Alle 82, Berlin, Germany. photographs courtesy of the gallery

"AN ALL COLORED CAST" By Hank Willis Thomas @ Kayne Griffin Corcoran In Los Angeles

An All Colored Cast is an exploration of color theory, popular culture, the development of Pop Art, Color Field painting, Minimalism, and the Hollywood film industry. In this new body of work, Thomas examines the portrayals of gender, race, and identity through the lens of film, performance, and color motion pictures.

Using color theory and screen color calibration charts as an aesthetic starting point, Thomas re-examines the language surrounding β€œcolor correction” and β€œwhite balance” in order to demonstrate the charged language of color, particularly around the time of desegregation and the proliferation of Technicolor in America.

An all Colored Cast is on view throughout March 7, 2020 at Kayne Griffin Corcoran 1201 S La Brea Ave. Los Angeles, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Melanie Baker's The Optimates @ Cristin Tierney in New York

The Optimates presents three distinct scenes: a person stands at a podium; a man, seen from behind, speaks to someone unknown; and a group of men huddle in conversation at a window. The works are large in scale; some exceed life-size. All are made with charcoal, graphite and pigment on paper. Two are mounted on panels, and the other is presented loose, pinned to the wall.

Baker crops her images to draw attention to specific details. It isn’t immediately apparent in every work who the subject is, but signifiers indicate the immense power the subject wields. They wear dark suits and crisp white shirts, and several are pictured in richly adorned rooms. These are the people, we are meant to intuit, who possess wealth, class, and authority. They are also, clearly, all middle-aged or older white men, and Baker provides just enough context clues to suggest that they are either the focus of attention, or the ones cutting the back room deal. The exhibition title is a further nod to their status; the Optimates in ancient Rome were conservatives who favored rule by oligarchy and opposed immigration and assistance for the urban poor.

The Optimates will be on view throughout February 22 at Cristin Tierney 219 Bowery, Floor 2 New York, NY. photographs courtesy of the gallery

The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles Presents Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963–2019

The first comprehensive survey in the United States of drawings and works on paper by the Los Angeles–based artist Paul McCarthy (b. 1945, Salt Lake City), Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963–2019, reveals a rarely examined aspect of the artist’s oeuvre. Produced in thematic cycles, McCarthy’s drawings share the same visual language as the artist’s sculptural and performance works, addressing themes of violence, humor, death, sex, and politics, and featuring extensive art historical and pop-cultural references. By presenting his expansive career of more than five decades through the focused lens of drawing, the exhibition offers a greater understanding of this influential artist and social commentator.

Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963–2019 features 600 works on paper selected from McCarthy’s archive. The works incorporate and utilize a variety of mediums, including charcoal, graphite, ink, marker, and collage, as well as more unorthodox materials such as ketchup and peanut butter. A consummate and accomplished draftsperson, McCarthy approaches his daily drawing practice as a way of thinkingβ€”a blueprint for projects and a tool to flesh out complex ideas. Since the 1970s, McCarthy has also incorporated drawing into his performances, implementing it as part of an action and often drawing in character. In recent years, this practice of drawing in character has become central to his large-scale video performance projects, such as WS White Snow (2012–13), CSSC Coach Stage Stage Coach (2017), and NV Night Vater (2019–). In a process McCarthy terms β€œLife Drawing, Drawing Sessions” the artist and his actors produce drawings in costume among the props and simulacrum of his film sets. These works bring together the materials and crude gestures that have been present in the artist’s work for the greater part of his career.

Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963–2019 will be on view throughout May 10, 2020 at The Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Gisela Colon: Meta Minimal @ Gavlak Los Angeles

Through her syncretic process of exploring and expanding upon past history, sculptor Gisela Colon has succeeded in creating sculptures that convey the fullest possible array of sensory and intellectual experience, projecting cosmic energy and power outwards into the world. With her astute practice of Organic Minimalism– an idiosyncratic sculptural language that imbues life-like qualities into reductive forms– Colon approaches her sculptural practice from the expansive perspective of phenomenological concerns: addressing the physical laws of the universe such as gravity, time, movement, energy and transformation. Colon’s oeuvre is the result of a synthesis of pointed historical reflection and visceral raw energy.

Colon’s practice of Organic Minimalism simultaneously expands and challenges the legacies of Light and Space, Minimalism, Kinetic and Latin American Op Art, merging industrial inertness with transformative biological mutability. Her sensual, gender-ambiguous sculptural forms further connect her practice to a history of female artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, Linda Benglis and Judy Chicago. By channeling Bourgeois’ notions of sexualized energies and Chicago’s nascent feminist atmospheric works, Colon similarly posits her sculptures as vehicles for conversion of classic masculine forms into feminized power.

Meta Minimal will be on view throughout March 7, 2020 at Gavlak 1700 South Santa Fe Avenue, Suite 440, Los Angeles, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery

On the Politics of Delicacy @ Capitain Petzel in Berlin

On the Politics of Delicacy is a group exhibition conceived around the Robert Anton Theatre Collection. In the early 1970s Robert Anton (1949-1984) created a surreal miniature theatre which quickly achieved cult status and fascinated audiences both in the US and Europe. By bringing together multiple influences – from Antonin Artaud’s writings on the Theatre of Cruelty, alchemist principles of transformation and hybridity, post-WWI characters of George Grosz and Otto Dix, to the eccentric creatures of Hieronymus Bosch; but also early Hollywood and Disney motives, Federico Fellini’s baroque fantasies, and pop cultural impulses of his era – Anton created a unique visual language. Due to the intimacy of his performances which often took place in his loft with a maximum capacity of 18 spectators, his plays remained something of New York’s best-kept secret, a refuge into the surreal imaginary. The exhibition gives insight into Anton’s work by showing his intriguingly sculpted figurines (effectively, his β€˜actors’), props and drawings.

At Capitain Petzel, curator Anke Kempkes contextualises the oeuvre of Robert Anton for the first time by unfolding thematic trajectories that resonate with his work, namely the politics of the home theatre, surrealist political theatre, the concept of β€˜monstrosity’ in postwar female avant-garde sculpture, a new female painterly symbolism, and queer performativity in times of political polarization. With such specific trajectories in mind, a dynamic dialogue takes place between Anton’s oeuvre and works permeating both genre and epoch by German Dada artist Hannah HΓΆch and Spanish poet and theatre director Federico GarcΓ­a Lorca; Anton’s theatre pioneer contemporary Tadeusz Kantor and scenographer Kazimierz Wisniak; works by Wanda Czelkowska and Liliane Lijn; post-modernist and queer artists from East and West Duggie Fields, Jimmy De Sana, Krzysztof Jung, RaΓΊl MartΓ­nez and Zoe Leonard; and contemporary artists Yael Bartana, Joanna Piotrowska, Stanislava Kovalcikova, Karolina Jablonska, Mikolaj Sobczak, Nicholas Grafia, Billy Morgan and Uel.

On the Politics of Delicacy is on view throughout February 22 at Capitain Petzel Karl-Marx-Allee 45, 10178 Berlin. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Gagosian Presents MAN RAY "The Mysteries of ChΓ’teau du DΓ©" in San Francisco

During his storied career, Man Ray, a multidisciplinary artist with a rare breadth, worked in a variety of mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, film, poetry, and prose. While for him photography and painting were paramount, his work in early film and cinema is often overlooked.

Man Ray’s first experience in making film was in New York, in 1920, when he worked with Marcel Duchamp on an unsuccessful attempt to create a three-dimensional film. After moving to Paris, in 1921, his diverse experimentation in the medium of photography eventually led him back to the moving image.

the exhibition also includes objects, drawings, and photography. Moving fluidly between media, Man Ray often made several iterations of a workβ€”photographing it, assembling and disassembling, or making multiplesβ€”reproduction being crucial to his concept of the art object. Throughout his vast body of work, Man Ray alluded to relationships between the real and the fictive, the literal and the imaginative, with a deft mastery over the liminal territory between the abstract and the figurative form.

The Mysteries of ChΓ’teau du DΓ© will be on view throughout February 29, 2020 at Gagosian 657 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Frank MΓ€dler's Teile der Vernunft @ Galerie Susanne Albrecht in Berlin

Fundamentally, Frank MΓ€dler is a doubter, and precisely for this reason he chose – well before the era of Photoshop – the camera as his medium. Whatever the camera documents must exist, it has objectivity. But behind the camera is a human being who determines how the camera works and what is photographed. So objectivity is already in doubt: it, too, is subjective, the camera gives the photographer enough leeway to lend the objects his subjective image. That is what characterises him: he interprets the world with the aid of the camera. So is man the creator of the objects? Does his eye determine how they appear?

These questions come to mind when we look at Frank MΓ€dler’s photographs. They transform banal, familiar everyday things into independent pictures and give them a new meaning. Birds become blurs of light blue, water lilies are turned into dazzling monumental sculptures with many colours, and even the sea does not appear blue or gray, but rather beige, in a strange light that the photographer did not manipulate in any way.

Teile der Vernunft is on view throughout February 8, 2020 at Galerie Susanne Albrecht Bleibtreustr. 48, 10623 Berlin. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Clintel Steed's Allegory Of Now @ M+B In Los Angeles

Clintel Steed’s paintings create a visual language that is a way of understanding the world. His work manifests an acute awareness of the history of painting, its potential, and combines it with an unfiltered immediacy. For Allegory of Now, Steed has made a suite of new paintings based on works by canonical painters such as Jacques-Louis David, Peter Paul Rubens, and Giotto. Selected for their subject matter and such universal themes as loyalty, judgment, and punishment, each narrative remains relevant today and is a reflection of how the world feels to the artist now. In The Last Judgment, bodies topple and free-fall towards the abyss β€” an unpitying metaphor of our mortality and a prescient evocation of our present situation. In Bacchanalia, Steed brings alive the inequity and absurdity in the follies of excess. 

In the process of transcribing the compositions, Steed deciphers the hidden geometries in each work, the shapes, colors and connections that make up the whole. There is an unadulterated devotion to the materiality -- surfaces are fragmented, and paint is often thickly layered. In some works he paints and repaints the canvas, building an accumulation of figures and forms in buttery impasto, while in others he works briskly -– wet-on-wet β€” and lets the white gessoed underpainting crack throughout the composition. In this reworking and re-presenting of classical themes, Steed aims to give us a greater sense of perspective on our current circumstances.

Allegory of Now is on view throughout February 7, 2020 at M+B 612 North Almont Drive Los Angeles, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Beers London Presents Humoral Theory By Morteza Khakshoor, Jerry Kowalsky & Moley Talhaoui

Humoral Theory presents artists Morteza Khakshoor, Jerry Kowalsky, and Moley Talhaoui, each of who have distinct and separate practices, and who show here together for the first time.

Also known as humourism, β€˜humoral theory’ was a model for the workings of the human body in which four humours existed as liquids within the body. The humours were blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile, and they governed aspects of the human disposition, including the sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic. As a sort of antiquated β€˜medical measurement’ of the body, it dates back to 3rd Century physicians who were interested in ailments and operations of the human body as being natural, as opposed to supernatural. Oddly, they are often referenced today in artistic and certain historic theories, perhaps because they summarize our natural bodily urges, impulses, and physicality into easily understandable categories. While humoral theory may seem slightly silly by today’s standards, they remain a poetic, metaphoric, and abstract means to understand the innate complexities of the human body, mind, and soul. Such thought predates medical, shamanistic, or (quasi)religious discoveries that occurred many centuries later – however naive they may still appear – such as flaying, trepanation, bloodletting, or even more modern psychological revelations as the Phrenology Chart, psychoanalytic study, or the Rorschaech Test, for example – all of which are alluded to (if not directly referenced by) various works on exhibit here.

Humoral Theory will be on view throughout February 22, 2020 at Beers London 1 Baldwin Street London, UK. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Andrew Kreps Gallery NY Presents Think of Our Future By Andrea Bowers

As our global freedoms decline, Andrea Bowers is trying to move from grief to hope by focusing on youth activists beginning with the new video, My Name Means Future. Centered on Tokata Iron Eyes, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe who has been involved with the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline since its inception, the video continues Bowers’s commitment to documenting important activists of her time. Bowers asked the young activist to show her some of her most sacred places in South Dakota. With a small group of friends - all artists and activists, they traveled together for 4 days in September recording video interviews and landscape drone shots of the youth activist discussing the landscapes, their histories, as well as the personal and political issues that arose from being in these sacred sites. In the Lakota language, β€œTokata” means β€œFuture”.

In response to her journey with Iron Eyes and the climate emergency we are currently experiencing, Bowers has created a new series of neon works based on the designs of tree branches that incorporate quotes from eco-feminists. These monumental and sculptural pieces are made entirely of reused and recycled materials, inspired by Judi Bari and the Earth First call to action, β€œResist Reuse Restore”.

Think of Our Future will be on view throughout February 15, 2020 at Andrew Kreps Gallery 22 Cortlandt Alley, New York, NY. photographs courtesy of the gallery

agnΓ¨s b. presents β€œ... PHOTOGRAPHERS ... ARTISTS AND THE SNAP CARDIGAN” in New York

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of her signature Snap Cardigan, agnΓ¨s b. presents β€œ... PHOTOGRAPHERS ... ARTISTS AND THE SNAP CARDIGAN”

The exhibition will echo the first snap cardigan exhibition held at agnΓ¨s b.’s Galerie du Jour in Paris as part of Mois de la Photo in 1986, where 140 photographers originally contributed to the exhibition. Each were asked to photograph the iconic snap cardigan in his or her own way. Acclaimed by the public and critics alike, the exhibition was then held at the Centre Pompidou in 1996. 

For the 2020 exhibition, which was shown in Paris at the end of 2019, agnΓ¨s b. has given carte blanche to more than 70 photographers and artists from 14 different nationalities. Young emerging artists and established artists from urban and contemporary scenes offer their interpretation of this timeless garment, working with a singular specification of a 40 Γ— 60 centimeter photograph whose main subject is the snap cardigan. Juergen Teller, David Lynch, Carly Steinbrunn, Mark Cohen, Omar Victor Diop, Ryan McGinness, Jim Jarmush, Martha Cooper, Hiraku Suzuki, Cheryl Dunn, Massimo Vitali, Annette Messager and Maripol are just a snapshot of the celebrated names invited by designer Agnes B. to photograph the iconic snap cardigan in his or her own way.

The exhibition will open on February 8, 2020, at 195 Chrystie Street. NY. It will be on view through March 1, 2020, with an opening reception for the artists on Saturday February 8 4 - 8PM. photographs courtesy of agnΓ¨s b.

Janet Sobel and Pearl Blauvelt @ Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York

Janet Sobel (1893-1968) and Pearl Blauvelt (1893-1987), two female self-taught artists born in the same year. Though both women were making art in the 1940s, they came from vastly different backgrounds and achieved art world recognition in the opposite manner. Sobel received critical attention during her lifetime at the epicenter of New York cultural circles, while Blauvelt created in complete anonymity, her drawings only discovered years after her death. Both artists currently have work on view in the recently completed rehanging of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 

Janet Sobel and Pearl Blauvelt will be on view until February 22, 2020 at Andrew Edlin Gallery 212 Bowery New York, NY. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Carrie Mae Weems: Push @ Galerie Barbara Thumm in Berlin

Galerie Barbara Thumm presents Push, Carrie Mae Weems’ first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Throughout her career Weems’ works have compelled viewers to actively consider how the world is structured, revealing systems of oppression and inequality while exploring the relationships between power, class, race and gender. Push present several bodies of work, which look at these themes in relation to how the past comes to bear on the present. In this regard Weems reflects on history in order to engage with the present and question where we might be going.

The exhibition features Ritual and Revolutions, Weems, largest immersive installation which marks one of the artist’s earliest forays into three dimensions. Composed of 11 diaphanous printed cloth banners organized in a semi-architectural formation and a poetic audio track, Ritual and Revolution explores the historic human struggle for equality and justice, including references to the Middle Passage, the French Revolution, World War II, among others.

Push is on view throughout February 1, 2020 at Galerie Barbara Thumm Markgrafenstrasse 68 D-10969 Berlin. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Apexart Presents Souls Grown Diaspora in New York City

Souls Grown Diaspora is an exhibition that explores a generation of leading contemporary visionary African-American artists from the wider United States, and situates their work into an art-historical lineage shaped by the Great Migration. The exhibition traces the migration: the movement spanning 1916 to 1970 in which six million African-Americans left the rural South for urban centers such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Oakland. Souls Grown Diaspora follows a new wave of artists, mostly self-taught, whose works address a range of revelatory social and political subjects.

The show’s title takes its inspiration from Atlanta’s Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which has worked for decades to change the canon of art history to include a group of pioneering African-American artists from the Southβ€”among them Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Mary T. Smith, Hawkins Bolden, and the women’s collective known as the Gee’s Bend Quilters (Arlonzia Pettway, Annie Mae Young and Mary Lee Bendolph)β€” as essential to the understanding of developments in the history of American art. The name β€œSouls Grown Deep” originates from the last line of Langston Hughes’ 1921 poem β€œThe Negro Speaks of Rivers”: β€œMy soul has grown deep like the rivers.” A collection of research material will be included in vitrines and a series of performances and talks will accompany the exhibition during its run.

Souls Grown Diaspora is on view throughout March 7, 2020 at apexart 291 Church Street, NYC. photographs courtesy of the gallery