Michael Slenske interviews Cole Sternberg on making the dream of the Free Republic of California a reality.
Virtually Cool: Otis College Annual Fashion Show Features Designs Inspired By The Work Of Noah Davis
This Saturday, May 8, Otis College will be holding their annual fashion show for the classes of 2020 and 2021, broadcasting digitally in lieu of an in-person event. In support of their first-generation population, which comprises roughly 30% of the student body, the public will be invited at no cost for the first time and encouraged to contribute financially during the program. These students worked under the mentorship of industry heavyweights like Ruth Carter, David Meister, Jonathan Simkhai and B. Akerlund in addition to many other prominent costume and fashion designers who work with Universal, Vince and ALC.
Virtually Cool also features a collaboration with designers Arthur Thammavong and Deborah Sabet from Vince, who tasked students to make a line of clothing based off of the late American artist Noah Davis' paintings.
RSVP now to attend.
Repeat: Sculptures By Janet Levy, Choreography By Diane Gemsch @ SWB Experimenthaus In Zurich
As we navigate our lives in these times of a pandemic, the question about home and living becomes even more pronounced. Janet Levy questions what is home and what is the significance of home, collecting objects from her surroundings to create a site-specific sculptural installation. In kind, Diane Gemsch creates an emotional response by physically bringing this action to movement while engaging with the house and sculpture installation.
Repeat is on view by appointment through May @ SWB Experimenthaus Neubรผhl, Westbรผhlstrasse 59, 8038 Zurich-Wollishofen. photographs by Rudolf Moser
Ben Sakoguchi's Chinatown @ Bel Ami In Los Angeles
Ben Sakoguchiโs combinations of commercial signage, history painting, and Pop Art comment on the American Dream and its fraught entanglement with xenophobia and racism. With acrylic paint on canvas, Sakoguchi reassembles imagery from film posters, newspapers, comics, and internet searches to reveal subtexts of local discrimination, mass media exploitation, and state-sanctioned violence. A Japanese American who spent years of his childhood living in an internment camp during World War II, Sakoguchi comments on a century and a half of prejudice against diasporic Asians. Contending with overlapping histories that contribute to ideas of Asian American identity, Sakoguchi creates an ironic primer on capitalismโs treachery with an audacity that challenges and uplifts.
A publication with essays by Eli Diner (Critic, Curator, and Executive Editor of Cultured magazine), Steven Wong (Curator and the Director of the Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park, CA), and Ana Iwataki (Writer, Curator, and PhD student in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles) will be released in PDF and printed form during the course of this exhibition.
Chinatown is on view through April 24 @ Bel Ami 709 N Hill St. #105, Los Angeles
Ben Sakoguchi
Chinatown, 2014
Acrylic on canvas, wooden frames (1 of 15 panels) 53 x 91 in (134.6 x 231.1 cm)
Randolpho Lamonier Presents My Kind Of Dirty @ Fort Gansevoort
My Kind Of Dirty is Brazilian artist Randolpho Lamonierโs first exhibition with Fort Gansevoort. This online presentation brings together recent textile works in which Lamonier responds to his upbringing in Contagem, an industrial city in southeastern Brazil, drawing upon observations of hardship and inequality to create powerful expressions in vivid colors, word combinations, and raw images. The artist locates his inspiration in an environment where joy grows proportionally to misfortune and likens his work to diaristic entries. Rendered in deceptively humble handwork and fabrics, the scintillating psychedelic landscapes on view in My Kind Of Dirty celebrate โthe exuberance of life that resists against the necropolitical agenda guided by the current Brazilian government,โ the artist has said. In this way, Lamonierโs approach to representation acts as personal revolution, whereby the aura of possibility defines his blueprint for the future.
My Kind Of Dirty is available for online viewing through May 15
an exit from this room and others like it: New Paintings & Ceramics By Hana Ward @ Ochi Projects In Los Angeles
Hana Wardโs newest oil paintings and ceramic works offer a visual narrative for what the artist describes as โa liberation in the mind.โ With so much time spent trapped in divergent states this past year, reading and reflecting, watching the news โ vacillating between feelings of hopelessness and anticipation โ Ward found herself thinking about the experience of transformation, of coming into oneโs power โ specifically about how this experience might unfold for Black women.
Taken individually and as a whole, Wardโs most recent paintings and ceramic works invite viewers to create more loving space within themselves, allowing for the potential to thrive during an otherwise unforgiving and isolating time. Each portrait relays a deeply personal inner metamorphosis that also manifests outwardly, through an individualโs outlook and approach to life, and even possibly, optimistically, as a society at large.
an exit from this room and others like it is on view through May 8 @ Ochi Projects 3301 W Washington Blvd. Los Angeles
A Strange Encounter: New Paintings & Watercolors By Harold Ancart @ C L E A R I N G, Beverly Hills
A Strange Encounter is on view through May 8 @ C L E A R I N G, Beverly Hills. DM the Gallery for appointments
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy: Window To The Clouds @ Salon Berlin, Museum Frieder Burda
Presented at Salon Berlin, the Berlin-based project and exhibition space of the internationally renowned Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Window to The Clouds is Paris-based artist Matthew Lutz-Kinoyโs first institutional solo presentation in Germany. Mirroring Salon Berlinโs engagement for diverse potentialities in contemporary artistic creation, Lutz-Kinoy embraces the full dimensionality of the exhibition space as he conceives an immersive and sensorial environment for visitors that sheds light on his deeply spatial approach to painting, rooted in the body and performance. Comprised of recent paintings, ceramics and a site-specific sculpture, the exhibition imagines a series of contemporary landscapes as painterly reflections that look at โ and through โ various architectures, historical paintings and current events. These environments act as stages for worlds of shared experience, human presence and touch.
Window to The Clouds is on view through June 5 @ Salon Berlin Auguststr. 11โ13, 10117 Berlin
Watch L.A. Dance Projectโs David Adrian Freeland Jr. Perform โIt Couldโve Been Me...It Could Be Me'
After a year of dormancy brought on by the pandemic, Hauser & Wirthโs dynamic, multi-use space in Downtown Los Angeles was revived with a special collaborative performance featuring L.A. Dance Project's David Adrian Freeland Jr. His powerful choreographic work, โIt Couldโve Been Me...It Could Be Me,โ was performed throughout the galleryโs outdoor spaces and within โThe Great American Fact,โ Amy Sheraldโs first West Coast exhibition. The performance, captured by Trevor Tweeten, can be viewed here. Debuting online as part of Ursula Magazine, the performance was created during the uprisings against police brutality and the killings of unarmed Black Americans.
Choreography & performance: David Adrian
Videography: Trevor Tweeten
Music: Joel Thompsonโs โSeven Last Words of the Unarmedโ.
Audio recording by Michigan State University Menโs Glee Club, 2016. Conducted by Eugene Rogers
Watch Ron Athey In Conversation With Hans Ulrich Obrist For Autre's Spring 21 Issue
Let's begin with the beginning...discover the electrifying, sacrificial practice of Ron Athey. Presenting a short film by Mat+Kat to accompany artist Ron Athey's cover story and 8,000+ word interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist for Autre's Spring 21 Doppelgรคnger issue. Obrist explore's Athey's 40-year boundary destroying oeuvre, the trance of performing, thinking in the live image, and the archetype of ritual. Read the full interview in Autre's Spring 21 issueโpreorder is available now (each preorder will receive a free full digital edition immediately after checkout). Athey's retrospective, Queer Communion, curated by Amelia Jones, is on view until April 4th at Participant New York. And will travel to ICA LA Summer 2021. Directed by Mat+Kat Cinematography by Austin Kearns. Makeup by Laramie. Styling Aleksandra Koj and Kristina Koelle. Production by Kendall Thompson
Diane Kotila's Boy Kings @ Deboer Gallery In Los Angeles
In Diane Kotilaโs Boy Kings each painting depicts Pharaoh Tutankhamun, often referred to as the โboy king,โ and images of the young Egyptian water boy Hussein Abdel Raasoul who is tied to the discovery of Tutankhamanโs tomb. Writing about her approach, Kotila has described her painting as โan exploration of historically and culturally familiar portraiture.โ A research heavy examination similar to the excavation of tombs; dirty and messy with moments of clarity and discovery.
Boy Kings is on view through April 17 @ Deboer Gallery 3311 E. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles
Our World Two: An Online Group Show @ Steve Turner
In its second iteration of Our World, Steve Turner presents an online group exhibition which features new works by seven artists (Patrick Bayly, Siro Cugusi, Jingze Du, Jon Key, Gabby Rosenberg, David Shrobe, and Shirley Villavicencio Pizango) who come from various parts of the world and who have coalesced to become part of the galleryโs world. While the artists work in a broad range of media, styles and concepts, all make deeply personal work that is a consequence of their biography, geography, identity and mentality. Their world is our world and we are delighted to present this in early March, when the art world previously gathered for the Armory Show in New York. With no travel, no art fairs and no opening receptions, we want to demonstrate that life goes on, art goes on and community goes on.
Our World Two is available to view online through April 14 @ Steve Turner Gallery
Introducing Our Spring 2021 Cover Featuring Lee "Scratch" Perry →
Click here to purchase.
Skunk Grove: Lucy Bull's Inaugural Solo Exhibition @ David Kordansky Gallery In Los Angeles
The gestures that animate the works in Lucy Bullโs Skunk Grove gravitate toward several overlapping categories. They include daubed, gauzy veils; illusionistic swirls and stratifications; and networks of scratched marks that give way to underlying areas of paint. But even these are mere generalizations, as any attempt to fix Bullโs abstract language within the constraints of descriptive analysis falls short. In this respect, the paintings seem to depict the process of grasping for solid interpretive ground while simultaneously acknowledging that there are times when the ground must fall away. Between these extremes, worlds are created and destroyed; thoughts give way to feelings, and vice versa; and lifeโs constant fluctuations are given symbolic expression as passages between discrete sections of a composition give way to those that surround and engulf it. Every element of the picture communicatesโsometimes harmoniously, sometimes sharplyโas part of an immersive, atmospheric whole.
Skunk Grove is on view through April 1 @ David Kordansky 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. Los Angeles
Read Our Interview Of Jason Stein On The Art Of The Auction At Bonhams →
LOT 275
MOTOROLA
50XC Radio
1940
marbleized green and butterscotch catalin
height 6 1/2in (16.5cm); width 9 1/2in (24cm); depth 6 1/2in (16.5cm)
US$ 5,000 - US$ 7,000
ยฃ 3,600 - ยฃ 5,100
โฌ 4,200 - โฌ 5,900
Jason Stein, Director of Modern Decorative Art and Design at Bonhams, grew up in the world of astrology and birth charts in Los Angelesโ growing New Age scene. His mother was a co-founder of The Aquarius Group, and his father was a department store manager. This amalgam wound up being a perfect formula for his work in the secondary market, first as an intern at Sothebyโs and finally at Bonhams where he is immersed in a universe of rare and beautiful objects that span movements, thoughts, trends, and design history. Ahead of this weekโs Modern Design | Art auction, which has a focus on rare Bakelite radios and Mexican surrealist artists, like Leonora Carrington, we spoke to Stein about his fascinating role as design guru at Bonhams, avoiding fakes, and the return of maximalism. Click here to read more.
Meriem Bennani's Guided Tour of a Spill @ Franรงois Ghebaly In Los Angeles
Meriem Bennaniโs Guided Tour of a Spill acts as an interlude between her groundbreaking Party on the CAPS (2018), her pseudo-documentary set in the Moroccan quarter of the CAPS, and a narrative sequel set to debut later this year at the Renaissance Society and Nottingham Contemporary. The exhibition consists of the titular multi-channel video projected and displayed on sculptural, kinetic screens alongside new drawings of scenes from the world of the CAPS. One screen, broadcasting what could be an A.I.-generated childrenโs video, is topped by helicoptering ropes that slap the gallery walls. Inspired by the compilation structure and synesthetic drive of Disneyโs Fantasia (1940), Guided Tour of a Spill centers less on overt narrative and more on the visceral and sensorial pleasure of music, dance, athletics and humor. Throughout the exhibition, Bennani playfully blends humor and critique, weaving an expanded allegory for how media circulates through channels of digital and geopolitical power, both online and in the real spaces we inhabit.
Guided Tour of a Spill is on view by appointment through May 1 @ Franรงois Ghebaly 2245 E. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles
Traces On The Surfaces Of The World Group Show @ GAVLAK Los Angeles
Traces on the Surfaces of the World brings together six international artists whose works stage the anxious encounters between human bodies and inanimate objects that define a world reformed by an all-encompassing fear of contagion. In โHuman Traces on the Surfaces of the World,โ Judith Butler parallels the invisible passage of a virus from bodies to objects to other bodies, to the similarly invisible machinations of socio-political paradigms that dictate who must assume the risk of contact, and by extension which lives are expendable. Artists and theorists have for decades romanticized the notion of dissolving the distance between art objects and those who experience them: this exhibition probes the dimensions of a reality in which this longed-for contact has become especially fraught. Exhibiting artists include Cristine Brache, Henry Chapman, Alex Chitty, Gisela Coloฬn, Amalie Jakobsen, and Dean Sameshima.
Traces on the Surfaces of the World is on view through April 24 @ Gavlak 1700 South Santa Fe Avenue, Suite 440 Los Angeles
Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life @ MoMA PS1 In New York
From the very outset of her career in the 1950s, Niki de Saint Phalle (American and French, 1930โ2002) defied artistic conventions, creating works that were overtly feminist, performative, collaborative, and monumental. Her first major US exhibition, Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life features over 200 works that highlight Saint Phalleโs interdisciplinary approach and engagement with pressing social issues. Innovation was key to Saint Phalleโs process: from beginning to end, she envisioned new ways of inhabiting the world.
Saint Phalle also engaged with the politics of social space in her work. Addressing subjects that ranged from womenโs rights to climate change and HIV/AIDS awareness, she was often at the vanguard in addressing pressing issues of her time. In particular, her work to destigmatize HIV/AIDS is highlighted through works related to her illustrated book AIDS: You Canโt Catch It Holding Hands (1986).
Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life is on view through September 6 @ MoMA PS1 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens
Karon Davis: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished @ Jeffrey Deitch In New York
When Karon Davis has not seen a specific image of Black history in art history, she tries to create it herself. For her first solo exhibition in New York, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, the viewers are witness to one of the most unjust trials in American history. The work celebrates the defiance of Bobby Seale in the face of injustice. Bobby Seale, bound and gagged in a Chicago courtroom, is one of the most searing images in American history. There were no photographs of this shocking episode during the trial of the Chicago 8 in October 1969, only artistsโ sketches. This has made the image even more resonant as we conflate the sketches and subsequent actorsโ portrayals in our visual memory. The image of Bobby Seale, physically restrained but defiant, refusing to submit to the judge, has haunted Davis for many years. It became especially provocative during the past yearโs incidents of police violence.
A powerful sculptural tableau of a bound and gagged Bobby Seale in front of Judge Julius Hoffman and the Chicago jury confronts visitors to the exhibition. Displayed in front of the courtroom are fifty sculpted bags of groceries, juxtaposing the Black Panthersโ free food program for the Black community in Oakland, California, with the repression of the judicial system.
Davisโs title for the exhibition is a reference to the governmentโs violent prosecution of the Black Panthers and its distortion of the publicโs understanding of the Panthersโ contributions to their community.
Karon Davis: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished is on view through April 24 @ Jeffrey Deitch 18 Wooster Street, New York
Watch Niki de Saint Phalle Fire Away At Her Work With A Rifle
Niki de Saint Phalle began her artistic career, encouraged by the painter Hugh Weiss. โLes Tirsโ, meaning โthe shotsโ were the performances that made her famous, during which spectators were invited to shoot with rifles at pockets of paint, thus splashing plaster assemblages. These works placed her firmly in the circle of 'new realists', playing the role of mediator between the French and American avant-garde.