Timm Ulrichs: Keep out of the exhibition!

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The Kunstverein Hannover and the Sprengel Museum Hannover present one of the most comprehensive surveys of the work by the concept artist Timm Ulrichs (born 1940). Timm Ulrichs’ oeuvre not only has an undisputed art historical importance, but has also gained a new relevance against the backdrop of contemporary art production. This joint exhibition project is thus not only occasioned by Timm Ulrichs’ 70th birthday and five decades of artistic activities in Hannover, but also by the significance of his work, which is still pertinent in the context of recent contemporary art through the increased recourse to conceptual paradigms. The double exhibition encompasses his early works from the nineteen sixties to recent productions that have been developed especially for this exhibition. November 28, 2010-February 13, 2011 Opening Saturday, November 27, 2010 at 5 pm at the Sprengel Museum Hannover at 7 pm at the Kunstverein Hannover. (SITE)

Tableau Vivant: Ulla von Brandenburg

Ulla von Brandenburg, 'Geister Ghosts,' Image Courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery/ Studio Voltaire

Ulla von Brandenburg's artworks are within the penumbra of tableau vivant, or 'living picture,' a nineteenth century mode of image making that includes costumes, elaborate lighting, and the immutable stillness of one or more actors. Brandenburg was born in Germany in 1978, but now lives and creates in Paris. "Working with drawing, painting, textiles, film and installation von Brandenburg investigates historical socio-cultural practices including the occult, magic, early psychoanalysis and modernist theatre..." Her works are now on display at the London Art Fair - through the 23rd. www.londonartfair.co/uk

Autodidact: Jorge Santos

Jorge Santos-Mail Order Bride

"[Self taught artist] Jorge Santos was born in 1959, and spent his childhood in Luanda, Angola on the coast of Africa. In 1975, Angola exploded in the violent political turmoil of decolonization forcing Santos' family to flee the country. At the formative age of 16, Santos found himself thrust into the equally turbulent and unknown culture of Lisbon, Portugal as that country slid into its own revolution. The national struggle paralleled Santos' own personal one and fueled his passion for drawing. At this early stage, pencil drawing, the most simple and direct form of expression, perfectly suited his complicated and dramatic images and expressed his unique vision." The George Billis Gallery will be presenting works by Jorge Santos at the 2011 Los Angeles Art Show which starts today and ends on January 23rd.

Objet d’Art: Dr. Lakra

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Presented in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, this will be the first solo exhibition in New York by Mexican tattoo artist Dr. Lakra (b. 1972, Mexico). For this exhibition, Lakra will create a site-specific wall drawing spanning 360 degrees of the gallery, shown alongside works on paper and selections from the artist’s collections of found objects. In these works, Lakra uses drawing as the most immediate artistic impulse to invoke fundamental human urges like sex and violence. Using a range of source material, from anatomy textbooks to magazine pin-ups and comic strips, Lakra looks to Mexican and international art historical traditions, as well as the contemporary iconography of tattoo art and borrows a rich sense of satire from his early interest in cartooning. Creating a transformative visual overload, Lakra merges representation with an invented universe, as works transcend categorization and challenge social norms. Dr. Lakra is on view from February 25 – April 24, 2011 at the Drawing Center in NYC.

The Lost Rolling Stones Photographs

A revealing look at the earliest days of the legendary band, captured in a collection of personal, never-before-seen photographs—the largest single trove of such important rock images ever uncovered. You can find The Lost Rolling Stones Photographs: The Bob Bonis Archive, 1964-1966 here.

Laurel Nakadate: Only the Lonely

Laurel Nakadate is known for her works in video, photography, and feature-length film. This is Nakadate's first large-scale museum exhibition and will feature works made over the last ten years in all three media, including her early video works, in which she was invited into the homes of anonymous men to dance, pose, or even play dead in their kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms. Laurel Nakadate: Only the Lonely is on view January 23, 2011 - August 8, 2011 at the Moma P.S. 1.

Fingerbanging Amelia Earheart

If there was anything in the world to denote the end of artistic sanctity, it would be the work of photographer Jason Levins. Using old point and shoot cameras and disposable film has been done a million times. In the bleary eyed dystopic fantasy Jason Levins captures through his lens there is a sense of irony that peers through, like light through cracks in a pitch black church. And in the columns of  light we  find illuminated our youth like rats scurrying in the putrid rot of some alternate zeitgeist: pulling their balls out under tables, drinking pabst blue ribbon, breasts, diy tattoos, camping.  But this raises a serious question: was there ever sanctity in art in the first place?  I have grappled for a little while now on how to fairly criticize Levins' photography, because, not only are his photographs deserving of questions, they are also worthy of analytical review.  If we look close enough we can find small, dazzling gems of humanity peering back out through the cracks, in small private moments of a youth grappling with their identity in an age of war and catastrophe.  In this light, Jasons Levins works become a highly critical essay on the condition of youth in our post modern society. We must fuck all to get us through the strange and frightening condition of the world, but fuck all with love - and that just might be the moral of the story.  www.staticonthebrain.com

The Great Search for Lady Day

With the all out indifference of New York City suffocating, I found myself barricaded  inside, listening to Billie Holiday's rendition of the jazz standard 'Solitude' over and over again. "In my solitude.....you haunt me." Her voice in the song sounds as if she's grasping at a wall, pleading. Who was haunting Billie Holiday?  The specter on the other side of the wall?   When I was a kid my mother gave me a Billie Holiday record as a gift. When I heard Billie's voice  for the first time, it was one of those mystical moments where I felt alive in a beautiful universe of nothingness and just as long as this woman was singing, oblivion was mine for the taking. I entered parallel dimensions.  Billie Holiday was haunting me - certainly.  Just a few days ago, after a long nocturnal blizzard blanketed much of New England, I decided to search for Billie Holiday. On a hot summer day in 1959 Billie was laid to rest in Saint Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx. She was 44.  I took a train uptown.  I spent close to two hours in a frozen, snowed over cemetery looking for her grave stone.  I was waist deep in snow, trudging about, losing my breath, and at the moment I decide to take a break to rethink my strategy I find her final resting place.  Billie Holiday was buried next to her mother, which I found fascinating and touching.   Earlier that day I had bought Billie a little seahorse and left it for her as a gift  (sailors used give each other seahorses for good luck before embarking on long odysseys).  So there I was - I had found Billie Holiday.

Text and photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

IANNIS XENAKIS: COMPOSER, ARCHITECT, VISIONARY

Iannis Xenakis, 'Philips Pavilion,' 1958 postcard 4 x 6 in. Iannis Xenakis Archives, Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris

Now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, this exhibition features the role of drawing in the work of Iannis Xenakis, a major 20th-century figure who brought together architecture, music, and advanced mathematics. A contemporary of fellow avant-garde composers, including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, and John Cage, Xenakis also created revolutionary designs while working with modern architecture pioneer Le Corbusier. Many of Xenakis's innovations in music and architecture were realized first on paper, resulting in hundreds of striking graphic documents that exemplify how the drawing process was used as a means of "thinking through the hand." The exhibition, the first in North America dedicated to Xenakis's original works on paper produced between 1953 and 1984, includes more than 60 rarely seen musical scores, architectural drawings, conceptual renderings, and samplings of his innovative graphic notation. Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary is on view at the MOCA through Feb 4th, 2011.

Jet Set: Marc Marmel

The idea came to Marc Marmel whilst vacationing in the French Riviera: "There was a time in history when travel was about the journey, not the destination.  A time when custom made luggage was a privilege only afforded by the wealthy. A time when luggage traveled to exotic locations by steamship, railroad, and horse drawn carriage."  So Marmel, based in Los Angeles, began to design and construct, by hand, one of kind luggage. Beautiful leather bags that undoubtably stand out in large contrast to the ubiquitous and ever so homogeneous black rolling suitcase: the exact opposite of unique.  What with rolling sidewalks and flight attendants with an ever changing job title and muffin tops who serve bad coffee, I think soon we'll see a small revolution in the way we travel. Oh lord that blows the wild wind: bring back a time that hearkens back to Pan-Am, luxury ocean liners, and the great discovery of mysterious flora and fauna; all with a gorgeous blond at our sides,  a ridiculously tiny unsafe car that reeks of leather and petrol, and a Marc Marmel bag in the trunk.  www.marcmarmel.com

X-Ray Art: Nick Veasy

Nick Veasy "The Finger"

In a "world obsessed with image," UK based artist Nick Veasy is on a peregrination to find the beauty so rumored to be only "skin deep." In a mysterious, fortified radiation safe structure called "the black box" is where Veasy creates most of his X-Ray images. The above fuck you image entitled "The Finger" and other works by Veasy will be on display at the the 11th Annual Los Angeles Art Show that runs from Jan. 19th to the 23rd. www.nickveasy.com

"Vicissitude of Water" by Dustin Lynn

Vicissitude of Water by Dustin Lynn

The Vicissitude Of Water (Tennis Court No. 2) Minneapolis, USA Photo Dustin Lynn

Vicissitude of Water by Dustin Lynn

The Vicissitude Of Water (Goal Post) Minneapolis, USA Photo Dustin Lynn

New photographs by artist, filmmaker, traveler Dustin Lynn.  To elucidate the hidden meaning behind these haunting, frigid images, in Dustin Lynn's own words: "[The] highest level of ascension in water is when it becomes snow - then it can take other forms like the branches of a tree, an alfa romeo, or a playing field." Isolated and glamorous with overwhelming quietude, these images are still-frames of a morbid, parallel nirvana in Middle America.

Performance Art: Chris Burden

"747" January 5, 1973 Los Angeles, California, at about 8am at a beach near the Los Angeles International Airport, I fired several shots with a pistol at a Boeing 747.

In 1971, during one of his most famous pieces, Chris Burden had his assistant shoot him in the arm from a distance of 5 meters with a riffle. “At 7:45 P.M. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me.” His life is seemingly an extreme case of Dadaist impulses and an insatiable thirst for danger; as well as the warm hard-on milking of the brain for adrenaline. Burden currently lives and works in Los Angeles.  You can find a book, an overview, of his works, here.

Contemporary Art In China: Feng Feng

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53 Art Museum, a new avant-garde contemporary art institution located in Guangzhou China will present an exhibition of three cutting-edge artists, Feng Feng, Qin Jin and Liu Qingyuan. Curated and sponsored by the prominent Asian Art Magazines Art Gallery Magazine / Gallery Sights. On view at the 2011 LA Art Show - Jan 19-23.