Burning Camera: Fernell Franco's Prostitutes

Fernell Franco worked as reporter and advertising agent. Throughout his career his professional duties crisscrossed constantly with brilliant results. The series Prostitutes is the starting point of an exhibition that encompasses his analysis of urban life as well as his experimental take on temporal processes. On view until July 4 as part of Photo EspaΓ±a 2011 at the Bellas Artes De Madrid. www.bellasartesdemadrid.com

If You Want To Reach Me

Gwilym Gold is a DJ and musician based in the UK. Gold has a new single, "Flesh Freeze", out now on a bespoke self remixing platform developed by Gold called Bronze. www.gwilymgold.com

MP3: Bullion : "If You Want To Reach Me (Gwilym Gold Remix)"

[audio:http://www.solidgoldrags.com/music/Bullion_-_If_You_Want_To_Reach_Me_Gwilym_Gold_RMX.mp3|titles=Bullion - Gwilym Gold Remix]

Henry Wessel: Vintage Photographs

Since the 1960s, Wessel has photographed vernacular scenes of the American West, particularly in California. Immediately drawn to the quality of light he encountered during a visit from New York to Los Angeles, Wessel moved cross-country to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971. From stretches of dusty highway to modest California bungalows framed by telephone poles and palm trees, Wessel's often spare and solitary images capture the idiosyncrasies and irony of American life with a wry objectivity. His photographs of parking lots, beach-goers, and shrubbery -- all illuminated by the brilliance of Western light -- find beauty and intrigue in the commonplace and document the social landscape in a manner that is casual yet formally compelling. Pace/MacGill Gallery is presents Henry Wessel: Vintage Photographs, on view April 21 through July 8, 2011. The exhibition marks Wessel’s first show at the gallery and features over 30 vintage gelatin silver prints made between 1968 and 1987. www.pacemacgill.com

[PHILOSOPHY] Contextualizations of a Genius

To honor the 60th anniversary of the death of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein the Shwules Museum (Gay Museum) in Berlin is holding a special exhibition. Wittgenstein was a giant in 20th century philosophy–the exhibition explores his jewish identity, his coming to grips with his family and the suicides of his three brothers, and his unique dialectics.Β Ludwig Wittgenstein:Β Contextualizations of a Genius is on view until June 13. www.ludwig-wittgenstein.com

Life in Photographs

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Phillips de Pury & Company is announces Life in Photographs a "selling exhibition" of 26 photographs by Linda McCartney. The exhibition, a selection of highlights from an archive of 200,000 will showcase the work of a exceptionally talented photographer, capturing spontaneous and moving moments of her life. The exhibition is curated in close collaboration with Paul McCartney and the McCartney family. On view from June 7 to June 16 in London. www.phillipsdepury.com

FLUXUS and the Essential Questions of Life

Ben Vautier, Let's Fuck

It could be said that John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "bed-in" for peace movement was the ultimate expression of Fluxus performance art. Yoko One is of course one of the most famous of the Fluxus artists. Β John Lennon actually met Yoko at a Fluxus performance and fell in love that very night. The Fluxists are sort of like modern Dadaists. Β Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, a majorΒ traveling exhibition based on the Hood Museum ofΒ Art’s George Maciunas Memorial Collection ofΒ Fluxus art, is "designed for visitors to experience theΒ radical and influential cultural development thatΒ was Fluxus, and maybe learn something aboutΒ themselves along the way." Fluxus was an international network of artists, composers, andΒ designers that emerged as an art (or ―anti-artβ€–)Β phenomenon in the early 1960s and was noted forΒ blurring the boundaries between art and life. TheΒ Hood’s exhibition runs from April 16 through August 7, 2011. Β www.hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu

Man Ray and Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism

From 1929 to 1932, Man Ray and Lee Miller -- two giants of the European Surrealism movement -- lived together in Paris, first as teacher and student, and later as lovers. Their mercurial relationship resulted in some of the most powerful work of each artist's career, and helped shape the course of modern art. Combining rare vintage photographs, paintings, sculpture and drawings, a new exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem,Β Massachusetts,Β tells the story of the artists' brief but intense association and reveals the nature of their creative partnership. On view from June 11 to December 4, 2011. www.pem.org

STOP THE SENSELESS HUNTING OF WOLVES

On August 5, 2010, a U.S. District Court in Montana restored federal protections for wolves in the Northern Rockies. Wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana have been temporarily halted, but now more wolves may be killed by Wildlife Servicesβ€”federal agents who are seeking authority to gas wolf pups in their dens and sterilize breeding pairs to control the wolf population. And in Alaska More than 1,000 wolves in Alaska have been killed by aerial gunning since 2003, and state officials are pushing to kill even more wolves this year using aerial gunning, poison gas and snares. Take action now to save wolves in Alaska...CLICK HERE

Richard Billings at the Guernsey Photography Festival

English photographer Ray Billingham is best knownΒ for his bookΒ Ray's A Laugh which documents the life of his alcoholic father Ray and obese, heavily tattooed, mother Liz. "My father Raymond is a chronic alcoholic.Β He doesn’t like going outside, my mother Elizabeth hardly drinks,Β but she does smoke a lot.Β She likes pets and things that are decorative.Β They married in 1970 and I was born soon after.Β My younger brother Jason was taken into care when he was 11,Β but now he is back with Ray and Liz again.Β Recently he became a father.Β Dad was some kind of mechanic, but he’s always been anΒ alcoholic. It has just got worse over the years.Β He gets drunk on cheap cider at the off license.Β He drinks a lot at nights now and gets up late.Β Originally, our family lived in a terraced house,Β but they blew all the redundancy money and, in desperation,Β sold the house. Then we moved to the council tower block,Β where Ray just sits in and drinks.Β That’s the thing about my dad, there’s no subject he’s interestedΒ in, except drink." Richard Billingham’s Ray’s a Laugh will be presented together for the first time with new work portraying his own young family at the Guernsey Photography Festival until June 30. www.guernseyphotographyfestival.com

Louis Vuitton Voyages

Vuitton Family, 1888

When Louis Vuitton founded his maroquinerieΒ label inΒ 1854 on Rue Neuve des Capucines in Paris heΒ knew how to make a good travelling case. Β This is proven in durability and by the fact that most of the cases, even the earliest examples, still stand the test of time. And, just as well, the ethos of handmade luxury, that has slowly faded into a seemingly prehistoric notion, has lasted too–leaving the Vuitton unprecedented in the integrity of its craft–even through corporate mastication,Β mergers, and a platform in the publicly traded market. The Louis Vuitton label has had its own history in China too–in an age when the orient was a universe away from its Parisian base.Β In 1931 the Croisiere Jaune expedition led 40 men to drive 12,000 km from the Mediterranean coast to the China coast, following the footsteps of Marco Polo, was outfitted with Louis Vuitton trunks. And even further backΒ to the 1907 Paris to Peking expedition when members struggled against temperatures as low as -30 degrees in cars outfitted with Louis Vuitton trunks. On view now until August 31 at theΒ National Museum of China in Beijing,Β "Louis Vuitton Voyages" explores its own history and tradition since its inception as well as celebrates the label's place in Chinese culture.

[LAST DAYS] Marilyn Minter Retrospective in Hamburg

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Marilyn Minter, Chewing Green, 2008 C-Print

In Marilyn Minter’s work, pride of place goes to the complex relationship between body, photography and painting. Here, Minter exposes all our cultural inhibitions in dealing with sexuality and desire, the hyperrealist shots of high-gloss surfaces and sections of the body are both seductive and irritating at once. In the fragmented representation of lips, eyes, mouths and necks, decadence confronts beauty and the pitfalls of glamour collide with the fascination it exerts. Minter’s voyeuristic hallucinations seem both tempting and dangerous. Beauty here proves to be a brittle construct in which sensuality and self-destruction are two sides of the same coin; flesh, yearning, sexuality and gender models are revealed to be commercial products. For the first time, the oeuvre of US artist Marilyn Minter (born 1948) is the subject of an extensive exhibition in Germany. On view until June 12. www.sammlung-falckenberg.de

Martin Parr's Last Resort

"Leisure, consumption, and communication" is apt in describing the trifecta of themes in which Martin Parr explores through his saturated and gluttonous vistas of humanities seeminglyΒ inexorableΒ appetite. Parr's seminal work, shot documentary style in rich hues on the beaches of New Brighton in the nineteen-eighties, captured an aura of man as beast in a dog-eat-dog false paradise; a notion propagated by the common belief that force feeding yourself to oblivion was good and fine for society. The book, entitled Last Resort, which has just been rereleased by Dewi Lewis Publishing–this time with an added forward–put Martin Parr on the map.

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www.martinparr.com