The Artistic Vision of Shen Wei

On view tonight in Reggio Emilia, Italy, is a very special site specific dance performance by choreographer Shen Wei, held in the galleries of the Collezione Maramotti – a beautiful collection of art founded by the by the family of the Max Mara fashion house. Shen Wei, master of the art of total dance, miraculously balanced between East and West, is an accomplished choreographer, director, dancer, painter, photographer and artistic director of Shen Wei Dance Arts, one of the most interesting groups in the world of dance. In Shen Wei's latest work, developed specifically for the Collezione Maramotti, Shen Wei presents (21 and 23 October) a new, site-specific creation, an original choreographed piece inspired by works in the permanent collection. In this new piece, the conventional perspective of the gallery visitor is redirected, spectators instead become witnesses and participants in a dialogue that feeds off the exchange of energies between the dancers and the works. Shen Wei's intention is thus to reveal a different framework that might enable visitors to consider works of contemporary art from a new and personal point of view.

Erotic Da Vinci

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Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian renaissance polymath, genius, is widely reported to be gay, but his portraits of the women in his lifetime have the subtly sexualized charge of a man infatuated. If you stare closely Da Vinci's portrait of Cecilia Gallerani stroking an ermine, as part of series painted in the Court of Milan, is suggestive in and of its hinting of the ermine's phallic symbolism, but also the thematic ambiguous grin of the girl herself.  ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan,’ now on view at the National Gallery in London, is the most complete display of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings ever held. This unprecedented exhibition – the first of its kind anywhere in the world. On view from November 9 to February 5.

Marilyn Monroe "12 photographs"

"So we think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America, Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards. She was our angel, the sweet angel of sex, and the sugar of sex came up from her like a resonance of sound in the clearest grain of a violin. Across five continents the men who knew the most about love would covet her, and the classical pimples of the adolescent working his first gas pump would also pump for her, since Marilyn was deliverance, a very Stradivarius of sex, so gorgeous, forgiving, humorous, compliant and tender that even the most mediocre musician would relax his lack of art in the dissolving magic of her violin. Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need" -- Norman Mailer.  Now on view at the Duncan Miller Gallery, Marilyn Monroe "12 Photographs," by photographer Lawrence Shiller, until November 26. 

Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Fitch: ANY EVER

Under the title Any Ever the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is presenting the first major exhibition in France by American artists Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch. For over five years now the duo's videos, installations and sculptures have been blowing consumer culture and intergenerational relations up to absurd proportions. Any Ever will be on view until January 8, 2012.

La Piscine

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In typical 1960s French film fashion, love is a dangerous game, mixing fast cars, beautiful legs, jazz and a sparkling swimming pool – all set in the French Riviera in Jacques Deray's 1969 film La Piscine (The Pool), which was just was just rereleased in the UK and is popping up theatrically. Starring Romy Shneider, Alain Delon, Jane Birkin, and Maurice Ronet, La Piscine is a gripping tale of sexual longing that is beautiful to watch.

It's a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards

S.M.A.K. presents the first Belgian retrospective by the filmmaker and artist Johan Grimonprez, entitledIt's a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards: On Zapping, Close encounters, and the Commercial Break. In the course of several sections, Grimonprez brings his works face to face with contemporary and historical counterparts, some taken from the Internet. He enters into dialogue with the artists Roy Villevoye and Jan Dietvorst and also with other makers of film and television including Adam Curtis, Brian Springer, the Yes Men, Dr. John Mack and Adbusters. His constantly expanding ‘vlogging installation’ runs through the exhibition like a referential thread and, as a sort of artistic sketchbook, it offers an insight into the way Grimonprez broaches new topics and develops visual associations. On view at S.M.A.K. (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) in Ghent, Belgium until January 29, 2012.

GEORGE CONDO: Mental States

Since his arrival on New York’s East Village art scene in the early 1980s, George Condo has developed a unique and provocative style of painting. But, for all its outlandish humour and outrageousness, his work is deeply engaged withthe memory of European and American traditions of painting. His ‘imaginary portraits’ conjure varied mental states with a mixture of comic absurdity and heart-rending pathos, and his larger abstract paintings re-imagine the work of modern Masters. On view now at the Southbank Center in London, a major retrospective, entitled George Condo: Mental States,  offers a comprehensive survey of three decades of Condo’s art.

Elisha Smith-Leverock's film "I Want Muscle"

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Winner of the 4th ASVOFF (A Shade View On Fashion Film) MK2 Grand Prix, 'I Want Muscle,' directed by Elisha Smith-Leverock, is a film that plays with taboo and gender stereotypes. It aims to explore a different kind of female beauty, providing a glimpse into the world of Kizzy Vaines, a female bodybuilder. She is the only British competitor for the Olympia Fitness title in Las Vegas.

Haute Culture

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General Idea was founded in Toronto in 1969 by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson. The collective interrogated media image culture through now legendary projects like File magazine, as well as paintings, installations, sculptures, mail art, photographs, videos, ephemera, TV programs and even a beauty pageant. The group’s transgressive concepts and provocative imagery challenged social power structures and traditional modes of artistic creation in ever-shifting ways, until Partz and Zontal’s untimely deaths from AIDS-related causes in 1994. Curated by Paris-based independent curator Frédéric Bonnet, Haute Culture: General Ideais the first comprehensive retrospective devoted to the collective. The exhibition is organized around five themes, each central to the trio’s production: “the artist, glamour and the creative process”; “mass culture”; “architects/archaeologists”; “sex and reality”; and “AIDS." Haute Culture: General Idea is on view until January 1 at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

River of Dust....

Aoi Kotsuhiroi has released another exciting chapter, entitled River of Dust, to the ongoing saga of the Erotic Regrets collection.  This time her signature human hair, wood, beads and other fascinating ingredients make up full blown knuckle dusters – in what she calls hand objects – and the same goes for her feet objects, with beautiful knotted, twisted leather and hair that wrap up the ankle, look like they could have been dug up from the paleolithic era.