KC Ortiz & POSE: Whitewash

On Saturday, November 19, graffiti artist POSE and photojournalist KC Ortiz will unveil Whitewash, their second exhibition at Known Gallery in Los Angeles, and their most cohesive to date. For POSE, Whitewash references society’s attempt to eradicate graffiti and stifle human expression. “Shortly after I started writing graffiti, Chicago took an extremely hard-line stance on its eradication, outlawing the sale of spraypaint and implementing Mayor Dayley’s Graffiti Blasters program,” POSE explains. With this exhibition, POSE will recall a time before the buff. “I am digging into my fondest childhood memories of riding the train and seeing all the colors, letters and cartoon characters along the lines. Making these paintings has been an incredibly rich process, and it makes me thankful that no city official can eradicate my memories.” POSE will show 15 new works in the main gallery. For KC, Whitewash is about the people and places he photographs. “Much of the work I do covers those who have been ‘whitewashed,’ so to speak, by history and policy,” KC notes. “Specifically, the work I will be exhibiting is from West Papua and Burma. You won’t find either of those ‘nations’ on the map, as both have been essentially ‘whitewashed’ away. Burma has been renamed Myanmar by its ruling junta in order to establish the fantasy of a unified nation, and West Papua has been occupied by Indonesia since 1963 after a very controversial handover from the Dutch that was orchestrated by the United States.” In the project room, KC will show 12 photographs of West Papua and Burma’s armed struggles. Whitewash will be on view from November 19 to to December 1o at Known Gallery. 

KENNETH ANGER: ICONS

MOCA Los Angeles presents Kenneth Anger: ICONS, a showcase of the films, archives, and vision of one of the most original filmmakers of American cinema, on view at MOCA Grand Avenue from November 13, 2011, through February 27, 2012. A defining presence of underground art and culture and a major influence on generations of filmmakers, musicians, and artists, Anger’s films evoke the power of spells or incantations, combining experimental technique with popular song, rich color, and subject matter drawn equally from personal obsession, myth, and the occult.

Eugène Atget exhibit at MoMA

MoMA in New York will soon host from 6 February to 9 April next year, a retrospective on French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927). The title of the exhibition, “Documents pour artistes”, refers to the sign which hung on the door of Atget’s studio in Paris. Atget officially started photography in 1890, and aimed to capture the city of Paris in order to offer the material documentation to other artists.

Ans Westra: Washday at the Pa

NEW ZEALAND – Forty-seven years ago Ans Westra provided the text and forty-four images for a Department of Education journal made for primary schools. Titled Washday at the Pa the book followed a day in the life of a rural Maori family of eight children awaiting relocation to a state house in the city. Following protests by the Maori Women Welfare League Washday at the Pa was controversially withdrawn from circulation by the Department of Education. The League condemned Westra's depiction of the poor, rural Maori family living in sub-standard housing as untruthful and inaccurate. Westra defended the integrity of the images and as copyright owner later in 1964 published the second edition through the Caxton Press. Westra took this opportunity to add twenty-two new images, some introducing whole new episodes to the story. An new exhibition at the Suite Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand supports the publication of a new edition of Washday at the Pa, which features images made for the 1964 first and second editions of the book as well as images made by Westra in 1998 as part of a subsequent project: Washday at the Pa Revisited.Accompanying Westra's 35 uncropped images is text by Mark Amery. Washday at the Pa is on view at the Suite Gallery until November 26.

Cinema Sex Sirens

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Diana Dors

CINEMA SEX SIRENS, published by Omnibus Press, is a unique collection of photographs of female stars of the '60s and '70s. That period marked a new era of frankness in society and the movie industry lost no time in following suit after some 25 years of censorship and self-imposed regulations. The women who became the new erotic goddesses also became world-famous and defined a generation's view of sexuality. Dave Worrall and Lee Pfeiffer's gallery illustrates a luminous collection of idealized women and offers a fascinating insight into the movies' depiction of female sexuality during the '60s and '70s. From the indisputable legends to actresses whose used their beauty to gain fame in the short-term through exploitation movies, this book provides little-known insights into their lives and careers. Cinema Sex Sirens can be found through Omnibus Press.

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: ALL

Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster, and tragic poet of our times, Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art. His source materials range widely, from popular culture, history, and organized religion to a meditation on the self that is at once humorous and profound. Working in a vein that can be described as hyperrealist, Cattelan creates unsettlingly veristic sculptures that reveal contradictions at the core of today’s society. While bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing cultural critique. On view starting today at the Guggenheim in New York City, a major retrospective of Maurizio Cattelan is on view – literally hanging in the middle of the museums rotunda. Maurizio Cattelan: All is on view until January 22, 2012.  

Alexandra Grecco

With an unyielding desire to encourage women to play dress-up in their everyday lives, Alexandra Grecco created her eponymous womenswear line. The Brooklyn-based designer pays tribute to luxurious ladies of bygone days, drawing inspiration from silent film actresses of the 1920's and the burlesque dancers of the vaudeville stage. Grecco's pieces combine clean, ethereal and feminine elements while paying attention to practicality for today. Her line incorporates sumptuous silks, delicate tulle and birdcage veiling in a color palette of blush pinks, ivory and dusty cyan to conjure the old Hollywood glamour of an earlier age. Hand-sewn headbands and gowns embroidered with vintage millinery flowers and rhinestones showcase an attention to detail that creates a one-of-a-kind, custom feeling. The 26-year old FIT graduate is a former ballet dancer and painter and would not be surprised to discover she was a traveling circus performer in another lifetime.  For Alexandrea Grecco's Spring/Summer 2012 collection director and choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall directs an eccentric, chic, and cinematic fashion film featuring Erika Spring of the band Au Revoir Simone. 

The Radical Camera

Sid Grossman, Coney Island, 1947

In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers, most of them Jewish, first-generation Americans, formed an organization in Manhattan called the Photo League. Their solidarity centered on a belief in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and on a progressive alliance in the 1930s of socialist ideas and art. The Radical Camera, on view starting tomorrow at the Jewish Museum in New York, presents the contested path of the documentary photograph during a tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951 is on view November 4 through March 25.

EVA & ADELE Part of Survey of Recent Drawing

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EVA & ADELE claim to have to come to the future and say they have invented a new sex. EVA & ADELE are now part of a survey of artists form London and Berlin, entitled LONDON/BERLIN: Anschlüssel, on view until next month at the Center for Recent Drawing. This survey, curated by Andrew Hewish, seeks to present the vibrancy and depth of drawing production in London and Berlin. From recent graduates to the well established, these artists operate from within an understanding of the complexities of drawing values, of Anschlüssel: speculative, connective, playful - unlocking links wherever a line might lead. In bridging the space between these two metropolises, we find similar polyglot populations, artists from all over the world working in these cities, and with a similar breadth of expressive possibilities that reflect the exchange of ideas and forms in a globalized field.