Idols

Steven Kasher Gallery presents Gilles Larrain: Idols featuring 35 never before exhibited large-scale photographs of New York’s most wildly colorful, often scandalous denizens of style that he shot during the revolutionary early 1970s. Original copies of the book are coveted collectors items; a new edition by powerHouse will be launched simultaneously with this exhibition. On view until December 23 - 521 west 23rd street, New York.

You, Me, Something Else

you_me_Something_else_glasgow_strive_to_set_the_record_straight_james_mclardy

A piece entitled Strive To Set the Record Straight by artist James McLardy now on view at the exhibition You, Me, Something Else in Glasgow celebrating sculpture.

The Elegant Beasts

"Moody & Farrell’s Spring/Summer 2012 collection is inspired by fabulous creatures and is filled with shapes that evoke underwater leviathans, crouching beasts and giant crustaceans. During the Golden Age of exploring, sailors and adventurers would often return home with descriptions of wonderful new animals which illustrators would attempt to draw – with wildly inaccurate results, leading to fantastical depictions of giraffes, crocodiles and walruses. It is these mutant beasts which have informed this set of hats, the bastard off-spring of tall tales,improbable visions and things that go bump in the night. A diverse range of materials have been used, many of which would be more usually found on a galleon than in a hat. From fine cashmeres and silks in muted colours – to oak, leather and rope. With its wild shapes, bold colours and mythical silhouettes, this collection is exciting yet feminine, utterly original yet entirely flattering on the head." [....]

Warhol's Empire

In celebration of the opening of Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964–1977, the Art Institute of Chicago will project Andy Warhol’s 1964 film Empire—a single, eight-hour-long nighttime take of the Empire State Building—from the museum’s Bluhm Family Terrace across Millennium Park to the upper stories of the Aon Center. Warhol’s work thus sets the stage for the artists featured in Light Years who redrew the boundaries of both photography and contemporary art. On view December 9 through December 10.

Illuminance

Photographer Rinko Kawauchi on the shortlist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012. Kawauchi is nominated for her publication Illuminance, published by Editions Xavier Barral (France, 2011). In her work, Kawauchi creates an imaginary space where the fantastical is possible— evoking moments of dreams, memory and temporality. The images in her book Illuminance, the results of both commissions and personal projects, span fifteen years of her practice and have the ability to turn the mundane into the extraordinary and poetic.

I Like Pigs & Pigs Like Me

Lately, artist Miru Kim has been spending a lot of time with pigs for her project entitled The Pig That Therefore I Am. Pictured above, Miru Kim spent 104 hours, nude, behind glass with two hogs for Miami, Basel. Part live performance, and part photographic series, Kim writes in her artist statement about the project: "Both a pig and I carry our exteriorized memories on our cutaneous garment–scars, blemishes, wrinkles, and rashes that manifest markings of time, anguish of the soul, wounds of love and war. We all live at the same time, naked and not quite naked. Underneath our exterior coverings, whether they are silk, cotton or leather, we humans carry our own skin, just as pigs do. Born with a blank canvas enveloping us, we accumulate more and more brushstrokes of memories as years pass, on our garment that cannot be literally cast off until death."

[NEXT] Danielle “Danz” Johnson is Computer Magic

Danielle “Danz” Johnson must have been realizing some kind of fantasy by wandering around New York in a spacesuit in the wonderful music video for the track The End of Times, a powerfully poppy single which was released last July on Roundtable Records, out of the UK.  The end of times sure, but not for Computer Magic – I can bet we'll be hearing a lot from this 22 year old DJ and blogger based in Brooklyn, New York.  Computer Magic is currently working on full length album with no set date for release.

The End of Time
Computer Magic

John Baldessari, The First $100,000 I Ever Made

High Line Art, presented by Friends of the High Line, today unveiled The First $100,000 I Ever Made, a new work created by legendary artist John Baldessari for the 25-by-75 foot billboard next to the High Line on 10th Avenue at West 18th Street. This is the first of three works to be presented as part of a new series called HIGH LINE BILLBOARD. The First $100,000 I Ever Made will remain on view until Friday, December 30, 2011.

Liquide Vermeil

Liquid_Vermeil_da_end_gallery_CENDRINE_ROVINI

Cendrine Rovini’s exhibition, Liquide Vermeil, takes us into an emphatically feminine world where female images reign. First off the proverbial relationship between women and blood. A rich and intimate mystery which has the power to fascinate man but whose deepest meaning constantly eludes him. The artist presents her creatures as strangely beautiful women who play with and enjoy their own femininity to the point of intoxication. An overflow of blood become flowers, a flow of tears become hair, a face rain, horns erupt in the shape of delicate, wild plants. Liquide Vermeil is on view at the Da-End gallery in Paris from December 15 to February 15, 2012, 17 rue Guénégaud 75006.

Taschen's Big Book of Pussy

In-depth exploration of the female pudendum, that coveted orifice man spends nine months trying to escape, and a lifetime attempting to reenter....The Big Book of Pussy, not to be confused with a book of big pussy.....[is an] in-depth exploration of the female pudendum, that coveted orifice man spends nine months trying to escape, and a lifetime attempting to reenter. The Big Book of Pussy, not to be confused with a book of big pussy. Now available here.

Psycho

Die Stimmungsbombe, 2000. Courtesy Sammlung Falckenberg

At the end of this year, the Sammlung Falckenberg will bring together seemingly poetic-surrealist images by US painter Ena Swanser and subversive-enigmatic works by Finnish artist Robert Lucander who now lives in Berlin.  The exhibition’s title of Psycho is a reference to the eponymous horror classic by Alfred Hitchcock and calls to mind the disturbed nature of schizophrenics, psychopaths and other psychologically disturbed persons. Psycho is Greek for soul and the term referring to insanity is derived from the notion that a human’s spirit or soul can become ill; psychoanalysis, for example, is used to treat deep-rooted psychological traumata and behavioral disorders. Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho exposed, for example, the ugly face of unquestioning materialism but left the reader in doubt as to whether the gruesome scenes depicted in the novel emanate from the protagonist’s psychotic fantasies or whether he actually carries out these excessively violent acts. Colloquially, psycho is used to describe a mentally disturbed person who displays behavioral problems and a tendency towards aggressive conduct, thus having an unsettling and threatening effect on their environment. The use of this term leads one to expect a confrontation with art that takes non-conformism, insanity and thus the threatening and the sinister as its theme. This exhibition is on view at the Falckenberg Collection in Hamburg, from December 18 through