Love, Commas and Asterisks

Blum & Poe and legendary musician Van Dyke Parks present a selection of work by Maurizio Vetrugno, his first one-person exhibition in Los Angeles. Vetrugno’s practice alters everyday objects, such as cloth and tools, into wry commentary on popular culture of a bygone era. Hand-made, embroidered textiles, woven in Laos, depict the distinctive designs of vinyl record sleeves from the 1950s-1980s. The selected album covers reference the legacies of exotica, modernism, glam rock and the golden age of graphic design in music. Fashion has been a continuing influence on Vetrugno’s work, as exemplified in his female portraits woven in monochromatic hues of blue and green. Sources for these works derive from black and white images taken from fashion magazines of the same time period as the album covers. Models such as Twiggy evoke mid-century popular culture and become self-referential in the works -- the cloth “wears” the model. There is a lushness and preciousness to these labor-intensive textiles, whose technique co-opts and contradicts the Pop content. Maurizio Vetrugno: Love, Commas and Asterisks will be on view until August 25, 2012 at Blum & Poe, 2727 S. La Cienega, BLVD

My Idol by Sergey Melnitchenko

Schwarzenegger Is My Idol is a series of juxtaposing photographs of Ukrainian body builders in the nude by twenty year old Ukraine based photographer Sergey Melnitchenko. The series harkens back to the male erotic imagery of 1950s pin-ups with a certain campiness that seems intentional. Melnitchenko says, "In these photos we can see boys whose main goal is to be the best of the best and they will do anything to reach it." 

Autre Issue #2 Review From Down Under

Enormous thanks to Alex Vancil and The Thousands, Australia's go to guide for all things culturally relevant and cool, for the amazing review on Autre's second issue. It was hard to choose just one quote: "Channeling a potent combination of anti-heroism and raw intimacy, the magazine casts long shadows of various experimental attitudes in a wide range of artistic nooks and crannies." Read the full review here. 

Artists in Love

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

For centuries, great artists have been drawn together in friendship and in love. In Artists in Love, curator and writer Veronica Kavass delves into the passionate and creative underpinnings of the art world's most provocative romances. From Picasso and Francoise Gilot to Lee Miler and Man Ray to Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne, Kavass' graceful and daring text provides a generous glimpse into the inspiring and sometimes tempestuous relationships between celebrated artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Artists in Love will be out this October but is available for preorder now. 

Mark Flood The Hateful Years

On view this month at Luxembourg & Dayan gallery in New York, works by Punk propagandist Mark Flood who has been making art for the last three decades in his unique style of commentary on contemporary culture that is both shocking and witty. The show, entitled Mark Flood: The Hateful Years will be on view from July 18 through September 29, Luxembourg & Dayan, 64 E 77th St

Jenny Holzer SOPHISTICATED DEVICES @ Sprueth Magers

Sprüth Magers London presents a solo exhibition of work by Jenny Holzer. The American artist finds ways to make narrative a part of visual objects, employing an innovative range of materials and presentations to confront emotions and experiences, politics and conflict. Entitled Sophisticated Devices, this exhibition provides a survey of Holzer’s practice, encompassing her spray paint canvases, granite benches, LED works, painted signs, and cast plaques. Sophisticated Devices is on view until July 28 at Sprüth Magers, 7A Grafton Street, London

Brett Whiteley’s London Years

Brett Whitley's Studio

A new exhibition explores the late artist Brett Whiteley’s art and life from 1960 to 1967 when he was largely based in London. Key abstract works from this period as well as paintings from his Bathroom, Christie and London Zoo series, and the Endlessnessism monoprints of conversations with the artist Francis Bacon are featured in this exhibition at the Brett Whiteley Studio in Surry Hills, Australia. This remarkable body of work displays all the dexterity, imagination and ambition of a prodigious talent still in his 20s. On view from Jul 13, 2012 to February 13, 2013, The Brett Whiteley Studio at 2 Raper Street, Surry Hills, Australia

The Humping Pact

The Humping Pact was developed by two venture fiction entrepreneurs, Diego Agullo and Dmitry Paranyushkin, in the field of polysingularity, during a residency at  PACT Zollverein center for performance and choreography in Essen, Germany.  What is a venture fiction entrepreneur? Venture fiction is "a practice of creating enterprises in order to communicate ideas and not the other way round. Each enterprise proposes its own system of perception with multiple solutions. It is not there to make a statement or to generate profits. It is there to propose its own world, behavior, and episteme." Diego Agullo and Dmitry Paranyushkin's mission is to get their humpers to hump all around the world as an "aesthetic meditation on the human desire to believe in the futile and to conceive the impossible."  The Humping Pact's mission is spread by a number of mediums which include exhibitions, live performances, film showings, projections, photo prints and press publications. The Humping Pact's new "mission" will premiere at Beursschowburg in Brussels on October 5 2012.

Touched by Frances Goodman

(Art) Amalgamated presents Frances Goodman’s first solo show in New York Touched. Recognized as one of South Africa’s leading young artists, Goodman has become well known for her multi-media works that explore issues of female identity in ways that are often humorously dark and cryptic. By looking at everyday obsessions and behavior she explores the way people respond to our contemporary, highly materialistic society and the often idiosyncratic coping mechanisms they develop. Her work reflects a morbid ambiguity of excess and loss, a dislocation between appearance and truth. Touched is on view until August 4, 2012 at (Art) Amalgamated,   317 10th Avenue, New York

Laisvyde Salciute Exhibition

Laisvyde_Salciute_orlando

Laisvyde Salciute's new exhibition on view this month at Vyner Street Gallery is inspired by Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando. A Biography where the protagonist of the novel is not subject to gender or time constraints and lives a life of oscillating sex through the ages. This brave reevaluation of gender is one of the biggest values of the novel. Salciute says,  "According to Jacques Lacan, any constant sensual and visual identity can only reach us as a gap between words and images. In this series of artwork I was interested in transforming reality into a traumatic phantasm or a dream in a dream. From random images and quotations resourced from the Internet, I have fabricated visual puns on distance, scarcity, desire and images of disintegrating identity and illusion as existing in indefinite time and space." Orlando. A Biography, a series of 26 silkscreens will be on view from July 19 to July 21, 2012  at Vyner Street Gallery, 23 Vyner Street London