Dennis Hopper's Lost Album on View @ Martin-Gropius-Bau

On view at Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum are an impressive four hundred vintage photographs taken by Dennis Hopper in the 1960s. Tucked away in five crates and forgotten, they were discovered after his death.Many of these pictures are icons, such as the portraits of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Paul Newman and Jane Fonda. They also cover a wide range of subjects. Dennis Hopper is interested in everything. Wherever he happens to be, whether in Los Angeles, New York, London, Mexico or Peru, he takes in his surroundings with empathy, enthusiasm and intense curiosity. He seeks and savours the “essential moment”, capturing the celebrities and types of his time with the camera: actors, artists, musicians, his family, Hell’s Angels and hippies. He leaves an impressive photographic record of the “street life” of Harlem, of cemeteries in Mexico, and of bullfights in Tijuana. Hopper accompanies Martin Luther King on the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Dennis Hopper: Lost Album is on view until December 17, 2012 at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Niederkirchner Straße 7, 10963 Berlin, Germany

James Franco's Band Daddy Releases First Music Video

James Franco and musician Tim O'Keefe (a former classmate of Franco's at the Rhode Island School of Design) have released an EP under the moniker Daddy. James Franco directed the duo's first video, Love in the Old Days, a meditation on romance in the 1960s. Daddy's debut EP, Motor City, hits Sept. 25 and features vocal contributions from Motown's Smokey Robinson, whom Franco met on a flight. The cover art is a polaroid of Franco's Spring Breakers costars Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine. The music video stars Autre's own Adarsha Benjamin, along with Henry Hopper, Lily Donaldson, Nina Ljeti and a host of Franco's merry band of postmodern pranksters. 

Andreas Slominski's Sperm Exhibition in New York

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Anyone care to see a panther's semen on a pair of sandals? Andreas Slominski's Sperm comprises the semen of humans and animals splashed on the walls and floors of Metro Pictures gallery in New York. The theme of the exhibition is that of touch, specifically the moment sperm fuses with the ovum and fertilization occurs. As the foundation of existence, Slominski identifies touch as one of the most important forces in our world. “Sperm” represents both a shift in focus and continuation of Slominski’s engagement with this notion of the instant of contact, which has been a key element in the traps that have been a signature aspect of his work for more than 25 years. The elaborate and often hidden processes that go into Slominski’s exhibitions and works have long been the poetic and brutal crux of his practice. Sperm is on view until October 27, 2012 at Metro Pictures Gallery, 519 West 24th Street

Object(ing): The Art/Design of Tobias Wong

The Museum of Vancouver is pleased to present the first time solo exhibition of internationally acclaimed Vancouver-born artist Tobias Wong who committed suicide in 2010 at the age of 30. Wong’s work defied categorization, as he engaged with a range of art processes from installations, performances, and furniture making to product and fashion design. He was cheeky, playful, witty, and clever. He appropriated, manipulated, manufactured, mass-produced, and re-issued objects, pouring new meanings into them. Like many pioneers, his art both seduced and upset. Object(ing): The Art/Design of Tobias Wong opened yesterday and is on view until February 24, 2013 at The Museum of Vancouver. 

Marc Molk: The Blue Sky Upon Us May Well Fall Apart

"Divination is a noble ambition, an infinite nostalgia. The power of predictions, be they good or bad, is the same as the power of memories, be they faded or vivid. Clairvoyants promise a blue sky, several times a day, to anyone. But we all know that the blue sky upon us may well fall." It is this presage esthetics that pervades Marc Molk’s first solo show in Paris.The artist, whose lives are many, goes for the neglected art of allegory in a spiritualist register, where melancholia has put on golden clothes, ball garments. His mixed technique explores various states of pictorial matter, from large nuanced colourwashes to thick highlights. Often, he puts on a certain degree of naivety to tackle disenchantedly sentimental subject matters. Marc Molk: The Blue Sky Upon Us May Well Fall Apart is on view from September 27 to November 3, 2012 at Da End Gallery, 17 rue Guénégaud, 75006 Paris.

Eric Yahnker At The Hole Gallery

The Hole gallery presents the first New York solo show by LA based artist Eric Yahnker. For the past two years Yahnker has been preparing his massive drawings and sculptures for this exhibition, and it represents the culmination of his recent explorations. The works in this show range from meticulous, two-foot colored pencil and graphite drawings to towering ten-foot works on paper; from tiny sculptural interventions to massive three dimensional arrangements. The pieces en masse form a lyrical and disturbing poem – which takes the title Virgin Birth ‘N’ Turf – about the state of the union and our contemporary American moment. Virgin Birth ‘N’ Turf is on view until October 6 at The Hole Gallery, 312 Bowery, New York

RETNA New Works At Michael Kohn Gallery

Michael Kohn Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings, works on paper and site-specific installations from artist Retna. Born and bred in Los Angeles, Retna has come to art world attention from his critically acclaimed participation in Art in the Streets, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Retna has a particular interest in the visual writings of ancient cultures, from Arabic and Persian to Hebrew and Native American. Both hieroglyphics and the graceful tradition of ink calligraphy inform his paintbrush while the angles and curves of his improvised alphabet echo the architecture of a mosque or Asian temple. Retna was invited into the gallery to transform both the interior and exterior spaces with his complex system of multi-layered lettering in an installation of murals and paintings like the above customized Rolls Royce. RETNA: New Paintings and Works on Paper will be on view until October 27, 2012 at Michael Kohn Gallery, 8071 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles.

[MUSIC VIDEO] Tamaryn 'Heavenly Bodies'

New Zealand born singer Tamaryn, now based in San Francisco, along with her main collaborator and producer Rex John Shelverton, release a psychedelic music video for the track Heavenly Bodies from the album Tender New Signs due out October 16 on the Mexican Summer label. Tamaryn says, “In making this record, I hoped to transcend the mundane world, by living in a new one of my own creation....now it's time to invite everyone else in it with me.”