A Sad Day for Photography, Mary Ellen Mark Dies At 75

Her photography addressed such social issues as homelessness, loneliness, drug addiction, and prostitution. She worked primarily in black and white. She described her approach to her subjects: "I’ve always felt that children and teenagers are not "children," they’re small people. I look at them as little people and I either like them or I don’t like them. I also have an obsession with mental illness. And strange people who are outside the borders of society." Mark also said, "I’d rather pull up things from another culture that are universal, that we can all relate to….There are prostitutes all over the world. I try to show their way of life…" Mary Ellen Mark - March 20, 1940 - May 25, 2015

Ragnar Kjartansson’s S.S. Hangover with a Brass Sextet on Board Loops Around the Harlem Meer In Central Park

Icelandic conceptual artist Ragnar Kjartansson's incredible performance sculpture is currently making scheduled loops around the Harlem Meer in Central Park. The S.S. Hangover, a haphazard hybrid of Greek, Icelandic and Venetian ship design, was originally a 1934 wooden fishing boat from Reykjavík that the artist transformed into a remake of a theatrical boat that appeared on dry land in a swanky party scene in the film Remember Last Night? (1935). Sailing under the flag of a winged fat Pegasus–one that Kjartansson regards as a symbol for the artist struggling to reach sublime heights. Instrumentals are provided by the Grammy-nominated Metropolis Ensemble and led by conductor Andrew Cyr. You can catch the S.S. Hangover on Fridays and Saturdays through June 20, 2015 on the East side of the park near Lennox Avenue in New York.

Brian Kokoska's Collaborative Show With Chloe Seibert Is A Pepto-Bismol Shade of Pink and Full of Strange Artifacts

Johannes Vogt Gallery presents Night Cage, a two-person exhibition by Brian Kokoska and Chloe Seibert. Kokoska has altered the gallery space entirely in a Peto-Bismol shade of baby pink. Brian Kokoska's paintings explore sensibilities of a post-human "face" in which each composition is built from a series of gestures and recognizable iconography and symbols. His new monochromatic sculptures are built up from various acquired objects including snakes, Droopy the dog (an anthropomorphic cartoon dog introduced in 1943), rare collectible teddy bears, blankets, caskets and furniture. Each sculpture is intentionally altered and rearranged to induce a sort of hyper sentimentality or overwhelming sadness. Additionally, Kokoska is exhibiting a new work that is a selection from his collection of acquired prison drawings. Their intimate scale, cute subject matter and loving text is both personal to the artists childhood and to his current practice. Chloe Seibert uses scale and expression to evoke psychological and physical responses. In this selection of her work, gestural and aggressive mark making creates vague facial representations out of pedestrian materials and a bland palette. The works are decisively haphazard and familiarly disgruntled. She will be presenting two wall sculptures and a large head statue. Night Cage will be on view until June 20, 2015 at Johannes Vogt Gallery, 526 W 26th St., New York

Max Barrie Talks About The Vagina of His Dreams In the Latest Installment of A Trendy Tragedy

"...Women in the past, they usually reacted like a dog ate their homework. Of course, I'm referring to the ladies that weren't handing me an invoice after I ejaculated..." Max Barrie talks about the "vagina of his dreams," being in the friend zone and the ultimate torment of both rejection and self realization in the latest installment of his non-fiction short story series A Trendy Tragedy. Read the store here. 

Cole Sternberg's ARTed House Is On View Now in the Hamptons

Memorial weekend is always a memorable experience in the Hamptons. A must see this weekend, in this rarefied atmosphere, is artist Cole's Sternberg's ARTed House, which is presented by Los Angeles based MAMA gallery. Entitled "A Moment Near the Sea," Cole Sternberg has transformed a classic property into a giant canvas with installation based works, collages on wood, sculpture and more that spill out from the house and into the backyard. Cole Sternberg's ARTed House opens today and runs until June 7th, Davids Lane East Hampton, NY

Crackle & Drag T.R. Ericsson's First Solo Museum Exhibition Opens This Weekend At The Cleveland Museum Of Art

T.R. Ericsson employs photo-based work, sculptural objects, and cinema to create installations that provide a ruthlessly honest, yet tender portrait of his mother, who committed suicide at age 57, and of the triangulated relationships between three generations within one Northeastern Ohio family. Ericsson is involved in an ongoing investigation and reinterpretation of a deteriorating archive of family artifacts, documents, writings, and photographs. Crackle & Drag makes a personal struggle public, coming to terms with the archive’s power to determine the past and the future, even as it vanishes in time. The exhibition’s title is taken from the final line of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Edge”: “Staring from her hood of bone./She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.” T.R. Ericsson's Crackle & Drag will be on view from May 23 to August 23, 2015 at the Cleveland Museum Of Art. After that, you can catch his show All My Love, Always, No Matter What, which will be on view from September 10 to October 8, 2015 at Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels. 

Selfie-Stick Aerobics, Crystal Healing, Laughter Therapy and Hacked Kindles: Self Publish Be Happy Takes Over The Tate Modern In London

The madcap geniuses at Self Publish, Be Happy will be taking over the Tate Modern this weekend. A project in the Turbine Hall celebrates the fifth birthday of Self Publish, Be Happy (SBPH) this year for the first Offprint London fair, which coincides with Photo London. By using books to vitalize public interaction, the SPBH Project Space will host numerous events involving exciting contemporary photographers. Visitors can create their own temporary tattoo in photographer Thomas Mailaender’s ‘Fun Tattoo Parlor’. After selecting a photo from the artist’s weird collection of internet images, they can wear it - becoming part of a mobile exhibition. Artist Antony Cairns will be hacking old Kindles bought on eBay and making them into photobooks. Arvida Byström and Maja Malou Lyse will lead a selfie-stick aerobics class, while Japanese artists Daisuke Yokota and Hiroshi Takizawah will print a book using an experimental process that uses wax, cement and iron powder. There will also be some cathartic booksmoking by Melinda Gib- son, crystal healing sessions by Johan Rosenmunthe and laughter therapy by Dominic Hawgood. Finally, SPBH features workshops on risographs and zine-making with Maya Rochat and Col~Late. Offprint London opens tonight at the Tate Modern in London and runs until May 25, 2015. You can also view the events live on the SPBH Youtube Channel.   

Devendra Banhart and Adam Tullie Team Up for a Collaborative Book of Drawings entitled "Unburdened by Meaning"

"Unburdened By Meaning" is a split effort between Adam Tullie and Devendra Banhart which documents selections of work created over one week, while the artists worked in parallel in Devendra's New York drawing studio. Tullie and Banhart, who are now based in Los Angeles, have known each other for over 13 years, so it only makes sense that they would collaborate together in this capacity. As the title suggests, the collection of drawings found in this book aren't held to any one concept or idea - it is simply a freewheeling, minimalistic exploration of the two artist's unique, but synergistic styles. The book also includes two essays - one by New York based artist and writer Ross Simonini, and the other by San Francisco based writer and artist Chris Fallon. The book is available now from Canadian based publishing house Anteism in a limited edition of 200 - it is also signed and numbered by the artists. 

Urs Fischer Large Scale Sculpture "Big Clay #4" Outside of the Seagram Building

Gagosian Gallery presents Urs Fischer's monumental sculpture Big Clay #4 on view at Seagram Plaza until September 1, 2015. .Fischer's work is the result of an intimate gesture enlarged to epic proportions. The curving, towering stack derives from a scrap of clay that has been squeezed; scanned and enlarged digitally; then cast in aluminum as a 42 1/2-foot-tall sculpture. The silver surface reveals all of the incidental nuances of the original form, including Fischer's fingerprints, which are preserved as striated curves.

[DOCUMENTARY] Watch Larry Clark Talk About His 1995 Cinematic Debut "Kids" To Celebrate the Film’s 20th Anniversary

"Jesus Christ, what happened," the last lines of the movie summed up an entire decade of existential sloth and societal angst. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Larry Clark’s debut film, KIDS, the portrayal of NYC youth’s escapades in the early 90’s. Some were offended by the raw and anarchic world Larry Clark documented, for those that weren’t, the film became an important document of the time, place and culture. Through photographing skaters in NYC, Larry Clark came to meet the film’s writer, Harmony Korine and star, Leo Fitzpatrick. The rest of the cast was pieced together with a variety of downtown New York characters including original Supreme team riders Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter. It is a testament to KIDS cultural impact that it resonates today just as much as it did in 1995. To commemorate the 20th anniversary, Supreme releases a collection of items featuring stills from the iconic film KIDS. Also, a short documentary by William Strobeck. Watch the documentary above. The capsule collection will be released today on the Supreme New York website. 

William Pope.L: Trinket at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles

William Pope.L is perhaps best known for his extreme performative works, like the "The Great White Way," which involved him crawling 22 miles through the streets of New York in a superman costume with a skateboard strapped to his back - it took a span of five years to complete. In his new exhibition at the MoCA in Los Angeles, entitled "Trinket," Pope.L presents a number of installation works - including a giant American flag, which is being blown by four giant fans. Over the course of the exhibition, the flag will eventually unravel and disintegrate, thus continuing the artist's philosophy of the American identity in a contemporary context, especially as a black man. William Pope.L: Trinket will be on view until June 28, 2015, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles

Yayoi Kusama 'Give Me Love' On View Now At David Zwirner Gallery In New York

David Zwirner presents "Give Me Love," the gallery’s second exhibition with Yayoi Kusama in New York. On view in two spaces will be new paintings from the celebrated "My Eternal Soul" series and new polka-dotted pumpkin sculptures. The exhibition also marks the United States debut of "The Obliteration Room," an all-white, domestic interior that over the course of the show is covered by dots of varying sizes and colors. In a departure from earlier iterations of the work, which have involved one or several rooms, the present installation is built like a typical, prefabricated American suburban house. As visitors are handed a set of stickers and step inside, they enter a completely white residential setting where otherwise familiar objects such as a kitchen counter, couch, and bookshelves are all painted the same shade. Gradually transforming the space as a result of the interaction, the accumulation of the bright dots ultimately changes the interior until it is eradicated into a blur of colors. A sense of depth and volume disappears as individual pieces of furniture, floors, and walls blend together. Yayoi Kusama 'Give Me Love' will be on view until June 13, 2015 at David Zwirner, 519 & 525 West 19th Street, New York

Carmen Villain Shares Hypnotic, Tai Chi Inspired Video for her Track 'Quietly'

Carmen Villain (born Hillestad) follows the release of her recent single, “Quietly,” with a new video directed by photographer Adina Fohlin. The video was filmed in Stockholm and features Linnea Martinsson’s interpretative dance of Tai Chi. As described by Hillestad, "I wanted the visuals for the song to feature movement, and I've been obsessed with looking at films of people doing Tai Chi. There’s something very powerful and vulnerable about it -- the idea of getting through difficult things in life slowly, one breath at a time." The Quietly/Let Go 7” is out now via Smalltown Supersound.

'Fassbinder – NOW' @ Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin

The Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, presents the exhibition “Fassbinder – NOW” in nine rooms at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin to mark Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 70th birthday on 31st May. The presentation provides a new impetus to engage with one of the most significant German directors. The exhibition illustrates not only the film-maker's working methods, but also the coherence of his work in the cinema and its influence on the art being produced today. The exhibition thus takes in a dual perspective: both historical and contemporary. It traces the aesthetic, political and media contexts that distance our present from Fassbinder's time while simultaneously linking to it. Fassbinder – NOW will be on view until August 23rd, 2015 at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin, Germany

'America Is Hard To See' Inaugural Exhibition @ The New Whitney Museum Location In New York

Drawn entirely from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s collection, America Is Hard to See takes the inauguration of the Museum’s new building as an opportunity to reexamine the history of art in the United States from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Comprising more than six hundred works, the exhibition elaborates the themes, ideas, beliefs, and passions that have galvanized American artists in their struggle to work within and against established conventions, often directly engaging their political and social contexts. Numerous pieces that have rarely, if ever, been shown appear alongside beloved icons in a conscious effort to unsettle assumptions about the American art canon. America Is Hard to See will be on view until September 2015 at the Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York. 

Highlights from the 2015 NADA Art Fair At Basketball City In New York

photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Read Max Barrie's Humorously Dark Riff on Suicide and the Meaning of Life and Death →

Writer Max Barrie waxes poetic in a darkly humorous riff on suicide and depression - with a few tragic stories thrown in the mix - in the new installment of his non-fiction short story series A Trendy Tragedy. Read the full text here.