Pop and Circumstance: Read Alex Kazemi's Existential Review of Grimes' New Album →

Alex Kazemi is one of our favorite “voices of a generation” – a voice that has risen angelic and rebellious above the Tweeting and Snapchatting hordes. In a recent podcast, Bret Easton Ellis called Kazemi a “millennial friend” and “a contrarian 20 year old with a brilliant grasp of the contradictions that exist within his generation.” In the following review, if it can be called that, Kazemi shares his views on Grimes’ new album and wonders: “If Grimes can have a career in pop music, why can’t reality TV stars Scheana Marie and Heidi Montag?" Click here to read the review. 

Sophie Calle Installs Safes For Storing Lovers' Secrets At Fraenkel Gallery In San Francisco

"Find a couple. Have each of them tell me a secret. Install two safes in their home. Lock each secret up in its own safe. Keep the codes to myself. The lovers will have to live with the other’s secret close at hand but out of reach." Fraenkel Gallery presents an exhibition of work by Sophie Calle. Calle uses photography, text, and video to pursue her sociological and autobiographical investigations. Her exhibition at Fraenkel Gallery focuses on four bodies of work in which the artist delves into the nature of love, violence, secrets, and death. Among the works on view will be Secrets—a pair of working safes for storing a couple’s secrets, accompanied by a plaque engraved with the above text and the artist’s contract stipulating how these mysteries will remain secured. Writing is often integral to Calle’s work, as in her 2014 triptych Suicide (also on view), in which photographs of dark ripples on the surface of black water are accompanied by text sandblasted on glass: “They say the police can distinguish between people who drown themselves for love and those who drown themselves for money…” Featured in this exhibition will be two series incorporating portraits from ‘ready-made’ sources and addressing themes of privacy and violence. Calle’s Cash Machine photographs are made from ATM video surveillance footage, and each work is exhibited as a sequence of two to eleven images. Collateral Damage, Targets is a series comprised of images of petty criminals’ mugshots, which were used for police target practice. The exhibition will be on view until December 24, 2015 at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. photographs by Bradley Golden

Aarhus Is On Fire: Read Our Interview With An Amazing New Band From Denmark Called Liss →

Put a ‘B’ in front of Danish band Liss’ name and you have the perfect description of their unique, blissed out sound. Comprised of four teenagers from Aarhus (which is a little bit like the New Orleans of Denmark), Liss sounds like an amalgam of Arthur Russell angst and 90s R&B. Currently, Liss – who are on the Escho label (known for introducing Iceage and KLoAK to the world) – is making waves on the international music scene, and it is only a matter of time before they blow up in the States. In the following interview, Søren Holm, Vilhelm Strange, Villads Tyrrestrup, and Tobias Hansen chat with Autre about musical upbringing, their unique sound and their new single, which will be released at the end of this month. Also, listen to their incredible track, Always, at the end of the interview. Click here to read and listen. 

Here Are 11 Things You Need To Know About the Artist H.C. Westermann Before Seeing His Retrospective in New York →

"See America First," a comprehensive exhibition of sculptures and drawings by the late, great H.C. Westermann, is on view now at Venus Over Manhattan. The installation features a wide range of Westermann's work, spanning from 1953 to 1980. Clock here to read eleven things  about the artist before seeing the exhibition. 

Johnson Hartig, Designer of the Cult Label Libertine, Celebrates The Release of His First Monograph at Maxfield Los Angeles

Libertine is an invitation into Johnson Hartig’s world, as the designer shares images of his eccentric and whimsical fashion designs, inspirational references, and his captivatingly eclectic interiors. Johnson Hartig is the founder and designer for the innovative fashion brand Libertine, which is renowned for breathing electric life back into vintage couture pieces by cutting them up and adding ornate crystal embellishments, rich silk-screened graphics, and embroideries to create gorgeous one-of-a-kind garments. With an uncanny ability to combine unexpected colors, patterns, and textures, Hartig has created a style that is youthful and edgy yet undeniably glamorous and sophisticated. A hopeless traditionalist yet a rule breaker, Hartig’s personal style was initially what inspired the brand, and this eclectic philosophy permeates all parts of his life. Early champions include Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld, and Damien Hirst.You can purchase the book here. 

Friday Playlist: An Ode to Southern Lord Records in Celebration of the Announcement of the new Sunn O))) Record →

Despite decades of evidence to the contrary, music snobs still have a hard time viewing heavy metal as a musical form worthy of the label, "art." Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley have fought that notion throughout their careers. With the announcement of the duo's main band Sunn O))) releasing its first new record since 2008's 'Monoliths and Demensions (except for the 2014 'Soused' that saw the band collaborate with legendary UK singer Scott Walker), I have decided to use this Autre Playlist to pay homage to the duo's work as well as their record label, Southern Lord. Click here to listen to the full playlist.

Ryan McGinley "Winter" Opening At Team Gallery In New York

On view in New York are McGinley’s groundbreaking Winter photographs, which portray his nude figures in frozen landscapes. There is virtually no photographic or cinematic precedent for these works: to capture naked bodies in such extreme conditions took profound measures of precaution, audacity and sacrifice on the part of all involved. The artist and his team invented and improvised manifold contrivances, employing the likes of ice-fishing tents, propane tanks and rock-climbing gear, in order to enable the production of these images. These pictures, unlike the Fall photos, feature hyper-limited palettes of whites, greens, blues and greys, finding intrigue and variance instead in the texture and organic architecture of ice formations. Impossibly, the unclothed bodies appear native to their wintry settings. Ryan McGinley "Winter" will be on view until December 20th, 2015 at Team Gallery, 83 Grand Street, New York. Julianna Vezzetti

Big City Girl: Check Out Jump From Paper's 2015 Lookbook for the Traveler Collection Shot In New York

Internet-approved, Taipei-based sensation JumpFromPaper is back. This time with its relaunch of Traveler, a limited collection for the winter. Debuted in London back in 2013, JumpFromPaper's Traveler collection was an instant hit - The dark green backpack sold out in a mere 2 months. The new collection brings back the backpacks, but also new styles including handbags and wallets. Lookbook is modeled by Sahara Lin and shot by photographer Chien Wen Lin in New York. Click here to shop. 

The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up: Cobra and Its Legacy Group Show @ Blum & Poe In Los Angeles

Blum & Poe presents The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up: Cobra and Its Legacy, the second installment of a two-part exhibition which began in New York and now opens in Los Angeles, offering a broad and critical reassessment of Cobra—an essential postwar European movement named for the home cities Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam. The exhibition follows the solo exhibition of Karel Appel, one of the movement’s key protagonists, presented at Blum & Poe, New York in September 2014. Named after a seminal work by Cobra founder Asger Jorn, The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up pays tribute to Jorn’s catalyzing role and to the movement’s enduring aesthetic and conceptual influence on artists working today. Works by artists Enrico Baj, Joe Bradley, Bjarne Melgaard, Richard Prince, Julian Schnabel and many more are included in this exhibition. The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up: Cobra and Its Legacy Group Show officially starts today and will be on view until December 23, at Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles. 

Daniel Johnston In Los Angeles For "Hi, How Are You" Art Opening @ MAMA Gallery

MAMA gallery presents "Hi, How Are You?," an immersive exhibition exploring the art, music and mind of prolific cult singer-songwriter-artist, Daniel Johnston. The November 7, 2015 opening reception will feature the world premiere of the short film, Hi, How Are You Daniel Johnston, directed by Gabriel Sunday and starring Daniel Johnston. Hi, How Are You is an exhibition about Daniel’s past and present. "Through creative visions of madness and hope, we witness an aging musician coming to terms with the dreams of yesteryear." This unique exhibition of Daniel Johnston works explores his past and present art, exposing his heartrending tales of unrequited love, cosmic mishaps, and existential torment. Daniel Johnson: Hi, How Are You? will be on view from November 7 to November 11, 2015 at MAMA Gallery, In Los Angeles

Artist Keith Mayerson's Meta-Narrative of Appropriated Americana Explored In "My American Dream" At Marlborough Chelsea in New York

My American Dream is a large installation and body of work by artist Keith Mayerson created over the last decade. Various incarnations of this project, or “chapters”, first appeared in exhibitions in New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Houston, and Brussels, most recently culminating in his 42-painting installation, curated by Stuart Comer into the 2014 Whitney Biennial. My American Dream is a meta-narrative, consisting of more recent personal images from photographs—of his husband and himself, his family, and world—and also from a long career of painting from appropriated imagery and abstraction. This particular body of work began in 2005, building on the hope that one day the cosmology would be exhibited in a site-specific composition. Marlborough Chelsea presents the large cosmology of the work (accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog) to inspire and promote a progressive, positive view of America’s past in the hope to help make a better future. My American Dream will be on view until December 23, 2015 at Marlborough Chelsea, 545 West 25th Street, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

A Long Strange Trip: Read Our Intimate Convo With Actor, Artist And Now Curator Leo Fitzpatrick On Navigating The Tricky Waters of The New York Art World →

It’s been a long strange trip for Fitzpatrick since he was discovered skateboarding in Washington Square Park at age 14 by Larry Clark to star in the director’s seminal ‘90s troublemaker film Kids. Though he has remained involved in acting on and off ever since (he’s most likely appeared in at least one of your favorite shows: The Wire, Carnivale, Banshee, and a hilarious turn in this past season of Broad City as a misdemeanor prone trust fund man child), art has more or less been his primary passion since he bought his first Chris Johanson piece at age 17. He gained some notoriety for his austere and slightly brutal painting style as well as for his documented friendships with some of the early ‘00s’ most famous wild child artists like the aforementioned Snow and Colen, Nate Lowman, and Ryan McGinley. Click here to read our intimate convo with Adam Lehrer. 

First Look At Oneohtrix Point Never's Two Part Music Video In Collaboration With Jon Rafman

Nine days from the release of the new widely-anticipated Oneohtrix Point Never album Garden of Delete, a new single “Sticky Drama” and accompanying film by Jon Rafman and Daniel Lopatin has been released today. The short film /music video is released in two parts.  “Sticky Drama” is arguably the irregular-beating-heart and lyrical inspiration of Garden of Delete. It ensnares Lopatin’s hyper-attuned pop tendencies, as well as his reckless sonic trips into the void, and emerges as beautiful vertigo; a thorny, encompassing, truly groundbreaking classic. With a cast of over 35 children, the film tunes into this musical ambition, bringing to life a fantastical world in which characters are on a quest, battling for dominance and in a race against time to archive past histories. Inspired by the costumes, staging and extended improvised narratives of Live Action Role Play (LARP), the video reflects the vivid, often violent world of children’s imaginations and games, as well as extending both artists’ ongoing investigation into appropriation, the nature of memory and the horror of data loss. The piece was originally commissioned by the Zabludowicz Collection in conjunction with Warp Records. An alternative edit of it has been showing as part of Rafman’s multi-format exhibition currently showing in London.

Gagosian Beverly Hills 20-Year Anniversary Invitational Exhibition in Los Angeles

To mark the twentieth anniversary of Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills on North Camden Drive, founder Larry Gagosian has selected a special exhibition of works by more than thirty artists spanning three generations. Born in Los Angeles, Gagosian opened his first galleries on Almont Drive and Robertson Boulevard in the early 1980s. Chris Burden and Jean-Michel Basquiat were among the first artists to be exhibited. Drawing on the city's abundance of talented artists, Gagosian was at the forefront of developing a bicoastal model for contemporary art galleries—the beginning of a global expansion that now numbers fifteen galleries in three continents—when he moved to New York in 1985 and opened his first gallery there, in collaboration with Leo Castelli. Los Angeles provided both artists and galleries with an ideal infrastructure for creating and exhibiting diverse bodies of artwork, sometimes on a very large scale, and in 1995 Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills, designed by acclaimed American architect Richard Meier, opened with new sculptures by Frank Stella. The Beverly Hills 20-Year Anniversary Invitational Exhibition will be on view until December 19, at Gagosian Beverly Hills, 456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills, CA