Opening Night Preview of Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2016 At the Barker Hangar Part Two

Art Los Angeles Contemporary presents top established and emerging galleries from around the world, with a strong focus on Los Angeles galleries. Participants present some of the most dynamic recent works from their roster of represented artists, offering an informed cross section of what is happening now in contemporary art making. ALAC will be on view until January 31, 2016 at The Barker Hangar 3021 Airport Avenue Santa Monica, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Opening Night Preview of Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2016 at the Barker Hangar Part One

Art Los Angeles Contemporary presents top established and emerging galleries from around the world, with a strong focus on Los Angeles galleries. Participants present some of the most dynamic recent works from their roster of represented artists, offering an informed cross section of what is happening now in contemporary art making. ALAC will be on view until January 31, 2016 at The Barker Hangar 3021 Airport Avenue Santa Monica, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Time and Nostalgia: A Review of Paris Fashion Week Men's Fall/Winter 2016 →

"It feels like every season I find myself almost wanting the Paris round of menswear shows to suck, just to change it up. I can make claims like, 'London is ground zero for cutting edge young menswear designers,' or 'Italian luxury is forever,' or 'New York is on the up and up,' but when it comes down to it, everything still pales in comparison to the lineup of designers that show their new duds in Paris." Adam Lehrer reviews the best of Paris Fashion Week Men's, from Raf Simons to Lemaire and everything in between. Click here to read the full review.

Transcending The Blues: Read Our Interview With Legendary Record Producer Daniel Lanois On Motorcyles, Rock N' Roll and His Ongoing Exploration Of Inventing New Sounds →

Daniel Lanois lives and breathes music in a very literal sense. As a true audiophile, he seems to be marinating in centuries of sound waves, honing in on some of history’s most visceral musical compositions. It’s as though he pulls rhythms directly from the ground and resonant frequencies from the stratosphere. This description may seem over the top, and while it comes from a place of genuine reverence, I can say that over the 3 hours that we spent together, I witnessed this phenomenon with my very own eyes and ears. When he tells a story, it doesn’t suffice to tell it in words. His life story wouldn’t make sense unless he sang it to you, played it for you, and punctuated it with his signature, “yea, man.” Which is why I had to compile all of these bits in an audio file to give you a real feel for who he is and how he communicates. It’s really quite elevating. Click here to read the full interview. 

Opening Vernissage for Betty Tomkins' "Women Words, Phrases, and Stories" @ The Flag Art Foundation

Betty Tompkins' exhibition Women Words, Phrases, and Stories marks the first comprehensive presentation of 1,000 intimately-scaled, hand-painted works, each of which features a word or words used to describe women. The language in the exhibition ranges from flirtatious to derogatory, and emanates from Tompkins's career-long commitment to challenge the representation of female identity, the politics of pleasure, and the role of sexuality in contemporary culture. Betty Tomkin's "Women Words, Phrases, and Stories" will be on view until May 14 at the Flag Art Foundation, 545 West 25th Street, New York. photographs by Scout Maceachron  

Cecily Brown, Jeff Koons, Charles Ray The Flag Art Foundation in New York

Ranging from lushly painted canvases to sculptures of extraordinary technical acumen, Cecily Brown, Jeff Koons, Charles Ray includes three artworks by each artist that address themes of youth, nostalgia, and intimacy, and highlight the intersection of innocence and subversion. Jeff Koons and Charles Ray's unprecedented approach to material, scale, and surface have redefined the possibilities of sculpture. Mining the rich psychological territory of childhood and familial relationships, both artists elevate innocent subject matter to monumental status. Cecily Brown explores youth and transience in kaleidoscopic compositions of fleshy, abstracted figures, utilizing the materiality of paint to replicate physical sensation and the illusion of motion. The exhibition will be on view until May 14, 2016 at the Flag Art Foundation, 545 West 25th Street. photographs by Scout Maceachron

Read An Exclusive Excerpt From Amber Sparks' Much Talked About Novella and Collection of Short Stories

In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks’s dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In “The Cemetery for Lost Faces,” two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, “The Unfinished World,” unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family. Sparks’s stories―populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors―form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Click here to read the excerpt. 

Imperial Teen with Sara Cummings and Kris Kidd: Outtakes by Bil Brown

Typically a fashion photographer is very limited in what they can push out of a shoot, even editorial which tends to scream ADVERTORIAL because of the influences of fashion stylists, fashion editors, editors, and advertising execs. No fashion shoot is purely an "art experience". But as Yves Saint Laurent once said, "Fashion, though not a true art needs artists to survive." Thus I thought, what If I didn't care about the showrooms, the stylists, or seeing a "total look" and just concerned myself with the choices I would make on a shoot? How would that influence the way I would choose the story and art of the shoot itself? Thus, here is the Photographer's Cut of a shoot that I not only shot, but published with fashion director Mynxii White and Stylist Lisa Bae. Except this time, there will be no mention of the fashions. None. Some of the photos are almost behind the scenes, completely unexpected and unregulated. The models in some cases weren't able to pose while in others they were more intense and tired than they needed to be. Some shots are almost macro, close up, unexplained. But there is a mood, a vision. Something is happening that has maybe somewhere happened before. And really... that is what photography should be. Timeless, endless, and never ever able to be seen as "just for that season." Let the work stand on it's own with only the history of photography to judge. photographs and text by Bil Brown, who is also the editor-in-chief of Black and Grey Magazine. 

Read Shane Jones' Short Story "Maneesh in Los Angeles" →

       On Saturday mornings Maneesh tells Sarah things. They have lived together for six months. Sarah refuses to define their relationship, so Sarah is just Sarah and she lives her life saying she has a cold. Maneesh doesn’t understand why Sarah always has a cold, but she says she does and she likes to talk about it. Once a week Sarah works for a veterinarian who makes house calls. The only reason he makes house calls is to put dogs to sleep. The only reason he employs Sarah is to have someone in the house if the dog is too big. Click here to read more.  

Yutaka Sone "Day and Night" @ David Zwirner Gallery In New York

David Zwirner present an exhibition of recent and new works by Yutaka Sone. This will be the artist’s seventh solo show since his first exhibition with the gallery in 1999. Across a wide range of media—predominantly sculpture but also painting, drawing, photography, video, and performance—Sone’s work revolves around a tension between realism and perfection. A conceptual framework, paired with a meticulous attention to detail, has characterized his practice since the early 1990s, informing equally his self-contained jungle environments, life-size roller coasters, magnified snowflakes, and staged events. His sculptural works in particular attest to a profound interest in landscapes, whether natural or architectural, and their extraordinary ability to capture light relates them to a genre primarily associated with painting and photography. Yutaka Sone "Day and Night" will be on view until February 20, 2016, at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer and Tenlie Mourning