Sydneyβs Alex Cameron will release his debut album, Jumping The Shark, on August 19th via Secretly Canadian. Alex weaves intelligent, poignant lyricism with primitive 80s synths and seemingly minimalist arrangements recalling David Bowie and Ariel Pink, all under a Lynch-ian lense. "My name is Alex Cameron and I won't waste your time. You talk about my business partner, Roy Molloy, and me, you're talking about the online cowboys in the wild-west days of the World Wide Web. If you want to know what we're really about, the elbow of the whole scenario, just look at all the things you wish you'd done differently. All the things you stopped yourself from doing on account of the fear of failure, or rejection. Weigh that up against your ambitions. Think about your work ethic. We're reclaiming failure as an act of progress. An act of learning. Something to celebrate." Click here to preorder.
Iconic Johnie's Coffee Shop In Los Angeles Transformed Into "Bernie's" During The Last Leg of His Candidacy
Iconic Los Angeles Coogie-style diner Johnie's Coffee Shop is transformed by the owners into Bernie's - a temporary pro-Bernie Sanders art installation and canvasing headquarters. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Creating a Feminist Utopia In the Desert, Read Our Interview With Multi-Disciplinary Swiss Artist Mai-Thu Perret →
Perret is fascinated by the idea of the utopia, or, a unique landscape with a set of ideals that would theoretically facilitate a revisionist art history. Perret envisions a utopia in which the ideals and creativity of women and marginalized groups are as much a part of the conversation surrounding art history as those of men. Perhaps Perretβs best known and most labored over work, entitled The Crystal Frontier, is most exemplary of this idea. The Crystal Frontier is an imagined utopia of women living in the desert in New Mexico. Perret has built on the idea of The Crystal Frontier over her career, imagining its artifacts and furniture and fashions. The Crystal Frontier not only poses an fascinating conceptual narrative, but also has proven to be a place of contemplative creativity for Perret; one in which she can return to as a renewable source of inspiration. Click here to read more.
Katherine Bernhardt "Product Recall: New Pattern Paintings" @ Xavier Hufkens in Brussels
Known for her large-scale pattern paintings depicting constellations of everyday items that have been isolated from their original context, American artist Katherine Bernhardt has created a new ensemble of colorful and dynamic images that take inspiration from both Brussels and New York. Executed in acrylic and spray paint on canvas, in a spontaneous and fluid style, her latest work features objects typically associated with Belgian popular culture, such as Smurfs and chocolate, with those representative of America, such as Lisa Simpson and Nike trainers. Added to the mix are domestic objects like toilet rolls and Windex; toucans and tropical fruits (a reference to the artistβs frequent travels to Puerto Rico); iconic games from her teenage years during the early 1980s (Pac-Man and the Rubikβs cube); and food and drink (Nutella, cigarettes, wine). Because of the myriad objects in her work, it is sometimes interpreted as a wry comment on consumerism. Yet this is not a conscious concern of the artist, who is primarily motivated by a fascination with her everyday surroundings, and in giving it expression through color and composition. Katherine Bernhardt "Product Recall: New Pattern Paintings" will be on view until June 18, 2016 at Xavier Hufkens, 107 rue St-Georges, Brussels, Belgium
Alexis Taylor From Hot Chip Releases Music Video For "I'm Ready" Off Upcoming Album
I'm Ready is taken from Alexis Taylor's solo album 'Piano' out on 10th June on Moshi Moshi Records. Download the sheet music here to play the song yourself. The music video is directed by Simon Owens: "Working with Alexis was like working with Vantablack, I couldn't see or talk to him."
The Altar Collective Presents "All Your Friends" Fest With Special Guest Kris Kidd @ L.A. Mother in Hollywood
photographs by Douglas Neill
Paul McCarthy Signing Copies of His Expanded Monograph @ Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles
Los-Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy creates Disneyesque installations, sculptures of animal/vegetable/human hybrids and slapstick performances in a purge of a national subconscious. The psycho-sexual desires and anxieties induced by the media and the built environment of contemporary America emerge in his collisions of plastic prosthetic limbs and condiments that stand in for bodily fluids. These works have been variously deployed: through live actions, often documented on video, and more recently in outsized figures and artificial rural environments, combined in overtly sexual ways. McCarthy's work echoes that of European artists such as Joseph Beuys or the Viennese Aktionistes, but gives 'action art' a postmodern twist. This new revised and expanded edition includes contributions by luminaries such as Kristine Stiles, Ralph Rugoff, Massimiliano Gioni and Robert Storr. Click here to purchase. photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei Dual Exhibition @ The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh
Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei, developed by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and the National Gallery of Victoria, with the participation of Ai Weiwei, explores the significant influence of these two artists on modern and contemporary life, focusing on the parallels, intersections, and points of difference between their practicesβWarhol representing 20th-century modernity and the βAmerican century,β and Ai representing life in the 21st century and what has been called the βChinese centuryβ to come. The exhibition will be on view until August 28, 2016 at The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky Street photographs by Ali Lotz
Ballet Parking: Watch A Mesmerizing Dance Film Set In A Parking Lot At Night by Nacho Alvarez
The movie "Faraway, So Close!β tells the story of an angel who comes to earth to live as a human. What is heavenly, imprecise and volatile descends to fully stamp against the earthly, the concrete. These two worlds, distant and contradictory are bound by a new atmosphere that allows movement, pulse, life. What it far is close. Ballet Parking is directed by Nacho Alvarez, with a performance by Vicente Etcheverry. Shot in Montevideo, Uruguay
Honoring the Music of Seattle-Based Producer Randall Dunn →
The month of June on Autreβs Friday Playlists column celebrates the most important record producers working in music today. Click here to listen.
A Visit to The Showroom of NYC Fashion Label Private Policy
Read our interview with the design duo behind the label here. photographs by Adam Lehrer
Private Policy: Read Our Interview With the Duo Behind The NYC Indie Fashion Label Everyone's Talking About →
Private Policy is the gender-neutral fashion label by two Chinese-born fresh-faced recent Parsons grads Haoran Li and Siying Qu. Only two collections in, the two designers have created a smart albeit colorful range of menswear fitted products that can also sensibly be worn by women. The clothes seem to reference V Files-approved street wear, colorful and a bit off, with a focus on high fashion tailoring and embellishment: a simple fitted turtleneck comes exaggerated by orange bondage belting, a velvet bomber jacket is equipped by fluffy tassels, gigantic fur-laden scarves adorn the shoulders of brown down jackets. Click here to read more.
Blondey McCoy "Thames, Tits and Teeth" A One Night Only Exhibition @ Riflemaker Gallery in London
photographs by Flo Kohl
Premiere of Galen Pehrson's The Caged Pillows and Launch of Ruins Magazine @ MAMA Gallery In Los Angeles
photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Read Tender Meat, A Short Story by Jennifer Love →
Click here to read.
Hyon Gyon "Emotional Drought" @ Shin Gallery In New York
Shin Gallery presents Hyon Gyon's "Emotional Drought," which will run until May 29th in Shin's main exhibition space at 322 Grand Street, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer
Louis Vuitton Cruise 2017 Presentation at the Oscar Niemeyer Designed Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
photographs by Saskia Lawaks
Cult Publishers of Cheap Date Return With "Fanpages" A New Bible of Fandom for the Zineaphile In All Of Us
To draw a little blood, you have to break the skin of the status quo. In the late 90s, Kira Jolliffe and Bay Garnett did just that with Cheap Date, an anti-fashion magazine that attempted to affectionately shatter some of the illusions of the highly glossy fashion industry; an industry that Garnett is very much a part of as a contributor to Vogue and as a consultant to some major fashion brands. You could call Cheap Date a catharsis of sorts β a catharsis that gained cult and bible status with contributors such as Anita Pallenberg, Chloe Sevigny, Liv Tyler and Debbie Harry, and headlines like βCellulite Problem? Tough Shit!β After an attempt to move the magazine to New York, Cheap Date folded in the mid-naughts. After feeling the itch to re-start the magazine, Garnett came up with a new idea, which became Fanpages (published by Idea Books) β a publication of one-page fan collages by the likes of Nick Knight, Claire Barrow and Rita Ora. She tells Autre: "My father always used to say 'you've always got to have a project,' and when he died a little while ago I think it galvanized me to get off my arse and do what I wanted to do. Kira and I were talking about doing Cheap Date again, and when we were talking about the contents page, we decided we wanted to do a pinboard of fandom. It all just grew from there β and also I realized that I don't have anything in particular that I want to say, I want to see what other people had to say instead!" On collaborating with contributors, Joliffe says, "What was really brilliant was how into it people were. We just kind of sat down and watched this kind of rainbow spectrum of fan pages fall into our laps.β Fanpages is available now on the Idea Books website, along with this cool t-shirt.
Paul Lee "Layers for a Brain Corner" @ Maccarone Gallery in Los Angeles
Paul Lee "Layers for a Brain Corner" will be on view until August 12, 2016 at Maccarone Gallery, 300 South Mission Road, Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
A Dark and Fluffy World: Read Our Interview With Galen Pehrson Before The Premiere of His Animated Film The Caged Pillows →
Watching one of Galen Pehrsonβs films, like his most recent, The Caged Pillows, starring the likes of Jena Malone and James Franco, is like stepping into a psychedelic cartoon where you canβt help feeling a tinge of dΓ©jΓ vu β youβre not sure if it was a dream, a childhood memory, or an omen. Itβs as though a mixture of real life memories and old movie scenes were plucked from your brain and rearranged into a brilliant new narrative. Theyβre the renderings of a world that most of us have inhabited for all our lives, but for Galen, who spent the first 12 years of his life in rural Nevada City, without access to cable TV or any other means of consuming pop culture, this world can be seen from a slightly outside perspective. Click here to read more.