City Of Memphis Unveils I AM A MAN Plaza: A Tribute To MLK & The 1968 Sanitation Workers' Strike

Sculpture, text and landscape come together to form an important new American Civil Rights memorial. The I AM A MAN Plaza, designed by Cliff Garten, is a large-scale experiential public sculpture commissioned to pay tribute to the members of the pivotal 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Garten and his studio led a design team with Memphis-based landscape architect John Jackson of JPA, Inc. for the 54,000-square-foot memorial plaza. As part of Garten’s plan, spoken word artist Steven Fox held an open dialogue with the greater Memphis community, who through a series of public workshops organized by the UrbanArt Commission, selected pertinent historical text and created an original contemporary text which is etched into the marble gates to the plaza’s entry.  The texts combine as a meditation on America’s struggle and progress with racism and class inequity since the sanitation workers and Dr. Martin Luther King took their historic stand in Memphis. Present at the ribbon cutting were Reverend James Lawson, Cliff Garten, Congressman Steven Cohen, Bill Lucy, Elmore Nickleberry and many of the original sanitation workers who went on strike 50 years ago. Elmore Nickleberry has been a sanitation worker in the city of Memphis for 63 consecutive years. photographs by Lisa Buser

Read Our Interview Of Lauren Halsey On The Occasion Of Her Funkadelic Installation At MOCA Los Angeles →

Lauren Halsey’s dream-world is cosmic, funky, carpeted, and technicolored; an atemporal, fantastical, and hyperreal vision of black liberation which she conjures via site-specific installations that celebrate her childhood home. Click here to read more.

The Opening Of Mario Ayala & Greg Ito's "Sun Sprawl" @ Club Pro Los Angeles

These stanzas of Wanda Coleman’s reach across time to help locate the work of Los Angeles-based artists Mario Ayala and Greg Ito. Following in the tradition of the city’s unofficial poet laureate, Ayala and Ito explore the ecology of symbols distinct to their birthplace, elevating and reconfiguring the ubiquitous visual language and objects central to the experience and mythology of Los Angeles. Sun Sprawl is on view through April 28th at Club Pro 1525 South Main Street, 3rd Floor Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

 

BioPerversity Group Show Opens @ Nicodim Gallery In Los Angeles

Nicodim Gallery is pleased to present BioPerversity, an exploration of humanity’s darker and lighter perversions as told through the personification of the rest of the animal kingdom, creatures who exist a few rungs beneath us on the evolutionary ladder. BioPerversity is on view through April 28 at Nicodim Gallery 571 S Anderson Street Ste 2, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Read Our Interview With Christian Coppola On The Value Of Short Cinema →

Christian Coppola is an LA-based filmmaker and photographer with a few short films already under his belt. Informed by an early fascination with The Wizard of Oz, Coppola’s personal style incorporates dreamy colors and the ever-present dichotomy between home and away. His short film debut, Heartbreak Hotel and his upcoming short, Daddy, explore the complicated nature of hotels, and the opportunities offered by the short film genre. Fixated on the process of creating his personal style, Coppola’s own viewing process is predicated on the question, “could anyone else have made this?” We had a chance to catch up with the burgeoning filmmaker and discuss his upcoming film, development as an artist, and his desire to create a universe through film. Click here to read more.

The Opening Of Jeremy Everett's "The Good Part" @ Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles

The Good Part is a mixed-media installation by Jeremy Everett. Acting as interventions, the various works on view offer notions of tension, movement, resistance, and corruption. The Good Part is on view through May 19th at Wilding Cran Gallery 939 South Santa Fe Avenue Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Ali Prosch Presents "Come Undone" @ Bed & Breakfast

Come Undone explores the nuanced processes of aging and loss. Set against cultural constructions of beauty ideals that pedestal the flawless and utilize digital modes of erasure, this series of new latex sculptures use the language of tactile vulnerability. The artist prods dominant adverse representations and perceptions of aging, while considering the stigmas of trauma and grief. Come Undone highlights the power of disorder, metamorphosis and the body in flux. Reservations for overnight stays in Ali Prosch's Come Undone are open. Guests are read a bedtime story and served a full breakfast in the morning, prior to checkout. For reservations, contact hello@bedandbreakfast.life. The exhibition will be on view through May 20 at Bed & Breakfast. photographs by Lani Trock

Ed Templeton's "Hairdos of Defiance" opens at Roberts Projects in L.A.

Resembling a bedroom, Ed Templeton's new photo installation Hairdos of Defiance explores historical context and social moment of the mohawk. The images shown come from twenty years of chance-encounters with people who have mohawks in the U.S. and Europe. Hairdos of Defiance is on view until April 21st at Roberts Projects (formerly known as Roberts & Tilton) 5801 Washington Blvd, Culver City. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

The Opening Of "Blue State" A Group Show @ Night Gallery

Blue State explores the invention of “blueness” through various historical narratives, examining the role of the color as a catalyst for geographic and technological discovery. Once the essence that inspired scientific pilgrimage, blueness is now itself a geographic measuring instrument, serving as a shorthand to map political constituencies across the American landscape. District by district, blueness blankets a matrix of values under a single shade of establishment liberalism. A desire for exactness, for natural blueness rich in detail and meaning, has given way to its opposite: blueness as projection, a tool of blurring and false ascription. Blue acts not as an organizing principle but as an organizing force, one that points us at once to the paradoxes of discovery and repression, of global apocrypha and intimate secrets, of the joy of nature and its dissolution into the ether. Featured artists include: Cameron Crone, Cynthia Daignault, Paul Kremer, Divya Mehra, Monique Mouton, Elizabeth Marcus-Sonenberg, and Elise Rasmussen. Blue State will be on view through April 14 at Night Gallery 2276 E 16th Street Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Opening of Florian Meisenberg's The Taste Of Metal In Water @ Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles

The Taste Of Metal In Water is a body of new paintings in a sculptural sound installation. This show marks the artist's first solo exhibition with the gallery and unspools like a vivid session of lucid dreaming. Metal pipes slice the space into particular trajectories. The pipes, extensions of the guts of the building, carry neither electricity nor water, but instead small and resonant hiccups that spread throughout the space. A series of new paintings operate collectively as a stream of memories. The show will be on view through April 14 at Ghebaly Gallery 2245 E Washington Blvd. Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Highlights From Sun Kissed Chokehold Curated By Laura Watters & Kaylie Schiff

Sun Kissed Chokehold was a pop up group show on view in Highland Park on October 17, 2018. Featured artists include: Aaron Elvis Jupin, Adam Beris, Alina Perkins, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Bennet Shliesinger, Brendan Donnelly, Chris Fallon, Chris Lux, David Black, Giovanni Duca, Greg ito, Gustaf von Arbin, Hannah Hooper, Ivan Comas, Jessica Williams, John Zane Zappas, Lukas Geronimus, Mattea Perrotta, Maxwell McMaster, Nick Darmstaedter, Nicklas Stewart, Sam Keller, Steve Aldahl, and Sophia Green. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

The Opening of Sylvie Fleury's L.A. Bougainvillea @ Karma International

A potpourri of plush and furry textures, of bright and sparkling colors, and of lights and shapes are offered in this playful exhibition of sculptures, installation and and furry wall works in Sylvie Fleury's L.A. Bougainvillea. A seemingly haphazardly xeroxed "press release" à la '80s fanzine aesthetic provides a barebones biography of the artist, a stencil-ready black and white portrait that looks not unlike Patty Hearst in a pair of sleek aviators, and a handwritten list of ideas and materials possibly pulled directly from the artist's personal notebook. L.A. Bougainvillea is on view through May 5 at Karma International 4619 W Washington Blvd. Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Deanna Lawson @ Sikkema Jenkins & Co. In New York

ikkema Jenkins & Co. presents a solo exhibition of new photographs by Deana Lawson, the artist’s first with the gallery. Deana Lawson's photographic portraits are the product of a prolonged and singular journey. The images document studied and methodically staged interactions that blur the desires and intentions of the photographer and the individual in front of her camera. Lawson's intentions are situated in an “I AM space” –insisting that her subjects' identities supersede material limitations and interface with higher planes of value systems. The exhibition will be on view until April 7, 2018 at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. In New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Robert Mapplethorpe Curated By Roe Ethridge @ Gladstone Gallery In New York

Gladstone Gallery presents an exhibition of historic works by Robert Mapplethorpe, curated by artist, Roe Ethridge. This marks the gallery's first solo presentation as the New York representative of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Barbara Gladstone showed his work once before when she published the seminal Flowers portfolio in the early 1980s. Ethridge brings his own perspective as a contemporary artist who works in the same genres of portraiture and still life that are touchstones of Mapplethorpe's well-known oeuvre. Drawn from the extensive archive of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Ethridge has selected both iconic images-including self-portraits, flowers, and scenes of frank sexual provocation-and those exhibited for the first time to evoke his own experience of understanding the breadth of Mapplethorpe's mastery of process and composition. This show offers a compelling new look at Mapplethorpe's distinctive practice: rather than focusing on a specific time or subject, it explores less familiar images and themes that highlight the innovation of his work, still astonishing almost three decades after his death. Robert Mapplethorpe Curated by Roe Ethridge will be on view until April 14, 2018 at Gladstone Gallery in New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

The Opening Of "Nose Job" A Group Show Curated By Adam Beris @ BBQLA

Nose Job groups together artists who work knowingly/unknowingly within the process of transformation: to look at material as character and alter its identity into something aesthetically functional. Featured artists include: Bjorn Copeland, Andrew Dadson, Trulee Hall, Ariel Herwitz and Joshua Miller. The exhibition will be on view through April 14 at BBQLA 2315 Jesse Street Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Kate Parfet's Mirror Domme Launch Party @ The Home of Kulapat Yantrasast In Venice

Autre launches Mirror Domme, Kate Parfet’s debut book of poetry. This first collection is strewed buckshot of intimate recollections told in delirious balancing of lyrical phrase and fragmented prose. Inspired by the sudden death of a lover, these poems – as if written in part with invisible ink – illumine for the speaker a new self, one that dares to be visible in the context of loss. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Rikki Wright Presents SIS. @ Junior High In Los Angeles

Sis. is a photo series exploring black sisterhood. The series, four years in the making, analyzes the unique sibling relationship and how it affects the development of personal agency. The images, featuring real life sisters, portrays sisterhood in its glory and complexity: mesmerizing, magical, and rare. Rikki Wright's inaugural solo exhibition will be on view through March 31 at Junior High 5656 Hollywood Boulevard. photographs by Lani Trock

"By the Lights of Their Eyes" Group Show at Shulamit Nazarian in Los Angeles

Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to present By the Lights of Their Eyes, an exhibition featuring six artists whose works employ tropes from fantasy, mysticism, science fiction, and horror. Informed by diverse sources from religious stories to contemporary cinema, the artists in the exhibition draw from personal experience to create fictional narratives that examine social and political issues. The show features works by Juno Calypso, Katie Dorame, Sara Issakharian, Naudline Pierre, Roni Shneior, and Ilona Szwarc.  By the Lights of Their Eyes will be on view from March 3 through March 31. photographs by Oliver Kupper