Dilexi Gallery: Seeking the Unknown @ Parker Gallery In Los Angeles

Dilexi Gallery: Seeking the Unknown is one of six exhibitions in a multi-venue retrospective honoring the pioneering San Francisco-based gallery led by Jim Newman. The Dilexi Gallery (1958-1969) was renowned for championing a diverse stable of artists, many of whom— through autonomous strains—presented their own cosmologies replete with systems of individuation. These strategies provided a modern allegory for ancient forms of magic. Revitalizing the notion that the artist has a proto-shamanic role, their work culled the latent powers of alchemy, Kabbalah, totemic thought, and hermetic diagrams, often convening with the unknown. The exhibition features work from Jeremy Anderson, Wallace Berman, Roy De Forest, Wally Hedrick, Alfred Jensen, Jess, Kurt Schwitters, H.C. Westermann and Franklin Williams. Dilexi Gallery: Seeking the Unknown is on view through August 10 at Parker Gallery 2441 Glendower Ave, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Parker Gallery

The Skirball Cultural Center Presents Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite in Los Angeles

Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite is on view now at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The exhibition features over forty photographs of black women and men reclaiming their African roots with natural hair and clothes. This is the first-ever major exhibition dedicated to this key figure of the second Harlem Renaissance. In collaboration with the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios (AJASS) and Grandassa Models, Brathwaite organized fashion shows featuring clothing designed by the models themselves, took stunning portraits of jazz musicians, and captured the black arts community in a series of behind-the-scenes photographs. Brathwaite’s work challenged mainstream beauty standards while celebrating black beauty, instilling a sense of pride throughout the community. On view through September 1 at the Skirball Cultural Center 2701 N Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles. photos courtesy of the Skirball Cultural Center

June Edmonds Presents "Allegiances & Convictions" @ Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Allegiances and Convictions explores the American flag as a malleable symbol of ideals, promises, and identity. June Edmonds’s new Flag Paintings create space for the inclusion of multiple identities including race, nationality, gender, and political leanings. Each flag is associated with the narrative of an AfricanAmerican, past or present, a current event, or an anecdote from American history. Edmonds investigates the complexities of these stories through the creation of new symbols for Americanness. Allegiances and Convictions is on view through June 29 at Luis De Jesus 2685 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. Click here to read an interview with June Edmonds and gallery owner/director, Luis De Jesus.

Group Show 'TRANS WORLD' Opens at @ Nicodim Gallery In Los Angeles

According to multiverse theory, every decision a person makes causes a split in the universe, wherein an alternate version of one’s self continues to exist in an alternate universe, living with the consequences of an alternate decision. There are an infinite number of variations of ourselves existing throughout time and space, having made an infinite number of differing decisions. BUT WHAT IF AN INDIVIDUAL IS ABLE TO OCCUPY MULTIPLE UNIVERSES SIMULTANEOUSLY? Trans World is on view through August 10 at Nicodim Gallery 571 S Anderson Street Ste 2, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Stephen Neidich "Making the rounds (a place to wait)" @ Wilding Cran Gallery In Los Angeles

Making the rounds (a place to wait) is a new installation by Stephen Neidich is on view now at Wilding Cran gallery in Los Angeles. Comprised of long metal chains attached to mechanized camshafts that generate a circular rotation across blocks of urbanite, the resulting sculpture produces a mechanical melody that echoes throughout the gallery. This creates a contradiction of theory and practice – industrial forms rarely induce feelings of serenity, yet there is something hypnotic and oddly calming about the rhythm of metal hitting concrete. Neidich has repurposed but not totally decommissioned these moving parts. He does not attempt to fully disguise their recognizable forms but instead alludes to the performative nature of machines, focusing on their aesthetic qualities. On view through July 27 at Wilding Cran Gallery 939 South Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Henzel Studios Partners With Twentieth Gallery For An Exhibition Of LA-Artist Designed Rugs

This collaboration takes place on the 20th anniversary of both Henzel Studio, the Swedish luxury rug manufacturer and Twentieth, a Los Angeles contemporary design gallery. The exhibition will unveil rugs by artists Ashley Bickerton, Olaf Breuning, Sanford Biggers, Carsten Höller, Jonathan Horowitz, Jack Pierson, Tony Oursler, Jwan Yosef and Lawrence Weiner. It will also include collaborations with Helmut Lang, Scott Campbell and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and will introduce a new and separate capsule collection with the designers of Videre Licet. The exhibition, opening June 20th, will be on view at THE NEW, 7466 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles CA 90036, through Summer 2019.

Group Show 'The Shape Of Content' @ Ochi Projects In Los Angeles

The Shape of Content is an exhibition of works by Thomas Linder, Erica Mahinay and Andrea Welton. By definition, form is the essential nature of a thing as distinguished from its matter. In his book from which this exhibition takes its title, Ben Shahn expanded on this definition by writing that “form is the shape of content” and argues that form cannot exist without content. The Shape of Content contextualizes three artists, who each use distinct materials, in their exploration of relating content—experience, memory and idea, to form—gesture, color and material.The Shape of Content is on view through July 13 at Ochi Projects 3301 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

"Of Survival, Celebration, and Unlimited Semiosis" Group Show @ Freedman Fitzpatrick In Los Angeles

Of Survival, Celebration, and Unlimited Semiosis is a group show featuring works from Dachi Cole, Tommy, Hartung, Alima Lee, Kyp Malone, Diamond Stingily.

… those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere … [Barthes]

What does this paradoxical statement imply? First, it implies that a single reading is composed of the already-read, that what we can see in a text the first time is already in us, not in it; in us insofar as we ourselves are a stereotype, an already-read text; and in the text only to the extent that the already read is that aspect of a text that it must have in common with its reader in order for it to be readable at all. When we read a text once, in other words, we can see in it only what we have already learned to see before.
– Barbara Johnson, The Critical Difference

from “Of Survival, Celebration, and Unlimited Semiosis,” Neveryóna, Samuel Delaney

Of Survival, Celebration, and Unlimited Semiosis is on view through July 6 at Freedman Fitzpatrick 6051 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock


Barbara Stauffacher Solomon Presents 'Relax Into The Invisible' @ LAXART In Los Angeles

Relax Into the Invisible is an exhibition by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon comprising works on paper, artist books, a new body of sculpture, and site-specific Supergraphics. These works build upon the artist's signature design sensibility while cleverly playing with language, feminism, symbolism, technology, mass media, politics, and personal narrative. Relax Into the Invisible is on view through August 10 at LAXART 7000 Santa Monica Blvd Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Hammer Projects Present: Max Hooper Schneider @ Hammer Museum In Los Angeles

Artists are often likened to inventors or scientists, and in the case of Max Hooper Schneider the comparison is more than metaphoric. Schneider’s background in landscape architecture and marine biology strongly informs his artwork. Research and scientific investigation are key to his process. He explores the relationships between philosophy and nature, the personal and the political, destruction and construction, and what he calls nonhuman and human agents. Blending his diverse areas of expertise, his idiosyncratic sculptures, installations, and drawings challenge conventional systems of classification, suggesting a worldview that strives to dislocate humans from their assumed position of centrality and superiority as knowers and actors in the world. Schneider created a new immersive installation for his Hammer Projects exhibition, his first solo museum show. The exhibition is on view through September 1 at the Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Geraldo Perez Presents 'The Chicago Paintings' @ East Hollywood Fine Art In Los Angeles

The Chicago Paintings is a selection of paintings on canvas and phone books all made over the past 7 years. After being bought out of his New York apartment, Geraldo Perez moved to the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois and purchased a house, where he was able to convert his entire basement into his studio. The Chicago Paintings present a survey of memories lived and experienced from Perez’s birth in 1962 in the Dominican Republic, to his family’s emigration to New York six years later, and to his day-to-day experiences with intimacy, family, and transition. The paintings reflect on a chance encounter with Basquiat at Danceteria, studying under Jack Whitten and Dore Ashton at Cooper Union in the 2000’s, war and death in the DR, being a father, being brown, seeing the MOMA for the first time, making love, and so much more. The Chicago Paintings is on view through June 23 at East Hollywood Fine Art 4316 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Eleanor Antin Presents "Time's Arrow" @ LACMA In Los Angeles

Eleanor Antin (b. 1935) is one of the most important artists of her generation and a pioneer of performance and conceptual art in Southern California. In 1972, she challenged definitions of sculpture, self-portraiture, photographic documentation, and performance with CARVING: A Traditional Sculpture. Consisting of 148 black-and-white photographs, CARVING shows the transformation of Antin’s body as she lost 10 pounds over 37 days. Eleanor Antin: Time's Arrow brings together both CARVING series, a new self-portrait, and a related serial work from the 1970s, provoking reflection on discipline, vulnerability, and the passage of time. Time's Arrow is on view through July 28 at Los Angeles County Museum of Art 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Sarah Lucas Presents 'Au Naturel' @ Hammer Museum In Los Angeles

Over the past 30 years, Sarah Lucas has created a distinctive and provocative body of work that subverts traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Since the late 1980s, Lucas has transformed found objects and everyday materials such as furniture, cigarettes, vegetables, and stockings into absurd and confrontational tableaux that boldly challenge social norms. The human body and anthropomorphic forms recur throughout Lucas’s works, often appearing erotic, humorous, fragmented, or reconfigured into fantastical anatomies of desire. Au Naturel is on view through September 1 at the Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the Hammer

Sterling Ruby "S.R. STUDIO. LA. CA" Collection Presentation During Pitti Immagine Uomo 96 in Florence, Italy

Endocannibalism X Exocannibalism – The Los Angeles-based artist, Sterling Ruby’s first runway presentation at the gorgeous Le Pagliere in Firenze, Italy was a triumphant clash of tribalism, studio wear, bleach splatters, dark natural landscapes and a chilling romanticism. Presenting a form of soft sculpture on the runway, Ruby’s first collection is autobiographical, a chart through cloth of Ruby’s life, influences, fantasies and reality. The references include heavy metal and punk album cover art, Amish and Mennonite dress, and Ruby’s own geographical journey across America, from his rural upbringing in Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, California. The craft language of American folk tradition - of crafting, mending, the patchworking of quilts - is here embedded in garments, whose worked surfaces are a map of the journey of their making. The first drops are available here and here. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Read Our Interview Of Chris Gentile Director Of Self Discovery For Social Survival On The Occasion Of The LA Premiere →

Surf Discovery for Social Survival is the surf/music feature film born from the collaboration of Chris Gentile from New York-based surf brand Pilgrim Surf + Supply and Keith Abrahmsson from the record label Mexican Summer. Together they started this ambitious project to connect surf, sound and sight and make a film that would satisfy most senses. World-renowned surfers including Stephanie Gilmore, Ryan Burch, Creed McTaggart and Ellis Ericson joined musicians Allah-Las, Peaking Lights, Connan Mockasin and MGMT ’s Andrew VanWyngarden on this surf journey starting from a secret spot in Mexico, to the southern atolls of the Maldive Islands, and ending in the cold waters of Iceland. Click here to read more.

Pronounce SS 2020 Collection “A Fresh Dig” During Pitti Uomo in Florence, Italy

The Guest Nation China project culminates with the fashion show of the Chinese duo Pronounce, the experimental fashion brand established by Yushan Li and Jun Zhou in the Dogana, will be launching the SS 2020 collection “A Fresh Dig” on the catwalk, along with reinterpretations of Converse Jack Purcell shoes. The special event is organized with the support of Labelhood, incubator of emerging designers and one of the most innovative retailers in China, and of V/Collective, international creative agency based in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper