Kumasi J. Barnett: The Amazing Black-Man @ Lowell Ryan Projects in Los Angeles

Lowell Ryan Projects presentsThe Amazing Black-Man, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Kumasi J. Barnett. Riffing on classic superhero series including;The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Superman, Daredevil and Captain America, the show will feature two hundred hand-painted comic book works pinned up in their clear plastic sleeves. For each work, Barnett has painted over the cover of an old Marvel or DC comic book, replacing familiar heroes with characters including “The Amazing Black-Man,” “The Media’s Thug,” “Whitedevil,” and “Police-Man.” Barnett replaces Spider-Man’s full-body leotard with a hoodie and jeans, Superman’s logo with the stars and bars of the Confederate flag, and turns the supernatural villains into—a no less brutal nemesis—the police. Alteration here acts as an intervention. By addressing real world issues through a superhuman genre, Barnett’s work dissolves the disconnect between contemporary American narratives and the reality of “justice,” making us reexamine cultural conceptions surrounding the Good versus Evil paradigm.

The Amazing Black-Man is on view through August 17 at Lowell Ryan Projects 4851 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016. photographs courtesy of the artist and Lowell Ryan Projects

Tandem: Alejandro Cesarco and Tamar Guimarães @ Alexander and Bonin in New York

The third iteration of Tandem, a project curated by Luiza Teixeira de Freitas is on view at Alexander and Bonin. Tandem consists of a series of five exhibitions presented over 2019 that run parallel to the gallery program, each one a dialogue between two distinct artistic practices. In the video gallery are two films by Tamar Guimarães, O Ensaio [The Rehearsal], 2018 and Canoas, 2010. The dialogue between the two works is framed by the changes that Brazil has gone through over the last decade – namely, the rise of new social movements, the reemergence of the political right, and the fragmentation of the left.

O Ensaio is on view from June 27 to July 25 and Canoas is on view at Alexander and Bonin 47 Walker St, New York, NY from July 26 to August 16 as part of Tandem: Alejandro Cesarco and Tamar Guimarães. photographs courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York

Spilling Over: Painting Color in the 1960s @ the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York

Spilling Over: Painting Color in the 1960s gathers paintings from the 1960s and early 1970s that inventively use bold, saturated, and even hallucinatory color to activate perception. Many artists during this era adopted acrylic paint—a newly available, plastic-based medium—and explored its expansive technical possibilities and wider range of hues. Color Field painters poured paint and stained unprimed canvas, dramatizing materiality and visual force of painting. At the same historical moment, an emerging generation of artists of color and women explored color’s capacity to ignite new questions about perception, specifically its relation to race, gender, and the coding of space. Spilling Over looks to the divergent ways color can be equally a formal problem and a political statement.

Spilling Over: Painting Color in the 1960s is on view through August 18 at the Whitney Museum of American Art 99 Gansevoort Street New York, NY. photographs courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art

bitforms gallery presents "IDEAL CONTAGION" in New York

IDEAL CONTAGION is curated by David Hunt, and features the work of Barry X Ball, Richard Dupont, Peter Gronquist, Jon Kessler, Ted Lawson, and Lynn Hersman Leeson. As a whole, the exhibition suggests a looming middle future where our current tsunami of data and information—largely blank, implacable and bewildering—is seamlessly internalized by each individual artist as the substrate of their work. Technology is transformed from a passing zeitgeist fetish into something inscribed on, or within, the artist’s own body, etched like algorithmic scrimshaw into the far recesses of his or her own mind. Each artist in the exhibition signifies a modernist categorical academic division, such as landscape, body art, or appropriation—that have yet to percolate and trickle down into traditional digital and techno-art discourse.

IDEAL CONTAGION is on view at bitforms gallery through August 16 at 131 Allen Street New York, NY. photographs courtesy of bitforms gallery, New York and Shark Senesak

Hyun Jung Jun: Teyo’s Lightshield at Fresh Bread in Chicago

Teyo’s Lightshield is Fresh Bread’s inaugural exhibition. Fresh Bread is a kitchen-based exhibition series in Rogers Park, Chicago, run by artist Morgan Mandalay and writer Kim-Anh Schreiber. Each show meditates on metaphors of digestion and features an accompanying cookbook, a document of process and practice.

Teyo’s Lightshield is on view through August 4 at Fresh Bread, reservations recommended. photographs courtesy of the artist and Fresh Bread

Asya Geisberg Gallery presents "Plastic Garden" Group Exhibition in New York

“Plastic Garden” is an exhibition curated by Katrina Slavik featuring the works of seven painters: Madeleine Bialke, Jennifer Coates, Sharona Eliassaf, Adrienne Elise Tarver, Joani Tremblay, Emma Webster, and Brian Willmont. These artists depict landscape and flora through a synthetic lens, creating lush, technicolor dystopias. In combination, their works seek a spiritual connection to nature not through awe-inspiring vistas, but with toxic colors, moody surrealism, and industrial surfaces.

“Plastic Garden” is on view through August 16 at Asya Geisberg Gallery 537B West 23rd Street, New York, NY. photographs courtesy of the gallery and Etienne Frossard

ASHES/ASHES Presents L’IM_MAGE_N Group Exhibition In New York

L’IM_MAGE_N is a group exhibition curated by Timothy Hull, featuring Graham Anderson, Gina Beavers, Mathew Cerletty, Gregory Edwards, Anya Kielar, and Chason Matthams. The show’s title plays on the word image, folding it into different linguistic aspects yet allowing for the stability of decipherment. One could look at this through the rhetoric of the pop image, denoting a distillation or simplification into something symbolically new. While elements may be re-arranged, the image can still be read and understood—if not intellectually, then psychically. Although the image is passed through a sieve, its meaning contains vestiges of its origin. L’IM_MAGE_N is on view through August 4 at ASHES/ASHES 56 Eldridge Street New York, NY. photographs courtesy the artists and ASHES/ASHES, New York

FUN HANG Group Show @ Karma International in Los Angeles

Karma International presents FUN HANG, a group show curated by Jools Braiman-Rothblatt and featuring artists Alex Becerra, Poy Born, Nick Farhi, Kim Fuck, Kezia Harrell, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Rachelle Sawatsky, Nicole-Antonia Spagnola, Ambrose Vallard, Bri Williams, and Phillip Zach.

What is a FUN HANG? Is hanging a fun activity? Subjects and objects that hang: fruits hang, friends can hang, art hangs once it has been hung, and, on a more macabre note, bodies can hang too. Does art hang as bodies, fruits, or friends? Can we separate the schema of art hanging from the bodies who made them and then the body who hung it? How is the body, the object and the hanger always in flux?

How fun is the process of FUN HANG? Did all bodies have fun hanging, participating, making, and being in the FUN HANG. Does the labor account for this FUN? If we accounted for this FUN could FUN still be had? Is the install FUN, does making need to be FUN, or is FUN more of an affect, a position of resistance, of jouissance, of pleasure that can not be removed from one's liberation to the world? How subjective are our FUNs?

Are these decisions situated in a kind of subjective relationship to FUN? Does FUN have or could have an aesthetic like cool could be said to once have had an aesthetic? Have FUN!

FUN HANG is on view through August 10 at Karma International 4619 W Washington Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90016. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Group Show ‘The Real: Three Propositions’ @ White Cube In London

‘The Real: Three Propositions’ presents paintings and drawings by Peter Dreher, Konrad Klapheck and Des Lawrence, all of whom use precise, figurative styles to depict people, places and things. These artists merge realms of appearance and consciousness to varying degrees in their work, intermixing objectivity and subjectivity as they conjure things and their meanings in two dimensions. At a time when images and information, factual and fictional, circulate instantaneously, they ask the viewer to slow down and to consider how matter and mind intertwine when the world is re-envisioned. The Real: Three Propositions is on view through August 25 at White Cube Bermondsey 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Dana Kyndrová Presents "Woman Between Inhaling And Exhaling" @ The Czech Center In New York

Czech documentary photographer Dana Kyndrová has been focusing her camera on women for half of a century. The series "Woman between Inhaling and Exhaling" examines the many aspects of women’s lives. Shot primarily in former Czechoslovakia and later in the Czech Republic, but also in some Western countries, the photographs show the moment of birth, the tension of school exams, falling in love – daily life, both under Communism and after. Woman between Inhaling And Exhaling is on view through July 28 at the Czech Center, Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, New York. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Lauren Quin: If It Were A Snake It Would Have Bit Me @ East Hollywood Fine Art

If It Were A Snake It Would Have Bit Me, Lauren Quin’s first solo show in Los Angeles, presents a body of work characterized by a nimble image and a sentimental mark. Dipping into the networks of an organism, these paintings are biotic, and they need for their small and large elements to coexist as a whole being. With a drag of a dull knife or the tip of a fingernail, fine-lined drawings are carved into wet paint on the surface. They are sharp marks that pull themselves up and away from the whole of the painting; incisions that linger in a shallower focal plane, only to be discovered with a certain degree of intimacy.

If It Were A Snake It Would Have Bit Me is on view through July 28 at East Hollywood Fine Art 4316 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90029. photographs by Lani Trock

Ever Present Series Features A.S.T.R.A.L.O.R.A.C.L.E.S @ The Getty Center in Los Angeles

Inspired by the exhibition The Wondrous Cosmos in Medieval Manuscripts, Ever Present brings together a group of artists who integrate the intergalactic into their varied work. Like their medieval forbearers, they quest for new artistic, analytic, and spiritual ways of understanding our connection to the cosmos. Performances include music by vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and Vedic astrologer Deradoorian (known for her work with Dirty Projectors), choral scores translated from the constellations by experimental artist and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, an interdimensional ritual by A.S.T.R.A.L.O.R.A.C.L.E.S with live music accompaniment by ambient composer Ana Roxanne, a planetarium-style visual lecture on the multiverse by artists Jennifer Moon and laub, and site-wide energy work by multidimensional artist and Afrofuturist Jordi.

Ever Present occurs throughout the year at The Getty Center 1200 Getty Center Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90049. photographs by Lani Trock

Dana Hoey Organizes Ladies Muay Thai Fight Night @ Petzel Gallery in New York

As part of her exhibition Dana Hoey Presents, artist Dana Hoey organized a live Ladies Muay Thai Fight Night featuring 5 amateur fights, emceed by JoAnn Falanga, which took place on Friday night in the 20’ x 20’ boxing ring installed inside Petzel Gallery. Dana Hoey Presents challenges and confronts preconceived ideas and realities of feminism, combat, violence, self defense and the martial arts.

Dana Hoey Presents is on view through August 2 at Petzel Gallery 456 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011. photographs by Rann Golamco



The Collection of the Fondation: A Vision for Painting @ Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris

“The Collection of the Fondation: A Vision for Painting” brings together 72 works by 23 artists representing different horizons across generations. The exhibition showcases how formal modes and expressions of painting have been renewed and reinvented since 1960 to today: figurative or abstract, manufactured or mechanic, inhabited or distant. These works are also displayed in dialogue with a series of sculptures and installations.

“The Collection of the Fondation: A Vision for Painting” is on view through August 26 at Fondation Louis Vuitton 8 avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Bois de Boulogne, Paris. photographs courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton

Camp: Notes on Fashion @ The Met in New York

The Met Costume Institute’s spring 2019 exhibition, Camp: Notes on Fashion, explores the origins of camp’s exuberant aesthetic and how the sensibility evolved from the margins of society to become an important influence on mainstream culture. Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp’,” provides the framework for the exhibition by examining how fashion designers have used their métier to engage with camp in a myriad of compelling, humorous, and sometimes incongruous ways. The exhibition features approximately 250 objects, including womenswear and menswear, as well as sculptures, paintings, and drawings dating from the 17th century to the present.

Camp: Notes on Fashion is on view through September 8 at The Met Fifth Avenue 1000 Fifth Avenue New York, NY. photographs courtesy of The Met Costume Institute

Takis @ Tate Modern in London

Takis has created some of the most innovative art of the 20th century over his 70-year career. His work seeks out the essential poetry and beauty of the electromagnetic universe. Takis has created antennae-like sculptures he calls “Signals,” and musical devices using magnets, electricity, and viewer participation to generate resonant and random sounds. This exhibition brings together over 70 of the artist’s pieces, making this the largest exhibition of his work ever held in the UK. Takis was one of the most original artistic voices in Europe from the 1960s and remains a pioneering figure in contemporary art today.

Takis is on view through October 27 at Tate Modern Bankside, London SE1 9TG. photographs courtesy of Tate Modern

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 @ The Broad Museum In Los Angeles

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power shines a bright light on the vital contribution of Black artists made over two revolutionary decades in American history, beginning in 1963 at the height of the civil rights movement. The exhibition examines the influences, from the civil rights and Black Power movements to Minimalism and developments in abstraction, on artists such as Romare Bearden, Barkley Hendricks, Noah Purifoy, Martin Puryear, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Alma Thomas, Charles White, and William T. Williams. Los Angeles-based artists appear throughout Soul of a Nation, and more deeply in three specific galleries, foregrounding the significant role of Los Angeles in the art and history of the civil rights movement and the subsequent activist era, and the critical influence and sustained originality of the city’s artists, many of whom have lacked wider recognition.

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power is on view through September 1st at The Broas Museum 221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Punch, Curated By Nina Chanel Abney @ Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles

Punch, curated by artist Nina Chanel Abney, features thirty-three artists who examine contemporary culture and society through the lens of figuration. The exhibition focuses on artists primarily from Los Angeles in Abney’s circle who explore connections and disconnections between culture and subculture, figuration and abstraction, and the physical and the digital. The pieces featured in the exhibition contain references to art historical precedents such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, as well as street art, while integrating elements of design, graffiti, cartoons, and satire. Using painting, sculpture, and performance as acts of defiance, these artists explore how they can create figurative and abstract representations with visual punch while portraying a society immersed in new media and pop culture.

Punch, Curated by Nina Chanel Abney is on view through August 17 at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles 925 North Orange Drive, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch

Olafur Eliasson: In real life @ Tate Modern in London

Olafur Eliasson: In real life marks the most comprehensive solo presentation of the artist’s work, and his first major survey in the UK. Eliasson consistently seeks to make his art relevant to society, engaging the public in memorable ways both inside and outside the gallery. Driven by his interests in perception, movement, and the interaction of people and their environments, he creates artworks which offer experiences that can be shared by all visitors. The exhibition also examines Eliasson’s engagement with issues of climate change, sustainable energy, migration, as well as architecture. Olafur Eliasson: In real life offers a timely opportunity to experience the immersive world of the endlessly inquisitive artist.

Olafur Eliasson: In real life is on view through January 5, 2020 at Tate Modern Bankside, London SE1 9TG. photographs courtesy of Tate Modern

Watch The Music Video For SadGirl's "Chlorine" Off Their New Album "Water"

America is restless. And in the Golden State of California, the veneer of optimism and unlimited opportunity hides a countryside teetering on the edge of the Pacific. The hillside mansions risk burning in the wildfires while the views from ocean front properties remind their owners that one tectonic shift will sink it all.Surely the people who built Los Angeles on the desert landscape were aware of the delicate balance of their surroundings, but hope springs eternal. And indeed, LA became a place of dreams realized, even though Mother Nature and the hands of fate often destroyed those dreams. LA’s SadGirl are acutely aware of that reality, and their analog rock n’ roll has always somehow managed to approximate the relentless optimism of the pioneer spirit, but they’ve also exuded some degree of self-awareness of the anodyne properties of vintage pop. With their new album Water, the Los Angeles trio taps into the romantic and nostalgic spirit of their native city while exuding a time-tested authenticity suggesting that they’ve had a peek behind the curtain of the manicured lawns, glitzy boulevards, and relentless sunshine. SadGirl will be performing tonight, July 11, at the Teregram Ballroom