Moffat Takadiwa: Son of the Soil @ Nicodim In Los Angeles

Son of the Soil is Moffat Takadiwa’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Takadiwa reassesses his own Korekore craft culture through the appropriation of garbage from the West, elevating found objects into sculptural forms that engage with issues of cultural identity, language, social practice, and the environment. All of his artworks are composed from the discarded remains of consumer waste, woven together in the language of traditional Zimbabwean textiles. Macrobiotic in his approach to material, his repurposed objects tell stories of each piece’s past lives to viewers brave enough to confront their own ecological and colonial legacies. Son of the Soil is on view through October 19 at Nicodim 571 S Anderson Street Ste 2, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock and courtesy of Nicodim

Robert Moreland: Deliberation @ Wilding Cran Gallery In Los Angeles

Just when you think you have the measure of them, these composites of painting and sculpture slip out of mental reach. At first glance Moreland’s latest body of work evokes the geometry of industrial spaces: a saw roof; bi-fold windows; up-and-over garage doors…. But the closer you approach, the more the architectural undertones are disrupted. In the face of brightly painted, leather-hinged, canvas-covered wooden panels, architecture gives way to a story of making. Tacks, tucks, folds: no part of fabrication is disguised. These crafted elements may lurk in the shadows but they are handled in such a way as to become significant features. Like the sixties Minimalism movement that it references, Moreland’s work is without pretension; unlike the Minimalists, it is not devoid of emotion or artistic gesture. There are just discernible brush strokes on the painted surfaces, and his striking use of color points up the geometry of each piece. Deliberation is on view through October 27 at Wilding Cran Gallery 939 South Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Egan Frantz "Paintings" @ Team (gallery, inc.) In New York

Good paintings, those with intrigue, appeal and tension, ask us to hold competing and simultaneous understandings in mind, and contend with synchronized yet oppositional forces. At odds with the unexpectedness and complexity of Egan Frantz’s works is an effortlessness, an instinctive ease, vital in producing an image that is at once seemingly familiar and impossible to place. This is a show of new images, adamantly straightforward yet enigmatic, that manifest a proprietary power and charged presence. Paintings is on view through October 5 at Team (gallery, inc.) 83 Grand Street, New York. Photographs courtesy of Team (gallery, inc.)

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan & Chris Ofili: Affinities @ David Zwirner In London

Affinities is a two-person exhibition of work by Trinidad-based artists Jasmine Thomas-Girvan and Chris Ofili at the gallery’s London location. Featuring sculptural works by Thomas-Girvan alongside paintings by Ofili, Affinities brings to light the rich artistic conversation that exists between these two artists, arising both in response to their shared environment as well as an ongoing dialogue throughout the nearly two decades they have known each other.

Drawing alternately from Caribbean history, myth, ritual, literature, and her own experience, Thomas-Girvan’s poetically inflected works are grounded in the specificity of the Caribbean landscape and the region’s colonial past, but open out onto universal themes—most prominently, transformation and the construction of identity. Her sculptures and installations seamlessly weave together traditional supports, such as wood and bronze, with both found everyday objects and materials sourced from the natural environment, including shells, pieces of coral, palm fronds, and mangrove hairs, culled from a vast collection that she has amassed over time. The resulting assemblages, which cohere into singular visual statements, are at once familiar and fantastical, both venerating and working through a rich and complicated past. As Ofili notes: “Jasmine’s work tells beautiful and mysterious tales that are a combination of fragility and dread with a knowing nod towards alchemy and witchcraft of the past, present, and future.”

On view will be several large- and small-scale canvases by Ofili from a 2019 body of work devoted to the figures of Calypso and Odysseus from Homer’s Odyssey. Inspired in part by the music of Trinidad, where Ofili has lived since 2005, the artist has reimagined Calypso—traditionally represented as a deceptive femme fatale—as a striking mermaid, and he has visualised Odysseus as a beautiful, dark-skinned suitor. In the paintings, Ofili presents the characters with curving bodies, sumptuously spread out across the compositions and displayed in layered surfaces filled with arabesque vines and bubble-like forms. Known for his intricate, kaleidoscopic paintings and works on paper that deftly merge abstraction and figuration, Ofili’s recent works—vibrant, symbolic, and frequently mysterious—evoke the lush landscapes and local traditions of Trinidad. Affinities is on view through September 21 at David Zwirner 24 Grafton Street, London. Photographs courtesy of David Zwirner

Portrait Of Britain Announces Winners Of Its Fourth Edition National Exhibition In Partnership With JCDecaux

Portrait of Britain, is the largest exhibition of contemporary portrait photography ever held, as much a celebration of photography as it is a celebration of the diversity of our country’s people. Now in its fourth year, British Journal of Photography will launch the nationwide exhibition on 2 September across JCDecaux UK’s national channel of digital screens. Following an open call by British Journal of Photography earlier this year, thousands of portraits were submitted, and judges had the task of selecting the 200 shortlisted images from that number. All 200 images will be printed in the Portrait of Britain Book Vol.2, published by Hoxton Mini Press, and released on 5 September.

The 100 winning entries will be showcased across JCDecaux’s network of digital Out-of-Home screens throughout the country, from rail stations and airports, to shopping malls and high streets, throughout the month of September.

GOOD TASTE, A Group Exhibition Curated by Paige Silveria @ The Arts District Of DTLA

GOOD TASTE is a collaborative project, curated by Paige Silveria, presenting an intimate take on the current state of arts and culture in our society. It blends various disciplines of contemporary art into the format of a group exhibition. GOOD TASTE simultaneously exists in the mainstream yet provokes and predicts the mainstream. Artists featured include Philip Ashley, Soft Baroque, Lisa Boalt, Ganna Bogdan, Erik Brunetti, Cali Thornhill DeWitt, DRx, Erik Foss, Taj François, Lukas Gansterer, Joe Garvey, Jan Gatewood, Julian Klincewicz, Alex Knost, Stephen McClintock, Jason Nocito, Hassan Rahim, Shay Semple, B. Thom Stevenson, Nick Stewart, Devin Troy Strother, Peter Sutherland and Stephen Zerbe. GOOD TASTE was on view from August 22-28 at 801 Mateo Street in The Arts District of DTLA.

Sweet Harmony: Rave | Today Group Show @ Saatchi Gallery London

Sweet Harmony features multimedia room installations and audio-visual works by some of the rave movements' most prolific and authentic visual commentators. The acid house revolution is charted through typographic accounts, photo stories, live music events, talks and panel discussions by the movements' architects and influencers. By reliving the revolution through the voices and lenses of those who experienced it, the exhibition portrays the new world that emerged from the club scene of the 80s and 90s. Participating artists include Mattko, Ewen Spencer, Dave Swindells, Chelsea Louise Berlin, Seana Gavin, Project Zoltar, Carsten Nicolai, Lost Souls Of Saturn, Jeremy Deller, Minnie Griffith and Max Mcgarvie, Weirdcore, Adrian Fisk, Cleo Campert, Colin Nightingale and Stephen Dobbie, Liam Young, Cyril de Commarque, Aida Bruyère, Anna-Lena Krause, Matthew Wilkinson, Molly Macindoe, Mustafa Hulusi, Immo Klink, Shaun Bloodworth and Toby Mott.

Sweet Harmony is on view through September 14 @ Saatchi Gallery Duke of York's HQ, King's Road, London. all images courtesy of the gallery

The Sun Hung Low or A Question Loomed: A Solo Exhibition By Morgan Mandalay @ Everybody In Chicago

A snake made of bottle caps wraps around itself on the floor. Trees grow, overgrow, burn, and grow again. And some kind of mouse created a hole in our newly-built drywall (this may or may not be related to the snake).

It’s hard to tell if the sun is rising or setting. You might come to a conclusion based on the time of day, the temperature outside, your political views, or something else. Whatever the case, you’re looking at some paintings and not the sun itself. This is probably a good thing.

The Sun Hung Low or A Question Loomed is on view through September 1 @ Everybody 1722 N Western Avenue, Chicago. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Pacing Around My Desire: Read Our Interview Of Carmen Winant On Her New Book Published By Printed Matter →

Honey Lee Cottrell Papers, #7822. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

In her new book titled Notes on Fundamental Joy; seeking the elimination of oppression through the social and political transformation of the patriarchy that otherwise threatens to bury us, Carmen Winant offers a poignant question: Does hope have an aesthetic? If it does, you may find it within the pages of this provocative book. Click here to read more.

Group Show "Charrette" Opens @ Maple St. Construct In Los Angeles

‘Charrette’ is a group show of large scale sculptures, where the artists confront materiality, space, collage, light, time, discomfort, and the unknown as a way to bring difference together as one interdependent exhibit of work. The exhibition features works from artists Shagha Ariannia, Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Thomas Linder, Mike Nesbit andJenny Rask. Charrette is on view at 3626 west Jefferson blvd, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Dreamin' Of A... @ Charlie James In Los Angeles

Dreamin’ of a… is a group exhibition conceived by Los Angeles-based art historian and curator Sagi Refael featuring work by Adar Aviam, Mara De Luca, Rafa Esparza, Robert Ginder, Renée Lotenero, John Knuth, Marisa Mandler, David O’Brien, Rotem Reshef, Glen Wilson, Nathan Zeidman and Barak Zemer.

The show is a tribute to the landscape of Los Angeles, as seen and experienced by walking its streets and taking its public transportation. The show closely examines the tensions between the glamorous cinematic and televised images of the “City of Angels” and the grittier realities of life in the city. Dreamin’ of a… takes its title from John Knuth’s piece from 2018, a mylar sewn landscape composed on a cardboard sign the artist bought from a homeless person. The piece expresses LA as microcosm of the American Dream and suggests the outlet of creativity and imagination as a means of socio-economic advancement. The artworks gathered for the show vary widely in media and operate together as a form of “Gesamtkunstwerk”, aiming to synthesize from many perspectives an idea of the identity of Los Angeles. Emphasizing the city’s fragmented and evolving nature, its continuous becoming and collapsing, Dreamin’ of a… examines the act of dreaming in LA and its linkage to branding and image-making, contemplating drives to self-measure and climb socially against the broader canvas of time, landscape, and community. Dreamin’ of a is on view through August 31 at Charlie James Gallery 969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Dane Johnson Presents "House Party 2" @ Charlie James Gallery In Los Angeles

House Party 2 follows up Dane Johnson’s House Party exhibition from 2017, wherein in the course of a few short days he activated the whole of a condemned house in Silver Lake with floor-to-ceiling interlocking figurative installations made from wood and painted in bold primary colors. House Party 2 will expand on the first show, presenting a series of paintings and sculptures depicting various forms of human interaction, connected by functional pieces which change the viewer’s relationship to the work. The emotional temperature of the figures and their interplay remains warm, their intersections supportive and loving, and essentially chaste. Bodies stretch out in mutual support, hold hands, share ledges, and walk in unison. Sculptural paintings are pieced together to create stages, platforms, ledges, and curtains that frame the actions of the figures: walking, talking, embracing, kissing. The scenes depicted in the works are amplified and connected by an array of functional pieces installed within the gallery space. Benches, stairs, and platforms lead the viewer to rest, climb, and stand while regarding the work, sometimes mirroring the poses in nearby pieces. House Party 2, read against the backdrop of contemporary social tension and general unease, and seasoned with the simplicity of its figuration, operates like a primer on the foundational postures of human kindness and cooperation. House Party 2 is on view through August 31 at Charlie James Gallery 969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Judith Supine Presents "MANLBDRO: The Cowboy Series" @ Muddguts in New York

Throughout the Cowboy series, Judith Supine uses one of the most iconic and impactful brand images of the past century: Marlboro Man advertisements from the 1960s and 1970s that symbolize a heroic desire for adventures to the unknown, valor and daring independence. Supine breaks the barrier of gender norms and social constructs by twisting the archetypal narrative and cultural context of the connotations likely associated with the cowboy and interjects his own personal associations with gender and sexuality. Re-writing the age-old narrative to include one where balance, nurture, environment and intimacy are at the forefront of inclusivity. 

MANLBDRO: The Cowboy Series is on view through August, Saturday-Sunday 12pm-8pm or by appointment at Muddguts 427 Graham Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211. photographs by Brian Karlsson

Desert Painters of Australia Part II @ Gagosian Beverly Hills

Gagosian presents a sequel to the critically acclaimed Desert Painters of Australia, again drawing from the distinguished collection of Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield. This is the first time that the work of Indigenous Australian artists are being shown in Los Angeles since Icons of the Desert at UCLA’s Fowler Museum in 2009.

Evolving out of ancestral rituals of mark making practiced for many thousands of years, such as tree carving, body painting, and sand drawing, painting on canvas is a fairly recent phenomenon for remotely based Indigenous Australians, linked to the forced displacement in the late 1960s of communities such as the Pintupi, Luritja, Warlpiri, and Arrernte peoples to the Papunya settlement in the Northern Territory. This social upheaval inadvertently created a resilient hub of artistic production: out of communal work on canvas, wall, and ground emerged the movement now referred to as Western Desert painting.

Desert Painters of Australia Part II is on view through September 6 at Gagosian 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. photographs courtesy of Gagosian

Devil In The Flesh, When Op Art Electrified The Film World @ MAMAC In Nice, France

In the early 1960s, kinetic art established itself in Europe with a double principle: destabilising perception and democratising art. Optical illusion paintings, reliefs with light and motion, and disorientating environments shake perception. Christened “Op Art” in 1964, this avant-garde art was met with resoundingly popularity and success, so much so that it was commandeered in entirely new ways. While the advertising agencies, designers and major fashion house seized its intoxicating shapes, cinema gave Op Art an unexpected angle. An art of movement and of light, it was both a predecessor, able to sublimate its visual games, and a follower, which seeks to plunder it through its desire for modernity. From dramas to thrillers, filmmakers and decorators drew a language and themes from it, producing a whole range of “re-uses” in the scenery and the plot – scenes of hoaxes and dread, sadistic characters or zany improvisers, but also extreme experiences: scenes of hallucination, psychosis.

Exhibition immersed the visitor in this passionate story between two arts, punctuated by mockery and misunderstanding, reciprocal sublimation, pop or baroque manifestations as well as collaborations and plagiarism. Through nearly 30 films, 150 works and documents, it explored the origin and the taboos of this predatory fascination, and considers what cinema revealed to Op Art of its own nature. In such, it released the spirit of a decade ruffled by modernity, thirsting for emancipation and haunted by the ghosts of the war. This era, full of contradictions, created a completely new aesthetic culminating in the fruitful friction between the visual arts and the cinema. Devil in the flesh, When Op Art electrified the film world is on view through September 29 at MAMAC 1 Place Yves Klein, Nice. photographs courtesy of MAMAC

Lizzi Bougatsos + Kim Gordon x Penny Slinger @ Blum & Poe In Los Angeles

Lizzi Bougatsos and Kim Gordon perform sonic improvisation to the projections of artist Penny Slinger's early experimental silent films from 1969. After returning from a Gang Gang Dance Japan tour last winter, Bougatsos found herself emerged in the films of Jane Arden, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Penny Slinger, part of an experimental feminist film series curated by Alison Gingeras and Nicoletta Beyer at the Anthology Film Archives. She began writing text while watching the Slinger films in the theater, and thereafter asked her friend Kim Gordon to perform a sonic reaction. The two artists improvised to the films teetering on the elemental, surreal, metaphysical, and distinctly feminine raw poetry of the sublime unconscious -- an almost Artaudian parallel for the unconscious leadings of the nature of improvisation in art and life, shared in the three practices of Bougatsos, Gordon, and Slinger. photographs by Julia Nicoletti

Pre-Order Autre's Eighth Issue Featuring The Pope Of Trash Himself, John Waters →

"I did masturbate to Elvis the first time. But I didn’t know what it was. It was like a new thing for me." – John Waters.

Introducing Autre’s 8th issue – a little late for Summer, but timely nonetheless – featuring the inimitable Pope Of Trash himself, JOHN WATERS, in conversation with LA-based artist and musician SETH BOGART. At 10 pages, 3,500 words and portraits by Bennet Perez on the beach in Provincetown, it’s the filthiest and most entertaining interview we have ever published. Click here to pre-order.