Read The Ninth Chapter Of Gideon Jacobs' & Brad Phillips' Serial Novella →

text by Gideon Jacobs (and Brad Phillips)

To: Brad and Gideon

From: The Editors

Dear Brad and Gideon, 

To start, we want to thank you for writing your “exquisite corpse serial novella” with us. When you mentioned the concept back in winter, we were immediately intrigued. It sounded like the perfect sandbox for writers like you two to play in, a recipe for something unusual and surprising. Over these months, it’s been fun to watch you ping-pong the novella back and forth, unaware of the other’s intentions and ideas, fingers crossed that it will result in something cohesive and whole. We’ve laughed out loud at some point while reading every single chapter. 

All that said, we’re emailing today just to express a few concerns. Click here to read more.

Ed Clark "Expanding The Image" @ Hauser and Wirth Los Angeles

Los Angeles... A pioneer of the New York School, Ed Clark (1926 – 2019) extended the language of American abstraction beyond expressionism through his inventive use of pure color, abstract form, and the seductive materiality of paint. Following Hauser & Wirth’s recent New York exhibition of Clark’s paintings made from 2000 to 2013, ‘Expanding the Image’ will be the gallery’s first exhibition in Los Angeles devoted to the artist. On view will be works from his highly formative years of 1960 through 1980, two decades during which Clark made pivotal breakthroughs that expanded the language of abstraction. Make an appointment to see the exhibition here. On view until January 10, 2021 at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, 901 East 3rd Street Los Angeles CA 90013. Installation photographs by Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.

Serkan Sarier’s "They Eat Their Young" Is A Prescient Reflection Of The Current Moment

 
 

Serkan Sarier’s first solo exhibition in Germany features installations and complementary paintings made onsite during a nine-week residency hosted by the Stiftung Reinbeckhallen. It draws inspiration from The Little Mermaid, a story written in 1836 by Hans Christian Andersen after he was rejected by the man he loved, as well as the artist’s own memories of rejection, feelings of otherness, and moment of transformation. As a member of a Turkish migrant family (Gastarbeiter Familie) and a German citizen, Sarier often explores the subaltern in his work; in the case of They Eat Their Young, he does this through mythical bodies that are not only trapped and isolated, but removed (both socially and geographically) from each other and the observer. It is a hybrid of classical Greek and Roman sculptural references combined with the artist’s own cultural heritage. An exploration made relevant by the scores of younger immigrant generations currently seeking asylum in the Western world.

Shaped by the environment of both his family’s culture and everyday life in Hanau, Serkan expresses this juxtaposition in his use of color and materials. The pervasive and suffocating nature of humankind is made visceral by way of large rocks drenched in iridescent car paint, the weight of them supported by metal grates that line industrial plastic containers; a proper plinth for a rodent being studied in a lab. Great care is taken in the details of faces, gloves and feet. Yet, the genitalia remain vague, if not feminine, on otherwise masculine bodies. One figure dons a large pair of rubber gloves identical to those worn by the artist’s father years ago when he was of working age, its face composed of a deflated rubber mask is squashed and frozen in a moment of anguish. Mannequins made from a soft, rubbery material bring a haunting humanity to wholly cold forms. Each sculpture is immersed in a fresh new coat of car paint that harkens Western Germany from the 1950s through the 1970s, an era when most Turkish immigrants were employed by the automobile industry. They glitter with the promise of assimilation: an opportunity to provide for one’s family in a new Western life.

They Eat Their Young is on view through September 20 @ Stiftung Reinbeckhallen Reinbeckstr. 17, 12459 Berlin. text by Mimi Krtinić Rončević, photographs courtesy of the gallery

Majeure Force: Part II Group Show Marks Tenth Anniversary Of Night Gallery In Los Angeles

In this second installment of Night Gallery’s tenth-anniversary exhibition, forty-one artists have been assembled from its roster and surrounding community to celebrate the exuberant city of Los Angeles. It is a testament to the endurance of creativity and the power of art to continue bringing people together. The closing celebration included a performance by Daniel Gaitor-Lomack photographed below by Lani Trock. Majeure Force Part Two features work by Sarah Awad, Cara Benedetto, Josh Callaghan, Cynthia Daignault, Mira Dancy, Ian Davis, Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Samara Golden, Paul Heyer, Ridley Howard, Khari Johnson-Ricks, JPW3, Grant Levy-Lucero, Tau Lewis, Anne Libby, Rose Marcus, Jesse Mockrin, Luke Murphy, Rashaad Newsome, Sterling Ruby, Melanie Schiff, Elaine Stocki, Claire Tabouret, Marisa Takal, Kandis Williams, and Andy Woll.

Watch The World Premiere Of The Music Video For Eddie Chacon's "Pleasure, Joy, And Happiness" Shot On An Alpaca Farm In New Zealand

Eddie Chacon experienced proper, peak-nineties acclaim in the soul duo Charles and Eddie: they scored a global No. 1 in 1992 with “Would I Lie To You,” appeared three times on Top of the Pops. After a hiatus, Chacon returns with “Pleasure, Joy and Happiness,” which is available on the boutique Los Angeles-based label Day End Records. This is a thoughtfully considered album of quiet, confident R&B: it doesn’t jump out at you, but rather gets in you. Produced by John Carroll Kirby, the like-minded artist and collaborator with Frank Ocean and Solange Knowles, it features restrained percussion from Kanye West’s Sunday Service drummer Lamar Carter. Celestial soul as a break from chaos, these are quietly challenging songs as timeless as they are contemporary. Music produced with footage from the Shamarra Alpaca Farm in New Zealand, by Chacon and Sissy Sainte-Marie. Editing by Brandon Bloom. Preorder the LP here.

Read The Eighth Chapter Of Brad Phillips' & Gideon Jacobs' Serial Novella →

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They recommend that when dealing with rapists and murderers you say your name or your kids names, talk about them - “Our son Oscar just started walking!” They even suggest telling your attacker you’re pregnant when you aren’t, which Bobby didn’t like the dishonesty of. When he robbed people he told the truth about what he wanted and what might happen and preferred his victims be honest in return. Considering the circumstances he knew it was an unreasonable expectation. The personalization strategy made sense objectively. Criminals who aren’t set on murder could possibly change their minds in the heat of the moment if their victims could transform themselves from objects into subjects. Click here to read more.

Take A Peek Inside Voo Store's New Brutal Store Design in Berlin

Now in its 10th year, Voo Store has decided on an in-house redesign of its Kreuzberg concept store. Maintaining the charm of the former locksmith studio, Voo Store eschews well-known architecture firms, deciding instead to pare down its re-design process using local small businesses, designers, and artists in transforming its store space. In light of recent global events, Voo Store aims to go back to basics and focus its energy into collaboration with local projects, local brands, artists, and institutions in order to foster a greater sense of community. Voo Store wants to first establish itself as a Berlin fashion and cultural presence through these collaborative efforts before realizing long-term goals of expanding into additional physical locations in Berlin. We hope the next ten years sees the organic growth of Voo Store with a concerted focus on community, creativity and collaboration. Visit them here: Oranienstraße 24, 10999 Berlin, Germany. photographs by Thomas Meyer

Your Heartbreak Lives Here: A New Book of Photography by Kendall Waldman

Photographer Kendall Waldman is selling a small book of images of life in American pandemia and giving all proceeds to The Modest Needs Foundation. This is, of course, a ubiquitous model in this strange time of ours, when any artist with a functioning combination of heart and brain is trying to reconcile the impulse to work and the impulse to help. If you have the means, I encourage you to buy every item that every artist on the whole of the internet is selling to raise money for a good cause. But, if you must be discerning, if you’d like to contribute to an organization that seems to truly understand this unique societal moment and own an art object that does too, I recommend Waldman’s project. 

Simply put, these photographs capture the popular experience of life under COVID-19 lockdown so accurately and efficiently, it hurts a little. I don’t mean that the book offers a representative variety of stories—this isn’t reportage—but that it quietly articulates exactly what these months have felt like. It’s a formal study of an informal tone. Flipping through its pages some years from now just might be the easiest way to access the 2020 sense memories we’ll surely be storing in our marrow for decades to come. text by Gideon Jacobs

Follow Kendall Waldman on Instagram, and DM to buy the book.

Watch Cerimonia By Radical Italian Architecture Utopians Superstudio

"Cerimonia" is the third chapter in the "Atti Fondamentali" (Fundamental Acts), a series of five stories each dedicated to a primary act in human life: Life, Education, Ceremony, Love, Death. The five stories, conceived as a sort of philosophical and anthropological reconstruction of architecture, first appeared, as texts, images and storyboard, on the pages of "Casabella" magazine in 1972 and 1973.

Read The Seventh Chapter Of Brad Phillips' & Gideon Jacobs' Serial Novella →

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Chapter 1 

I’ll write the first chapter, but please know that I am very wary of being someone who takes charge of group projects, someone who breaks the silence after the teacher asks for a volunteer to captain the science olympiad team with an earnest “I’ll do it,” or even worse, an “I’ll do it” of feigned reluctance. I was never that guy in school. No way I wanted to do that much work. But I also didn’t want to be associated with any projects that I considered poorly executed, so unless my “I’ll do it” volunteer was smart, I tended to give so little effort that I could not, in any scholastic court of law, be considered a bonafide collaborator. Click here to read more.

Read Our Interview With Papooz On The Occasion Of Their New Video Release

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The Parisian duo Papooz became well known in France thanks to their summer 2016 melody Ann Wants To Dance with its sensually whimsical music video directed by artist Soko. They released their second album, Night Sketches in 2019, which encapsulates the essence of France’s warm summer nights: sipping white wine after spending the whole day being sun-kissed on the beaches of Cap Ferret (where Papooz recorded their first album), or enjoying the freshness of an ice-cold drink on a terrace with friends after suffocating in the streets of Paris all day.

This year’s summer plan might not be as sandy and salty as we’d once imagined, but we can only hope for more sexy new tracks and clips like Papooz’s latest sumptuous release. Straight from the garden of Eden, this forbidden fruit was directed by Victoria Lafaurie & Hector Albouker “in the year of Covid-19” and features goddess-like Klara Kristin, who made her film debut in Gaspard Noe’s Love. Papooz’s Armand Penicaut and Ulysse Cottin quarantined with their musical crew at La Ferme Records to prepare the new album, yet to be announced. I sat down with Papooz a couple months ago, before their show at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles, before the world went into quarantine.

Read the full interview and ‘The Garden’ here.

Read The Sixth Chapter Of Brad Phillips' & Gideon Jacobs' Serial Novella

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Dear Ms. Jacobs,

If you’re reading this letter it means your son is dead, along with a much older man named Brad Phillips he was working with on some obscure writing project - a project which I think tested their endurance for suffering, a test they seemed to have failed. Typically, when you receive a letter like this, it will say, ‘If you’re reading this I AM dead,” and comes from a loved one in the form of a suicide note, or it comes from a friend or family member who is being stalked by the American Intelligence Apparatus (see Danny Casolaro). I wish for your sake your son had it together enough to write an ‘If you’re reading this’ (Dear John becomes Dear Mom) letter himself, but please try not to judge him too harshly — only now am I beginning to understand the amount of pressure he and his friend Mr. Phillips were under to — as they described it  somewhat pretentiously — ‘revolutionize contemporary literature’. Attached is a letter Mr. Phillips wrote to your son Gideon. Perhaps more letters will be unearthed. I wish you the very best and am sorry for your loss.

-Detective Leslie Morris

Click here to read more.

Read The Fifth Chapter Of Gideon Jacobs and Brad Phillips Serial Novella "Cheaters" →

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Dear Ms. Jacobs,

Below, see a transcription of one of many handwritten letters Gideon sent Brad in the days leading up to what the two writers were flippantly referring to as their “groundbreaking innovation for the murder-suey industry.” It seems they weren’t exactly following the rules of their exquisite-corpse serial novella, and were secretly corresponding behind their editors’ backs the whole time. I hope these words give you some insight into their mental states during this period, and that some insight affords you some solace. 

-Detective Leslie Morris

P.S. For the record, we’re still figuring out who did the murdering and who did the suey-ing. It’s…complicated. 

Click here to read more.

Cecile Believe Releases New EP "Made In Heaven" With Photographs by Zoe Chait

“We might be tangled in our thoughts, fractured and fragmented, constricted by channels...but if we follow one of the threads for long enough we eventually touch something and connect,” is how artist Zoe Chait describes the concept for these photos made on the occasion of Cecile Believe’s new EP “Made In Heaven,” available to stream here. “Made in Heaven” is her first release since working with Sophie on her Grammy nominated album. photographs by Zoe Chait