I Contain Multitudes Group Show @ Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery In New York

I Contain Multitudes is a group show featuring the works of Jules Gimbrone, Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin, and Jennifer Sirey. The microbiome — all the bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses that cohabitate our genetic biomass, actually outweigh us by volume, some estimate that there are over 10 times as many microbial cells than human cells in and on each one of us. The microbiome is invisible to the eye but visible to our sense of smell, taste and touch, and visible in human culture as well. From the foods that we eat and the ways we digest, to the ways we process and interpret information and construct identity, and to whom we are attracted, the microbiome is influencing us and participating in our relations to the world. This show seeks to explore ways that several artists have pointed to, cooperated, or worked in tandem with microbial life in the making and context of works of art and culture. The title originally comes from “Song of Myself, 51” by Walt Whitman, and more recently used by science writer Ed Yong to title his book about the microbiome.

This exhibition will include a special series of KLAUSGALLERY.cloud editions focusing on the various practices of each artist. New editions of the online component will launch throughout the month.

I Contain Multitudes is on view through February 20 @ Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery 54 Ludlow Street, New York

Michael Stamm Presents "so super sorry sir!" @ Shulamit Nazarian In Los Angeles

The paintings in Michael Stamm’s “so super sorry sir!” revel in their idiosyncratic, contradictory attitude toward morality, sexuality, mental health, and contemporary cultural politics. They feature an unlikely cast of characters—ranging from the Devil to an anthropomorphic hand—whose disparate senses of virtue and spirituality often clash with societal convention. At once clinging to life and hurtling toward annihilation, the artist questions what self-actualization looks like in the face of an overly righteous and emotionally precarious world.

The Devil appears as a surrogate for various archetypes—a conspiratorial friend, a scorned enemy, or at times, the artist himself. He is at once a foe to be vanquished and a sly, picaresque hero, providing an infinite set of entry points for the viewer to project their own definitions of “right” and “wrong”. In the titular painting of the show, “so super sorry sir!”, the Devil takes the role of a hysterical martyr, at once offering his patriarchal tormentor a flower, while stabbing himself with a sword. The painting reimagines a memory of a forced apology extracted from the artist by a homophobic teacher. Instead of flatly submitting, the Devil flamboyantly and sibilantly disobeys. Deploying icons of the Virgin Mary interspersed with images of historical gay villains, the work indulges both the aggression of sarcastic defiance and the kinky masochism of self-flagellation. Throughout the exhibition, the Devil, ever at odds with his environment and always nude, exuberantly plays out the iconoclasm of being a queer person. This dissonant, ever changing position associated with queerness may deny an easily resolved identity or moral stance but, ironically, is exactly what allows for the possible reconciliation of conflicting desires.

so super sorry sir! is on view through March 6 @ Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles 616 N La Brea Ave

Cammie Staros's What Will Have Being @ Shulamit Nazarian In Los Angeles

Over the past decade, Cammie Staros has investigated the ways in which classical antiquities have come to represent an origin story of Western art history. While continuing to address the historical narrative surrounding these objects, the body of work in What Will Have Being focuses more on the prescience of ancient artifacts – how their treatment might foretell a possible future of today’s objects. Relics and ruins, which outlast the societies that made them, emphasize both the achievements and the hubris of humanity. But by shifting our contextual understanding of these objects, by considering how meaning is made, we can begin to understand an alternative narrative. The works in What Will Have Being not only question our understanding of contemporary political and environmental instabilities, they also poignantly consider how our current moment will be remembered, and what kind of world it will produce for tomorrow.

What Will Have Being is on view through March 6 @ Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles 616 N La Brea Ave

Sue Williams Paintings And Collages @ 303 Gallery In New York

In 2020, the brutal reality of living in the waning days of American Empire has allowed Williams to consider how we might have arrived at this point. Her new paintings are suffused with images of colonial times: disembodied Pilgrim clogs, Tudor cabins, horses outfitted with blinders, the literal nuts & bolts that prefigured the industrial revolution, Betsy Ross as a dinosaur. The suggestion that America is founded on violence and manipulation, that the post-truth, post-Trump, post-COVID world is not an anomaly but a continuation of a status quo built over the past 400 years, doesn't seem far-fetched. A painting titled "Land Of Profit and Coincidence" would resonate equally in 1620 or 2020.

There is a wry and impertinent classicism in Williams' compositions - at first glance, they suggest the kind of maps early land surveyors might use. They also may intimate the strewn wreckage of a natural disaster, here the relentless and sadistic subversion of democracy, the American dream, and E Pluribus Unum. Couched in the archetypal imagery of our noble forefathers, of amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties, American idyll itself becomes Machiavellian. Williams herself sums it up with two quotes: "The American people are the most brainwashed in the world" (Adam Curtis), and a hopeful note courtesy of Woody Guthrie: "You fascists never gonna win."

Sue Williams’ solo exhibition is on view through January 30 @ 303 Gallery 555 W 21st Street

Infinite Games Group Show @ Capitain Petzel In Berlin

Infinite Games takes its starting point from a recent project initiated by Capitain Petzel during the Corona lockdown called Rhizome. Among the works presented online and later at the gallery was one of Sarah Morris’ films, Finite and Infinite Games. The work posits two opposing worldviews of politics, thinking, strategy and even creativity. The exhibition encompasses 13 artists whose practices reflect the power that the deviant, ambiguous and disjointed can play both in art and society as a whole. Featured artists: Jadé Fadojutimi, Ximena Garrido-lecca, Stefanie Heinze, Jacqueline Humprhies, Sanya Kantarovsky, Rodney McMillian, Sarah Morris, Virginia Overton, Laura Owens, Jorge Pardo, Seth Price, Pieter Schoolwerth, Wim Wenders.

Infinite Games is on view through January 30 @ Capitain Petzel Karl-Marx-Allee 45 10178 Berlin

David Hicks Presents Inaugural Solo Exhibition @ Diane Rosenstein Gallery In Los Angeles

Seed, David Hick’s exhibition of ceramics and drawings represents the artist’s first solo show with Diane Rosenstein Gallery. This body of work is closely connected to the landscape surrounding Hicks’ studio and home in Central San Joaquin Valley, a largely agricultural area in California. The artist writes,

While not tethered to a focused realism of nature’s shapes and natural development, my approach is more a loose conversation with natural form; one that addresses my interpretations of growth, irregularity and the movements of nature.

David Hicks’ multifaceted terracotta works ‘grow’ up and around the space in which they are installed. Dionysian ‘Offerings’ take the artist’s maximalist approach to an extreme, depicting heaping plates of vegetal forms—some rising four feet high off the floor—doused in thick glazes, often captured in mid-drip. Plant-like forms also appear as small talismanic objects the artist calls ‘Clippings’. In places, the forms appear more bodily, like heads or organs, offering a reminder that we, too, are a part of the landscape.

Seed is on view by appointment through February 13 @ Diane Rosenstein Gallery 831 N Highland Avenue

Highways Performance Space Presents Film Maudit 2.0 Virtual Festival

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Film Maudit 2.0 is a film festival dedicated to outré films inspired by the legendary artist Jean Cocteau’s “1949 Festival Du Film Maudit”, which celebrated a group of films that were criminally overlooked and neglected at the time. Taking its title from the French expression meaning “cursed films,” this showcase of counter-cinema blends together narrative, documentary, and experimental films that in their style and/or subject matter, are deliberately bold, confrontational, troubling, and/or shocking. 

The Film Maudit 2.0 festival features over 125 works of cinema from 25 countries including films rarely if ever, seen in festivals: works addressing sociopolitical issues and taboo subject matter that challenges conventional artistic assumptions and sexual mores.

Film Maudit 2.0 is free and available to view online January 12 – 24

Hannah Epstein's Kill Your Captors @ Steve Turner In Los Angeles

Kill Your Captors, Hannah Epstein’s latest solo exhibition at Steve Turner, features new hooked rugs, most of which she created after moving into an 1886 church in Mahone Bay, a small town one hour from Halifax. The hysteria of 2020 and meme culture that ensued are depicted in some works, while others depict monsters looking on. The meme works relate to Cancel Culture, Elon Musk and Grimes, Xi Jinpeng’s China, sacred cows and hyperstimulation. Battles are brewing and monsters are watching.  

Kill Your Captors is on view through February 6 at Steve Turner, 6830 Santa Monica Blvd

Lee Bul's Utopia Saved @ The Manege Central Exhibition Hall In St. Petersburg

The multifaceted work of Lee Bul has in many respects defined the development trajectory of contemporary Asian Art and has also had a significant influence on the contemporary artistic process all around the world. The artist uses icons and tropes from utopian modernism, transforming, allegorising, and juxtaposing them in her own creative works. She engages with utopian modernism with empathy and originality, with critique and imagination. 

The Utopia Saved exhibition is Lee Bul’s first solo exhibition to be held in Russia, and is one of Lee Bul’s most personal artistic expressions. It is the first time that the artist has so fully explained to the public the sources of the current phase of development of her artistic path and the influence that the Russian avant-garde has had on her work.

Utopia Saved is on view through January 31 @ The Manege Central Exhibition Hall, St Petersburg

Friday Playlist: Counter Cortisol

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Hang in there baby! 2021 is off to a rocky start, so here are some tracks to curb that cortisol rush. Because we all need a little calm after the storm.

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Clayton Schiff's Small World @ 56 Henry in New York

Et quid amabo nisi quod ænigma est?[*] 
[What shall I love if not the enigma?] 
-Giorgio de Chirico 

Clayton Schiff’s paintings seem like representations of dreams. The  artist gathers impressions of an unconscious that distorts, displaces, enlarges, and compresses experiences accumulated while awake. His haunting iconography recalls the symbolism of Arnold Böcklin, the alienation and anxiety of Edvard Munch, and Leonora Carrington’s fairylands. Yet Schiff’s fantastical creatures and strange landscapes also have a subtlety and lightness that is playful and even humorous recalling Dr. Seuss. 

Schiff’s first solo exhibition with 56 Henry speaks of isolation and disaffection, and champions the irrational and poetic, the enigmatic and arcane. The color palette is muted; soft tones prevail, adding to the work’s otherworldly quality. The paintings often feel empty and sparse, inviting comparisons to Giorgio de Chirico’s dystopian, alienating land and cityscapes.

Small World is on view through January 17 @ 56 Henry Street New York, NY 10002


Friday Playlist: No Exit

Film still, Santa Claus vs. the Devil, 1959

Film still, Santa Claus vs. the Devil, 1959

Hell is other people's playlists. Some ambient rarities. Shoegaze gems. Sound effects. A prick followed by numbness followed by blackness followed by infiniteness.

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Brooke Wise's Aloha From Hell Is An Apt Short Film Festival To Conclude A Nightmarishly Long Year

text by Avery Wheless

As we wrap a year of the unpredictable and frightening, it’s clear that comedy serves as a good access point to observe the macabre in life. This is no new approach for curator Brooke Wise, who is notorious for utilizing humor while approaching complicated topics. Wise reasons, “You can get so much across with humor, especially with so much darkness happening at the moment, it’s the best tool we have.”

Luckily, Wise has blessed us once again with her fourth round of Aloha From Hell, a film festival calling together creatives of all kinds with proceeds benefiting Planned Parenthood LA in partnership with Depop.

Aloha from Hell is typically a Halloween festival, but in a year where schedule is neither here nor there, Wise delivers her satirical and spooky cinematic experience right in time for the holidays.

Unlike most film festivals, submissions are open to all creatives, musicians, artists, comedians, and more. The resulting selection features traditional filmmaking, experimental video, narrative and performance art— proving you don’t need to be an actual filmmaker to make a video.

This year features creatives such as Chloe Wise, Benny Drama, Mia Kerin, Kate Jean Hollowell, Mark Indelicato, Miles McMillan, Dinah Rankin, Ew Yuk! And musical guests, Okay Kaya and Kacy Hill. The festival’s common thread of uncanny and outlandish opens conversations through a visually experimental context, while addressing raw and diverse topics in regards to gender and sexuality.

Known for combining her curatorial work with raising funds for charitable organizations, Wise chose Planned Parenthood specifically for Aloha from Hell, as an open expression of gender and sexuality is rooted at the core of many of the showcased films. 

Reasoning that the best way to face all things scary is through a lens of playfulness, Aloha from Hell delivers just the right amount of the obscene, kooky and irreverent, brightening the quarantine and making us all feel a little less fucked up. 

Aloha From Hell will be screened virtually on December 22 from 5-8pm PST.

Friday Playlist: Ballad of Sexual Dependency

Nan Goldin, Rise and Monty Kissing, New York City, 1980

Nan Goldin, Rise and Monty Kissing, New York City, 1980

Tender, heartbreaking, beautiful, joyous, Nan Goldin's iconic Ballad Of Sexual Depency changed photography forever. Here is the soundtrack.

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Michelle Blade's Into The Forest @ Wilding Cran In Los Angeles

Set against the backdrop of a global pandemic and fraught political times, Into the Forest is an amalgamation of experience and emotion made while sheltering in place. Taking note from her most intimate and immediate surroundings, Blade’s paintings depict a collection of quotidian scenes:  the last blush of day, her children in the garden, the remnants of a meal, flowers in stages of decay, mountainous landscapes and towering trees under radiant moons. These meditative moments of solitude within a California landscape take note from the natural world and closely examine its stillness, strength, persistence and metaphysical qualities.

Driven by the inescapable qualities of the natural world this exhibition is about curiosity and one's search for meaning and place within the cosmos. The perceived energy Blade depicts lays behind physical appearances. It’s a world of benevolent energy flowing through and protecting life. The title of the exhibition “Into the Forest”, is not simply an escapist fantasy but also a rallying call to dive more deeply into ones reality and reassess our connection to the health of our afflicted world. In the words of Mary Oliver, using “Attention as devotion”.

Into The Forest is on view for two more days @ Wilding Cran 1700 S. Santa Fe Ave #460 Los Angeles CA 90021

Frutti Di Mare: Read Our Interview Of Danish Designer Sia Arnika →

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With her SS21 Frutti Di Mare collection, designer Sia Arnika has found a chimeric pearl in the depths of a timeless Limfjord oyster. These highly-coveted mollusks were so in demand by the 16th-century King Frederic II of Denmark and his court that he declared them “crown regalia” and forbade the people of Arnika’s native Mors island from eating any themselves. While the capital city Nykøbing was a bustling port city in the mid-19th century, its population has since dwindled, and with it, much of the island’s former sense of self. Click here to read more.