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Friday Playlist: Dubble Stuff
As an aural clone to Autre's spring 21 doppelgänger issue, Dubble Stuff is a gamut-running exploration of musical genres that is everything and nothing at once; an avatar perpetually in search of itself.
Skunk Grove: Lucy Bull's Inaugural Solo Exhibition @ David Kordansky Gallery In Los Angeles
The gestures that animate the works in Lucy Bull’s Skunk Grove gravitate toward several overlapping categories. They include daubed, gauzy veils; illusionistic swirls and stratifications; and networks of scratched marks that give way to underlying areas of paint. But even these are mere generalizations, as any attempt to fix Bull’s abstract language within the constraints of descriptive analysis falls short. In this respect, the paintings seem to depict the process of grasping for solid interpretive ground while simultaneously acknowledging that there are times when the ground must fall away. Between these extremes, worlds are created and destroyed; thoughts give way to feelings, and vice versa; and life’s constant fluctuations are given symbolic expression as passages between discrete sections of a composition give way to those that surround and engulf it. Every element of the picture communicates—sometimes harmoniously, sometimes sharply—as part of an immersive, atmospheric whole.
Skunk Grove is on view through April 1 @ David Kordansky 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. Los Angeles
Students At The European Institute Of Design In Milan Are Innovating Inclusivity
In their first semester of the 20/21 academic year, students of the European Institute of Design in Milan were asked to design in an inclusive way with gender, disability, ethnicity, and age in mind. Conducted by professors Mia Vilardo and Riccardo Polidoro, partners of Studio Elitre, the inclusive design course asked students to create original products capable of satisfying everyone's needs.
In terms of gender inclusiveness, the REN proposal goes to intercept the needs of those who do not identify with one of the two sexes and of those who feel unique through what they choose to wear: a mix of garments and accessories that reflects the person without distinction between man and woman. On the disability front, there are those who have imagined a fashion brand " for anyone who feels wrong or not fully represented ". JFMP - Joy for mistaken people (proposed by Penelope Bazzani, Michela Polo, Jennifer Rossi, Federica Santangelo) subverts the rules and looks at things in a different light, working specifically on blindness and low vision.
On the path of ethnic inclusion, the To.get.there - Rebirth project instead works conceptually to "unite" what is at the deepest roots of human experience, what unites all cultures (both physically and spiritually). This translates not only into the choice of fabrics made from elements present in nature, but also into the reuse, grinding and processing of industrial and production waste to obtain, with the appropriate binders, new design materials.
Good taste and being able to be inspirational have no age: thus, the working group on the ageless theme (Simone Ricetti, Alice Marchetti, Alessandra Natalino, Martina Sagliaschi) imagined AMAS, a range of accessories perfect for all seasons of the life.
Read Our Interview Of Jason Stein On The Art Of The Auction At Bonhams →
LOT 275
MOTOROLA
50XC Radio
1940
marbleized green and butterscotch catalin
height 6 1/2in (16.5cm); width 9 1/2in (24cm); depth 6 1/2in (16.5cm)
US$ 5,000 - US$ 7,000
£ 3,600 - £ 5,100
€ 4,200 - € 5,900
Jason Stein, Director of Modern Decorative Art and Design at Bonhams, grew up in the world of astrology and birth charts in Los Angeles’ growing New Age scene. His mother was a co-founder of The Aquarius Group, and his father was a department store manager. This amalgam wound up being a perfect formula for his work in the secondary market, first as an intern at Sotheby’s and finally at Bonhams where he is immersed in a universe of rare and beautiful objects that span movements, thoughts, trends, and design history. Ahead of this week’s Modern Design | Art auction, which has a focus on rare Bakelite radios and Mexican surrealist artists, like Leonora Carrington, we spoke to Stein about his fascinating role as design guru at Bonhams, avoiding fakes, and the return of maximalism. Click here to read more.
The Unexpected: Magnum's Square Print Sale Features Over 100 Photographers @ $100
This week only, Magnum Photos is selling over 100 archival-quality prints, signed by the photographers or estate-stamped by the estates, are available for just $100.
They are not editioned by quantity, but editioned by time, as these items will not be made available outside the sale window. The images in each sale are always different, and will never be available in this format again. Don’t miss out!
Renata & Friends: A Photographic Essay Of Soft Sculpture By Cassandra Bickman
Sally Knows How To Party
I was in a deep sleep one night at my great grandmother’s small town midwestern home, when suddenly I heard a loud crash downstairs. I put on her old blue silk robe, and walked down the rickety staircase to her green shag carpet basement with those old vinyl wooden walls, mugged with that dense musty smell midwestern basements have, with a slight scent of cigar smoke lingering in the air. To my surprise, The Versatile Henry Mancini and His Orchestra record was playing, and as I turned the corner, this strange silhouette was hanging from an old crystal chandelier, and another was laughing hysterically as it had crashed into the glass coffee table below. It was the strangest thing, it was 3am, and it appeared that I had walked into the winding down sloppy haze of a midnight soirée! As I further opened my eyes, I realized that it was my very own CLOSET that had come alive!! In awe, I sat down on the pink floral couch next to my favorite green suit whom introduced themselves to me as “Irene and Eileen the inflatable siamese twins”, they were classy yet bizarre, and were telling me an intriguing story about their favorite lizard named Susan and her popsicle stand in the desert.
Irene & Eileen, The Inflatable Siamese Twins
It was Renata hanging from the chandelier, who told me she was my dad’s lady friend, and Maude to my right, who told me she liked to model as she poured me a sparkling glass of champagne. My favorite white leather jacket Sally had a real swagger, and Toby was obsessively puffing away at my grandpa’s old cigars. Then out came stumbling this very unpredictable figure from the bathroom who was Nancy, she was telling us this absurd story about how she was once a nanny who became an assassin. In another corner sat Big Red, who was a bit frozen as he told me he drank some beetle juice and was feeling a bit stunned. I later found my black silk gown sitting on the floor as she had taken a slight dose of acid and was in the midst of an epiphany, her name was Tiffany. I partied with them until just before sunrise, when I passed out on that floral couch with a tantalized smile.
Maud likes to Model
Toby In His Tuxedo
As I opened my eyes the next morning, I looked around to greet my new friends, yet they had all vanished into deflated empty piles of my very own clothes on the ground. When I told my grandma over coffee the next morning, she oddly just gave me a mischievous smirk when I told her what had happened, as if this wasn’t the first time this sort of thing happened here late at night. She said nothing more, and neither did I. Luckily, there was an old camera lying on the ground that night, and these photos that I snapped are all that I have left to reconcile the daze of this splendid, mysterious evening.
[AUTRE ARCHIVE] Read Gideon Jacobs' Crisis-Predicting 2020s Meditation From Our Winter 2019 Issue →
Settle into a slightly uncomfortable position. For example, hold your arms above your head as if you’ve just finished the ascent of a rollercoaster and are about to begin the descent, or bite your cheek hard the way some nervous people do when they’re nervous, or cross all of your fingers like a child desperately hoping to avoid retribution for telling a lie. Most meditations suggest the meditator find a neutral posture, but neutrality is a halcyon myth for our species. So, today, we’re not even going to pretend, not even going to kid ourselves. Click here to meditate more.
Meriem Bennani's Guided Tour of a Spill @ François Ghebaly In Los Angeles
Meriem Bennani’s Guided Tour of a Spill acts as an interlude between her groundbreaking Party on the CAPS (2018), her pseudo-documentary set in the Moroccan quarter of the CAPS, and a narrative sequel set to debut later this year at the Renaissance Society and Nottingham Contemporary. The exhibition consists of the titular multi-channel video projected and displayed on sculptural, kinetic screens alongside new drawings of scenes from the world of the CAPS. One screen, broadcasting what could be an A.I.-generated children’s video, is topped by helicoptering ropes that slap the gallery walls. Inspired by the compilation structure and synesthetic drive of Disney’s Fantasia (1940), Guided Tour of a Spill centers less on overt narrative and more on the visceral and sensorial pleasure of music, dance, athletics and humor. Throughout the exhibition, Bennani playfully blends humor and critique, weaving an expanded allegory for how media circulates through channels of digital and geopolitical power, both online and in the real spaces we inhabit.
Guided Tour of a Spill is on view by appointment through May 1 @ François Ghebaly 2245 E. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles
Traces On The Surfaces Of The World Group Show @ GAVLAK Los Angeles
Traces on the Surfaces of the World brings together six international artists whose works stage the anxious encounters between human bodies and inanimate objects that define a world reformed by an all-encompassing fear of contagion. In “Human Traces on the Surfaces of the World,” Judith Butler parallels the invisible passage of a virus from bodies to objects to other bodies, to the similarly invisible machinations of socio-political paradigms that dictate who must assume the risk of contact, and by extension which lives are expendable. Artists and theorists have for decades romanticized the notion of dissolving the distance between art objects and those who experience them: this exhibition probes the dimensions of a reality in which this longed-for contact has become especially fraught. Exhibiting artists include Cristine Brache, Henry Chapman, Alex Chitty, Gisela Colón, Amalie Jakobsen, and Dean Sameshima.
Traces on the Surfaces of the World is on view through April 24 @ Gavlak 1700 South Santa Fe Avenue, Suite 440 Los Angeles
Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life @ MoMA PS1 In New York
From the very outset of her career in the 1950s, Niki de Saint Phalle (American and French, 1930‒2002) defied artistic conventions, creating works that were overtly feminist, performative, collaborative, and monumental. Her first major US exhibition, Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life features over 200 works that highlight Saint Phalle’s interdisciplinary approach and engagement with pressing social issues. Innovation was key to Saint Phalle’s process: from beginning to end, she envisioned new ways of inhabiting the world.
Saint Phalle also engaged with the politics of social space in her work. Addressing subjects that ranged from women’s rights to climate change and HIV/AIDS awareness, she was often at the vanguard in addressing pressing issues of her time. In particular, her work to destigmatize HIV/AIDS is highlighted through works related to her illustrated book AIDS: You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands (1986).
Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life is on view through September 6 @ MoMA PS1 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens
Karon Davis: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished @ Jeffrey Deitch In New York
When Karon Davis has not seen a specific image of Black history in art history, she tries to create it herself. For her first solo exhibition in New York, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, the viewers are witness to one of the most unjust trials in American history. The work celebrates the defiance of Bobby Seale in the face of injustice. Bobby Seale, bound and gagged in a Chicago courtroom, is one of the most searing images in American history. There were no photographs of this shocking episode during the trial of the Chicago 8 in October 1969, only artists’ sketches. This has made the image even more resonant as we conflate the sketches and subsequent actors’ portrayals in our visual memory. The image of Bobby Seale, physically restrained but defiant, refusing to submit to the judge, has haunted Davis for many years. It became especially provocative during the past year’s incidents of police violence.
A powerful sculptural tableau of a bound and gagged Bobby Seale in front of Judge Julius Hoffman and the Chicago jury confronts visitors to the exhibition. Displayed in front of the courtroom are fifty sculpted bags of groceries, juxtaposing the Black Panthers’ free food program for the Black community in Oakland, California, with the repression of the judicial system.
Davis’s title for the exhibition is a reference to the government’s violent prosecution of the Black Panthers and its distortion of the public’s understanding of the Panthers’ contributions to their community.
Karon Davis: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished is on view through April 24 @ Jeffrey Deitch 18 Wooster Street, New York
Watch Niki de Saint Phalle Fire Away At Her Work With A Rifle
Niki de Saint Phalle began her artistic career, encouraged by the painter Hugh Weiss. “Les Tirs“, meaning “the shots” were the performances that made her famous, during which spectators were invited to shoot with rifles at pockets of paint, thus splashing plaster assemblages. These works placed her firmly in the circle of 'new realists', playing the role of mediator between the French and American avant-garde.
Post Impalpable Rites: Theodoulos Polyviou & Dakis Panayiotou @ Künstlerhaus Bethanien In Berlin
In landscape architecture, “Desire Lines” are the imprints of illicit paths that emerge when predetermined patterns of movement are not adhered to and spaces are accessed contrary to their planning. Planned lines start from conventional navigation methods that become inscribed in everyday life over time through repetitions of norms and rituals. To deviate from these lines is to become disoriented.
With Post Impalpable Rites, Theo & Daki celebrate a divorce from the virtual reality that populates our private and public spaces. Visitors currently experience and develop “Desire Lines” mainly digitally, with body extensions such as their smartphones. In the window front of Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the artists transform an architecture that was once constructed virtually but is now brought into the exhibition space in real terms. The structure represents the already built part of a building, a future space and at the same time the outline of a ruin from the past.
In response to the invitation of the Cypriot Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, Theo & Daki developed a site-specific virtual structure that is here partially brought into the physical space at Künstlerhaus Bethanien. The Biennale is entitled “How will we live together?” As one possible perspective, the artists engage in intentional mutations, new paths until the state of disorientation and being lost can become a state of meditation.
Lines are both created by being followed and followed by being created.
-Sarah Ahmed
Post Impalpable Rites was curated by Carola Uehlken and is on view through March 21 @ Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kottbusser Straße 10, 10999 Berlin
[AUTRE ARCHIVE] Read An Excerpt From Françoise Hardy's Memoir Published In Autre Summer 2018 →
Venice, Italy, September 1966, © Steve Schapiro, courtesy of A. Galerie Paris
Since his break-up with Jane Birkin at the end of 1980, we had been seeing a lot more of Serge Gainsbourg. He was smitten with Thomas and telephoned me regularly as a distraction from his gloominess. I always more or less managed to lift his spirits although I don’t know how. After a bit of random chatting on one thing and another, I would hear his little short laugh, and the battle was won. Temporarily. His existential angst was an innate part of him and Jane’s departure had multiplied it tenfold. Click here to read more.
Henry Taylor's Inaugural Solo Exhibition @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset
Henry Taylor culls his cultural landscape at a vigorous pace, creating a language entirely his own from archival and immediate imagery, disparate material and memory. Through a process he describes as ‘hunting and gathering,’ Taylor transports us into imagined realities that interrogate the breadth of the human condition, social movements and political structures.
For his inaugural exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, the American artist has taken over all five galleries in Somerset to present a major body of sculptural work and paintings, evolving in unison across the spaces. Throughout his four-decade long career, Taylor has consistently and simultaneously both embraced and rejected the tenets of traditional painting as well as any formal label. He has amassed a staggering body of highly personal work rooted in the people and communities closest to him, often manifested alongside poignant historical or pop-cultural references. In preparation for the exhibition, Taylor extended and unraveled his studio practice within the galleries at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, followed by an artist residency at Hauser & Wirth Somerset this winter - energetically building, stacking and affixing a vast array of collected objects together to create a holistic record of his everyday routine and the materials that define them. With a guiding sense of human connection, Taylor layers reoccurring visual cues associated with his own personal experiences and broader cultural references that lead us through a multifaceted narrative in sculpture and painting.
Although his subjects are wildly diverse - family members, peers and acquaintances - Taylor’s ability to seek out the truest sense of a person and their sociocultural framework is evident throughout. This sharp focus has shifted inwards during the UK’s national lockdown with two new self-portraits. The first, a head and shoulder profile, depicts a regal-looking Taylor as Henry V and is a play on the artist’s childhood nickname of Henry VIII, since he is the youngest of eight children. The second is a full body image of Taylor in Somerset adorning pinstripe pyjamas and flanked by sheep, placing him firmly in his new rural environment.
Henry Taylor is available to view online now through June 6 and for will be open for in-person viewing by appointment starting April 13 @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL
Garden Group Show Features More Than 100 Female & Non-Binary Artists @ Ladies' Room In Los Angeles
GARDEN is an exhibition of more than 100 female and non-binary artists and artist teams whose work was made while in quarantine. Understanding that gardens are metaphorical utopias and sites of resilience, but principally serve as bodily nourishment, GARDEN underscores mutual aid in a moment of institutional atrophy, financial insecurity, and cultural drought. As part of the exhibition’s commitment to the Los Angeles community, LADIES’ ROOM will donate 15% of all sales to benefit LA Food Policy Council, Ron Finley Project, and Summaeverythang Community Center.
The exhibition also considers art production amidst global turmoil by highlighting the linkages between gender, ecological processes, economics, labor, and power obscured by colonial histories. Beyond the narrow assumption that certain gender identities hold an innate closeness with “nature” due to some biological predisposition, this exhibition challenges us to see gender not an isolating construct, but as an expansive and illuminating guide in the realm of environmental mediations.
Participating artists include: Aili Schmeltz • Alex Heilbron • Ali Prosch • Alison Blickle • Allison Peck • Alison Ragguette • Anja Salonen • Anna Elise Johnson • Annabel Osberg • Annie Hodgin • Ari Salka • Ariel Dill • Ashley Garrett • Beth Fiedorek • Betsy Lin Seder • Bettina Hubby • Brittany Mojo • Carey Coleman • Carolyn Castaño • Carrie Cook • Cathy Akers • Cheyann Washington • Christine Frerichs • Christine Nguyen • Dafna Maimon • Dana Greiner • Delia Brown • Devon Oder • Ekta Aggarwal • Elisa Johns • Esther Ruiz • Farrah Karapetian • Felice Grodin & Linda Chamorro • Geneva Jacuzzi • Hadley Holliday • Heather Rosenman • Isis Aquarian (The Source Family Archives) • Janet Levy • Jaqueline Cedar • Jenna Ransom • Jessica Simmons • JOJO ABOT • Julie Bowland • Julie Lequin • Julika Lackner • Karen Constine • Karen Kuo • Karley Sullivan • Kate Harding • Kelsey Shwetz • Kristin Leachman • Krysten Cunningham • Laurie Nye • Lesley Wamsley • Lily Wilkins • Linnéa Spransy • Lisa Ohlweiler • Lisa Oxley • Livy Porter • Lydia Maria Pfeffer • Mabel Moore • Madam X • Madeleine Hines • Malisa Humphrey • Margarete Hahner • Margie Schnibbe • Mary Anna Pomonis • Maya Mackrandilal • Meghann McCrory • Meike Legler • Molly Duggan • Molly Larkey • Monica Nouwens • Nancy Evans • Nasim Hantehzadeh • Nora Shields • People’s Pottery Project • Rachel Kessler • Rachel Roske • Rachelle Rojany • Rema Ghuloum • Renée Fox • Richelle Gribble • Roberta Gentry • Roni Shneior • Rose Wharton • Samantha Fields • Sarah Alice Moran • Shahla Friberg • Siri Kaur • Sohani Holland • Soo Kim • Sophia Allison • Sophie Lee • Stephanie Rose Guerrero • Still Life Ceramics • Summer Cooper • Sunja Park • Tanya Brodsky • Titia Estes • Tova Mozard • Trina Turturici • Xinrui Chen • Zoe Koke
GARDEN is on view through April 30 @ Ladies' Room Bendix Building, 1206 Maple Avenue #502B, Los Angeles
Watch Rashid Johnson's The New Black Yoga (2011)
Representing the performative aspect of Johnson’s practice,The New Black Yoga (2011) is a short film depicting an enigmatic scenario in which five African-American men perform choreographed movements on a deserted beach. Their gestures alternately appear balletic, athletic, and martial, conjuring a range of potential narratives that ultimately remain elusive. Johnson’s 2016 installation Antoine’s Organ is included in the New Museum’s current exhibition Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America.
Kate Mosher Hall's Without a body, without Bill @ Hannah Hoffman Gallery In Los Angeles
The look is the strangest lie God gifted us. Pointed gawks back and forth, stuck in stare, with lovers, unknowable animals and the rest of the world’s stuff. The (modern) animal is said to be locked in an interminable cycle of disappearance. Phantasmal creatures that slip in and out of view, only illuminated as symbols and pictures. To know them is to see them. To see them is to try on a battered old human conceit: the animal was the first metaphor. It’s dreadful, a thing that should never have been possible, for sight to possess such procedural power. And yet, here we are, like moths to a bulb in the twilight of our go, amid a scene that holds an audience and a stage, a spotlight and the darkness that surrounds it. In solidarity—together, beside, a cabaret of sights unseen.
- Nicole-Antonia Spagnola
Without a body, without Bill is on view through April 10 @ Hannah Hoffman 2504 W 7th Street, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America @ New Museum In New York
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America is an intergenerational exhibition of works from 37 artists, conceived by curator Okwui Enwezor. This exhibition brings together works that address Black grief as a national emergency in the face of a politically orchestrated white grievance.
Comprising all three main exhibition floors of the New Museum, as well as the Lobby gallery, the South gallery, and public spaces, the works included in the exhibition represent cross-disciplinary approaches that incorporate methods of documentary film and photography, experimental filmmaking, performance, and social engagement alongside traditional artistic mediums like painting, drawing, and sculpture. The exhibition comprises diverse examples of artists exploring American history from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to issues of police violence in the United States in the 1990s and today. These works thoughtfully reflect upon what catalogue contributor Saidiya Hartman characterizes as “the afterlife of slavery,” as many of the participating artists reflect on the intersection of historical memory and the social and political realities of the present. Participating artists include: Terry Adkins, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kevin Beasley, Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Garrett Bradley, Melvin Edwards, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Charles Gaines, Ellen Gallagher, Theaster Gates, Arthur Jafa, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Jennie C. Jones, Kahlil Joseph, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Julie Mehretu, Okwui Okpokwasili, Adam Pendleton, Julia Phillips, Howardena Pindell, Cameron Rowland, Lorna Simpson, Sable Elyse Smith, Tyshawn Sorey, Diamond Stingily, Henry Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Nari Ward, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jack Whitten.
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America is on view through June 6 @ New Museum 235 Bowery, New York
