Virtually Cool: Otis College Annual Fashion Show Features Designs Inspired By The Work Of Noah Davis

This Saturday, May 8, Otis College will be holding their annual fashion show for the classes of 2020 and 2021, broadcasting digitally in lieu of an in-person event. In support of their first-generation population, which comprises roughly 30% of the student body, the public will be invited at no cost for the first time and encouraged to contribute financially during the program. These students worked under the mentorship of industry heavyweights like Ruth Carter, David Meister, Jonathan Simkhai and B. Akerlund in addition to many other prominent costume and fashion designers who work with Universal, Vince and ALC.

Virtually Cool also features a collaboration with designers Arthur Thammavong and Deborah Sabet from Vince, who tasked students to make a line of clothing based off of the late American artist Noah Davis' paintings.

RSVP now to attend.

Repeat: Sculptures By Janet Levy, Choreography By Diane Gemsch @ SWB Experimenthaus In Zurich

As we navigate our lives in these times of a pandemic, the question about home and living becomes even more pronounced. Janet Levy questions what is home and what is the significance of home, collecting objects from her surroundings to create a site-specific sculptural installation. In kind, Diane Gemsch creates an emotional response by physically bringing this action to movement while engaging with the house and sculpture installation.

Repeat is on view by appointment through May @ SWB Experimenthaus Neubühl, Westbühlstrasse 59, 8038 Zurich-Wollishofen. photographs by Rudolf Moser

 


Watch BAGGAGE: A Dance Film By Choreographer Jay Carlon @ Los Angeles' Historic Union Station

BAGGAGE is a theatrical dance work for film by acclaimed dancer and choreographer Jay Carlon with a live-score and sound design by musician Alex Wand. Developed on site in Union Station’s historic Ticketing Hall during a two-week residency by Carlon and Wand—the work celebrates origin stories and embodies the many histories of arrivals and departures at the station and in our lives. It is a personal family narrative of migration told in three chapters unpacked through music, dance, and memory inside the landmark historic space that has served as a gateway to the many individual and collective California arrival stories over the past eight decades.

Opening with the Phillipine proverb “A person who does not remember where they came from will never reach their destination” in Tagalog to provoke the question “How did you get here?”,  Carlon channels the stories of the space through his personal family story. The film concludes with an emotional and physical release as Carlon lets go of family traumas handed down from previous generations. 


[AUTRE ARCHIVE] Read Oliver Kupper's Essay On Los Angeles' Iconic Westin Bonaventure From Our Winter 2018 Issue →

 
Westin Bonaventure, exterior, elevated view to northwest, May 1989 Michael Portman, The Westin Bonaventure Collection

Westin Bonaventure, exterior, elevated view to northwest, May 1989
Michael Portman, The Westin Bonaventure Collection

 

Click here to read.

Ben Sakoguchi's Chinatown @ Bel Ami In Los Angeles

Ben Sakoguchi’s combinations of commercial signage, history painting, and Pop Art comment on the American Dream and its fraught entanglement with xenophobia and racism. With acrylic paint on canvas, Sakoguchi reassembles imagery from film posters, newspapers, comics, and internet searches to reveal subtexts of local discrimination, mass media exploitation, and state-sanctioned violence. A Japanese American who spent years of his childhood living in an internment camp during World War II, Sakoguchi comments on a century and a half of prejudice against diasporic Asians. Contending with overlapping histories that contribute to ideas of Asian American identity, Sakoguchi creates an ironic primer on capitalism’s treachery with an audacity that challenges and uplifts.

A publication with essays by Eli Diner (Critic, Curator, and Executive Editor of Cultured magazine), Steven Wong (Curator and the Director of the Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park, CA), and Ana Iwataki (Writer, Curator, and PhD student in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles) will be released in PDF and printed form during the course of this exhibition.

Chinatown is on view through April 24 @ Bel Ami 709 N Hill St. #105, Los Angeles

Ben Sakoguchi Chinatown, 2014 Acrylic on canvas, wooden frames (1 of 15 panels) 53 x 91 in (134.6 x 231.1 cm)

Ben Sakoguchi
Chinatown, 2014
Acrylic on canvas, wooden frames (1 of 15 panels) 53 x 91 in (134.6 x 231.1 cm)

Watch CELINE PARADE: The Women’s Winter 21 Collection

“Son regard est pareil au regard des statues.”
Paul Verlaine
Mon Rêve Familier

“Ma jeunesse ne fut qu’un ténébreux orage, traversé çà et là par de brillants soleils.”
Charles Baudelaire
l’Ennemie

“J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage.”
Arthur Rimbaud"
Parade

CELINE
PARADE
Jardins d’André le Nôtre
Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte
Filmed in March 2021

Directed and styled by HEDISLIMANE

Original soundtrack for Celine
”Un Daydream” performed by REGINA_DEMINA

Written and produced by Regina Demina & Charles Caste"
Featuring harp arrangements by Leonie Favre-Tissot
Commissioned and co-produced by Hedi Slimane

Hair Stylist
Esther Langham

Makeup
Christelle Cocquet

Randolpho Lamonier Presents My Kind Of Dirty @ Fort Gansevoort

 
 

My Kind Of Dirty is Brazilian artist Randolpho Lamonier’s first exhibition with Fort Gansevoort. This online presentation brings together recent textile works in which Lamonier responds to his upbringing in Contagem, an industrial city in southeastern Brazil, drawing  upon observations of hardship and inequality to create powerful expressions in vivid colors, word  combinations, and raw images. The artist locates his inspiration in an environment where joy grows  proportionally to misfortune and likens his work to diaristic entries. Rendered in deceptively humble handwork and fabrics, the scintillating psychedelic landscapes on view in My Kind Of Dirty celebrate “the  exuberance of life that resists against the necropolitical agenda guided by the current Brazilian government,” the artist has said. In this way, Lamonier’s approach to representation acts as personal revolution, whereby the aura of possibility defines his blueprint for the future. 

My Kind Of Dirty is available for online viewing through May 15

an exit from this room and others like it: New Paintings & Ceramics By Hana Ward @ Ochi Projects In Los Angeles

Hana Ward’s newest oil paintings and ceramic works offer a visual narrative for what the artist describes as “a liberation in the mind.” With so much time spent trapped in divergent states this past year, reading and reflecting, watching the news – vacillating between feelings of hopelessness and anticipation – Ward found herself thinking about the experience of transformation, of coming into one’s power – specifically about how this experience might unfold for Black women.

Taken individually and as a whole, Ward’s most recent paintings and ceramic works invite viewers to create more loving space within themselves, allowing for the potential to thrive during an otherwise unforgiving and isolating time. Each portrait relays a deeply personal inner metamorphosis that also manifests outwardly, through an individual’s outlook and approach to life, and even possibly, optimistically, as a society at large.

an exit from this room and others like it is on view through May 8 @ Ochi Projects 3301 W Washington Blvd. Los Angeles

 
 

A Strange Encounter: New Paintings & Watercolors By Harold Ancart @ C L E A R I N G, Beverly Hills

A Strange Encounter is on view through May 8 @ C L E A R I N G, Beverly Hills. DM the Gallery for appointments


Matthew Lutz-Kinoy: Window To The Clouds @ Salon Berlin, Museum Frieder Burda

Presented at Salon Berlin, the Berlin-based project and exhibition space of the internationally renowned Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Window to The Clouds is Paris-based artist Matthew Lutz-Kinoy’s first institutional solo presentation in Germany. Mirroring Salon Berlin’s engagement for diverse potentialities in contemporary artistic creation, Lutz-Kinoy embraces the full dimensionality of the exhibition space as he conceives an immersive and sensorial environment for visitors that sheds light on his deeply spatial approach to painting, rooted in the body and performance. Comprised of recent paintings, ceramics and a site-specific sculpture, the exhibition imagines a series of contemporary landscapes as painterly reflections that look at — and through — various architectures, historical paintings and current events. These environments act as stages for worlds of shared experience, human presence and touch. 

Window to The Clouds is on view through June 5 @ Salon Berlin Auguststr. 11–13, 10117 Berlin

 
 

Watch L.A. Dance Project’s David Adrian Freeland Jr. Perform ‘It Could’ve Been Me...It Could Be Me'

LADP Still 5.jpg

After a year of dormancy brought on by the pandemic, Hauser & Wirth’s dynamic, multi-use space in Downtown Los Angeles was revived with a special collaborative performance featuring L.A. Dance Project's David Adrian Freeland Jr. His powerful choreographic work, ‘It Could’ve Been Me...It Could Be Me,’ was performed throughout the gallery’s outdoor spaces and within ‘The Great American Fact,’ Amy Sherald’s first West Coast exhibition. The performance, captured by Trevor Tweeten, can be viewed here. Debuting online as part of Ursula Magazine, the performance was created during the uprisings against police brutality and the killings of unarmed Black Americans.

Choreography & performance: David Adrian
Videography: Trevor Tweeten
Music: Joel Thompson’s ‘Seven Last Words of the Unarmed’. 
Audio recording by Michigan State University Men’s Glee Club, 2016. Conducted by Eugene Rogers

Papou: A Vintage Fashion Editorial Pays Homage To Greek Grandfather Steez By Hakan Solak

stylist & photographer: Hakan Solak
model: Ilias Paci (@ Viva Models)

Browns Finds A New Forever Home On Brook Street

On April 12th Browns will open its doors to Browns Brook Street, located at 39 Brook Street in the heart of London’s Mayfair. The new flagship is an intuitive environment in collaboration with Farfetch that cultivates personal connections to foster community in a highly tech-enabled retail experience. 

Browns Brook Street offers a rich canvas to uniquely showcase the merging of the historical and the  contemporary. Set over four floors, the new space features a pioneering restaurant, Native at Browns designed by Red Deer, who are leaders in sustainable design, and an unexpected yet inviting courtyard that celebrates the history of 39 Brook Street which has been preserved yet modernized to perfectly imbue the Browns brand. They have endeavored to use as many local, natural and artisanal products, to fit in with the Native ethos. Expect handmade ceramic tiles and blown glass lamps from UK artisans, a mosaic floor made from repurposed tiles and walls rendered in colored clay from Cornwall. The Courtyard, designed by award-winning landscapers Rosebank, has been reimagined into a secret forest in the city. Silver birch trees populate the space, whilst a large cherry tree takes centre stage in the middle with white neon  strip lights dotted around to give it a modern touch. Due to environmental impact, Native has chosen not to use patio heaters, opting instead for blankets made from recycled cotton, produced in Cornwall, with Pergolas to provide light weather cover. The tables outside are fabricated from recycled glass beer bottles with chairs made out of recycled ocean plastic.

Built in 1720, the heritage site located on the corner of Avery Row and Brook Street, has had an illustrious history within the fabric of Mayfair having housed influential British decorating firm Colefax and Fowler which was founded by 20th-century tastemaker Nancy Lancaster, who resided in the space. Drawing on these historical aspects of the building and retaining some of the site's original grandeur, some areas have been left completely untouched, blending old decadence with a contemporary mood. 

After the success of the launch of the ‘Residencies’ programme online in October 2020, Browns Brook Street will also play home to the physical realization of these experiences.

 
 

Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic Is A Virtual Performance Space Of Embodied Liberation

In 2016, choreographer and educator, Suchi Branfman, began a five-year choreographic residency inside the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium-security state men’s prison in Norco, California. The project, dubbed “Dancing Through Prison Walls,” developed into a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and ways for surviving restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. The dancing abruptly ended in March 2020, when the California state prison system shut down programming and visitation due to Covid-19. The work was rapidly revised, and the incarcerated dancers began sending out written choreographies from their bunks to the outside world. The resulting collection of deeply imagined choreographic pieces, written between March and May of 2020, became Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic.

Guided by the written and choreographic direction from inside the prison walls, the performers effectively dance these works into the “free” world. Highlighting six of the dances written/choreographed inside the prison by Brandon Alexander, Richie Martinez, Landon Reynolds and Terry Sakamoto Jr., this event includes a film of the written work transformed into embodied dances in sites throughout the Santa Monica civic center area, drawing focus to the nation’s school to prison nexus (Meiners, 2007), followed by a conversation with the eleven artists involved.

With artistic direction by Suchi Branfman and cinematography by Tom Tsai, the dances are powerfully narrated by Marc Antoni Charcas, Ernst Fenelon Jr., Richie Martinez and Romarilyn Ralston (formerly incarcerated movers and organizers) and choreographically interpreted by a group of brilliant choreographers: Bernard Brown, Jay Carlon, Irvin Gonzalez, Kenji Igus, Brianna Mims and Tom Tsai (all of whom have joined Branfman dancing inside the Norco prison). Each team was entrusted with bringing one of the written dances to action. Between them, they are steeped in hip hop, tap, breaking, performance art, quebradita, spoken word, Butoh and contemporary dance forms. Released from prison during the summer of 2020, Richie Martinez joins the cast as he narrates and performs in “Richie’s Disappearing Acts” which he wrote while incarcerated at the Norco prison during the pandemic.

In December 2020, Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic was published by the inimitable Sming Sming Books. Benefiting the authors, Critical Resistance and California Coalition for Women Prisoners, the 2nd edition of the sold out book is forthcoming. This project was made possible by Art of Recovery, an initiative of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs.

Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic is a free virtual event produced by 18th Street Arts Center that can be joined via Zoom April 16, 2021 6:30pm PDT (Spanish translation available)

Watch Ron Athey In Conversation With Hans Ulrich Obrist For Autre's Spring 21 Issue

Let's begin with the beginning...discover the electrifying, sacrificial practice of Ron Athey. Presenting a short film by Mat+Kat to accompany artist Ron Athey's cover story and 8,000+ word interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist for Autre's Spring 21 Doppelgänger issue. Obrist explore's Athey's 40-year boundary destroying oeuvre, the trance of performing, thinking in the live image, and the archetype of ritual. Read the full interview in Autre's Spring 21 issue—preorder is available now (each preorder will receive a free full digital edition immediately after checkout). Athey's retrospective, Queer Communion, curated by Amelia Jones, is on view until April 4th at Participant New York. And will travel to ICA LA Summer 2021. Directed by Mat+Kat Cinematography by Austin Kearns. Makeup by Laramie. Styling Aleksandra Koj and Kristina Koelle. Production by Kendall Thompson

Diane Kotila's Boy Kings @ Deboer Gallery In Los Angeles

In Diane Kotila’s Boy Kings each painting depicts Pharaoh Tutankhamun, often referred to as the ‘boy king,’ and images of the young Egyptian water boy Hussein Abdel Raasoul who is tied to the discovery of Tutankhaman’s tomb. Writing about her approach, Kotila has described her painting as “an exploration of historically and culturally familiar portraiture.” A research heavy examination similar to the excavation of tombs; dirty and messy with moments of clarity and discovery.

Boy Kings is on view through April 17 @ Deboer Gallery 3311 E. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles

Our World Two: An Online Group Show @ Steve Turner

In its second iteration of Our World, Steve Turner presents an online group exhibition which features new works by seven artists (Patrick Bayly, Siro Cugusi, Jingze Du, Jon Key, Gabby Rosenberg, David Shrobe, and Shirley Villavicencio Pizango) who come from various parts of the world and who have coalesced to become part of the gallery’s world. While the artists work in a broad range of media, styles and concepts, all make deeply personal work that is a consequence of their biography, geography, identity and mentality. Their world is our world and we are delighted to present this in early March, when the art world previously gathered for the Armory Show in New York. With no travel, no art fairs and no opening receptions, we want to demonstrate that life goes on, art goes on and community goes on.

Our World Two is available to view online through April 14 @ Steve Turner Gallery