Hedi Slimane Photographs Featured In Poster For Rock Documentary "Meet Me In The Bathroom" Premiering In Theaters This November

Utopia and Pulse Film’s official Sundance Selection documentary Meet Me in the Bathroom—directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern and based on the successful oral history released by author Lizzy Goodman in 2017—has partnered with photographer and Grand Couturier Hedi Slimane to celebrate the film’s official US theatrical release. The collaboration joins still-life images taken by Slimane during the book’s eponymous era of rock n’ roll revival between the years of 2001 - 2011 into a limited release concert poster to celebrate the film’s upcoming NYC and LA premiere events. The film features legendary bands such as The Moldy Peaches, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem and more as it covers their come up amongst the backdrop of Lower East Side dive bars and gritty city streets.

Hedi Slimane became synonymous with this era while at the helm of Dior Homme leading as its Creative Director and dressing rock musicians such as The Strokes, The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers, among others. Slimane’s intimate relationship with music has remained a creative force in his work as he continues to set the tone for a relationship between fashion and underground musical talent. 

The upcoming premiere events in LA (October 27 at The Fonda Theater) and NYC (October 30 at Webster Hall) will feature a special screening of the documentary with special guest panel Q&A and the first-ever reunion performance by The Moldy Peaches with additional surprise performances TBA.

“Meet Me in the Bathroom” will be released in theaters on November 4th at IFC, NY and Los Feliz, Los Angeles followed by a national theater opening expansion the week of November 11th. 

Emily Mae Smith "Heretic Lace" @ Petzel Gallery In New York

In Emily Mae Smith’s solo exhibition, Heretic Lace, on view at Petzel Gallery in New York, the pensive figures in the artist’s staggering and ominous paintings, who often take the form of humanoid brooms (descendants of the sweeper in Disney’s Fantasia, 1940), are trapped, blood on hands, in the rattling cage of art historical motifs. They look out over the horizon, expressionless, faceless, against a large moon or the amber hued glow of a window, with their bristled limbs in entropic environs. Flowers slightly wilted, a woodpecker gnashing at the timber, carnivorous felines, and hordes of mice invade the grain. As startlingly beautiful as they are, the paintings in Heretic Lace take on darker, psychosexual overtones (as compared to Smith’s past forays into the syntax of pop)—a distant famine, the memory of plagues and the torment of the artist in a zeitgeist at war with itself and haunted by the memories of the past. Formalities contradict themselves like brilliant paradoxes of form and perspective. There is a twisted surrealism that begs you to sweep all your nightmares under the rug.

Emily Mae Smith “Heretic Lace” is on view at Petzel Gallery until November 12th. All artwork courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York

Hot Concrete: Los Angeles Comes To Hong Kong For A Groundbreaking Exhibition

K11 MUSEA presents Hot Concrete: LA to HK, the first major group presentation of Los Angeles-based artists in Hong Kong, running from Friday, 21 October through to Sunday, 13 November 2022. Sponsored and supported by UBS AG, H.Moser & Cie and Ruinart; the exhibition is curated by Sow & Tailor (Los Angeles), presented by K11 MUSEA (Hong Kong) and WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong); and co-organized by Ouyang Art Consulting (Los Angeles). Hot Concrete: LA to HK is the second iteration of Sow & Tailor’s inaugural exhibition from 2021 with an expanded selection of thirty artists and over fifty-five artworks. As an epicenter for creativity not only in Asia, but also internationally, Hong Kong enthusiastically welcomes the explosive creativity of Los Angeles and the breadth and rigor of its multidisciplinary and multi generational artists. Hot Concrete: LA to HK’s unique curatorial perspective uses the four major principles of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, as its point of departure, particularly a fresh approach, movement, balance, and harmony. The exhibition is not only a bridge that connects two significant artistic hubs and geographies, but also provides Hong Kong’s art-viewing public with a glimpse into the current creative energy of Los Angeles and its limitless opportunities for exploration, innovation, and self-fashioning. Hot Concrete not only fosters cultural exchange, but also injects the vibrancy of Los Angeles into Hong Kong’s cultural landscape, benefiting the latter’s community of artists, curators, collectors, and enthusiasts of art.

All images Courtesy of Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles and WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong. Photography and video by Hannah Kirby / Time Based Media 911, Los Angeles.

Watch Both Teasers Of "MIASMA", A Live Installation By Hannah Rose Stewart and Blackhaine @ Trauma Bar und Kino In Berlin

Drawing from Ligottian horror, MIASMA takes place in an unnamed seaside town in the artists’ home region of Northern England where a blackened volcanic hole opens below an abandoned car park. The work incorporates 3D design, neo-noir film, and the Japanese dance theatre of Butoh to unearth sensations of dread, mourning, and alienation.

MIASMA autopsies the corpse of post-industrial urbanity, carving out its wounds in unparalleled catharsis: an encounter with darkness that oscillates between the solemn and abrasive.

In Thomas Ligotti’s The Shadow at The Bottom of The World, a strange profusion surfaces and exhausts itself into the atmosphere, afflicting the air, vegetation, and people in a nearby town—ultimately turning a familiar place into an estranged version of itself. This duality becomes the subject of Hannah Rose Stewart and Blackhaine’s (Tom Heyes) debut audio-visual installation, MIASMA.

These uncanny dispositions frequently appear throughout MIASMA, within crowds of twisted and curled faces, as characters and dancers stagger past illegible signs of defunct businesses—a gesture to Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life: “You suppose that you could be in familiar territory … few landmarks. The tracks have numbers, not names. You can listen to them in any order. The point is to get lost.”

Live and recorded Butoh alchemize MIASMA’s provocations into a visceral, unnatural domain, forcing viewers to take part in the mutative rift that opens, not only across the towns, but also within the minds of its inhabitants and visitors.

Through the virtual and choreographic, MIASMA conducts its autopsy on the town’s post-industrial corpse, carving out its wounds in the act of unparalleled catharsis: an embrace and respondent transformation to darkness characterised by its balance of the intimate and abrasive.

Text by Matt Dell

MIASMA will be on view this Saturday, October 22 at 21:00 @ Trauma Bar und Kino Heidestraße 50, 10557 Berlin

Video by Hannah Rose Stewart
Graphic design by Jordi Theler
Ue5 development by Filip Setmanuk Soundtrack by Blackhaine, Croww, Rainy Miller

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Color My Life With The Chaos Of Trouble By Jana Gerberding and Mine Uludag

photography by Jana Gerberding
styling by Mine Uludag
casting by Eli Xavier
modeled by Winter, Aime, Bethlehem, Lici, Xen Hur, Dhyhani, and Sophia

Life today offers almost infinite possibilities juxtaposed by maximum confrontation with internal pressures, domestic threats, and global uncertainties. We participate in social movements that are meant to liberate us from oppression and share them on the same social platforms that torment us with an incessant evaluation of our appearance and identity. What exactly do you have to prove today as a young woman? What is socially expected? What does femininity even mean? Is there a new femininity? Does gender play a role at all? Isn‘t it just about individuality and belonging?

Making choices and gaining confidence is for many young people an inner conflict between knowing who they want to be and who they really are.

Our heroines in these portraits embody different possibilities of the feminine. A portrayal that describes the role of the body, identity, the power of self-confidence, and individuality.

This is a portrait of a growing female generation who is not afraid.

LEFT Dyhani is wearing full look Celine.
RIGHT Sophia is wearing panties by Prada, bra by Dior, and stockings by Hermès.

Bethlehem is wearing dress by Arturo Obegero.

LEFT Dyhani is wearing leather coat by Max Mara and sunglasses by Celine.
RIGHT full look Celine

Winter is wearing white blouse by Jil Sander and black skirt by Dries Van Noten.

Aime is wearing skirt and jewelry by Versace and cropped zip top by Alexander McQueen.

LEFT Sophia is wearing bra by Versace, hoodie by Sankuanz, skirt by Louis Vuitton.
RIGHT Xen is wearing top and skirt by Ottolinger.

LEFT Bethlehem is wearing corsage by Alexander McQueen.
RIGHT Bethlehem is wearing dress by Arturo Obegero and boots by Dries Van Noten

LEFT Xen is wearing dress by Missoni.
RIGHT Sophia is wearing bra and shoes by Versace, hoody by Sankuanz, and skirt by Louis Vuitton.

Aime is wearing skirt, boots and balaklava by Max Mara, long sleeve shirt by Lacoste, and leather jacket by Louis Vuitton.

LEFT Xen is wearing dress and heels by Missoni.
RIGHT Lici is wearing long sleeve shirt by Balenciaga, skirt by Loewe, stockings by Hermès, and boots by Dries Van Noten.

"Presley Gerber" The New Video By Hedi Slimane for Celine Haute Parfumerie "Eau de Californie"

Presley Gerber, directed by Hedi Slimane in California in December 2021

The memory of palo santo, that magical essence of wood, with fresh, smoky, and creamy facets.
In the background, the powdery notes of orris and tree moss give this Californian dream the signature of a Parisian Couture House.

Soundtrack: Girls - My Ma

A Look Back on Vienna’s “Curated by” Gallery Festival

Ola Vasiljeva
En Rachâchant, installation view Vleeshal Museum (2015)
courtesy the artist
photograph: Leo van Kampen

text by Lara Schoorl


Hope For The Rising Sun of Promise: East not West

Every September, for the past fourteen years, the start of Vienna’s gallery season coincides with Curated by; a monthlong festival that invites international curators to organize exhibitions in the Viennese contemporary art galleries, under an overarching theme. This was the first year that an “impulse provider” was invited to propose said theme to the curators. Elected by twenty-four participating galleries, Dieter Roelstraete, received the inaugural position to present a curatorial and artistic framework for the fourteenth edition of Curated by. 

In the shadow of the Russian invasion in Ukraine and the ongoing war, Roelstraete proposed “East” for the theme. More specifically “Kelet,” Hungarian for East, and explicitly the opposite of “Nyugat,” West. Nyugat was the name of a Budapest-originated, avant-garde journal from the early twentieth century; “Nyugat” one word that captured the desire for what was happening culturally in Paris and Munich, in the West. At that time, Budapest was still the second capital alongside Vienna of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, an interesting fact when thinking about cardinal directions now. Austria, and Vienna in particular, has long carried a gateway position (for culture) between East and West. During in the first half of the last century and through the Iron Curtain, and in the past two decades, Austrian art institutions have often gravitated towards the West in terms of who and what was shown. Yet now, as people move from Kyiv to Lviv, flee from East to West and South to North, Roelstraete urged, more than ever it is important to shift our perspective from West to the (expanded) East. And to then not see East as a place of trauma, but of promise, because “Is it not in the East,” he asks, “where the sun rises?” 

The theme, “Kelet,” remains open for interpretation to the gallerists and curators as East, of course, is a relative position or place depending on where one finds themselves. Although one imagines that this year the galleries might have invited curators and the curators in turn artists from the(ir) East. For Roelstraete “Kelet” provided a platform to contemplate a semantic shift for the meaning of East and or versus West through art in the European imagination. Curated by then may have formed a preliminary map of the state of art in the East (which can also be understood as Central or South and East of Vienna all the way to the Pacific). And such was the impression of the twenty-four exhibitions that spanned curators and artists of multiple generations from Ukraine, Slovenia and Georgia, to Kuala Lumpur and Mexico, and many countries in between.

The full-length curatorial essay by Roelstraete can be found here and below are highlights of this year’s Curated by, reflective of the various interpretations of “Kelet.”

SOPHIE TAPPEINER curated by Lukas Hofmann

Anna Zemánková
Untitled, the second half of 1960s
perforated paper, pastel, acrylic, china ink, embossing
60 x 41 (Detail)
Copyright and courtesy: The Artist’s Estate

Spread across two floors, SOPHIE TAPPEINER presented Pollen, a small retrospective of the self-taught Czechoslovakian artist Anna Zemánková (1908-1986). All works are on paper, all as seemingly fragile as their subjects, “my flowers,” as she called them, curator Lukas Hofmann explains. And all made in the twilight hours of dawn, before the rest of the world woke up—an unconscious nod to the East where the sun would rise as she worked. She used various techniques to create the flowers, often perforating the outlines and shapes in the paper and then coloring them with aquarelle paints, but some include stitching, ballpoint, and collage elements. They each required the viewer to take a step closer, especially her last works, which gradually became much smaller (a result of having both legs amputated and working exclusively from a board in her lap), to see the difference between thread and line and light, and then a step back in case the sun passes by or a light is lit behind them (as with the lamps), and their colors change, and shadows dance. Although the organic appearance of flowers, plants, butterflies and birds in the work is recognizable, the still not exactly true to nature imagery oozes a strong sense of elsewhere. Humble in their size and material, they breathe a kind of freedom. 

CRONE WIEN curated by Eva Kraus & Volo Bevza

In 2022, the works were equally as sharp as the exhibition title. Showing exclusively young artists from Ukraine, curators Eva Kraus and Volo Bevza localized East in one place to inquire about the repercussions of the war (and prior events) that take effect both locally and globally, and how those are experienced. Any type of event, including a war, but also protests and uprisings, can now be witnessed collectively through various instant (social) media outlets. Bevza wrote: “On the ground, you can feel the war, but most importantly, it is ‘experienced’ digitally.” The war takes places in Ukraine, in the East, in our phones all over the world. Reality is stretched into the digital realm, or the digital realm absorbs our reality. Either way, a blurry in between space is created and it is in this liminal space that the artists in 2022 make work. Analog and digital realities bleed into each other in the photography-based works of Victoria Pidust and the paintings of Artem Volokitin of Bevza. A floor to ceiling curtain, also by Bevza, printed with an image of a ruined structure characteristic of his paintings divided the front space of the gallery from the back space. A curatorial intervention gesturing to both roles he occupied in the exhibition. One literally had to walk through or around the edges of the image of destruction enforced by the war in Ukraine. Although dark, the painterly quality and manipulation of the photographic image, as with all of his recent work, softens the harsh visual as it swayed lightly in the gallery space. A contradiction felt also in mediated reality. Not only the image but our sense of reality was distorted moving through the exhibition. Behind the curtain, Yevgenia Belorusets, well-known for her war dairies presented an older work. “Please Don’t Take My Picture Or They’ll Shoot Me Tomorrow” (2015) is part of the series “Victories of the Defeated” which documents the lives of communities during the military conflict in Donbas (indicating too that this war has been ongoing) through photographs and texts. A two-sided sculptural installation, on one side the exaggerated large cover page of a fictional paper Today’s News, and on the other side a portrait of miner a filled up the center of the front space. Through irony—the paper’s subtitle reads “You’re reading a quality-looking newspaper with a seriously dubious name”—Today’s News criticizes the misinformation that the media spreads and how it corrupts the truth, another way in which our reality, be it digital or analog, is distorted.

WONNERTH DEJACO curated by Kilobase Bucharest

Alex Horghidan
Untitled [series Polyamory], 2020
graphite on paper framed
35 x 35 cm
Courtesy of the artist, TRIUMFAMIRIA, Museum of Queer Culture and Family Servais Collection

WONNERTH DEJACO opened its doors two years ago and although this was their first time participating in Curated by, their presence was strong. The group exhibition JOY ~ JOY ~ JOY ON THE PEPPERSIDE OF SUPRANFINITE was one of the few shows where the work completely took over; it was louder than the standard white cube aesthetic of the space, but in a way that was welcoming, meeting the viewers at their frequency. The curators, Dragos Olea and Sandra Demetrescu, who collaborate under the hybrid curatorial practice KILOBASE BUCHAREST, brought us dreams of a future in a utopian queer universe called Suprainfinite. Suprainfinite is a space imagined by the art collective Apparatus 22, which includes Olea, in 2015. It is used here in the fictional locale of Pepperside to contemplate hope and joy, and how those experiences can support our future on Earth. They utilized a science fictional approach to explore the idea of utopia, proposing that in radical imagination we find tools the that can facilitate change and evolution in the present. This attitude was visualized by a curatorial intervention Title for an Exhibition (2021) installed in the window and visible first from outside the gallery. In various languages, an LED loop said: “queer since the dawn of time” and “our queer forefathers” suggesting that queerness has always been present in the world. Inside, the “ultra fragile” Shields (2019-ongoing) adorned with tassels or stitching by Irina Bujor rounded off the corners of the first room. A soft voice seeped from behind them, sharing wishes that would change the violence in the realities of transgender people. In the second adjacent room, Irresistible (2021), a short film by Barbora Kleinhamplová in collaboration with Mistress Velvet, features the late queer dominatrix and their BDSM practice; as with their community organization and activist positions, Mistress Velvet used BDSM as a process to foster systemic change in the form of, for example, reparations by letting their white cis male clients read and study Black Feminist Theory. The curators made a point that queerness can become isolated in a bubble that to other communities is perceived as inaccessible or even violent. JOY ~ JOY ~ JOY aimed to not only leisurely depict joy but also the importance of notions of consent, care and comfort, which are of necessary concern to all people. These acts of care were scattered throughout the exhibition, in particular in the pencil drawings of Alex Horghidan’s Polyamory series (2020) in which groups of people, sometimes dressed sometimes not, but always in the comfort of a soft environment of grass, pillows, plants or a bed, and each other are portrayed at rest.

Frieze London Opens to Large Crowds With Visceral Sensations

Installation view, Patricia Domínguez solo exhibition “Indra’s Net,” curated by Sandhini Poddar, Cecilia Brunson Projects Frieze London booth 2022, Courtesy Cecilia Brunson Projects.
Photograph by Eva Herzog


text by Jennifer Piejko


The early crowd snaked through Regent’s Park in central London, pouring into the tents of the 19th annual Frieze Art Fair from the moment the doors opened. After a string of quiet art-fair seasons, the morning circus of 160 temporary galleries, pop-up cafes (city favorites Petersham Nurseries, Jikoni, and Bao among them) and champagne counters was seemingly full from day to evening.

Perhaps the nearly three years of online viewing rooms, PDF sales lists, and isolation have left us with a longing for the deeply personal as well as the three-dimensional, as the engaging paintings on view leaned into the visceral, from Romanian painter Marius Bercea’s wistful portraits of friends and figures, mostly women, from his native Cluj at Los Angeles and New York gallery François Ghebaly. Hints of the seams of social construction—such as the aftereffects of the country’s 1989 revolution and the resulting creep of consumer capitalism into Romanian society, modern femininity and womanhood, and alienation—are disclosed in the details of his paintings, whose stylings recall paintings by Impressionist artist Mary Cassat and Milan Kundera films. 

 

Marius Bercea
Untitled, 2022
Oil on canvas
40 x 50 cm
Courtesy François Ghebaly Gallery © Marius Bercea

 

Warsaw and Cologne gallery Wschód present a series of canvases by Polish artist Joanna Woś that depicts scenes from Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi’s fresco The Feast of Herod (1466), part of Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist inside the Prato Cathedral in Tuscany. The diaphanous figures in shades from sand to terra cotta share side glances and intimacies while seeing right past and through each other. At the other end of the scale, Gagosian presents a towering row of seven paintings by British artist Jadé Fadojutimi, timed with her solo exhibition “Can we see the colour green because we have a name for it?” at the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Neon lines and forms of abstracted foliage race across the canvas in pure, frantic saturation. 

Installation View, Joanna Woś, Galeria Wschód Frieze London booth 2022

Reaching out to visitors, works highlighting texture and dimensionality filled the fair, begging to be touched or crinkled in the hand: Shin Sung Hy at Gallery Hyundai (Seoul), Suki Seokyeong Kang at Tina Kim Gallery (New York), Joanna Piotrowska at Phillida Reid (London), Barbara Bloom and Karla Black at Gisela Capitain (Cologne), Acaye Kerunen at Pace, Rossella Biscotti at mor charpentier (Paris and Bogotá). It’s a scandalous feeling now that we’ve gotten accustomed to mediating nearly every work through a digital screen.

Installation View, Acaye Kerunen at Pace Gallery Frieze London booth 2022 © Pace Gallery, London 2022 
Photograph by Damian Griffiths, courtesy Pace Gallery 

Among the fair’s usual sections Focus and Editions, this year’s special section is “Indra’s Net,” curated by Sandhini Poddar from the Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi. Titled after the ancient Buddhist and Hindu concept of dependent origination, illustrated by intertwined cords that hold a multifaceted jewel at each knot, where each jewel reflects every other jewel, connecting the entire universe. Works included here reflect connections and exchanges in language, history, ancestry, consciousness, and futurity. At New York gallery Jack Shainman’s booth, Richard Mosse’s work Flooded Municipality, Amazonas captures the environmental damage inflicted on the Brazilian Amazon in the craggy reds and blacks that eat away at a flooded residential neighborhood, chronicling ecocide by drone in his signature conceptual photographic technique. At London gallery Cecilia Brunson Projects, Chilean artist Patricia Domínguez’s works stem from her interest in fantastical ethnobotany. Trained in botanical illustration, she used her recent artistic residency at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland and time with a Peruvian plant healer to inform the hybrid foliage-and-black box paintings (with gemstones), sculptures, and video here. Seen together, it might offer a roadmap into our next dimension. See you in the line to get in there, too.  

INSTA FAMOUS By Diego Cruz & Zion Dezm

 

Lisa is wearing earring 1CONCEPT, top MIU MIU, skirt and thong VALERIEVI, tights TYTM8.

 


creative direction, art direction and casting: Diego Cruz & Zion Dezm
photography by Diego Cruz
styling by Zion Dezm, assisted by Andrea Brown
makeup by David Gillers, assisted by Mialuca Backus
hair by Moe, assisted by Jennifer Chan
Models: Lisa from PRM Model Agency
Arual & Olivia from Milk Management
Bertie from Anti Agency


Arual is wearing earrings 1CONCEPT, necklace and skirt MIU MIU, top NII HAI.

Lisa is wearing earring HEAVEN BY MARC JACOBS, top DOLCE & GABBANA.

Lisa is wearing bag HEAVEN BY MARC JACOBS, earring 1CONCEPT, ring and jumpsuit VALERIEVI.

Bertie is wearing shoes MIU MIU.

Olivia is wearing top R & M LEATHERS, dress PRADA, bag GIVENCHY.

Lisa is wearing earring 1CONCEPT, top DOLCE & GABBANA, thong NII HAI, skirt HEAVEN by MARC JACOBS, trousers PACO RABBANE, shoes GIVENCHY.

Bertie is wearing dress CHARLES JEFFREY.

left to right: Olivia is wearing necklace and earrings ALESSANDRA RICH, top JORDANLUCA, tights MM6, shoes MIU MIU.
Arual is wearing earring 1CONCEPT, dress CHRISTOPHER KANE, tights R & M LEATHERS, shoes NII HAI.
Lisa is wearing earring 1 CONCEPT, top and tights DOLCE & GABANNA, dress PACO RABANNE, shoes PRADA.


A Better Mistake SS23 Debuts @ Milan Fashion Week

 
 

photographs by Spyros Rennt

Taking part for the first time at Milan Fashion Week, A Better Mistake presents a preview of their genderless Spring/Summer ’23 collection and their latest series of see-now-buy-now drops, which include “Influx”, a collaboration with visual artist Kushlet, “Aoi”, and the freshly launched “Persona.”

A Better Mistake “Eternal” explores the intersection of digital and physical worlds, and seeks to define the value of the digital as a whole within the installation “Alter Dimensions.”

For Spring/Summer ‘23 “Eternal”, the brand’s iconic Touch Me intarsia garments, made of high-end Italian viscose and techno yarn, appear in a new acid green variant. The silk twinset is crafted in an exclusive, thick silk fabric, in a diagonal structure. The “Eternal” print, created by NY-based artist Running File, appears across a variety of items: the quilted “Eternal” jacket with engineered print placement in the front and the back, the silk shirt with additional “Chromo” print on the chest, and the technical dress in a tight & short silhouette. The “Eternal” denim look is made of hand-sprayed organic cotton.

The “Hero” print from the collaboration with Running File is applied to hoodies and T-shirts, as well as a twinset of shirt and shorts in an ultra light fabric. The print quite literally sets the tone for the whole collection, merging the blues, lilac, and shades of purple in other looks. The “Gate” graphic was created by Milan-based artist Ultra Creature and morphs into the Modular earrings.

The brand’s best-selling pajama look now comes in two different fabrics — a striped gray and blue viscose version, and a monochromatic lilac jacquard in “Chromo” monogram — half matte, half satin.

Last but not least, a special collaboration with The End is Near, called “God’s Mistake” is presented, composed of two incredible handmade pieces, a custom-made dress and a sci-fi face mask.

Spring/Summer ‘23 marks the introduction of the “Artist Collection” conceived for collaborations on show pieces, which is kicked off with a true highlight — an acid yellow tailored look that features a “Chromo” transfer to the sleeve, and is finished by hand in aerosol shades of gray and black.
The presentation, in collaboration with queer creatives from Berlin, brings the German capital’s underground mindset to Milan. It takes place at A Better Mistake’s headquarters, a transdisciplinary creative space located on Via Fusetti 8, on the Naviglio Grande, one of the city’s most evocative and vibrant areas.

The collection is not presented on your regular model type. It comes to life on dancers and performance artists from a wide variety of backgrounds. Rather than a simple showcase of clothes, the presentation aims to express and embody its values with an unbridled, artful approach. Dancers hailing from Milano’s major international theater La Scala share the stage with the voguing and rave scenes in a firework of identities.

 
 

The installation “Alter Dimensions” completes the performance through sound. Two Berlin-based DJs, Alva and Raven, manifest the concept of warped dimensions as they perform in a futuristic and sound proof glass pod. “Alter Dimensions” explores and develops the different forms of artificial space, ranging between digital, physical and the metaverse. What is actually real, what isn’t? The interaction between the installation and the performers is integral to the presentation. A transdisciplinary approach forms the core of A Better Mistake, along with the creation of safe spaces where people are free to experiment, experience, and express.

The experimental spectacle is documented by the analog lens of internationally-renowned, Berlin-based photographer Spyros Rennt and distilled into a movie, as envisioned by A Better Mistake’s Creative Director Madame_Inc, and movie director Byron Rosero.

Ahmet Öğüt Presents "A:PPOINTED D:IRECTORS" @ A:D: Curatorial in Berlin

Jump Up! , 2022 Ahmet Öğüt

Ahmet Öğüt
Jump Up! , 2022 
Installation, with 3 selected works from the museum collection,  3 trampolines 

A:PPOINTED D:IRECTORS by Kurdish-Dutch artist, Ahmet Öğüt at A:D:Curatorial deals with institutional critique as well as a number of sociopolitical precarities, questioning the role of art institutions and artists themselves.

“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”

—International Council of Museums, August 24th, 2022

This recently approved new definition of the museum by ICOM is very aspiring, yet still, some objectives are far from reality. Therefore, it is the role of art professionals to find new strategies to achieve these objectives. How may we balance our roles between addressing urgent issues and not falling back into the complicit patterns of the art world? Sometimes smaller institutions can enable strategies to experiment with new formats more easily.

Topics such as museum collections, exhibition displays, public interactions, and institutional representations are addressed throughout the show, using both playful and challenging strategies. Visitors can immediately become part of the show with the installation Jump Up! by jumping on small trampolines to see selected works, which hang above eye level. Another work, No Institutional Abuse Zone, marks the area but also tries to put the same standards and parallels between human affairs and artist-institution relationships. Resulting from a google search, Appointed Curators is a collection of closely cropped portraits underscoring the prevalence of curators who choose to represent themselves with arms crossed. Those who assume this posture are often perceived as being angry, closed off, or feeling overwhelmed. This ironic take on self-representation reminds us of the importance of care, transparency, and a welcoming culture in art institutions. A:PPOINTED D:IRECTORS will be on view from October 9th - December 15th at A:D: Curatorial: Kurfürstenstraße 142, 10785 Berlin.

portrait by Ateş Alpar

Ahmet Öğüt
Appointed Curators, 2022 
250cm x 200cm 
poster 

A Rich, Somber Undercurrent: Read Our Interview Of Alannah Farrell →

Alannah Farrell — the sexual awakening to colors and hues, to kinks and dreams. This queer, trans-identifying artist from rural New York gracefully depicts the real bodies of their queer scene in atmospheric paintings, the magic of which stems from the shapely emotional nuances of each subject. Here, their struggles are visible, but so are the celebrations. Though currently represented by Harper’s and Anat Ebgi, they've had an enduring journey to their current career, beginning as a child yearning for a creative outlet, from babysitter, to cashier, to model, to dungeon domme, and later, Cooper Union graduate, allowing their art to leap from the confines of their bedroom to their first show at The Painting Center in New York. With the vibrant bodies and milky pigments enclosed in these works, Farrell expresses the multifaceted layers of their subjects’ queer identities, supporting the normalization of all expressions of beauty and power within the LGBTQI+ community. We see these queer bodies and faces through a lens unfocused on the taboo fascination that society perpetuates. It is one that instead centers the subject and how they wish to be seen and heard. Undoubtedly a New Yorker, Farrell pursues these intimate scenes and perseverances throughout the city with heart. They allow us, the viewers, into these blissful connections. We sat down with Farrell to discuss their expansive ideas surrounding queer identity in art, the fluidity of life, and their newest solo exhibition, I Want to Thank you, at Harper’s Gallery in New York. Read more.

Tea Hacic-Vlahovic Celebrates The Launch Of A Cigarette Lit Backwards

On September 22, Tea Hacic-Vlahovic and friends celebrated the launch of her second, brutally honest coming-of-age novel, A Cigarette Lit Backwards, at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, following the smash success of her 2020 debut novel, Life of the Party. Hosted by Paper Work, the night included a performance by ZAESOTERIC aka Isiah Edwards, as well as CPR guidance and safe drug using instructions by Narcan Nate, who distributed fentanyl testing strips, Narcan, and business cards for neverusealone.com. The book is out now and can be purchased in select book stores and abramsbooks.com. photographs by Michael Krim

Theophanies Explores The Late Steven Arnold's Personal Mythologies @ Fahey/Klein In Los Angeles

Realized between 1981 and 1993, Steven Arnold’s tableau photography represents a confluence of his myriad other disciplines. This modality allowed him the freedom to fully realize his cinematic visions without outside influence or compromise. After sketching storyboards inspired by his dreams, a habit from his filmmaking days, Arnold would craft his tableaus using cardboard, seamless paper, metallic and patterned fabrics, cut paper, paint, and selections from his obsessive collection of antiques, costumes, makeup, and dime store finds. Finally, he would dress, paint, and pose his models within his tableau, bringing his vision to life, then captured with his Hasselblad, often utilizing multiple exposures. 

Theophanies is an exhibition of works curated as a limited retrospective of the late artist’s surrealist tableau photographs, supported by a small selection of drawings, paintings, sculpture, and films. A proud, prominent member of the LGBTQ community years before this moniker became part of our common vernacular, Arnold sadly died of AIDS in 1994. Most recently, he is the subject of a documentary, Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies, co-narrated by Anjelica Huston and Ellen Burstyn, which will be screened on September 21 at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with filmmaker Vishnu Dass, writer/editor Steffie Nelson, writer/filmmaker Jessica Hundley (The Library of Esoterica) and Nicholas Fahey of Fahey/Klein Gallery.

Theophanies is on view through September 24 @ Fahey/Klein Gallery 148 North La Brea Avenue

Jay Carlon's Novena Is A 9-Step Devotional Ritual For Grief


text by Summer Bowie
photographs by Angel Origgi


James Baldwin once wrote, “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” For rising choreographer and dancer Jay Carlon, the history and the colonial turmoils of the Filipinx experience is as heavy as a gunny sack of rice. As part of the REDCAT NOW Festival, Carlon presented his tender and prescient performance, Novena, at the CalArts Theater in Downtown Los Angeles with singer and sound artist Micaela Tobin. Historically, Novena—from the Latin word for nine—is a multi-day devotional ritual for grieving and healing, a transmutational practice of turning suffering into acceptance. Over the course of Carlon’s performance, this metamorphosis is slow, quiet and beautiful, like a lepidoptera emerging from a cocoon, body first, then legs, then wings, then flying into the unknown. Novena starts with the backstage wide open, lights on, fluorescent, exposed, the theater as a naked object. The first thing you recognize is someone riding an industrial floor polisher, the hooks, the ladders, the wires behind the stage symbolically exposed. A nod to the invisible workers, the culturally vanished. Carlon, in just a pair of boxing shorts, emerges with a sack of rice as Tobin gives her somber soprano chorus.

 
 

Shapes are shifting constantly before our eyes while our hero navigates the theater from stage, to catwalk, through the audience and back. His sack of rice at times resembles the ashes of an ancestor, exacting its weight on his shoulders with the entitlement of an exhausted elder. We are in the first stage of grief, penitent with the carriage of both our shame and pleasure simultaneously. In this state of self-flagellation one can imagine the superimposition of the stigmata and the ease of its colonial transmutation. He crawls on hands and knees, his lower back arched and buckling from the onus of inherited trauma. Transitioning into the second stage of grief, we dispose of Rudyard Kipling and his White Man’s Burden. A form of deliverance is attained in the realization that the savior we were awaiting is itself a false idol. The sack rolls effortlessly into his arms, held gingerly like an infant as he presses his cheek to it in a low squat. For a moment the putrefactive qualities of ash are indiscernible from the potential energy of harvested grain. He approaches a punching bag that has been sitting solitary at the center of the stage, waiting patiently to be filled. In our third stage, we discover that we are not empty vessels, and so begins the process of transference. The punching bag is at first filled one cup measure at a time like a loved one initially interred by a single fistfull of dirt. In an act of total unburdening, the remaining content of our sack is hoisted on one shoulder and emptied into the punching bag. The sack itself folded triangular like the folded American flag that drapes a soldier’s casket and is bequeathed to the next of kin after burial. 

Once filled, our punching bag is lifted off the ground, suspended by a heavy metal chain that our boxer hoists link-by-link, a repetition of prayer with a unique gesture of devotion committed to each and every bead of the rosary. This first prayer is one for the preparation of battle that is to come in stage V. The hands are ceremoniously wrapped and the bag spins like a pendulum. In a cycle of seductive Stockholm Syndrome dispelled by unforeseen acts of triumph, our warrior battles the true replacement theory behind white supremacy. It’s the one that bred the mestizos as a genocidal act against the indigenous populations of the islands. It’s the one that motivated US Army Officer “Howling Jake” Smith to order his soldiers to “kill everyone over the age of ten" and make the island of Samar "a howling wilderness." It’s the one that replaced 70% of the archipelago’s rainforests with a denuded wasteland in service and literal support of the American and Japanese architecture of the 20th century. This is also the 1521 Battle of Mactan, where Ferdinand Magellan was felled by a poisoned arrow to his unarmed thigh and an eventual stabbing to his other thigh with a kampilan. This is the battle that delayed Spanish colonialism by 44 years. This is 500 years of fighting for sovereignty and forgiving those who conformed as an act of survival. Punches are thrown, the bag is tossed, dodged, and left alone to submit itself to the forces of gravity. A prayer marks the sixth stage of grief and it is extended to family and institution alike. They are the sacrifices that are the subject of this seance. 

The chain is pulled tighter and the bag is lifted higher. Carlon hangs from a wrist leash attached to his sacrificial urn, tips of toes dragging along the floor beneath. The crucifixion of stage VII pulls our hero into a transcendent flight, spinning like a centrifuge of cultural distillation. Finally ready to be atoned, he returns to earth with feet firmly planted below the bag. He tears open a hole in the bottom of his vessel and stands, head back and chest lifted high in acceptance of his baptism. The punching bag becomes like an hourglass keeping the time of history’s ravages, the rice like infinity spilling onto the stage, another metamorphosis. He renews his sense of faith, trust, and love in his eighth stage of grief so that he can form a bridge to his ancestors in the ninth. A shower of rice pours down on Carlon as he kneels in solemn submission. His cleansing is scored by Micaela Tobin’s deconstructed reprise of “Sa Ugoy ng Duyan”, a Filipino lullaby sung in Tagalog that is as familiar as the national anthem. Lying supine in his growing mound of rice, Carlon offers his own song, this one a contemporary Visayan ballad called “Nalimot Ka Ba” about betrayal and loss of faith in the one that you love. It is a clarion call to his elders. Perhaps if we can share our grief in voice and gesture, we might enrich the detritus of a battle-scarred terrain with the nutrients necessary to support future generations. It is a prayer that they might one day be unburdened by the bondage of this shared history.

Brother's Breeze & Sister's Ease

Marlene
dress: Nimph 
Mathilda
full look: Filippa K.
bag: Lou de Betoly
Arthur
shirt: We Are Dagger
necklace: Tine Kozjak Paris


photography & art direction by Emma Ball-Greene
photography assistance by Bohdan Yermak
art direction & styling by Camille Naomi Franke
fashion assistance by Antonio Chiocca
hair by Wataru Suzuki using “Less is More Organic Haircare”
makeup by Victoria Reuter using Mac Cosmetics
makeup assistance by Eleonore Ising
set design by Stefanie Grau
casting by Lilly Meuser @ Neu_Casting

Beck
vest: Magliano
trousers: Arket
belt: Off-White
Mathilda
full look: Filippa K
bag: Lou de Betoly
Ohm
suit: Paul Smith
blouse: Prada archive
tie: models own 

Sarah 
dress: Rui
pants: Old Celine via Vestiaire Collective @reference studios
Masa
dress: Pucci
Richard
trousers: Hugo Boss
belt: stylist’s Own

dress: Rui
pants: Old Celine via Vestiaire Collective @reference studios

fake fur top: Filippa K.

dress: Katharina Dubbick

Ohm
cardigan: Filippa K.
jeans: Our Legacy 
Mathilda
dress: archive 
shoes: Balenciaga
turtle neck: Filippa K.
Arthur 
blue jumpsuit: Paul Smith
shoes: Puma

top: Calvin Klein

top: Rui

top: Rui

Masa
dress: Pucci
Mathilda
suit: Prada archive

Sarah
pink suede blouse: Magliano
Mathilda
pink ciao bella shirt: stylist’s own 
Beck
shirt: Magliano
trousers: Arket
shoes: Scarosso

Marlene
dress: Nimph 
Arthur
shirt: We Are Dagger

CHART Art Fair & Art Book Fair: Looking Back & Forward

text by Lara Schoorl
photographs by Niklas Adrian Vindelev

Last weekend (August 25-28) the Nordic art world gathered in Copenhagen for the 10th edition of CHART. For four days visual art, books, music, performance, architecture, talks, food and people filled the rooms and courtyard of Charlottenborg. The art fair was founded in 2013 by six cross-generational, Copenhagen-based gallerists—Claus Andersen, Bo Bjerggaard, Jesper Elg, Mikkel Grønnebæk, David Risley, and Susanne Ottesen—as a not-for-profit. This year they expanded their board with six new members hailing from tech, politics, business and cultural fields. The impetus behind the founding of the fair was to put an international spotlight on the region and to strengthen the local and Nordic art market; now, with the installation of these additional board members, the fair will be steered into a new non-traditional art world business model. 

Like all art institutions, CHART was also challenged to reconsider its format and question its purpose during these past years of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the fair decentralized in 2020 and instead took place in galleries across the Nordic capitals Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Reykjavík, and Stockholm. At that same 8th edition, 100% of the exhibiting artists were women; a collective response from the participating galleries to “highlight the structural challenge of gender imbalance in the art market.” This year’s fair was their “first fully gender-balanced art fair.” For the international audience that was unable to visit all these Nordic galleries, CHART organized a series of online talks and published a reader that is still available for free as a PDF. 

 
 

The following two years, the fair continued to expand its public programming with a focus on inclusivity and sustainability, introducing an Experimental section with artist-run and alternative art spaces as well as the CHART Art Book Fair in 2021. For this year’s CHART Architectural Competition the theme was Bio-Architecture, inviting architects, artists and designers to create symbiotic relationships between nature and architecture. Reaching wider or different audiences triumphed during this year’s fair. In addition to exhibiting work at Charlottenborg, CHART invited fifteen artists, among whom are Austin Lee, Jasmin Franko and Nanna Abell, to present work inside the Tivoli Gardens—one of the world’s oldest theme parks, which opened its doors in 1843. Rather than your fair ticket, a ticket to the rides at Tivoli will allow you access to these works. The expanse of visitors continues with The Museum of Nordic Digital Art (MoNDA), which launched at the fair with works by ORLAN, Sabrina Ratté, and Morehshin Allahyari that can be found in the foyer of Charlottenborg and with an AR sculpture garden in the courtyard. MoNDA’s first exhibition, “Flags of Freedom,” a solo NFT show by Mette Winckelmann, can still be visited via the QR code on their website. It quickly became clear that new initiatives were a defining imperative of CHART 2022.

Noticeably different from the past years is that about a dozen more spaces participated in the fair, thirty-eight in total. All of them located in the Nordic region, although some galleries have spaces or viewing rooms elsewhere, such as Carl Kostyal in London and Milan. Others collaborate or engage in projects in the US such as the Norwegian Galleri Brandstrup with Sean Kelly Gallery in NYC and Loyal Gallery as a NADA member respectively. While the fair is structurally and conceptually moving forward, many of the works in the fair still felt more traditional materially, in the sense that the majority were wall works. Some beautifully refreshing nonetheless. Such as Emma Ainala’s surrealist paintings in which fairytale and nightmare meet shown by Helsinki Contemporary, or Anna Tuori’s gestural canvases presented in a collaborative installation with Jani Ruscica’s wall painting and video work for Galleri Anhava. But also the solo presentation at Carl Kostyal of Camilla Engström’s warm paintings that leave us longing for a gentle end of summer—especially in the northern Northern Hemisphere. Remarkable as well was Tacita Dean’s ten-meter-long photogravure, Inferno (2021), at BORCH Editions. The print, inspired by the stage and costume design Dean made for The Dante Project, a ballet on the occasion of the 700th anniversary celebration of the poet’s death, asks you to follow Dante and Virgil, depicted as two dots, across eight parts through the circles of hell, in an upside-down landscape scattered with textual fragments from the Divine Comedy and occasional satanic references like 666—leaving us hover between punishment and play for ten big steps. 

 
 

The art book fair, equally manageable in size with twenty-seven tables, hosted publishers, (art) book and print makers also all based in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. And also ranging from 1980s staples such a Space Poetry to brand new initiatives such as Halden Workshop. Interestingly, however, several operate between various languages and continents. Kinakaal (Norwegian for Chinese cabbage), a multilingual press run by Ben Wenhou Yu and Yilei Wang, which exists alongside their art space Northing in Bergen, for example, fosters communication between Norway and East Asia. To facilitate dialogue and connection between these different cultures, their publications often have Norse, Chinese, and English texts presented together. Then, Halden Workshop, a new (residency) program for book arts, in Halden, Norway offers workshops and studio space with access to letterpress, bookbinding and paper making assistance. The program is organized by Radha Pandey, a letterpress printer, and papermaker, and scholar of paper and book arts, and Johan Solberg is also a papermaker and scholar, letterpress printer, and a bookbinder. While the workshop is located in Halden, they spend half of the year in Delhi, India where they both teach and continue (to share) their practice. 

Tacita Dean, Inferno, 2021. Detail. Photogravure with screen print in eight parts, 89,5 x 956 cm framed. Image courtesy the artist and BORCH Editions

 

Many of the publishers and presses are one, two or three-person endeavors, some are part of institutions, others run small art spaces alongside their publishing arms. Although definitely a labor of love—see CULT PUMP’s multi-color silk screen printed comic and art books and zines—these publications and their makers form a tight regional community that reaches far beyond the Nordic countries. Hour Editions, run by Kristina Bengtsson and Kevin Malcolm, came into being in 2013 out of the communal question “What is the artist’s work?” and the sentiment “If we can’t change the system, at least we can try together.” Malcolm also runs the exhibition space Vermillion Sands, for which Hour Editions has made poetic extensions of several of their shows, with the most appealing titles. Calling All Divas on the occasion of “Inside me with Incredible Intensity” with Martin Jacob Nielsen and Tyler Matthew Oyer is a beautiful and empowering tribute to many known, lesser known, and overlooked “queer artist mentors” who lost their lives to HIV/AIDS; and I like to stare at things that cannot be read. Only in that way can the present be remembered. I need a menu to wash my car. on the occasion of the eponymous show by Mikko Kuorinki brings together the poetry of Jenny Kalliokulju, Karl Larsson, Henning Lundkvsit and Amalie Smith.

For four days a lot was to be seen, listened too, talked about and tasted, but not too much. The size of CHART, including its new and additional programs and collaborations, invites you to linger, take time, and revisit. It is, after all, just a walk across the courtyard between Diana Al-Hadid’s sculptural wall panels (of which the layering and myriad of materials ask for multiple observations) and At Last Books to read Lindsay Preston Zappas’ text on David Risley’s watercolor series Against God. Against Guns. Against Energy. 

Diana Al-Hadid, In the Year AD 832 Large Stones Were Thrown From the Sky, Breaking the Copper Earth, Etc., 2019. Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, plaster, copper, leafing, pigment. Dimensions: 160 x 210 x 10 cm. Image courtesy the artist and Galleri Brandstrup, Oslo

Dozie Kanu's World Building Tools: An Interview From The Biodiversity Issue →

 
 

text by Oliver Kupper
portraits by Parker Woods 

Dozie Kanu’s practice is a conceptual exploration of colonial and hegemonic politics, architecture, spatial narratives, and so much more. Born in Houston, Texas in 1993, and now based in Santarém, Portugal, Kanu’s investigation of cultural artifacts belies an America still grappling with not only its troubled past, but also its troubled present. Razor-sharp, anti-climb, raptor spikes, a visual and physical deterrent for vandals and undesirables, find their way onto one of his sculptures modeled as a baby crib, an emblematic nod to the countless divisions that are psychologically embedded at birth. There is something alchemical about Kanu’s reimagined objects of our urban visual landscape, like an ATM blasted with a thick layer of black epoxy sculpting clay, or a poured concrete chair in “crack rock beige” that sits on a spoked tire rim, that gives Kanu’s work a kind of authentic reclamation of power in a grief-stricken zeitgeist. We caught up with Kanu on a rare visit to Los Angeles, before the opening of his exhibition, to prop and ignore, at Manual Arts, to discuss tools for building a more socially equitable world. Read more.

FOOD For Thought: Gordon Matta-Clark’s Restaurant For Artists Changed The Culinary Discourse →

In 1971, artists Gordon Matta-Clark, Carol Goodden, and Tina Girouard opened FOOD, a landmark New York restaurant on the corner of Prince and Wooster Streets in SoHo. In the urban wilds of a not-yet-fully developed or gentrified Lower Manhattan of the early ‘70s, FOOD was a revolutionary laboratory for fresh sustainable cooking and unusual culinary collaborations. Artists like Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage created meals at FOOD. Although never realized, Mark di Suvero had plans to serve dishes through the windows via a crane—he would then instruct diners to eat with tools such as hammers and screwdrivers. As a hub for young artists in the nascency of their careers, the menu was affordable and simple, which created a unique atmosphere of camaraderie and community. Although FOOD, in its original incarnation, only lasted three years, the restaurant became a fabled institution and paradigmatic lesson for the possibility of food at the intersection of art.

Originally published in Autre’s Biodiversity Issue, FW 2021