Raised nomadically along the Northern Plains of the United States, artist Teresa Baker spent her childhood shrouded in tribal storytelling. However, it wasn’t until recently that she realized how thoroughly steeped her visual work had become in all of these inherited allegories. Working with a wide range of materials, both organic and inorganic, she weaves the fiction and nonfiction of her heritage to create works that reflect the complex nature of American tradition. Referencing artists of the abstract expressionist, cubist, and postminimalist movements in harmony with the topographical territories and utilitarian objects employed by the Indigenous nations who inform her practice, Baker imbues her works with an autonomy that allows them to be singular and timeless. In anticipation of her solo exhibition with de boer, Los Angeles at NADA Miami, I spoke with the artist about her unusual path into artmaking, the influence of her wide-reaching travels abroad, and the delicate balance of becoming a mother while the demand for her work has skyrocketed. Read more.
Celine Presents Their SS23 Womenswear Collection @ the Wiltern in Los Angeles
Celine and creative director Hedi Slimane will present their spring/summer ‘23 womenswear collection on December 8th at the mythic Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. This presentation will be the first in-person runway show for the label since February 2020.
Donate to CIELO This Giving Tuesday to Provide Critical Language Services for Indigenous Angelenos
Comunidades Indígenas en liderazgo (CIELO) is an Indigenous women-led non-profit organization that works jointly with Indigenous communities residing in Los Angeles. One of their key priorities is to fight for social justice through a cultural lens. The fight for social justice includes ending gender-based violence, providing language access rights, cultural preservation, and reproductive justice. CIELO is a link, a resource, and a liaison for migrant Indigenous communities residing in Los Angeles. You can learn more about CIELO and its matriarch, Odilia Romero, in our current FW22 issue, which is available for purchase in our online store.
Click here to make a donation today.
Maison Valentino Unveils A New Concept For Worldwide Stores
The venerable Maison Valentino unveils a new concept for its stores worldwide, presenting an evolution of the brand towards an increasingly human-centric approach through a more intimate retail dimension. A gradual redesign of its global locations, the project stems within the Maison itself and strengthens the brand’s focus on client experience through a contemporary design language. On the cusp of tradition and innovation, the concept represents Valentino’s identity as a Maison de Couture, with an interior design that speaks of the brand’s artisanal approach and aesthetic. The interiors allude to 1930s Art Déco motifs and a bold 1970s aesthetic, which merge into a contemporary language expressed through an eclectic material palette and details inspired by Roman buildings. The color tones of the textile walls are a nod to the tailoring busts belonging to the world of Couture. The new concept pervades the architecture of the stores, with ceramic tiles covering the façade, and floors defined by iconic geometric motifs rendered in Botticino and Sahara Noir marbles. Elements in onyx and wood contribute to the sense of warmth, elegance and discreet luxury. Special areas will be reserved for private appointments, to enhance the feeling of intimacy and exclusivity within a carefully curated setting. The new store concept will be rolled out globally.
Read Our Interview of Navine Dossos On Her Solo Exhibition @ Alkinois Project Space In Athens
Vibrant palm and hybrid trees imbued with symbolic messaging and visual references culminate in Panicle Paintings, the new series by visual artist Navine Dossos. On view at Alkinois project space, Athens through Friday November 25. Read our interview with the artist.
Robert Colescott's "Women" Opens @ Venus Over Manhattan
Robert Colescott: Women traces the development of the artist’s depictions of female subjects over the course of his sixty-year career. Serving as a coda to the recent, critically-lauded traveling museum retrospective Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott, this presentation charts the evolution of Colescott’s ambitious practice through some thirty works produced between 1955 and 1996. Organized in close collaboration with The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust, Venus Over Manhattan’s exhibition is the first to trace the development of Colescott’s representations of women through major works from key moments in his career.
Robert Colescott: Women will be on view at Venus Over Manhattan’s downtown location at 55 Great Jones Street from November 15, 2022 through January 14, 2023.
Read Our Interview Of Ceri Hand: The Art Mentor Fostering A More Inclusive Art World →
Ceri Hand, Photo by Lorna Milburn
From running a successful commercial art gallery to becoming Associate Director at Simon Lee Gallery and director of programs at Somerset House Trust, London, Ceri Hand, also known as the Artist Mentor, is championing a more holistic support framework for creative practitioners and professionals through her mentoring and coaching services.
Lara Monro spoke with Hand about how her own experiences in the arts shaped her approach to mentoring and coaching, and why her upbringing instilled a level of responsibility in championing a more inclusive art world.
Growing up in the Midlands, Hand was introduced to the importance of social justice and the need to support others from a young age. Her mother established and ran women's refuges and her father taught children with learning disabilities. While Hand came from a multi-racial family who combatted racism by achieving great success in business and embracing family, music and dance, she was confronted by the realities of prejudice from a young age. Read more.
"Terms of Belonging" Group Exhibition On View Now At Gavlak Gallery
Gavlak presents Terms of Belonging, an intergenerational exhibition of Latin American artists featuring Allora & Calzadilla, Candida Alvarez, Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A.), Iván Argote, Ricardo Brey, Gisela Colón, Débora Delmar, Teresita Fernández, Ignacio Gatica, Lucia Hierro, Alfredo Jaar, Anuar Maauad, Carlos Martiel, Joiri Minaya, Gabriela Salazar, Yoab Vera, and Valeria Tizol Vivas. The word “belonging” conveys an effortless kinship: a natural affinity between like and like. The imposition of the word “terms,” however, shatters this ideal and serves to remind that communities are also forged through selective exclusions. By focusing solely on conceptual practices in the work of Latin American artists, Terms of Belonging asks what it means for an artist to refuse the call for “positive” representation on behalf of a marginalized community through established artistic conventions and forms. Though this pressure to produce and/ or represent on behalf of a larger cultural identity is not isolated to artists of the Latin American diaspora, Terms of Belonging proposes a framework for Latin American art that does not hinge on nationality or ethnicity. Like the contentious term “Latinx,” the exhibition signals the need to expand beyond antiquated categories of belonging while acknowledging the ways in which these new and supposedly more inclusive terms are themselves rooted in specific and localized definitions of Latin American experience. Like the broader conceptual and minimalist traditions to which they belong, the works in the exhibition do not comprise a rejection of figuration, or identitarian concerns entirely. Instead the inclusion or allusion to real bodies constitutes an acknowledgment of the reductive nature of individual and collective identity, and a desire to speak beyond the constraints of the self. The exhibition will continue through December 10, 2022. A closing panel moderated by curator Susanna V. Temkin, PhD. will take place on Saturday, December 10, 2022 and Valeria Tizol Vivas will perform her durational piece remejunje: requemar.
Warning Shots Not Required: Henry Taylor Proves His Undeniable Genius at MoCA Los Angeles
text and photographs by Oliver Kupper
This is his house. This is his city. This is Henry’s world. In the earth-shattering career survey of Henry Taylor’s oeuvre at MOCA Grand Ave. in Los Angeles, the artist proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is one of the most important painters of our generation. Organized thematically, not chronologically, B Side is a tragicomic traversal, a dissection of the artist’s prolific body of work, but also a glorious star-spangled journey into the heart of a racialized America. Like a Max Roach drum solo or a Duke Ellington intro, the survey is an abstract confession of genius in a collective of large, energized paint strokes. There are friends, lovers, family, and humanized portrayals of people living, or more so surviving, on Skid Row. There is Miles Davis and his wife Cicely Tyson outside Obama’s White House—a distinct psychological examination of a "post-racial" America. Black Americana as a speculative exercise in fictional temporalities—the notion of hanging on to a dream like a vertical rock cliff. There is Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, in full military regalia with the words ‘Tupac’ and ‘Coffee’—two cultural exports with distinctly colonial and revolutionary implications. There is track and fielder Carl Lewis long jumping past a white picket fence with a prison looming behind him and the word ‘gold’ written in large stenciled lettering. Indeed, a carceral foreboding looms over these paintings as a distinct soliloquy of Black life in America, and the thin blue line pierces through with horrifying consequences. In THE TIMES THAY AINT CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH! (2017), the killing of Philando Castile is captured in stark blocks of color: a body slumped over, arms clutching an invisible bullet wound, a twisted car seat, a white hand holding a 9mm glock. B Side also delivers a vast breadth of rarely seen works, like his sketches made during his ten-year stint working at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital where the likes of Charlie Parker and jazz pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. went to fight their addictions to heroin. There are also painted objects, like cigarettes, cereal boxes, and even a black typewriter case with the words: “I try to be write aint TRY’n to be WHITE.” In the end, you can never demand more, because Henry Taylor gives every part of himself. You are too stunned to flip the record over, so you let the stylus fall into the last groove where it crackles gently, romantically, to the edge of your reverie.
Henry Taylor: B Side is on view through April 30 at MOCA Grand Avenue
Jermaine Francis Presents A Storied Ground @ Galerie PCP in Paris
PROJECTION: ‘A PROSPECT BEFORE KENWOOD HOUSE’ ENGLAND, 2022
The visuality of British Landscape painting in the tradition of such luminaries as Sir Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir John Constable have long provided viewers with a pastoral history of the British Landscape as an idealized and romantic one, free of the politics of the time and offering an aesthetic paradigm for the fabled “English countryside” that we know today. But the visual culture that produced those sweeping pastoral views, sometimes populated by wealthy white landowners, dressed in the finest garments of the time and enjoying leisure activities that were decidedly of the titled class. In fact, those sweeping views also contained nuanced messages pertaining to white ownership of that landscape, the right to surveil their own private property, and the centrality of the white body as both owner, and natural, and “neutral” inhabitant of that landscape.
Using those same gestures as the centrality of the body occupying space, Jermaine Francis’ project obliges the viewer to reconsider who is considered a natural inhabitant of the British landscape. The history and the visualization of the landscape is about property and wealth, but embedded are deeper meanings alluding to a sense of belonging and ownership. This project situates the Black body within those landscapes with both an unflinching primacy as well as a natural ease. The participants of Francis’ photographs do not offer a reason to justify their position in the landscape: they have a right to occupy that space without explanation. This tension, as well as the lack of textual narrative accompanying the exhibition, challenges and invites the viewer to regard the Black body within the landscape as neutral and with agency; as being in harmony with and not as an anomaly to that landscape.
A Storied Ground is on view through December 17 @ Galerie PCP 8 Rue Saint-Claude 75003
Vikky Alexander "Les Jardins de Versailles" @ Wilding Cran Gallery
Bring on the warm jets. In legendary pioneer of the Appropriation and Pictures Generation movements, artist Vikky Alexander mines the artifice and simulacra of paradise in a new body of work that takes us down the primrose path of the Gardens of Versailles. Since the 1980s, Alexander has explored desire and fantasy in media landscapes. In this series of collages and wall works, the landscapes are more literal, collaged and beautifully mounted on aluminum with a clash of crisp and pixelated color palettes. The blue of bygone travel agencies. The brown of a divorce lawyer’s filing cabinet. There are pieces of familiarity—old magazine cut outs, advertisements, but also photographs from the artist’s archive. Utopia deconstructed. Beauty as a slash and burn exercise in dismantling the illusions of our industrial society’s control over nature. Alexander will always be a master at this unique craft. In this case, the beautiful Gardens of Versailles denote something more sinister. The garden as a manifestation of a Jungian god complex. Vikky Alexander "Les Jardins de Versailles" will be on view until December 22 at Wilding Cran Gallery.
Études Releases Book N°26 With Artist Alessio Bolzoni Titled "I SPEAK A LANGUAGE THAT IS NOT MINE"
Since its inception, the independent publishing house, Études Books, has showcased the multi-disciplinary creations of artists from the contemporary art scene. Among the fall publications of 2022, Études Books is pleased to unveil book N°26, created with renowned Italian artist, Alessio Bolzoni.
For the London-based photographer, the personification of objects and the body caught between two states are favorite themes. Featured in past collaborations between Bolzoni and Études, these topics resurface in I SPEAK A LANGUAGE THAT IS NOT MINE. The book is the expression of a visual reflection through fragments, recurrences, and visual scansions.
Digital photographs, scans, facsimiles, screenshots: these various images, put in relation to one another, compose a mental cartography of the artists’ state of mind. Bodies in motion, chromatic analogies, skin details, plastic textures, and press clippings instill a dynamic impression of uncanniness.
The term “abuse”—referring to the eponymous titles of Bolzoni’s previous books—takes on an evocative power and invites us to question our relationship to images. The result is an intimate visual poem about form and substance. “It’s an observation of reality as I see it—a personal, social, and political registration of reality filtered through the lens of photo notes. Every detail tells a story and reveals something about my practice of living. This is my language.” —Alessio Bolzoni
With the launch of Alessio Bolzoni’s book, Études Studio is pleased to inaugurate its new 14.1 space. Envisioned as a place dedicated to creativity beyond the world of fashion, this space will welcome exhibitions by emerging artists, photographers, and Études collaborators, as well as various artistic events. Located above Études’ Paris flagship, 14.1 reinforces the studio’s initial wish to reflect and drive the contemporary creative landscape.
Études Books is an independent publisher, operating from Paris, with a will to present a new photographic and artistic scene with each publication. The official release was November 09, 2022. The book is available on etudes-studio.com/books and selected bookstores worldwide.
Watch the Music Video Premiere of "Light Sleepers" the New Track by Soft Cell
Soft Cell is back together for the first time in decades with a new music video shot & directed by Charlie Ann Max, starring Violet Chachki who portrays a young Marc Almond. This soft focus, erotic ode to gender bending romance and sexual freedom is a cinematic dream sequence of curling smoke, blue light, leather, and glitter. “Light Sleepers” is a celebration of the light that comes from within and the unique shadows we cast with our ever-changing forms, the shapes that define us as individuals.
The Second Skin By Alexander Morgan & Donovan McClenton
vintage catsuit: stylist’s own, jacket and sunglasses: Alexander McQueen, jewelry: Proenza Schouler
photography by Alexander Morgan
styling by Donovan McClenton
makeup by Ryo Kuramoto
hair by Andrita Renee
nails by Dan Renée
photography assistance by Kalelle Conklin & Chase Elliott
casting direction by MC Barnes
model Anika Elle Hartje
top: Skims
skirt: Fendi
jewelry: Proenza Schouler
leather dress & jewelry: Proenza Schouler
jacket and bra: stylist’s own
pants: Harley Davidson
jewelry: Proenza Schouler
leather jacket: Junya Watanabe
leather skirt: Alaia
jewelry: Proenza Schouler
top: stylist’s own
leather leggings: Rag and Bone
sunglasses: Alexander McQueen
jewelry: Proenza Schouler
jacket and sunglasses: Alexander McQueen
leather dress & jewelry: Proenza Schouler
Pouá By Thomas Hauser & Hakan Solak
Tanktop: Axel Arigato
photography by Thomas Hauser
styling by Hakan Solak
makeup by Melanie Hoppe
hair by Kosuke Ikeuchi
models Arya B from Mirrrs Models & Cora from Girls Club
jacket & skirt: A Better Mistake
tights & socks: Falke
gloves & shoes: stylist’s own
earrings: Gucci @ Vestiaire Collective
jacket & skirt: A Better Mistake
stockings: Falke
boots: Versace @ Vestiaire Collective
gloves: stylist’s own
coat: A Better Mistake
stockings & socks: Falke
shoes: stylist’s own
tanktop: Axel Arigato
skirt: A Better Mistake
stockings: Falke
shoes: Versace @ Vestiaire Collective
shirt: Our Legacy
raincoat, longsleeve used as skirt, tie & shoes: stylist’s own
tights & socks: Falke
jacket & skirt: A Better Mistake
tights & socks: Falke
gloves & shoes: stylist’s own
earrings: Gucci @ Vestiaire Collective
Jacket: A Better Mistake
Read Our Interview of Daniel Richter On the Occasion of His Solo Exhibition Opening @ Regen Projects In Los Angeles →
Daniel Richter
Fun de Siecle
2002
Oil on Canvas
115.75 x 151.18 inches (294 x 384 cm)
interview by Oliver Kupper
Artist Daniel Richter cut his teeth designing music posters and album covers in the antifascist, squatter punk scene of Hamburg in the 1980s and ‘90s. Now based in Berlin, the spirit of rebellion is wielded by the knife blade of his paintbrush in works that cross violently across the threshold between abstraction and figuration. With inspiration from early French symbolists, his work holds a mirror to a society pervaded by chaos and perversity. His show, Limbo, which coincides with the 59th Biennale di Venezia, was presented in a palazzo where a Catholic brotherhood once provided spiritual benediction to those sentenced to brutal public executions. Today marks the opening of his solo exhibition, Furor II, at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. We caught up with Richter while he was on vacation in Trieste, Italy where an oligarch’s seized Philippe Starck-designed superyacht was moored just outside his hotel window. Read more.
BFRND Releases Soundtrack To Balenciaga's Summer 2023 Collection
This week, BFRND released Elephant, Balenciaga’s Summer 2023 original soundtrack in collaboration With German rapper UFO361 and producer SONUS030. The inspiration for the soundtrack comes from the idea of having to fight to be who you are and the trio wanted to produce music that gives strength to their audience, something that you can listen to while walking in the street with the feeling of being indestructible, that nothing in this world can stop you from being who you are. The expression “The elephant in the room” is a metaphorical idiom for an important or enormous topic, question or controversial issue that is obvious or that everyone knows about, but no one mentions or wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable and is personally, socially, or politically embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory, or dangerous. The term is often used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo, which generates disagreement, such as race, religion, politics or sexuality. It is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged; and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided. The artwork for this LP has been fully generated with Dall-e 2, a text-to-image artificial Intelligence developed by Open AI. Streaming everywhere now.
Bergen Assembly: Yasmine & the Seven Faces of the Heptahedron
Installation view from Shirin Sabahi’s exhibition, The Moped Rider, 2022
Bryggens Museum. Courtesy the artist © VG Bild-Kunst, Bergen Assembly 2022 convened by Saâdane Afif and curated by Yasmine d´O. Photo: Nicolas Rösener
text by Lara Schoorl
The days after the opening weekend of Bergen Assembly, my (personal) quest for the Heptahedron continues. Revisiting my notes, the exhibition texts and issues of Side Magazine, searching for names, plays, the histories of artists, artworks, and possibly imaginary people, I am not quite lost but certainly uprooted in the spiraling narrative that Saâdane Afif inspired across seven exhibition sites in Bergen, Norway.
I confuse the artists with the characters and characters with exhibition sites, or perhaps that is the point; to let my imagination run its own course. Together, they form my image of the Professor, the Coalman, the Moped Rider, the Tourist, the Fortune Teller, the Bonimenteur, and an Acrobats. The cast of Afif’s Bergen Assembly. And together these characters are to merge into a heptahedron; a seven-sided shape—my heptahedron. A multifaceted concept that is used as the storytelling device in the perennial exhibition to connect the presented artworks (old, new, and commissioned) to our current world. Taken from the unpublished (imaginary) play, The Heptahedron, written by Thomas Clerc that is (supposedly) based on a performance of a geometry class by Afif for the 2014 Marrakech Biennale (see the possibility for the consciously imposed yet profound confusion). This form, evokes both mathematical and apocalyptic associations, literally shapes, and conceptually thematizes the third edition of Bergen Assembly. Each character is linked to one of seven sites and each site shows three participating artists. A conglomeration of layers that fold in on each other, challenging thought, yet facilitating navigation.
Flag for Yasmine and the Seven Faces of the Heptahedron
© Bergen Assembly 2022, Convened by Saâdane Afif and curated by Yasmine d´O. Photo: Nicolas Rösener
Afif, as convener of the triennial, in turn invited Yasmine d’O as its curator. It is d’O who gives substance to this Heptahedron; the artists she curated into the shows flesh out the geometrical skeleton. As can be read in her curatorial statement, d’O had also been thinking about the idea of a solid body with seven faces for some time. Of course, she turns out to be (semi-)fictional too—on a webpage that sells clothing items on which Afif collaborated with Star Styling, I read that Yasmine d’O may refer to Yasmine d’Ouezzan, the first woman billiards champion of France in 1932. Although, not much information is found when further research concerning this fragment is conducted. Nevertheless, Yasmine, whoever she may be, is a crucial figure in the narrative of the exhibition. Having the Bergen Assembly titled after her, introducing her as the protagonist of the curatorial narrative under the same name as well, she becomes a symbol for the myriad paths through which one approaches the exhibition(s).
As in all plays, there is a certain order of appearance of characters, although it is not mandatory to abide by in this case. And as often when consumed by a narrative, I cannot help but to have a favorite character. In Bergen, I visited each of them, spent time with their origin stories in the curatorial room at Bergen Kunsthall and with the works they are assigned to host in their locations. Although all characters resonated, each very aptly responds to current themes—questioning systems of knowledge production, acknowledging our human footprint, addressing climate crisis, highlighting identity politics, breaking gender boundaries—it was the Fortune Teller who kept calling me back. As fourth and middle character, tucked between The Moped Rider and The Coalman (arguably the strongest opposition between characters: freedom, movement and sidetracks versus death, old ways, and stagnation), spread across the spaces of Northing, an empty house, and a public open air listening booth, the Fortune Teller comprises the only non-institutional site. Jessika Khazrik, Miriam Stoney, and Alvaro Urbano are the artists that make up The Fortune Teller.
Khazrik’s interdisciplinary installation, ATAMATA, is presented in Ekko, a club in Bergen, which includes a seven-channel video, silver-colored material covering sculptures as well as the club’s architecture, a series of interstellar raves, and a four-day music and performance program that “re-addresses club spaces as templar and serendipitous places of techno-political congregation and collective attunement with an ability to re-create and host different times and desires into the present.” The club becomes a social place not just for fun, but to celebrate, elevate, build, and change community; club as a place to call out and be heard. In an artist talk, Khazrik explained that the etymology of the Arabic word for ‘club’ returns the meaning to “calling,” while pointing out that silver as a color reflects rather than absorbs, multiplying what is present around. The affirmation we hear you, we see you is given additional dimensions in Khazrik work.
Across the street, in the abandoned rooms of Østre Skostredet 8, Urbano re-installed his work The Great Ruins of Saturn (2021). With the lights turned off, one steps into and becomes part of a performance in progress upon entering the old wooden home; shadows of small metal sculptures dance on the wall and inevitably on anyone stepping among them. While reminiscent of children’s projection puppet lamps, these sculptures also include stars and planets, the majority of the imagery are symbols of capitalism: dollar bills, UFOs, skyscrapers, futuristic cars, the Statue of Liberty, and the famous Unisphere. They directly refer to presentations, thoughts, and imaginations seen at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, of which some architectural ruins still remain unused in Queens’ Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Now disassembled, the remnants of the fair speak to one of the themes in Urbano’s practice: the longevity of the idea of future. What has become of these futuristic plans driven by corporate greed and capitalist gain? Originally made for Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, restaging the work in a ruin of Bergen, Urbano allows for the future to be reimagined again and acknowledges the cyclical understanding of time: that what was once future is now past.
Installation view from Alvaro Urbano’s exhibition The Great Ruins of Saturn for The Fortune Teller, 2022 in Østre Skostredet, Bergen. Courtesy the artist. © Bergen Assembly 2022 convened by Saâdane Afif and curated by Yasmine d´O. Photo: Thor Brødreskift
It is not possible to hide from the future, perhaps similar to the way debt will catch up to you eventually. Stoney was commissioned to create a new work for the Bergen Assembly, for the Fortune Teller in particular, and so she wrote a book-length poem called Debt Verses in the voice of the Fortune Teller about debt and indebtedness. The poem is written in English and translated into Chinese and Norwegian, all languages appear alongside each other in a truly beautiful, harmonica foldout design with a magnetic cover so that it can be opened and read from two sides while remaining one book. This physical layering of the publication follows the structure of the narrative. Aside from commenting on credit lines, college loans, and debt collectors, seemingly fictional structures are voiced through bureaucratic auto messages, but in reality with the power to kill that haunt and settle into the fabric of everyday life, Stoney reels in another reality of academics and the acknowledgement of knowledge that is borrowed, which she extensively footnotes. Sometimes seen as a hiding behind others, the extensive referencing on one hand points to the exclusiveness of academia, and on the other, how an indebtedness to the backbone of the women informing it has long gone uncredited. Presented at Northing Space, temporarily turned into a bookstore, selling just one book, Debt Verses, deceives us a little just like its collectors and any form of socially constructed belief system. But not for long, as outside, this ironic ploy is countered by the installation of a public listening booth on Østre Skostredet, giving any passerby access to a full-length audio recording of the poem by Stoney.
Debt Verses, book signing by Miriam Stoney as part of Miriam Stoney’s exhibition Debt Verses | Vers om gjeld | 赋债, 2022 for The Fortune Teller, Northing Space Bergen. Courtesy the artist, Northing Bergen. © Bergen Assembly 2022 convened by Saâdane Afif and curated by Yasmine d’O. Photo: Yilei Wang
Whether conceptually or visually, each of the Three Fortune Tellers’ works is a call for visibility or immediate inclusivity. Silver-reflecting walls and daytime club hours in Khazrik’s work, shadow and light play in Urbano’s, as well as the act of re-predicting a formerly imagined future, and the literal highlighting of others’ texts informing one’s writing in Stoney’s poem are among some examples making this call tangible. It makes sense that in uncertain times of pandemic, war, raging gas prices and a declining economy, an insight into the future is most wanted now. This attitude, however, risks the future—the 1964 World’s Fair is an example par excellence—to turn into a commodity. Thus, when Afif introduced a Fortune Teller, she appears not to know what is to come, but as becomes so evident in Stoney’s words, to understand the guiding impact of the then and now on what will be. As the fourth character, The Fortune Teller is all of us, the rest spirals out of her. Beyond her call for a contemporary clairvoyance as opposed to a future one, all other characters, which I will leave for you to encounter, spread a message from their past or future positions: be here now. A seven-sided form is tricky to imagine, let alone perceive completely at once, and so the heptahedron becomes a very accurate allegory for the impossibility to see the future if we cannot even see around the corner. To see all seven sides, one has to move, one character at a time, until a fragmented whole can be pieced together from the different viewpoints obtained. Then still, the figure that appears, is subjective; combine all subjective perceptions and the rest spirals out of her. “Depending on how you choose to look at it, the ebb and flow of life is a continuum that is either circular or moves back and forth, rather than being linear.”
Bergen Assembly runs through November 6, 2022 in Bergen Norway.
Installation view from Jessika Khazrik’s exhibition, The Fortune Teller, 2022 at Østre, Bergen Courtesy the artist. © Bergen Assembly 2022, convened by Saâdane Afif and curated by Yasmine d´O. Light design: Shaly Lopez. Photo: Thor Brødreskift
FREAKS! By Azazel & Francesca Cavalcanti
Eve wears body suit by Ann Summers
top & skirt: TYT
Lola wears jumpers by Marco Rambaldi
skirt: stylist’s own
photography by Azazel assisted by Kester Messan
styling by Francesca Cavalcanti assisted by Olivia Abadian
makeup by Machiko Yano assisted by Yurino Kinjo
hair by Shinosuke Nakashimo
models: Hody from Milk Management
Bertie, Bella, Lola & Eve from Anti Agency
full look: Diesel
necklace: stylist’s own
t-shirt: Our Legacy
knitwear: GCDS
jumper: Marco Rambaldi
top: Diesel
shorts: SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
boots: model’s own
jewelry: EXXXENTIAL
t-shirt: Mowalola
shoes: vintage MARC JACOBS from SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
tights & hat: stylist’s own
Lola wears track top by SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
skirt: Marco Rambaldi
earrings: ILENIA CORTI VERNISSAGE
Eve wears dress by Marco Rambaldi
hoodie: vintage PALACE from SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
hat: DR.CREATUR3
necklace: EXXXENTIAL
dress: ACT N°1
coat: Diesel
dress: GCDS
jacket: Acupuncture
hat: Poche Studio from SORRRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
Lola wears track top by SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
skirt: Marco Rambaldi
earrings: ILENIA CORTI VERNISSAGE
socks: TYT
shoes: vintage Dr. Martens from SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
Eve wears dress by Marco Rambaldi
hoodie: Vintage PALACE from SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
hat: DR.CREATUR3
necklace: EXXXENTIAL
shoes: model’s own
knitwear: GCDS
t-shirt: Our Legacy
top: Diesel
jumper: Marco Rambaldi
shorts: SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
jewelry: EXXXENTIAL
full look: Diesel
necklace: stylist’s own
shirt: SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
leather vest: DESA1972
skirt: Diesel
hat: Hat.N.Spicy
tights: stylist’s own
shoes: ACT N°1
bodysuit: Ann Summers
top & skirt: TYT
shoes: CONVERSE from SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
coat: Diesel
dress: ACT N°1
dress: GCDS
jacket: ACUPUNCTURE
hat: POCHE STUDIO from SORRY MUMMY ARCHIVE
bracelet: stylist’s own
shoes: Diesel
Watch The Premiere Of "LOOK AT YOU" By Leo Luchini
Songwriting meets character development in a thrilling double music video about afterlife, injury, existentialism, and spaces of limbo (Sartre's No Exit). This black comedy-esque performance by auteur Leo Luchini features his new song "LOOK AT YOU" in a larger-than-life cinematic vision shot on a rainy Berlin day with a vintage Jaguar as a symbol of post-mortem motion. His new oeuvre is styled to match the dense clash of distorted metal guitar and slick trap syncopation: a filmic fantasy where deathly spectres are counterbalanced with the vastness of an angelic infinite afterlife. Son of a film director, this is Leo's third self-produced/co-directed music video for himself after his acclaimed video for "Bubblegum Creep", which launched his career and established his visionary scope.
As a music programmer of Berlin arts venue Trauma Bar und Kino, Luchini is a very active member of the underground music and performing arts communities. His infamous studio C-BLOCK has seen an array of visiting artists from Ms Boogie, Klein, Chico Sonido, Paris Aden, Moesha 13, Julianna Huxtable and Abyss X. Luchini's remix for trip-hop legend Tricky's recent album Lonely Guest came out this past June.
Director + Editor: Alexis Rummler with help of Nicolo Comotti, Miri Fenske and Charlambos Vlachodimos
Cinematography: Jan Fecke
Gaffer: Dominik Böhm
Electrician: Gonzalo Artabe with help of Philip Deutenbach and Nikita Fedosik
MUA: Ellen Eilzer + Sarah Hirth
Studio Light Engineer: Periklis Lazarou [fluxgeist]
Title Font Designer: Florencia Amodio
Colorgrade: Jonas Niemann
Camera gear and lenses: Steinmann Vintage @steinmann_vintage
Producer: Leo Luchini
Co-Producer: Jan Fecke
Featuring: Angel as Bystander, Erik as Thug Spectre 1, Dragos as Thug Spectre 2, Chris as Backseat Spectre 1, Davide as Backseat Spectre 2.