Hugh Hayden Examines the Prosthetics of Power in Hughman @ Lisson Gallery

text by Tara Anne Dalbow

Upon entering Hugh Hayden’s Hughman exhibition at Lisson Los Angeles, you’re confronted by three interconnected rows of metallic stall doors, the same as you might find in a public restroom. The doors simultaneously invite you toward entry and expel you, intriguing as they are impersonal and ominous. Before you glimpse an object resembling art, you’re implicated in the hidden meaning, an active participant in its revelation. You’re immediately made aware of the physicality of your body, your relationship to the space, and the identity you present to the unknown system of order. Questions arise: Is this a gendered bathroom? Do I belong here? Who am I sharing the space with? The interactive element of opening and closing each door, maneuvering in, out, and between the confined, private spaces, renders engaging from a disembodied perspective nearly impossible. As the exhibition's title implies, there’s no leaving one’s hughmanity at the door.  

My initial impression of imposition and interest follows me into the first stall, where a carved commode sprouts a bramble of thorny fir tree branches. The protrusion of sharp limbs obstructs further inspection; the effect is claustrophobic and disconcerting, and I back out cautiously. Behind the next door, a baby’s crib constructed from barbed wire and chain link fencing; behind another, interlocking wedding rings with Descovy pills [HIV antiviral] where the solitaire would be; and behind yet another, a classroom desk consumed entirely by abrasive white nylon bristles. Each object offers participation in a facet of contemporary American life under conditions as unwelcoming, uncomfortable, and caustic as the specular toilet seat. 

The visceral materiality of the various textures, though not physically touched, commandeer the senses as the bristles scrape, the barbs prick, and the branches snag against your skin. Prongs, spurs, and skewers disrupt movement and threaten physical confrontation while also poking metaphorical holes in expectations and illusions. Here, the most fundamental promises of the American dream, like the right to an education, are rendered onerous, animating the question: for whom were these institutions made? If the skin you’re in determines your experience, and the object's surface or skin reflects the relative ease or distress of the encounter, then certainly not for the artist, a Black queer man, and by association, those like him. 

Hugh Hayden
Cleanse, 2023
High density polyethylene bristles, cast resin
66 x 38.1 x 35.6 cm
26 x 15 x 14 in
© Hugh Hayden, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Hugh Hayden
Start 'Em Young, 2023
Chain link fencing and hardware
142.9 x 141 x 81.3 cm
56 1/4 x 55 1/2 x 32 in

© Hugh Hayden, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Hugh Hayden
Brainwash, 2023
PVC and nylon bristles
83.8 x 66 x 73.7 cm
33 x 26 x 29 in
© Hugh Hayden, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

 
 

As I continued around the room, the stalls began to feel more like dressing rooms with various identities available for perusal inside. Within one, a suit jacket and pants sewn from the rough and rigid bark of a cherry tree hang from a clothing rack. Elsewhere: a football helmet encompassed by boar hair, and still elsewhere: a bronze strap-on harness with a gun protruding from the crotch. The striking contrast between organic materials and those that are artificial and mass-produced recalls the antagonistic relationship between what’s natural and instinctual and what’s a consequence of sociopolitical structures. For whom are these spaces made? 

Those capable of comfortably wearing the prosthetics of power appear as idealized, neoclassical male torsos carved from white silicone. They wear their means for control where their sex would be; for two, cocked pistols; for another, an abject skyscraper. A fourth iteration sees the male body replaced by a miniature basswood model church whose phallic steeple hangs limply across the shingled roof. In a nod to the dominant enterprise in Los Angeles, a director’s chair projects tapered wood penises in every direction. The appendages appear to both protect the seat of power and stage an assault on the unendowed who come too close. Their audacious vulgarity tempers the violence of the cultural implications and satirizes familiar tropes like toxic masculinity and the male impulse to think with an organ south of the brain.  

When that door closes with a bang—emphasized by the acoustics of the room and made ominous by the presence of so many firearms—another door opens onto a bronze and acrylic sculpture of the waist and thighs of a man in navy uniform pants sporting a flashy leather belt, holstered gun, and handcuffs posed atop his white pedestal. Only when you move around the sculpture or are so moved by it do you see where the right side is sliced open to reveal beneath the uniform, armor, weaponry, beneath even the skin, the internal organs, veins, and bones within. The same veins in him that carry the red-blue blood between my heart and feet, the same stomach as the one that rumbles, hungry to be filled full when empty in Hayden, in him, in me. The man is twinned by another sculpture in the exhibition of a tree trunk spliced open to expose the biological contents of a womb carrying a luminous carved baby. 

Hugh Hayden
Real Tree, 2023
Cherry bark on Zegna Suit
Suit: 99.1 x 91.4 x 17.8 cm
Suit: 39 x 36 x 7 in
© Hugh Hayden, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Hugh Hayden
Eve, 2023
Cherry Bark and acrylic on resin, Black Walnut
63.5 x 38.1 x 25.4 cm
25 x 15 x 10 in
© Hugh Hayden, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Their combined effect illuminates how stripped of societal status, we are of the same nature and origin and made from the same stuff. As intricately connected to one another as we are to the trees, the earth from which the trees grow, and the animals, like the stuffed buffalo in another stall, roam. Hanging together in a red-flocked closet, two raceless, genderless, crimson rib cages tenderly embrace—as the only forms made from material gentle enough to hold and be held. The fellow feeling carries me out of the closet, the stall, the gallery, and I re-enter the world a little more human than I was only an hour before.

Hughman is on view through January 13 @ Lisson Gallery, 1037 N. Sycamore Avenue, Los Angeles

 

Hugh Hayden
The Audition, 2023
Bald cypress, steel hardware and canvas
149.9 x 188 x 154.9 cm
59 x 74 x 61 in
© Hugh Hayden, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

 

Trevor Yeung's First Solo Show at Gasworks In London Explores how emotional and behavioural conditions play out in our everyday life

Yeung’s exhibition at Gasworks delves into the complex social dynamics and interspecies relationships in London’s gay cruising areas. Central to the exhibition is a scale recreation of Hampstead Heath’s infamous “fuck tree”, a notorious ageing oak whose sturdy trunk is bent low and whose bark is polished smooth following its regular nocturnal use. Cast in soap, Yeung’s version fills the dark gallery with an earthy, moist scent – evoking a liminal space of desire, longing, and shame.

Glistening and ephemeral, the soap replica embodies the tree and presents it as an intimate object to be used and consumed. Slowly worn away by physical interactions, it touches and rubs against out bodies, smoothing and disintegrating over time.

At Gasworks a sense of quiet reverie is accompanied by additional presences of animal and nature as Yeung further examines his emotional connection with Hampstead Heath. The walls are painted in a cold, grey gradient, similar to the transient moment just before fresh morning light hits the ground. Acorns glisten in the gentle light, and the sound of water splashing on

the ground can be heard. Together, these elements combine to explore the fluid interplay between night and day, public and private, concealing and being seen.

Trevor Yeung
Soft ground, 2023
Courtesy of the artist

Soft Ground is on display through December 17th at Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall St, London

Every Single Look From Balenciaga's First Runway Presentation in Los Angeles

On December 2nd, 2023, Balenciaga presented Fall 2024 in Los Angeles, CA – the first time the house has held a show in the city. The lineup, revealed on a palm tree-lined street and scored by BFRND with a custom track featuring multiple voiceovers, illustrates Demna’s interpretation of L.A.’s fashion codes through a cinematic, character-driven lens. Ideas apply to everyday activities like jogging, yoga and gym sessions, and then progress to Hollywood evening with step-and-repeat-ready, Cristóbal Balenciaga-inspired gowns.

In between, sections of updated grunge, upscaled daywear and signature tailoring take the spotlight. An activewear chapter opens. Items are straightforward: shorts, bra tops, leggings and sweatshirts are included. A jersey section follows. This portion nods to the American velour tracksuit trend and celebrity street style photographs of the aughts. New versions of the suit suggest low slung trousers – some low enough to reveal undergarments beneath – and cropped hooded jackets. Knee-high Alaska boots are added. Neo-grunge enters. Garments are oversized and layered. Highlight items include cut-up asymmetric trousers, a hand embroidered leopard-motif coat, outdoor hotel slippers and leather bags lined with nylon shopper totes. Upscaled daywear, outsize proportions and precise tailoring – many pieces with flattened square shoulders or styled as tweed sets – bridge informality and glamor. One hooded jacket has an integrated scarf, which can be used for paparazzi deterrence. Eveningwear closes. Shapes and silhouettes are highly defined, and many of the garments fuse past and present by referencing original designs made by Cristobal Balenciaga himself. Wrapped coat- dresses cut an angular, plush form, while tailored one-shoulder gowns impart a softer impression. The final look furthers the incognito element: a monumental white gown in heavy white satin with a structured face shield.

Accessories include a new croc-embossed Rodeo bag, named for the Beverly Hills street and home of Balenciaga’s 2 L.A. flagships, and essential carriers such as the knitted 24/7 tote and the Monaco tote. Eyewear includes evolved mask and batwing shapes, along with the new super flexible Malibu line with elastic temples and premium titanium construction. A new shoe – the 10XL Sneaker – is introduced. It amplifies a sense of exaggeration in proportion, which is a Balenciaga signature. 2 select colorways (yellow/white/blue and blue/gray/black) will be available in an exclusive release. A number of exclusive release items in addition to the 10XL Sneaker are available immediately following the show: leather and paper tote bags, jerseys, caps and aprons made in collaboration with Erewhon, the L.A.-based grocery store phenomenon; the new Le Cagole Tote XL; No Logo jersey pieces, and high jewellery realized in collaboration with Jacob & Co. The jewellery designs reflect a sentiment of American youth culture and imbue it with a Made in the USA opulence.

Read Our Interview of Anarchist Sound System a.k.a. Lou Desamaison-Cognet of Golpe Civil →

In an exclusive interview and photoshoot for Autre, Anarchist Sound System a.k.a. Lou Desamaison-Cognet, musician and founder of Golpe Civil, unveils the complexities of modern society, critiquing a world immersed in electroslavery. Lou a.k.a. Loucifer shares insights into his own psyche as well as inspirations for his collective: from his collection of Nietzsche texts and the occult, to the visceral impact of recent love, loss, and sobriety. Read more.

Nora Riggs Presents a Multifaceted View of Camaraderie and Intimacy in Touchy-Feely @ Emma Gray HQ

 
Nora Riggs Presents Touchy-Feely at Emma Gray HQ in Los Angeles. Couple admiring themselves.

Nora Riggs, Couple Admiring Themselves in a Mirror, 2023. Image courtesy of Emma Gray HQ.

 

Emma Gray HQ presents Touchy-Feely, an exhibition of new paintings by Nora Riggs. Her depicted scenes present a multifaceted view of camaraderie and intimacy, reminding us of the mild indignities of youth and adulthood. While not autobiographical per se, her paintings emerge from an invented reality adjacent to our own. At one step remove, Riggs distills and alters it through colors, textures, shapes, and patterns that suggest aesthetics from another era without the pungent drifts of nostalgia. That her ideas rise like froth before she sleeps offers insight into her paintings. They are condensed memory images, emblematic of a time and place, at once playful and densely psychological. Her deft use of paint supports this mood, articulating an individuated vision about fugitive memories. Which is another way to say that she devotes her craft, one so specific to her sensibilities, to the complexity (awkwardness, tenderness, oddness, funniness) of intimacy.

Touchy-Feely is on view through January @ Emma Gray HQ, email info@emmagrayhq.com or call 310-497-6895 to book a visit

 
 

Ewa Juszkiewicz Subverts Historical Conventions through Pictorial Invention for In a Shady Valley, Near a Running Water @ Gagosian

Ewa Juszkiewicz's In a Shady Valley, Near a Running Water at Gagosian in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles

Installation view © Ewa Juszkiewicz. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.

Gagosian presents In a Shady Valley, Near a Running Water, an exhibition of new paintings by Ewa Juszkiewicz in Beverly Hills. This is Juszkiewicz’s first solo exhibition in California and her second with the gallery, following In vain her feet in sparkling laces glow in New York (2020–21).

Juszkiewicz’s oil paintings of women begin with historical portraits, appropriating their style while subverting their conventions through fantastical and discomforting pictorial interventions. Emulating representations of women painted in the Grand Manner style popular in Western art from the eighteenth through the early nineteenth century, she re-creates the poses, fashion, and settings of her sources while transforming their scales and palettes and adding details that point to the artifice of femininity’s stereotypical markers.

In a Shady Valley, Near a Running Water is on view through December 22 @ Gagosian, 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills

 
 

Jota Mombaça Uses Berlin's Decompositional History to Slow Time for Mourning @ CCA Berlin

A CERTAIN DEATH/THE SWAMP, Jota Momaça’s exhibition at CCA Berlin – Center for Contemporary Arts, was conceived, at first, through extensive conversations around the curious topography of Berlin, said to be entirely built atop drained wetlands. From swamp to city, a teleology of progress, a survival scheme, emerges. Looking at the devastating flash floods of 2021 that affected parts of Belgium, Germany and surrounding countries, Mombaça then conjures up reversal—what of cities that again turn into swamps, a form of dissolution fascists went in terror of (‘Drenare la palude!’, once howled a determined Benito Mussolini) throughout the twentieth century? From Berlin’s locality, we shift our gaze towards a planetary predicament: that of atmospheric phenomena continuously threatening terminal collapse across disparate geographies. until the last morning (2023), a newly commissioned video work, was shot among the mangroves and marshlands of Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon. Covering about 700,000 hectares, these mangroves and marshlands depend on a constant influx of fresh water from rainfall and from the Guajará Bay rivers and streams. To that end, the camera pans to the sky, observing cloud formations, their movements and maneuvers. The ecosystem’s survival depends on this unpredictable choreography—to observe the weather is thus to forecast whether or not a line of continuity can be drawn into the future. 

A CERTAIN DEATH/THE SWAMP is on view through December 2nd at CCA Berlin, Kurfürstenstraße 145, 10785 Berlin.

"Magic of The North" Retrospective Delves into Munch's Lights and Shadows @ Berlinische Galerie in Berlin

Edvard Munch challenged his contemporaries with the radical modernity of his paintings, especially in Berlin, where the Norwegian symbolist exerted a big influence around the turn of the century. The exhibition Magic of the North is a partnership with the MUNCH in Oslo. It tells the story of Edvard Munch and Berlin, illustrated by paintings, prints, and photographs.

The German capital was in the grip of a fervor for all things Nordic. Even the conservative Association of Berlin Artists invited the young artist, as yet unknown, to put on a solo exhibition in 1892. Viewers were shocked by the bright colors and perceived the paintings as sketchy. The show was forced to close shortly after opening. Munch’s works polarized people. The artist delighted in this public attention. He moved to the Spree, living and working in the city again and again between 1892 and 1908. The “Munch Affair”, as the press sardonically labeled the scandal, is seen as the beginning of Modernism in Berlin.

 
 

Magic of the North is on view through January 22nd at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin’s Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture Alte Jakobstraße 124–128, 10969 Berlin.

Nasan Tur Interrogates the Uses of Power through Lifelessness in Hunted @ Berlinische Galerie in Berlin

Nasan Tur deals with the political and social conditions of our time. His works are experimental arrangements that make ideologies, social norms and behavior patterns visible and expand them to include possibilities for individual action. To do this, he examines statements, gestures and images that he finds in the media and public space and condenses them into miniatures of current social crises and discourses. The focus is on the question of how predetermined role models influence us and when we are ready to cross boundaries and actively change social patterns in the face of oppression, powerlessness and manipulation.

New works were created for Hunted, his current exhibition at Berlinische Galerie, which deal with questions of the exercise of power and its legitimacy. Why do people kill? What violence lies within us, and how and under what circumstances is it activated? By arranging the works in space, Tur creates images that express an ambivalent attitude toward death and life. They range from confronting one's own inner demons to questioning hunters and the act of killing to the careful staging of lifeless animals in space.

Hunted is on view through April 1st at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin’s Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture Alte Jakobstraße 124–128, 10969 Berlin.

Rachel Gregor Presents Summer as an Inescapable Purgatory for Teenage Girlhood in Still Summer @ Hashimoto Contemporary

Still Summer by Rachel Gregor, Stickleback and the female nude

Rachel Gregor, Stickleback, 2023. Images courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.

The rules of adolescent girlhood are convoluted and often unspoken, something painter Rachel Gregor seeks to highlight in her first solo exhibition with Hashimoto Contemporary, Still Summer. The Kansas City-based painter portrays the summer before ninth grade (remembered through overexposed point-and-shoot film photos) as the tense passage into true young adulthood: newfound independence is at odds with a lack of agency, infantilization discredits budding knowledge about the world. Based on versions of herself, the characters in these new paintings are wolves in sheep’s clothing, rebelling to escape their physical and psychological barriers, or at least survive the small hell of Arcadian juvenility.

Still Summer is on view through December 2 @ Hashimoto Contemporary, 2754 S La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034

 
 

Ken Gun Min Fuses a Cosmopolitan Personal History with Lush, Floral Landscapes in Sweet Discipline from Koreatown @ Shulamit Nazarian

Ken Gun Min presents Sweet Discipline from Koreatown at Shulamit Nazarian in Los Angeles

Images courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian

Shulamit Nazarian presents Sweet Discipline from Koreatown, an exhibition of new works by Ken Gun Min. In the artist’s newest paintings, lush, floral landscapes and sensitively rendered, imaginative portraits are adorned with beads and embroidery. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Min has led a global existence, moving from Zurich and Berlin to San Francisco before eventually settling in Los Angeles's Koreatown. This cosmopolitan personal history informs the social and political narratives of Min's work, which explores emotion, otherness, and an intimate connection to place.

The paintings in this exhibition exemplify Min's intersectional engagement with the nuances of queer experience as an Asian man and his deeply personal approach to often unexplored social spaces and histories. Yet even as he mines his own feelings and experiences, Min pulls a wide range of references and associations into the work to consider the ways that power, race, and sexuality play into both local and global geopolitics. Certain works reference the history of conflict between Asia and Europe, the dynamic history of relations between different minority groups in urban conflicts, and the intersection of sexual and racial prejudice. By exploring stories that span contemporary reality and earlier historical moments, the paintings expand outward from Min's personal journey through Los Angeles to address the sublime encounter of splendor and darkness in the human experience.

Sweet Discipline from Koreatown is on view through December 20 @ Shulamit Nazarian, 616 N. La Brea Avenue Los Angeles CA

Daniel Arnold: New York Life Is Sustained by Forward Motion @ New York Life Gallery

Attuned to moments in the city that many fail to notice, Daniel Arnold: New York Life documents the personalities who rush, stumble, and idle through every sidewalk, subway, bodega, park, beach, and ferry throughout the five boroughs. From his vantage point—a camera perched on scaffolding in the rain or nestled to his torso amidst a crowd—he creates a time capsule of the city that is simultaneously unsentimental and imbued with sublime oddity. 

Arnold’s photographs feature a broad cast of characters improbably brought together on the street. People who appear archetypal or stereotypical at first glance are revealed for their idiosyncrasies—exposing the uncanny nature of unassuming subjects. Through his candid lens, metropolitan scenes steeped in cliché are distilled back into the raw, bizarre, humorous, and miraculous.

In Arnold’s universe, there is no right moment, wrong moment, or perfect shot; there is only the impulse to load a new roll and take the next picture. His work is sustained by this forward motion. While each image is an index of a particular place and time, the breadth and scope of Arnold’s photographs form a composite image of city life today. In New York, Arnold has found an infinite muse


Daniel Arnold: New York Life is on view through December 22nd @ New York Life Gallery  167-169 Canal Street, Floor 5, New York,

Balenciaga Music, Curated by Artistic Director Demna, Provides A Unique Sartorial and Auditory Experience

On November 20th, 2023, Balenciaga announced the next phase of Balenciaga Music, curated by artistic director Demna. The initiative aims to provide a comprehensive music experience through innovative formats. The project features Archive, an English group with a 28-year history in electronic, trip-hop, post- and progressive rock. Archive created an exclusive 8.5-minute track, "Patterns," and a 7-hour playlist for Balenciaga.

The unique aspect of "Patterns" is its exclusive availability through an NFC chip embedded in limited-edition Balenciaga Music | Archive merchandise. Buyers can unlock an original listening event by scanning the chip with a smartphone. The interactive garments, including T-shirts and hoodies displaying Archive's discography, will be sold in selected Balenciaga stores worldwide and online.

This collaboration represents a first for both Archive and Balenciaga, as Archive has never worked with a fashion brand, and Balenciaga has never premiered music through a product. Alongside the exclusive track, Archive curated a 7-hour playlist available on a new Balenciaga Music hub on balenciaga.com, linking to various streaming services.

Darius Keeler, a founding member of Archive, emphasized the alignment of values between Balenciaga and Archive, emphasizing individuality and innovation. The project expands Balenciaga Music by introducing entirely new music tailored to Balenciaga's audience, coupled with a technically advanced merch series for accessing the music.

A--Company Presents Antigone @ The Baryshnikov Arts Center


text by Abe Chabon
photography by Jenna Westra

For the debut of their Collection 9.5, A--Company, founded by designer Sara Lopez, partnered with the iconic jeweler LL, LLC and the groundbreaking director Daphné Dumons for a restaging of Anne Carson’s Antigone. The use of a play, and an ancient Greek tragedy at that, as the medium for a fashion show was unfamiliar to me, but for Lopez it felt right. Lopez told me that the combination of artistic mediums with fashion, jewelry, acting, set design, and directing was, “the culmination of many of my interests.” Lopez has long drawn inspiration for her collections from what she is reading, and for her, Antigone was the obvious choice. “I’ve been collecting translations of Antigone for years” she wrote me, “It’s a story that's embedded in our collective unconscious about individuals entangled in tragic dilemmas as conflicting moral codes clash. It reveals a humanity acutely aware of its destiny while grappling with a sense of powerlessness in the face of it. As one of the most performed plays, it’s a story that’s worthy of telling again and again.”  When she decided on Antigone, Lopez assembled a reference board of texts, as inspiration for both the clothes and the performance that would show them. In interpreting the ancient text she drew from writers and theorists such as “Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Sarah Ahmed. In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Esteban Muñoz says, “Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality.” It’s this potentiality that I’m interested in. Working with Anne Carson’s translation of Antigone in a Brechtian manner offered a way to think about how we can move towards this horizon that he speaks about in the here and now.” 

The show, performance, exhibition, may be best described as a “half-way dressed rehearsal.” The actors/models take centerstage on a raw set—black walls, a hanging suit represents the body of Polynices, a painted family tree—wearing hem-less suits, sleeveless coats, and dresses made of shirts. The clothing folds in on itself, layers both in and out and sleeves drape from backs and shoulders. The collection does not feel unfinished so much as unrestricted. With each article of clothing there is an implied process that does not begin and end with the clothes being made and bought, but continues on through how they are worn and how they move on the wearer's body. This uncensored process is mirrored in the performance itself. Models flub and retry their lines, read directly from script pages that they throw to the floor when finished. The director, Daphné Dumons, frequently took the stage herself, to instruct her actors and ask for suggestions. At one point a scene was retried three times before Dumons decided that it would be best to just move on.  Neither the set nor the performances ended at the foot of the audience chairs. The crowd was lit as fully as the actors who spoke and made direct appeals to us.

The intimacy Lopez sought to establish began before the official start of the show itself. As I filed in with the rest of the spectators, I felt encouraged to interact not only with other members of the audience but with the model/actors who were already on stage as we arrived, warming up with vocal exercises, getting their clothes and makeup adjusted. There was no backstage, nothing was hidden. Like the seams and stitches of the clothes, all was borne out for the audience to see and take in. 

Lopez told me that she wanted the performance and the clothing to be, “revealing, uncovering, and moving towards something.” An organic fluidity unusual in two media so often grounded in ideas of perfect lines or the perfect performance. “Many of the details of the collection arose from thinking about the psyches of the characters,” Lopez continued, “which of course, we all hold, so rather than being character-specific, the collection was designed as a whole that could be interchanged if needed.” Because of these values A–Company’s collaboration with LL, LLC felt natural. Lopez had admired the work both in terms of their approach to jewelry itself and to the process and understanding of art. Lopez said that they, “share a similar research-based approach to design with an idealism for form and a love of process.” Because of this, the two companies were able to collaborate both physically and intellectually, “While moving back and forth between ideas and shapes, we looked at the collection and considered the performance before creating the final edit. At times we considered the jewelry to be like a talisman for the characters, and ones a future wearer could also hold.”

For Lopez and A--Company, fashion design is not just about the production and selling of clothing, it is a process, a relationship between artist and inspiration, audience and ideology. And as Antigone will continue to be retold and restructured, Lopez will continue to create and re-create, think and rethink. 

Read Our Interview Of Artist & Curator Mieke Marple On Bridging the Digital & Traditional Worlds of Art →

Alida Sun, Southern Gothic Love Letters to My NSA Agent, 2023, courtesy of the artist, bitforms gallery, and PR for Artists. Image by Joshua White

NFT Tuesday LA co-founder and former Night Gallery co-owner, Mieke Marple is a Los Angeles-based artist and writer determined to navigate what she calls the “insurmountable chasm” between the physical and digital art worlds. 

In her passionate mission to reconcile both the analog and the digital, Mieke has recently curated an impressive exhibition titled Interreality, showcasing 35 artists from the pioneering digital space mixed in with traditional established artists. Produced by Steve Sacks, founder of bitforms gallery and Aubrie Wienholt, founder of PR for Artists, Interreality is simply a tour de force. 

A kindred spirit and peer curator, I was thrilled to interview Mieke to speak about the exhibition as we tackled notions of provenance, embodied experiences, collecting art and feminism. Read more.

Curt LeMieux "Heroes" @ White Box LA

 
 

WhiteBox.LA, renowned photographer Joshua White’s curatorial project, presents its second exhibition, Curt LeMieux: HEROES at The Desmond Tower from November 18 through November 30, 2023. A group of minimal, puerile paintings of classic LP albums, including the iconic album cover art from artists ranging from Dusty Springfield to Frank Sinatra, Patti Smith, The Rolling Stones, and Black Sabbath.

The works speak of LeMieux’s adolescent obsession with Rock & Roll imagery and his own teenage sexuality as he came of age on the outskirts of the rust belt on the late 70’s “Growing up working class on the outskirts the rustbelt, I had no access whatsoever to fine art. I had no idea that art existed. Nor did I relate much to regional expressions of culture. Large Green Bay Packer themed snow men littered every other yard. I first saw the cover of Meatloaf’s Bat Outta Hell while in a waiting room at Saint Luke’s Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. I remember the experience with vivid detail. As a bored and impetuous child, this artwork excited me to my core. It was pop of color in an overwhelmingly drab setting. It was life and it was death stuffed together in one horrible little scene. It was dramatic and forceful. The paintings in Heroes paintings pay homage to the role music played in my development as a visual artist. I do not want to capture an exact likeness of a given album cover or a given artist. The forms are deliberately exaggerated. The characters are somewhat gawky and jovial; reflecting the ostentatious and campy attributes of the source material,” says LeMieux.

The exhibition incorporates live music, with a performance by Randy Randall of No Age Mark at the opening event on November 18 and a closing event featuring musician Ian Svenonius in conversation with LeMieux.

Allison Katz Creates a Cosmos of Disparate Images in Westward Ho! @ Hauser & Wirth

 

Allison Katz, Truth, 2023.

 

In ‘Westward Ho!’ Allison Katz creates a cosmos by overlapping disparate images and narratives from visual culture, her own past, and the coincidences that gather around her. The title firmly locates us, with tongue-in-cheek undertones, inside Hauser & Wirth in West Hollywood, California. It was Katz’s specific request to exhibit here, in a desire to engage with its associated cultural mythologies: ‘Hollywood is a big picture and I should like to know what it means to walk the walk, or drive the drive, of the Pacific coast, with its last–resort, up to the edge, atomized light...if this is the birthplace of the silver screen, then it’s a chance to test out painting’s irrefutable material and impure surface, its porous consciousness...’ The title blends historical and literary allusions, tracing back originally to the calls made by Elizabethan ferryman as they navigated the River Thames in search of passengers. As Katz writes: ‘I’m using Westward Ho! as a call out, a whoop of exuberance, a question hollered across time and tradition to see who and what answers, as if to test the idea that painting is a conversation.’

 

Allison Katz, Sheepish, 2023.

 

Throughout the exhibition Katz deploys a constantly evolving set of techniques and source materials. Echoes, rhymes and serendipities erupt; meaning is reordered and unexpected genealogies converge. ‘West’ is the neighborhood in which the gallery is located, the direction Katz’s apartment faces in London, a catch-all term for a geopolitical system in the midst of being challenged, and an alias for the pastoral patch of English countryside where she worked in residence (the West Country). While preparing for the exhibition she also visited the ruins of Pompeii (in the context of the institutional program Pompeii Commitment), where the discovery of wall paintings buried under ash continues to play a central role in the origin story of Western figuration.

Allison Katz, Sleeping and Weeping in the Fourth Style, 2023.

Westward Ho! is on view through January 5 @ Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood, 8980 Santa Monica Boulevard West Hollywood CA 90069

Michelle Yeoh Named As New Balenciaga Brand Ambassador

 
 

Launching November 9th, 2023, Balenciaga’s Spring 24 campaign of photographs expands upon the collection’s digital presentation, showing scenes from a chic Parisian apartment.

Newly named Balenciaga ambassador Michelle Yeoh stars in the campaign, alongside brand ambassador PP Krit Amnuaydechkorn and friends of the House Malgosia Bela, Arthur Del Beato, Eva Herzigova, Soo Joo Park, and Khadim Sock. They wear looks from Spring 24 with the season's iconic bags: Le Cagole Sling, 24/7, Monaco, Crush, and Crush Sling.

Michelle Yeoh, whose career spans four decades, is credited with perfecting many genres of roles, from action heroine to dramatic lead. Since her start as an actress in the 1980s, Michelle has become ever more celebrated and influential in multiple domains. In 2023, she made several barrier-breaking achievements, including winning a Golden Globe, a SAG Award, and an Oscar—making her the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Actress and the first to win in the leading acting category.

 
 

Read Our Interview of Katharina Kaminski and Hanne Gaby Odiele on Queerness and Fertility →

The iconography of fertility holds a timeless power over us. Our paleolithic Venuses defined this obsession, encapsulating fertility as a powerful force of creation, rooted in the divine feminine while remaining paradoxically universal. Intersex artist Katharina Kaminski expands upon this understanding in her new show, Womb, which embraces our individual potentials for transformation and innovation while interrogating our gendered ideas about fertility. As we find ourselves in the throes of a gender revolution, Kaminski reckons with the intersection of gender and creation in her abstractions of the womb: soft vessels fill the Sainte Anne Gallery, distilling the Venus to its core sense of creation and transformation. In recognition of National Intersex Awareness Day, Katharina comes together with intersex model and activist Hanne Gaby Odiele to discuss creating while Queer, finding community, and claiming ownership of the self in the wake of bodily alienation. Read more.

Vincent Ferrané Inverts the Intimate Solitude of the Bed in Embedded @ La Cité Gallery in Paris

 
 

In the series Embedded, presented by photographer Vincent Ferrané realized in collaboration with performer Pauline Lavogez, the confined space of a bed transforms into the profoundly minimalist stage of a performative expression, an "embodied experience." The project is a mosaic of images that relies on a unique space-time of experimentation, intertwining photographic and choreographic ideas much like on an editing table.

Derived from ordinary situations inherent to this intimate and universalizing playground haunted by our fantasies, fears, or passions, the created images offer enigmatic representations in seclusion: ethereal presences, bodies, and suspended faces seize hold of this original setting and transform it into a microcosm, a topography. A mattress-crater hollowed by a fist, clothes resembling geological folds, an improvised refuge beneath the sheets, and ghostly silhouettes come together to give shape to a bed-landscape.

Drawing its name from the words "bed" and "embedded," which in our media-driven age convey the idea of incorporation and embodiment, the series Embedded explores, within the perfect rectangle of the bed, the place of the body, both social and metaphorical. Between pose and pause, the series Embedded draws from the attributes of live performance to script a mosaic of black and white still images, framing the gaze on fragments of bodies, faded, trapped in the penumbra.

Vincent Ferrané
Embedded (2023)
Photograph
Courtesy of the artist

Embedded is on view November 9th through November 16th at La Cité Gallery, 71 rue Réaumur 75002, Paris.