Devon Dejardin's Pareidolia Is A Reflection of Your Inner Psyche @ Carl Kostyál in Stockholm

 
 

Devon Dejardin’s new solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures takes its name from the strange and universal phenomenon wherein we see faces in abstract imagery. In a broader sense, pareidolia is the perception of scrutable objects in any kind of nebulous stimulus. We see animals in cloud formations and hear voices in white noise. From Rorschach’s inkblot tests, to hidden messages in a record played backwards, to Jesus Christ on a piece of toast, there are endless examples of our unconscious tendency to discern meaning and order in the face of chaos. For Dejardin, these works are guardians. They draw together elements of various faiths and belief systems. What you see when you look at any of these pieces may differ depending on your own belief systems, your relationship to art history, the conversation you were just having, and your emotional wellbeing. You might find that when you step away and come back to any given work that you can’t remember if you’ve seen it before or if you’re in fact looking at a new painting. Layer by layer, the works reflect aspects of our inner psyche back at us, like mirrored building blocks that reveal the ever shifting unconscious mind as it wanders around in real time.

Pareidolia is on view through July 21st @ Carl Kostyál Hospitalet, Sjökvarnsbacken 15, 131 71 Nacka, Stockholm

Autre Magazine LEVITY ISSUE Celebration At The Historic Arzner-Morgan Residence in Los Angeles

On Saturday June 8th, Autre Magazine celebrated its Spring/Summer 2024 Levity Issue at the historic Arzner-Morgan Residence in Los Angeles, now the West Coast outpost of Half Gallery, helmed by author and art dealer Bill Powers. With a crystal clear view of Los Angeles, the Greek-Revival home built for one of Hollywood’s first openly queer filmmakers in 1930, welcomed an intimate, personally invited guest list. Cocktails were provided by Legende Rakija in partnership with Casamara Club. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Read Our Interview of Musician Babymorocco

 
 


interview by Abe Chabon
photography by Iris Luz and Erika Kamano

Babymorocco loves beautiful women, cheap purple vodka, Gwen Stefani, and bodybuilding. He hates irony, uninspired people, and boring nights. The London-based recording artist has burst drunk, buff, and confidently into the music scene in the past two years with a distinct sound and an entirely original look. He sings about sex, partying, girls, and his ego over bubbling synths, Drum and Bass hi-hats, pounding 808s, and floating basslines. His subject matter is cheap, trashy, and vain, but it has an authenticity and humor that balance his narcissism with charm. ‘Rocco’ doesn't want you to take him too seriously; his aesthetic reflects that. Babymorocco looks like he belongs just as much on stage in a London warehouse as he does in a strongman porno mag. He makes it hard to tell the two apart. If you've seen Babymorocco live, you've probably seen him with his pants off. Sex appeal has always been important to male musicians, Jim Morrison had his long hair and bursting leather pants, Elvis wore unzipped bedazzled jumpsuits, Babymorocco has short shorts, tight T-shirts, and bulging biceps. He’s like a pitbull on a bender. He took a break from recording his upcoming project in the studio to talk. Read more.

Source: https://autre.love/interviewsmain/2024/6/7...

Read A Conversation Between Artists Darius Airo and Jon Pylypchuk on the Occasion of Airo's Solo Exhibition →

 
 

Between the minutia and the mirage of our fragmented contemporary existence, artists Darius Airo and Jon Plypchuk both create work imbued with a humorous and ironic darkness masked by playfulness. An inside joke, a half forgotten dream, a song lyric, abstracted figures caught between the waveforms of television static or the rain-drenched glass of a car windshield—our brains continually try to make sense of the world like an undecoded cypher. In Airo’s recent paintings and pastels, presented in the exhibition Mickey’s Mirror (opening May 25 at Abigail Ogilvy gallery in Los Angeles, curated by Josh White—whitebox.la), making sense of the world requires clever conceptual conceit of internal mirrors and the abstracted visages of iconic cartoon characters. In the following conversation, Airo and Plypchuk discuss how the world around them is absorbed into their work. Read more.

MSCHF Presents Art 2 @ Perrotin in Los Angeles

MSCHF presents Art 2, their latest exhibition and second solo show with Perrotin, which is being featured at their Los Angeles location. A compilation of some of their most prominent works, what stands most strikingly at the center of the gallery is the 2004 PT Cruiser which made its way across the United States. An understandable $19.99 could earn the average citizen rights to the car’s keys, prompting an all-american car chase which found its end in Truckee, California. MSCHF’s notorious, oversized shoes make a recurring appearance throughout the exhibition, which the product’s founders claim to “haunt the gallery.”

An Ikea-esque contraption stands assumingly amidst the chaos–it’s a sink made from standard hardware. One of the sink pieces was installed in the bathroom of the MET in New York City–so, MSCHF now has a permanent installation in one of the most renowned museums in the world. Lining one of the gallery walls are 249 copies of Picasso’s infamous La Poisson, which is a small wooden sculpture of a fish. The original stands among them, but the viewer may never know which one really laid in the hands of the great Spanish painter. Regardless, buyers receive an official bidding certificate which directly replicates the one MSCHF founders received when they successfully bid for the wooden object at a Christie’s auction. There’s no need to sue for copyright infringement. Near the entrance of the gallery is a Botero–once a portrait of a jarringly corpulent businessman has been visibly edited into a skinnier version. MSCHF retitled the work Ozempic (Botched Fumador de Cigarillos). 

Art 2 is on view through June 1 @ Perrotin, 5036 West Pico Boulevard Los Angeles

Bitter & Sweet by Emi Iguchi & Camille Ange Pailler

 

Sia Arnika velvet dress
Untitled Lab x Sia Arnika leather boots
Von Dutch cap
Wolford leopard tights

 

photography by Emi Iguchi
styling by Camille Ange Pailler
hair and makeup by Janette Peters
casting direction by Ananya Nisbet
model Lilja Drab via @elf_mgmt
photo assistance by Heinrich Wrede
styling assistance by Nadine Sham 

Katharina Dubrick knit wool top and mittens
Lina Nix skirt

Sia Arnika jumpsuit
Olivia Ballard bomber jacket
Lina Nix tutu skirt

 
 

Von Dutch cap
Sia Arnika velvet dress

Celine denim hooded jacket and shorts
Our Legacy t-shirt
Sia Arnika x Untitled Lab leather boots
Wolford leopard tights

 

Malene Specht jacket
Celine short

Celine short
Wolford leopard tights

 

Olivia Ballard bomber jacket

Sia Arnika jumpsuit
Olivia Ballard bomber jacket
Lina Nix tutu skirt

 
 

Valentino dress and sandals

Malene Specht jacket
Celine short
Sia Arnika x Untitled Lab leather boots

 
 

Cissel Dubrick shirt
Olivia Ballard shirt

Valentino dress

 
 

Cissel Dubrick shirt
Olivia Ballard shirt

 
 
 

Watch Celine 22 "Symphonie Fantastique" Featuring Their Winter 24 Men's Collection

In 1969, Leonard Bernstein described the "Symphonie Fantastique" as the first psychedelic symphony ever composed, and more than 100 years before the dawn of the movement in the late 1960s.

"...those sounds you're hearing come from the first psychedelic symphony in history, the first musical description ever made of a trip, written one hundred thirty odd years before the Beatles, way back in 1830 by the brilliant french composer Hector Berlioz. He called it "Symphonie Fantastique," or "Fantastic," and fantastic it is, in every sense of the word, including psychedelic."

Hedi Slimane discovered the "Symphonie Fantastique" at the age of 11 and became passionate about the romantic musical piece by the young Berlioz. Hector Berlioz was only 26 years old when he was in an obsessive relationship with English actress Harriet Smithson, which led him to compose the "Symphonie Fantastique" on December 5th 1830 in Paris.

Directed by Hedi Slimane

© hedi slimane photography and film

The "Symphonie fantastique" collection was filmed between January and February in the Mojave desert and Los Angeles.

Makeup artist: Aaron de Mey
Hair stylist: Esther Langham
Hair colorist: Alex Brownsel

SPY Projects Presents Unrequited Group Show: An Eternally Recontextualized Assemblage of Works @ the Former Brooke Alexander Gallery in New York

Pietro Alexander’s SPY Projects, a Los Angeles-based gallery that has developed a reputation for recognizing young, emerging talent both local and international since its inception in 2021 hosts their Unrequited group show at 59 Wooster Street. Not just another SoHo loft, the building—the very floor, in fact, once housed the Brooke Alexander Gallery, which opened its first exhibition in the space nearly forty years ago and worked with a number of artists who have gone on to become legends, influencing the art scene in New York and beyond. It’s a natural meeting place between East and West coasts, and a fitting home for SPY Projects’ New York debut, since the eponymous gallerist Brooke Alexander’s brother was the artist Peter Alexander, a pioneering figure of the Light and Space movement in California.

As much as we should know what an artwork is—what’s placed in front of us, contained within a frame, defined by a title and tombstone—there’s always something that seems to escape, an uncontrollable excess of meaning beyond what anyone, even the artist could predict. Because ultimately, the substance of it all is continually created anew and brought into being through every encounter between the viewer and the work itself. As a result, even the most rigorous or tightly structured artwork remains porous and in flux, incorporating shifting social contexts, feelings, and personal histories.

So, if it can’t be controlled, why fight it? Curator Sara Apple encourages you to let go of the Sisyphean struggle to reconcile vision and meaning with the murky, malleable world. The exhibition is not an endpoint, the final realization of a concept, but an embarkation, an embrace of the unrequited to welcome the larger possibilities of experience. This extends from the artists—selected less because they fit an aesthetic mold or illustrate a particular idea, but out of organic connections—to the structure of the show itself, which hosts events and performances throughout its duration. By opening up the exhibition while supporting its full potential, all these disparate strands can be brought together, encouraged to develop into the unknown and unexpected, and become something more in the process.

Unrequited includes works by Peter Alexander, Malik Al Maliki, Katherine Auchterlonie, Stefan Bondell, Cristine Brache, Sasha Filimonov, Chris Lloyd, Kay Kasparhauser, Alison Peery, Raymond Pettibon, and Montana Simone. The show is on view through May 31 @ 59 Wooster Street, New York

 
 

Andrés Anza Chosen As Winner of the 2024 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize

 
 

Awarded for his work “I only know what I have seen,” 2023. Andrés Anza was chosen from thirty finalists by a distinguished jury composed of leading figures from the worlds of design, architecture, journalism, criticism, and museum curatorship, including Magdalene Odundo, Minsuk Cho, Olivier Gabet and Abraham Thomas.

This year’s edition of the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft prize presents a selection of works that feature organic and biomorphic forms that push materials to their physical limits. Many of the works repurpose found or recycled materials and there is a focus on the elevation and transformation of the everyday. All thirty of the shortlisted works will be exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris from May 15th through June 9th. The exhibition will also be available to view online and documented through an exhibition catalogue.

Andrés’ life-size ceramic sculpture has an arresting and almost human presence in the exhibition. Its anthropomorphic form – allowing it to seem at once figurative and abstract – is intricately constructed using thousands of individual ceramic protrusions. These tiny spikes make up five puzzle pieces, which have been assembled with an almost architectural intention and precision.

The jury observed that this work defies time and cultural context, drawing upon ancient, archaeological forms but also tracing a post-digital aesthetic that sees ceramics absorbing the most defining influences of our time.

Tits Up: Read An Interview of Author Sarah Thornton On Her Latest Release →

Annie Sprinkle "Bosom Ballet" 1990-91, courtesy the artist

From the auction house to the titty bar, the art fair to the witches’ retreat, Sarah Thornton has moved her ethnographic eye from the art world to the titty world—and we are all better for it. Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts explores what breasts mean to five different breast-experts. The result is an ambitious collage of uplifting sagas (also the original name for Thornton’s book before the publisher asked her to change it). Thornton and I met over Zoom to talk about some of these lived experiences, particularly her own—everything from what inspired her to write the book in the first place to how writing it changed her relationship to her own body. Read more.

Read an Interview of Cammie Staros on the Occasion of Her Exhibition @ SCAD Museum of Art →

Image courtesy of the artist and SCAD.

Cammie Staros’ Sunken City featured at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art through June 24 reinvents our relationships to the traditional historical narrative. Referencing antiquities against the expansiveness of time, Staros positions iconic relics as vessels with which to unite history and the present moment. Her aquarium virtines, which house seemingly anthropomorphic vases, are manifested as self-sustaining biomes aptly referencing the nuances of the lifetime. Staros’ exhibition uniquely encapsulates the passage of time, while simultaneously illuminating the role of the object in the context of human systems. Her modernization, yet simultaneous preservation, of the iconic relic speaks to the primal instinctual basis of a commodity-driven culture and the modern conceptualization of value. Read more.

Sunken City is organized by SCAD Museum of Art curator Ben Tollefson and presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2024.

Human Intuition and Artificial Intelligence Collide in Sparks @ Future Gallery in Berlin

Sparks, a group exhibition featuring works by Rush Baker IV, Kévin Bray, Amalie Jakobsen, Chanel Khoury, Anselm Reyle, Vickie Vainionpää, and Jack Warne, delves into emergent artistic processes, from Augmented Reality to collaborative AI and simulated asteroid mining. It offers insights into the diverse and imaginative techniques these artists employ, such as Bray’s collaboration with AI to meld countless versions of his original hand-drawn sketches processed by a generative engine, and Vainionpää’s use of code in her oil paintings as a medium to create infinite relationships between diameter, curve, and entanglement. Reyle’s works are characterized by the use of various found objects that have been removed from their original function, altered visually, and recontextualized. Remnants of consumer society, discarded materials, symbols of urbanity, and industrial change play a central role in his oeuvre.

Sparks is on view through June 1st at Future Gallery, Schöneberger Ufer 59, 10785 Berlin.

John Valadez Extends the Chicano Arts Movement in Chaos Anime @ Luis de Jesus Los Angeles

ocean scene John Valadez chaos beach

John Valadez, Chaos, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

A trailblazer of the early Chicano Arts Movement in the 1970s and 80s, John Valadez’s work has come to define an iconography of Chicano experience in the city by catalyzing its changing dynamics and reconstructing a mythical allegory that speaks to an alternate vision. Through a multidisciplinary practice spanning 45 years, and encompassing documentary photography and portraiture, public murals, paintings, and pastel works, Valadez has cultivated a style that transcends genre designations. Never settling into one box, his work evokes a fluidity between multiple cultures and visual lexicons, effectively mirroring the unsettled experience of the Chicano identity. Valadez continues to pursue politically engaged work—a persistent voice championing generations of Chicano and Latinx communities.

John Valadez: Chaos Anime presents new paintings that address the shifting global dynamics and social climates facing new generations of Chicanos today, alongside recent works that revisit earlier themes. Together, the works exhibit the breadth of the artist’s social commentaries and further contextualize his lauded approach to painting. Drawing from current events, cultural histories, city life, and such experiences filtered through lucid dreaming, Valadez implements realism, mannerism, abstraction, and montage as a vehicle for allegory and satire to ignite a myriad of socio-political conversations. Themes of invisible borders, sublime skies, tempestuous seas, and juxtapositions between reality, dreams, and the natural world versus the consequences of human interferences, are but some of the constants throughout the trove of Valadez’s urban proverbs. A pivotal moment in Valadez’s new body of work is his extension of Chicano Movement principles, speaking to global matters of displacement, gentrification, economic disparities, famine, the environment, and geopolitics.

Chaos Anime is on view through June 8 @ Luis de Jesus Los Angeles, 1110 Mateo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021

 
women at the beach John Valadez

John Valadez, Piernas Anime, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

 

Two Men Sitting: Read Our Interview of Photographer & Curator Job Piston →

Two Men Sitting, Delfi, 30 x 40 in, lustre print, 2024. 1 AP, Ed. of 3 (option 17 x 22 in, metallic lustre print)

Muna Malik and Job Piston arrive on a Greek island sprinkled with sunflowers, daisies, and the sight of a tossed olive oil can. The two artists are gazing upon the Aegean Sea stretching out in front of them. They are in Hydra on a bench in the shadow of the Deste Project Space, not far from where they met for the first time to participate in the art and curatorial residency with ARC Athens. An oversized wind spinner with the melancholic face of the Greek god Apollo by Jeff Koons peers down over them. Apollo is often associated with sun and light, representing the illuminations of truth and knowledge. It is a fitting setting for a conversation around photography and metamorphosis, as they discuss the artist and curator Job Piston’s latest Los Angeles solo project Estate Sale. Read more.

Find Infinitude in Callum Innes' Turn @ Sean Kelly in Los Angeles

Installation view of Callum Innes: Turn at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, March 16 – May 4, 2024, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly New York/Los Angeles

Callum Innes’ Turn at Sean Kelly in Los Angeles is an escapade into the shape. The exhibition features his latest Tondo works, alongside his Exposed Paintings, Split Paintings, and Shellac Paintings. Innes utilization of shape and color seeks to reinvent itself repeatedly. There’s a sense of playfulness with how the traditional shape can be rendered, and how the manipulation of color can transform the space within a shape. This transformation of space is what makes Innes’ work so iconic; the hardness of his rectangular and circular figures are almost intimidating. There’s a sense of intense certainty around Innes’ work: square, circle, rectangle, line. The infinite history of these figures is perhaps what makes them so sturdy in their presence; they stand in themselves like sargeants in command. There’s something calming about this sense of complete certainty; the deliberate alteration of the traditional shape is uniform, mechanical, and familiar. The occupation of space within the shape itself is what forces Innes’ work outside the confines of all that we know to be the average circular or rectangular formation. The geometric display is pervaded with different intonations of pigment, while still steadfastly holding onto the robust structure that is quintessential of Innes’ work. 

Installation view of Callum Innes: Turn at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, March 16 – May 4, 2024, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly New York/Los Angeles

His latest exploration of the Tondo simultaneously catalyzed an experimentation with materiality. For this series of work, Innes’ circular figures are made of plywood panels. The sleekness of the surface invited a new methodology involving the application of color. This embrace of movement in process further enunciates the notion of time in Innes’ work. The infinitude of the shape is subliminally apparent; we are conscious of the fact that the standard shape is something that has always existed and will always exist. The notion of time becomes further warped across materiality, where the time spent making these forms varies and is dependent upon the surface of the work. 

Turn becomes incredibly nuanced when it’s embedded within the context of time and shape. The rotation of a circular form is ubiquitous in its implementation. To turn is to move, and to simultaneously occupy time. Innes directly engages with the advent of motion, but does so in a way that is entirely unchaotic. The structure that he gives time can be comforting, but it’s more so reflective. The sturdiness with which Innes presents abstract concepts lies at the heart of this ability for reflection; the idea of turning becomes inseparable from the idea of shape. To turn becomes reminiscent of both the infinite and finite. The end of the turn finds itself at the end of the circle, which doesn’t exist.

Installation view of Callum Innes: Turn at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, March 16 – May 4, 2024, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly New York/Los Angeles

Turn is on view through May 4 @ Sean Kelly, 1357 N Highland Avenue Los Angeles CA

A Look Inside Cartier's Newly Designed Boutique In South Coast Plaza Inspired By The Environs Of Southern California

Cartier announces the recently completed renovation and expansion of its newly-designed Costa Mesa boutique, with the creative direction led by Moinard Betaille agency, who drew inspiration from Orange County’s diverse landscape—from its local vegetation to the shimmering waters at Laguna and Newport Beaches, and from the nearby Mojave Desert’s sweeping sand dunes to the cracked earth at Joshua Tree. The boutique’s overall design pairs modern shapes with the Maison’s timeless design codes and a touch of whimsical details. A Livatz glass canopy light inspired by the region’s ubiquitous skateparks adds a playful touch to the accessories and care service areas, while custom-designed chandeliers in the shape of dahlias—a symbol of eternal love—decorate the bridal area’s ceiling. The bridal area is also home to a lacquer and mother-of-pearl panel by Atelier Midavaine, depicting inspired by a High Jewelry brooch in the shape of an orchid native to Southern California. Visitors approaching the boutique will notice the unique three-dimensional façade, the first of its kind for the Maison in North America. Handcrafted in aqua resin with plaster details, it is intended to evoke a soft sea breeze wafting through the window, gathering the curtains in gentle pleats. Upon entry, guests are met with Cartier novelties set against a large panel depicting a panther by François Mascarello, fashioned in wood, straw, and mother-of-pearl marquetry. Local flora can be found throughout the boutique, including the handcrafted staff columns inspired by palm trees and the hand-painted Moss + Lam mural depicting a hyperreal portrait of local vegetation in dusty desert tones. The new boutique will be open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 am – 8:00 pm, and will offer a full range of creations, including jewelry, fine jewelry, watches, leather goods, fragrance, and Art of Living, in addition to other special collections. 3333 Bristol Street in the renowned South Coast Plaza shopping center.

Celine Announces New Fragrance Zouzou With Campaign Featuring Esther-Rose McGregor

Zouzou is the new opus in the Celine Haute Parfumerie collection initiated in 2019. It comes to join the eleven perfumes conceived by Hedi Slimane for the launch of the line. all of them are in keeping with the tradition of the "couturier parfumeur" and recapture the excellence of french haute parfumerie. the collection is comprised of twelve creations to date. With Zouzou finding its place in the day collection.

Alina Perkins Eternalizes the Ephemeral in La Fiaca @ Fernberger

Alina Perkins, La Fiaca, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and Fernberger.

Fernberger is currently presenting La Fiaca, a solo exhibition of recent paintings and a new installation by the multidisciplinary artist Alina Perkins. In her native Argentina, la fiaca is a term used to describe a blissful, nourishing idleness—an introspective pace and productive space that she embraces to pursue intellectual meditation and creative invention. Her resulting artworks are portals into alternate, though familiar, realities—resisting the literal and functional, welcoming the surreal and sensorial.

She layers her canvases with blurred, chalky brushstrokes in verdant shades of red, orange, green, and yellow, and dusty tones of purple, blue, ivory, and slate. Each painting portrays an ambiguous object, scene, or vista: an egg seated on a plush cushion, a knife pierced into a lush field, a book open to a blank page.

La Fiaca is on view through May 11 @ Fernberger, 747 N Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029

Mercedes-Benz Premieres the All-New Electric G-Class In Los Angeles

Last night in Los Angeles, the all-new G-Class was released with a star-studded world premiere with a surprise performance by Travis Scott. Few other vehicles have influenced pop culture like the Mercedes-Benz G-Class with its instantly recognized silhouette. First launched 45 years ago, the G-Class, which takes its name from Geländewagen meaning off-road vehicle, formed its worldwide reputation as a sought-after brand icon. With its long-lasting durability, 80 percent of all G-Class’ ever built remain in use on or off–road. Learn more here.