Posts from the “Art” Category

Alex Prager: Play The Wind

Posted on September 10, 2019

Big West, 2019. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul

Alex Prager’s lifelong love affair with Los Angeles has informed the creation of her art since the beginning of her career, when she went around the city with a camera and a friend making photographs guerilla-style – no permits and all heart.

The city as muse is an archetype that runs throughout art history, from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris to Keith Haring’s New York City, providing a setting just as alive as its inhabitants. It is a sensation evident in every breath of Play The Wind, Prager’s new exhibition of film, photography, and sculpture.

“This is the most autobiographical work I have ever done,” Prager says, a statement that reveals itself figuratively and literally throughout the show. Upon entering the gallery, you are greeted by the figure of ‘Big West’, a towering sculpture of a woman decked out in her freshest Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, whose message is simply: ‘Welcome Home’.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Play the Wind Film Still #2, 2019. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul

Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Illicit Histories: James Bidgood

Posted on September 5, 2019

Tales from another time… In a new series, titled Illicit Histories, Miss Rosen tells the stories of queer art’s pioneers, unpacking the lives and work of people who revolutionised gay erotic imagery – often in defiance of censorship laws.

Born during the worst of the Great Depression in 1933, American artist James Bidgood displayed his love for glamour, fantasy and spectacle from a young age. “He begged his mother to buy him a paper doll set,” says Lissa Rivera, curator of James Bidgood: Reveries, now on view at the Museum of Sex in New York. “Despite the restraints on their financial situation, his mother bought one for him. Using his imagination, he turned an old cereal box into a technicolour masterpiece befitting a Busby Berkeley musical for the dolls.”

Now 86, Bidgood has forged a singular path throughout his life as a female impersonator, window dresser, fashion, costume, and graphic designer, photographer, stylist, and filmmaker. This remarkable career began when the young man from Wisconsin moved to New York in 1951 at the tender age of 18.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, AnOther Man, Art, Photography

Andrew Kung: The All-American

Posted on September 3, 2019

Austin © Andrew Kung, styling by Carolyn Son

Lim © Andrew Kung, styling by Carolyn Son

The “American Dream” is a myth packaged, peddled, and sold to those who prefer appearance to truth. Scratch the surface of the fantasy, and the horrors of systemic oppression emerge. No one is truly safe from the nightmare, despite how much they may choose to assimilate into a culture that is not their own. In the words of African-American writer and activist Audre Lorde: “Your silence will not protect you.”

First-generation Chinese-American photographer Andrew Kung is speaking out with The All-American, a limited edition book that features portraits, made in NYC and LA in 2018 and 2019, of his friends, like Alexander Hodge from HBO’s Insecure, wearing clothing made exclusively Asian fashion brands like sundae school, Prabal Gurung, PRIVATE POLICY.

“When you think about an ‘All-American,’ you think about a prototypical white man who is an attractive, built, outspoken, confident man who plays sports and is admired by all women – the model American citizen representing what ‘success’ looks like,” Kung tells Dazed.

“Asian-American men, on the other hand, have always been classified as ‘other’ – desexualised, emasculated, perceived as passive or weak, and most of all, invisible. No matter how hard we try to fit in, we are never ‘American’ enough — reinforced with questions and statements from everyday people like ‘Where are you really from?’ ‘Your English is actually really good,’ and, “You’re really good looking for an Asian guy.’”

Kung has had enough. Inspired by photographers like Larry Sultan, Kung began to create narrative images exploring universal themes of the human condition. He added a fashion component to the project as a reminder of how rare it is to see Asian-American men modelling ideals of beauty and style in our image-driven world. Here, Kung reflects on the importance of controlling the narrative to create images the offer a new space for exploration of Asian-American identity today.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Kris © Andrew Kung, styling by Carolyn Son

Categories: Art, Books, Dazed, Fashion, Photography

Shikeith: Rude / Emergencies

Posted on September 3, 2019

Shikeith, Rude/Emergencies Image courtesy of Shikeith and ltd Los Angeles

Like Gordon Parks before him, African-American artist Shikeith has chosen the camera as his weapon of choice, taking aim at the historic depictions that have altered minds and souls for generations through a campaign that has simultaneously denied, exploited, criminalised, fetishised, and appropriated black manhood and desire.

Hailing from North Philadelphia, Shikeith understands the remedy lies in the power of imagination to queer the image of black masculinity, reclaiming ownership of the narrative and its representation while making it illegible so that it cannot be easily read and consumed by the insatiable appetite of western hegemony. Using photography, video, and sculpture, Shikeith is creating a new visual lexicon that at once reveals as much as it hides, provoking a profound emotional response that is almost ineffable while it sits right on the tip of the tongue.

In the new exhibition Rude / Emergencies, opening 14 September at ltdlosangeles, Shikeith takes us to the very edge by transgressing boundaries in search of a deeper truth that lies beyond the false images imposed on black boys from the very day they are born. His is a desire that transcends the body in which it lives, yet fully embodies the vessel as a portal between realms. Here, Shikeith shares his journey, embracing his own tongue to reconcile being a black man in America to move forward in the world.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Shikeith, Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops. Image courtesy of Shikeith and ltd Los Angeles

Categories: Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Photography

Out of the Shadows — Marcus Leatherdale: Photographs New York City 1980-1992

Posted on August 29, 2019

Marcus Leatherdale. Larissa, Issey Miyake, 1983.

Hailing from Montreal, photographer Marcus Leatherdale remembers paging through Interview magazine and coming upon a photograph that spoke to his soul. “The picture of Edwige with blonde hair sitting on a couch was the epitome of where and what I wanted to be and do in New York,” he says.

In spring 1978, Leatherdale, then 25 years old, finally arrived in New York after completing his photographic training at the San Francisco Art Institute. Though SFAI didn’t focus on studio photography at the time, the young punk was determined to pursue his dream, beginning his practice by placing people in front of walls to simulate a controlled environment.

“I didn’t realize I was archiving an era that was going to be extinct; I was just photographing my friends,” Leatherdale says, reflecting on the release of his magnificent monograph, Out of the Shadows—Marcus Leatherdale: Photographs New York City 1980-1992. Leatherdale’s timeless black and white portraits of icons including Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Madonna, Iman, Suzanne Bartsch, Debbie Harry, Joey Arias, and Kathy Acker offer an elegiac epitaph to Downtown at its height.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Marcus Leatherdale. Tina Chow, Issey Miyake, 1983.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Manhattan, Photography

Tanya Marcuse: Fruitless|Fallen|Woven

Posted on August 29, 2019

© Tanya Marcuse, courtesy of Radius Books. Conceptual catalogue of fruit trees photographed over a 4 year period in the Hudson Valley, NY by artist, Tanya Marcuse. Many of the trees grow on land that is for sale and in danger of development.

Nature is our greatest teacher, providing ample evidence of the wisdom of the earth, the cycles of life and death ever flowing from one into the next. It is here in nature that we learn the truth: the beauty and power of the sublime, the ineffable, unspeakable grandeur that existence inspires.

But with the words written in Genesis 1:26, the world has lost its way, for the very idea that we have dominion over what does not belong to us is a sin of the worst kind. We are stewards and our role is to preserve and conserve so that nature continues to provide abundance, rather than wipe us off the earth as payback for the abuses of greed, gluttony, wrath, sloth and pride that have wrought the horrors of climate change to our doorstep.

The further we remove ourselves from nature, stashed indoors and stuck behind screens, in a state of constant consumption, always needing more and never satisfied, the more perilous the payback will be, according to Newton’s Third Law: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Yet it is entirely too easy to forget, to lose ourselves in the conveniences and conventions of the postmodern world, to presume that there are no consequences for our choices just because we cannot see them yet. We can rationalize the irrational until such a day the center can no longer hold, and the weight of our delusions shall break the dam, a deluge of glacial proportions.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park

Posted on August 22, 2019

Under the cover of darkness, Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki crept through Tokyo’s Shinjuku, Yoyogi, and Aoyama Parks during the 1970s, in search of an illicit world known to a select few. Moving like a hunter on the prowl, Yoshiyuki used infrared film and flash to capture public displays of sex between heterosexual and homosexual couples—and, perhaps more shockingly, the voyeurs who gathered to watch.

“One day I stumbled on the scene—and [an] incredible scene [Laughs]. That was when I was still an amateur,” Yoshiyuki tells Nobouyoshi Araki in a conversation titled “Tiptoeing into the Darkness…With Love,” featured in the new book Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park.

“I was shocked. They were actually fucking,” Yoshiyuki says. “When I saw them I knew this was something I had to photograph.”

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Document Journal, Japan, Photography

Mike Osborne: Federal Triangle

Posted on August 22, 2019

Many Americans profess surprise at the inhumane social practices coming from the present White House. Perhaps they are comforted that they once had the luxury to have never been concerned about the forces of the military and prison industrial complexes weighted against foreign lands and U.S. citizens alike.

Perhaps the carnage of AIDS never touched their families. Perhaps they were never the victim of land grabs, medical experimentation, or any number of the genocidal acts waged by this nation that are documented in the annals of history and the on-going subject of current events.

“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them,” poet Charles Bukowski opined, summing up the new wave of “Not my country!” that greets those who have chosen denial over truth up until it finally affected them.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Vivian Maier: The Color Photographs

Posted on August 22, 2019

Chicago, April 1977 © Estate of Vivian Maier, Courtesy Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York © Vivian Maier

Self-Portrait, Chicagoland, October 1975 © Estate of Vivian Maier, Courtesy Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York © Vivian Maier

When legendary American photographer Vivian Maier died in 2009 at the age of 83, she left behind some 40,000 Ektachrome colour slides that had gone unseen and unpublished. Thankfully, a new exhibition and monograph – titled Vivian Maier: Colour Photographs – showcase the stunning works made by the artist, who worked in total seclusion throughout her life.

For more than 40 years, Maier work as a nanny on Chicago’s wealthy North Side. Her job gave her the ability to hit the streets with her camera and take portraits of modern life during the second half of the 20th century.

“Look closely art the many self-portraits Vivian Maier made, and you will see her disguises, her cloak of invisibility,” photographer Joel Meyerowitz writes in the book’s foreword. “She’s as plain as an old-fashioned school marm. She’s the wallflower, the spinster aunt, the ungainly tourist in the big city… except… she isn’t!”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Untitled, c. 1977 © Estate of Vivian Maier, Courtesy Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York © Vivian Maier

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Greg Ellis: Sex Crimes

Posted on August 21, 2019

Beau Rouge, Los Angeles, 1954, Gelatin silver print from original large-format negative© The Estate of Bob Mizer (1922-1992). Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

It wasn’t until 2003 that the US Supreme Court finally gave LGBTQ people basic civil rights protection under the Constitution, ruling that sex between consenting adults of the same gender in private was not a crime. Under the current administration, though, these rights are slowly being chipped away in an effort to take the nation back to a time when citizens could be targeted for what have been interchangeably known as Crimes Against Nature, Unnatural Acts, and Sex Crimes.

For generations, these draconian laws lead to incarceration, institutionalisation, familial rejection, public shaming, loss of employment, denial of healthcare, and even death for members of the LGBTQ community. “This is our history,” says Greg Ellis of Ward 5B, who has co-curated Sex Crimes, a new group exhibition with Brian Clamp. “Times have changed, there have been gains made, and I think it’s good to put this context out there to say, ‘hey, not too long ago this is where we were, and we don’t want to head back there.’”

Rooted in the decades before Stonewall, Sex Crimes features work by artists including George Platt Lynes, John S. Barrington, Bruce of Los Angeles, James Bidgood, Mel Roberts, Jim French, and Jack Smith, all of whom created homosexual art and literature under the threat of arrest.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Untitled (Cowboy) / P00103, c. 1967-9, Vintage Polaroid print (Unique)© The Estate of Jim French (1932-2017). Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

Categories: 1960s, AnOther Man, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

The Second Latin American Foto Festival

Posted on August 16, 2019

Fred Ramos. A Honduran child plays near train tracks in Arriaga, Chiapas, in southern Mexico, October 2018.

Johis Alarcón. Nicole Carcelén, 19, plays with a cotton plant in her hair. The black slaves who first came to Ecuador were forced to work in cotton fields, cane fields and coal mines. For Nicole, cotton plants represent the strength of her ancestors and the strength of their blood. La Loma, 2018

With the second edition of the Bronx Documentary Center’s Latin American Foto Festival, curators Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera provide a space for photographers living and working in Latin America to tell their stories on their terms. The Festival, held in nine venues throughout the Melrose neighborhood of the Bronx, gave some 50,000 residents — many of whom are Latinx immigrants — the opportunity to engage with stories from their homelands through exhibitions, workshops, tours, and panel discussions.

The history of colonized lands is rarely told by those who have suffered the fate of centuries of imperialism that have systemically decimated the people and the lands of every continent outside Europe. Over the past 200 years, the people of Latin America have fought for independence and sovereignty, and against puppet regimes installed by the United States that first began in 1823 under the Monroe Doctrine.

As ICE raids systemically target Black and Latinx communities, the Foto Festival provides a pertinent moment to pause and reflect on the impact of white supremacy in its many forms, and the ways in which those it aims to exploit, oppress, and erase fight back in a struggle for life or death.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Chris Gregory. Ruta del Progreso

Yael Martinez. Family heart .photos on the wall of Perla Granda’s (my sister-in-law) bedroom of her missing brothers. She is 14 years old, she is in high school. She lives with her mother and Her sister Sandra at Taxco Guerrero Mexico On September 10,2013.

Categories: Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Latin America, Photography