On Sept. 18, the street artist Shepard Fairey will open his first solo show in New York since 2010’s “Mayday” — the suitably colossal closing exhibition at the now-defunct Deitch Projects. Fairey’s
latest offering, a series of new mixed-media paintings titled “On Our Hands,” will serve as his inaugural exhibition at Jacob Lewis Gallery, effectively consummating a 10-year friendship between the artist
and Mr. Lewis, the gallery’s owner and the first director of the influential Pace Prints in Chelsea. “Jacob looks at every aspect of what the artist is doing, not just the genre, the price or how in fashion
you are,” notes Fairey from his studio in Los Angeles, where he continues to finalize the collection. “If you look at the other artists he’s worked with, whether it’s Ryan McGinness or How and
Nosm, they’re the only people doing what they do.”
After more than a quarter-century as a professional artist, Fairey’s work has become instantly recognizable, as his particular aesthetic sensibilities — Russian Constructivism, the global wartime propaganda, Barbara
Kruger-style advertorial machinations, Jasper Johns Americana — have solidified. So has his motivation: “My mantra has always been ‘question everything,’” Fairey says. “I’m
not just trying to seduce people with an image, I’m trying to snap them out of a trance.” The political concerns that have long spurred his work, from corruption and authority to the environment and universal
personhood, are again strongly in evidence here. Read more…
How a small Italian press managed to turn works in translation into a form of social currency.
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Europa Editions’ books have a visual identity that’s as distinct as their literary sensibility.Credit Marko Metzinger
Recently, something improbable happened in the literary world: Europa Editions — a small, Italian-born publisher — became, of all things, a coveted intellectual brand.
We don’t like to think a book’s cover matters too much, yet the decade-old press has somehow become as much of a name as its authors. Readers have taken to Instagramming its titles to broadcast their cultural
verve and savoir faire, and to displaying their book while out at a restaurant, perched on the edge of a table for all to admire.
Even if you haven’t heard of Europa Editions, you’ve probably heard of some of its hits. There’s Muriel Barbery’s “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”
(more than a million copies sold); Jane Gardam’s “Old Filth” (now in its 20th printing); and Alexander Maksik’s “You Deserve Nothing”
(so far, the biggest title by an American). Like any good branded product, the books have an instantly recognizable visual stamp: stiff paper covers edged with white borders that frame color-drenched matte backgrounds.
According to Europa’s Australian-born editor in chief, Michael Reynolds, “When you see them all together, they draw you in like a bowl of candy.” Read more…
Upon the release of her poetic debut album, “Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful,” the folk singer pauses to enjoy the tender subtlety of fashion’s new bohemianism.
Hair by Neil Grupp at the Wall Group using Aquage. Makeup by Junko Kioka at Joe Management using Chanel Les Beiges. Manicure by Yuko Tsuchihashi at Susan Price NYC. Photography assistants: Carlos Monino, Grayson Vaughan and Duck Feeney. Stylist’s assistants: Kelly Harris and Rayner Reyes. Location by On The Mark Locations Ltd.
Watch the official video for “Pages of Gold” here.
Junk mail, job concerns, a lover’s penis and a young male muse called Bobby Jesus — the artist’s material is her life.
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Frances Stark, who has a Warholian penchant for collecting characters, especially men, with her muse Bobby Jesus (in braids) and his friend Aiookhai El-Bey, a.k.a. "Dubb," in her studio in L.A.’s Chinatown.Credit Andy Freeberg
The artist Frances Stark has been known to insist that she is a writer. It’s true that she is the author of many essays, which have been anthologized twice and are marked by
a witty, stream-of-consciousness style full of surprising digressions, connections and confessions. It is not uncommon, for instance, for her to reveal that she has taken a pause of a few months in between sentences. But
her insistence on being a writer is perhaps also related to the fact that her artwork is marked by a dense, literary quality; she tends to gravitate toward idiosyncratic, unexpected forms of self-expression, from annotations
of poetry to conversations in chat rooms to rap, which she refers to as an emancipatory form of autobiography.
To art audiences, Stark is perhaps best known for the work she made for the Venice Biennale in 2011, borne of her experience in the virtual rooms of Chatroulette, an online social portal introduced to her by her students at
the University of Southern California, which she used over a period of months to have conversations and virtual sex with men of diverse ages and shapes from around the world. The resulting feature-length video, “My
Best Thing” (the title is a reference to one of her lovers’ pet names for his penis), turned the transcripts of Stark’s exchanges with two of the men into conversations spoken by hokey avatars resembling
semi-nude Playmobil characters. The topic shifted from hammy erotica to lofty ruminations on creativity to discussions about the Arab Spring, which was unfolding at the time. One of the Biennale’s most talked-about
works, the film attracted a steady stream of visitors, myself included, who lingered in its darkened room for suspiciously long spells, captivated by its alluring combination of charm, intellectual rigor and sexual charge.
Read more…
A traveling tech convention where memes become mementos.
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Credit Illustration by Konstantin Kakanias
The idea behind Internet Yami-ichi, a roving, online-themed flea market, is to make tangible the often intangible flotsam of cyberspace. The goods for sale have included love letters
from Russian spambots and Edward Snowden globes, which contain a USB stick amid a flurry of flakes. Or you can hire a superheroesque character named Internet Dude to follow you around, loudly repeating phrases on cue, like
performative retweets. Next month, the artists Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa, who mounted the fair in Tokyo nearly three years ago, will help organize its largest event to date, at the Knockdown Center in Queens, N.Y., as
part of a monthlong series of events in cities from São Paulo to Seoul. Among those planning to bridge the URL-IRL gap in Queens are the digital artists Cory Arcangel and Rafaël Rozendaal, and Internet Dude —
if he can crowdfund his trip.
Here, a short list of the stalls to stop by.
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Some of the goods for sale at the New York Internet Yami-ichi. Clockwise from left: Daniel Johnson's DVD art, snacks from the Internet Bakery and part of the Social Clinic.Credit Courtesy of the artists
DVD commentary
The School of Visual Arts photography history professor Daniel Johnson covered DVDs in manipulated movie posters that respond to the current state of the entertainment industry.
“I think it’s an interesting way to play with context, and allow video art to be experienced under a different set of circumstances,” he says. $5 each.Read more…
Alice and Alba Rohrwacher turned their upbringing on an Italian honey farm into a Cannes hit.
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The filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher (left) and her sister, the actress Alba Rohrwacher, in the Italian home where they shot "The Wonders."Credit Bea de Giacomo
In Alice Rohrwacher’s sweetly elegiac coming-of-age film, “The Wonders,” in American theaters beginning Oct. 30, a pair of surprise arrivals interrupts
a 12-year-old girl’s humdrum life on her father’s beekeeping farm. First, a teenage boy, following a scuffle with the law, gets taken in by her parents in exchange for a monthly stipend; and later, a reality
TV crew, led by a campy host in knockoff Fellini costumes, comes to the Italian countryside with prize money for the area’s “most traditional family.” Both threaten the natural order of the farm, where
her father and mother (played by Alice’s older sister, Alba, who appeared opposite Tilda Swinton in “I Am Love”) pass the days collecting honey with a dirty centrifuge.
Rohrwacher based “The Wonders,” the follow-up to her 2011 debut, “Corpo Celeste” — about a
young girl’s relationship with the Catholic church — in part on her own experience growing up between Umbria, Lazio and Tuscany, and being raised by a beekeeper father and a schoolteacher mother. Her grainy
neorealist-style camera work, and a cast made up almost entirely of nonactors, gives the film an added layer of autobiographical vérité — the type of authenticity found in the work of Sofia Coppola, the
American chronicler of sun-drenched ennui, who saw the film last year as a juror at the Cannes Film Festival. “The Wonders” went on to win the Grand Prix award, and its memory lingered with Coppola, who called
Alice and Alba on a summer afternoon to talk about writer’s block, sibling rivalry and being a woman in film. Read more…
For his new bookshop installation, One Grand, the editor Aaron Hicklin asked people to name the 10 books they’d take with them if they were marooned on a desert island. The next installment in the series comes from Michael Stipe, the artist and former frontman of the band R.E.M., who shares his picks exclusively with T.
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“Complete Works,” Arthur Rimbaud “Because of Patti Smith I read Rimbaud’s entire works at the
age of 16. The whole time I was thinking his name was pronounced Rim-bawd. I actually can’t say at the time that I understood much of the finer points, but it was a wild read.” Read more…
Markus Brunetti
