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75 articles, 2016-04-01 00:03 1 zaha hadid: the architect's work in her own words last year, hadid spoke with designboom about her upbringing, influences, and creative vision. see her responses in full below, and read on for more thoughts from zaha hadid (6.04/7) taken from our previous interview in 2007. 2016-03-31 19:29 10KB www.designboom.com

2 Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Head Cheyenne Westphal Out After 25 Years Westphal in front of a Hirst. COURTESY SOTHEBY'S Cheyenne Westphal, the worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby's, is leaving after 25 years in what is 2016-03-31 12:59 (2.00/7) 1KB www.artnews.com 3 Directions & Parking Show Address Pier 94 711 12th Ave (55th Street & the West Side Highway) New York, NY 10019-5399 View Piers 92/94 in a larger map Parking On-Site Parking At Pier 92, 900 on- site parking spaces are available for cars, and... 2016-04-01 00:02 3KB artexponewyork.com 4 Official Logos Proud Sponsors Exhibitor Logos Spread the word and advertise your upcoming exhibition at FOTO SOLO 2016 with our official logos. Use them in your website, for online advertising, in promotional emails, print invitations and print marketing! Simply click any logo to download. Logo for... 2016-04-01 00:02 848Bytes artexponewyork.com 5 Ricardo Lowenberg, 2016 Spotlight Artist Gleaning artistic influence from an amalgam of art history’s greatest painters, Mexico-born painter Ricardo Lowenberg transforms the canvas with his skillful manipulation of shape, color, texture, and rhythm. In his portrayal of the everyday world, Lowenberg transforms scenes of the mundane into spiritually... 2016-04-01 00:02 2KB artexponewyork.com 6 Free Freight Program Take advantage of our special year-round Free Freight Program for exhibitors! It's simple: When you send your artwork to any of our shows to exhibit, we'll transport it to the next show... and the next ... and the... 2016-04-01 00:02 1KB artexponewyork.com 7 Hours & Location VIP Opening Night Preview Party • Thursday April 14th: 4PM–7PM — (Open to all attendees) Show Hours • Thursday (TRADE ONLY DAY), April 14th: 12PM – 7PM • Friday, April 15th: 12PM – 7PM • Saturday, April 16th: 10AM... 2016-04-01 00:02 2KB artexponewyork.com 8 Show Guide Ad Upload AENY 2016 Show Guide Ad Upload Form 2016-04-01 00:02 602Bytes artexponewyork.com 9 First Look: Erin Markey - Magazine - Art in America Ignoring boundaries between drama, comedy and performance art, Brooklyn-based Erin Markey writes and acts in works of outrageous theatricality—including a recent musical about a Michigan girl in love with her family’s pontoon boat. 2016-04-01 00:00 3KB www.artinamericamagazine.com 10 studio davidpompa combines traditional mexican crafts in cupallo lamp the pendant lamp uses 100% recycled and hand-shaped glass for the lens, resulting in an irregular surface with surprisingly tiny air bubbles enclosed. 2016-03-31 22:01 2KB www.designboom.com 11 dominique perrault completes renovation of pont de sèvres towers in paris following a complete re-structuring, dominique perrault has renovated the building to the future needs of different programs such as offices, retail and commercial. 2016-03-31 18:30 4KB www.designboom.com 12 Our Favorite Enamel Pins of the Week #9 Featuring new pins from Dropped Pin, Weirdo Weapons, This Might Hurt, Good Hustle Co., a patch from Ziero Muko, and an exclusive 20% off discount code from Strike Gently Co. 2016-03-31 18:30 4KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 13 Stella McCartney to Open Second Paris Store The British designer is joining the Rue Saint-Honoré juggernaut with a 2,000-square-foot location slated to open by year’s end. 2016-03-31 16:47 1KB wwd.com 14 Tommy Hilfiger Sponsors Rolling Stones’ First Exhibit “Exhibitionism,” opening at Saatchi Gallery in London on April 5, will feature more than 500 rare and original band artifacts. 2016-03-31 16:43 1KB wwd.com 15 DVF to Receive Honorary Degree from The New School Other speakers who will receive honorary degrees include Laverne Cox, DeRay Mckesson Anita Sarkeesian, David Miliband, and Mercedes Doretti. 2016-03-31 16:34 1KB wwd.com 16 Zalando Teams With Beyoncé’s New Ivy Park Label Online giant to launch Ivy Park in Europe with an exclusive campaign. 2016-03-31 16:30 2KB wwd.com 17 nendo designs marble sway table for marsotto edizioni nendo has designed a marble side table for marsotto edizioni that visually expresses the material's innately heavy qualities. 2016-03-31 16:15 2KB www.designboom.com 18 An Experimental Horror Film Marries Grotesquery and Feminist Poetry [Premiere] Filmmaker Leila Jarman and artist Chelsea Bayouth's film 'A Dream of Paper Flowers' creates a surreal portrait of the female experience and stars a "giant lactating tit slug. " 2016-03-31 16:15 3KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 19 PayPal Exec on Consumers’ Financial Health, Making Credit a ‘Democratized Process’ Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore is vice president and general manager of credit for the Americas at PayPal. 2016-03-31 16:09 4KB wwd.com 20 Colin Furze Demos His DIY Thermite Launcher You are legally obligated to not try this at home. 2016-03-31 16:05 2KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 21 Ordinary Pictures teaser trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDigBm_h8RI Here is the teaser trailer for our exhibition Ordinary Pictures, cut by our videographer Andy Underwood-Bultmann. The show, curated by Eric Crosby, surveys... 2016-03-31 18:57 860Bytes blogs.walkerart.org 22 Writhing, Sweaty, and Ecstatic: The Realist Paintings of Dan Witz What do mosh pits, raves, and one small orgy have in common? 2016-03-31 16:00 7KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 23 Forget 'Batman v Superman,' the Original Superman Cartoon Rules It's gorgeously animated, the rotoscope was invented to make it more realistic, and its influence spans Godzilla to Ghibli. 2016-03-31 15:30 2KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com

24 Versace Kicks Off Bag Contest The luxury brand invites participants to take part in the customization of the Palazzo Empire bag. 2016-03-31 15:26 1KB wwd.com 25 "Marilyn Monroe” Music Video Features Sevdaliza Becoming a Cyborg Hirad Sab and Sevdaliza team up for a dark journey into our relationship with technology. 2016-03-31 15:25 1KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 26 Fitbit’s On Fire – Ships 1 Million Blaze Units Fitbit says it has shipped 1 million units of its Blaze fitness tracker in its first month of availability. 2016-03-31 15:17 2KB wwd.com 27 The Healing Scars of Land Art How land art learns not only to shape landscapes, but understand them. 2016-03-31 15:00 6KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 28 The Origins of Visionary Art in Los Angeles | City of the Seekers Our new column, City of Seekers examines how creative freedom has enabled LA artists to make spiritual work as part of their practices. 2016-03-31 14:55 3KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 29 More Than Gaming, Playstation VR Provides an Experience Submerge yourself into other worlds with VR. 2016-03-31 14:00 4KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 30 A Network of LED Antennas Brings a Neighborhood Together Umbrellium's 'VoiceOver' converts people's voices into an interactive channel of light and sound, connecting up a neighborhood. 2016-03-31 13:35 3KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 31 A Day with California's Stoned Nuns [Photos] We caught up with Shaughn and John, photographers who spent the day with the pot growing “Sisters of the Valley.” 2016-03-31 13:30 5KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com 32 toyota setsuna concept for milan design week 2016 despite being a concept, the toyota setsuna offers basic vehicular performance and is able to drive, turn and stop. 2016-03-31 13:15 4KB www.designboom.com 33 5 April Fool's Pranks Inspired by Art Take inspiration from these jokey artists, and create the most high-brow pranks your friends have ever seen. 2016-03-31 13:01 3KB news.artnet.com 34 LA-Based State & Manor is All About American Made After three years in business, Naked Undies has been renamed State & Manor this spring. 2016-03-31 13:00 5KB wwd.com 35 Five Minutes With Halsey: Singer Talks MAC Lipstick, Changing Hair Looks and Coachella Singer Halsey dishes on her new MAC lipstick, her changing looks and Coachella. 2016-03-31 13:00 797Bytes wwd.com 36 CNN Relaunches Fashion-Centric TV Show Called ‘CNN Style’ Derek Blasberg will host CNN’s new show, which debuts on April 9. 2016-03-31 13:00 1KB wwd.com

37 ninkipen! plants jabuticaba tree inside organic café in osaka blending with the green exteriors, the interiors by ninkipen! have been realized to complement its menu. 2016-03-31 12:55 1KB www.designboom.com 38 Study: Teen’s Shift From Juniors to Plus Sizes as Petite and Tall Also Rise The NPD Group Inc. study revealed opportunities in the teen-plus segment. 2016-03-31 12:51 3KB wwd.com 39 Here’s the Exhibitor List for Spring Masters New York 2016 The 2015 edition of Spring Masters New York. LEANDRO J./BFANYC. COM Spring Masters New York announced the exhibitor list for its 2016 edition today. This 2016-03-31 12:30 2KB www.artnews.com 40 franck bohbot's cinematic photos of new york form a sentimental study of storefronts franck bohbot forms a sentimental study of storefronts through a series of expressive and cinematic architectural 'portraits'. 2016-03-31 12:26 1KB www.designboom.com 41 “It Gets Dislocated”: The Evocative Cinema of Chantal Akerman In tribute to the late Chantal Akerman, the Walker presents the three-film series Chantal Akerman: 1950–2015, March 31 through April 3 in the Walker Cinema. Here, University of Minnesota English Pr... 2016-03-31 14:06 919Bytes blogs.walkerart.org 42 Soft Sounds: Ben Vida Rethinks the Boundaries of Composition An exhibition of Vida's work opens at Lisa Cooley on April 3. 2016-03-31 12:01 6KB www.blouinartinfo.com 43 Gerard Darel Launches Capsule Collection Inspired by Jackie Kennedy The line goes on sale this week in a selection of stores in France and on the French fashion label’s Web site. 2016-03-31 11:42 1KB wwd.com 44 Margarete Hahner Explores Vision in “Smaller Than Life” at Zwinger Berlin Margarete Hahner’s paintings at Zwinger Galerie in Berlin explore the concept of “vision.” The show is titled “Smaller Than Life.” 2016-03-31 11:37 1KB www.blouinartinfo.com 45 perkins + will winds bicycle track through SRAM's chicago HQ global architecture and design firm perkins + will has completed an office in chicago's fulton market district that features an indoor bicycle track. 2016-03-31 11:15 2KB www.designboom.com 46 Eerie and Sinister Worlds: RONiiA on Their New, Walker- Inspired EP The Minneapolis-based trio RONiiA—Fletcher Barnhill (Joint Custody, FUGITIVE), Nona Marie Invie (Dark Dark Dark, Fugitive), and Mark McGee (Father You See Queen, Marijuana Deathsquads)—will relea... 2016-03-31 09:40 920Bytes blogs.walkerart.org 47 Noveller on performing with Iggy Pop and making a guitar sound like a synth – SXSW 2016 FACT caught up with Noveller at SXSW 2016 and talked about her show with Iggy Pop, how to make a guitar sound like a synthesizer and more. 2016-03-31 09:53 1KB www.factmag.com

48 São Paulo Art Guide March 2016 This week's guide includes Henrique Oliveira, Antonio Dias, and more. 2016-03-31 11:00 2KB news.artnet.com 49 Elisabeth Murdoch Creates Artist Award Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth has created a $150,000 award for mid-career female artists. 2016-03-31 10:59 2KB news.artnet.com 50 Amanda Levete to Redesign Galeries Lafayette in Paris British architect Amanda Levete and her studio AL_A have been selected by Galeries Lafayette to completely remodel its famous building on Boulevard Haussmann. 2016-03-31 10:41 6KB www.blouinartinfo.com 51 Justin Swinburne Michael Thibault / Los Angeles The very beginnings of something and the debris from its demise can seem interchangeable — perhaps most especially when that thing’s life and purpose have been totally and exhaustively consumed. In... 2016-03-31 10:37 2KB www.flashartonline.com 52 Don't Miss Out on the Affordable Art Fair The Affordable Art Fair held its latest edition at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York, and there are a lot of deals to be had if you're savvy. 2016-03-31 10:35 5KB news.artnet.com 53 ICI Founder Susan Sollins New York Apartment- Contemporary art pioneer Susan Sollins co-founded ICI and produced acclaimed PBS series "Art 21. " Her Madison Square Park apartment is on sale for $5.3 M. 2016-03-31 10:33 1KB news.artnet.com 54 Ross Bleckner Is Having a New York Moment Though 80s art world darling Ross Bleckner receded from the spotlight in the 1990s, he's back with six new shows including one in Dubai. 2016-03-31 10:32 11KB news.artnet.com 55 The Cyborg Anthropologist: Ian Cheng on His Sentient Artworks Ian Cheng, Emissary in the Squat of Gods (still), 2015, live simulation and story. COURTESY THE ARITST Last February, shortly after the opening of the 2016-03-31 10:15 9KB www.artnews.com 56 Journalism and Art: Complementary and Collaborative Storytelling Carrie Roy saw it in her head before the conversation was even over—a giant wooden sculpture of the back half of a cow, atop … 2016-03-31 12:57 26KB niemanstoryboard.org 57 Raw Material: An Interview with Google Design The SPAN Reader, a book released by Google Design in conjunction with its SPAN conferences in New York and London, is an eclectic collection of design thinking that investigates a variety of co... 2016-03-31 12:57 905Bytes blogs.walkerart.org 58 Public Art Saint Paul names new city artist Aaron Dysart starts his new job in April. 2016-03-31 12:57 2KB www.startribune.com 59 formula E announces chief design officer of new racing series with concept reveal daniel simon is renowned for his work on hollywood sci-fi films such as ‘tron: legacy’ and 'oblivion', and will now start to design driverless, electric and connected race cars for roborace competition. 2016-03-31 10:00 2KB www.designboom.com

60 Treble—Bright—Daylight Savings: Michael Gallope on Tristan Perich and Vicky Chow To spark discussion, the Walker invites Twin Cities artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and o... 2016-03-31 12:57 1015Bytes blogs.walkerart.org 61 Trump Says Nothing on Cultural Policies— A candidate willing to stake out positions on seemingly any issue suddenly becomes shy when asked about his administration's cultural policies. 2016-03-31 09:55 2KB news.artnet.com 62 Cao Fei Escapes in Her MoMA PS1 Show Artist Cao Fei makes her US debut at MoMA PS1, with a focus on alternative realities, and the way people use imagination to survive modern life. 2016-03-31 09:35 4KB news.artnet.com 63 Red Dot 2016 Product Design Winners Announced The winners of the world's most prestigious award for Product Design, Red Dot Awards, have been announced. 2016-03-31 09:17 4KB www.blouinartinfo.com 64 T weekend house by process5 design overlooks coast in western japan the team worked to develop a quiet, relaxed space where the little things lost in the chaos of urban living could be found once again. 2016-03-31 08:45 1KB www.designboom.com 65 Rolling Stones Get Gritty, Geeky and Grumpy at Mankowitz Show in London Rolling Stones Get Gritty, Geeky and Grumpy at Show in London: interview with photographer Gered Mankowitz by Mark Beech 2016-03-31 07:57 5KB www.blouinartinfo.com 66 Kanye West Under Fire for Copying Jacket Design Magnum photographer Jim Goldberg has called out Kanye West for copying the design of a jacket for his "The Life of Pablo" clothes range. 2016-03-31 07:01 2KB news.artnet.com 67 Maarten Baas Burns Up Design's Modern Past– Read THE DAILY PIC: By scorching an icon by Gerritt Rietveld, Baas moves beyond it. 2016-03-31 06:00 1KB news.artnet.com 68 Mei.com, Alibaba Stage Fashion Show The two companies hosted an interactive runway show in Shanghai to celebrate the launch of a new flash sales luxury channel partnership. 2016-03-31 05:59 2KB wwd.com 69 Athens & Epidaurus Festival Bizarrely Filled with Belgian Dance by Jan Fabre It’s as if Greek dance has nothing to showcase as Fabre ensure Belgians take over. 2016-03-31 05:26 3KB www.blouinartinfo.com 70 Art Wuzhen: Ann Hamilton’s Giant Loom Weaves Present and Past Art Wuzhen: Ann Hamilton’s giant loom weaves present and past 2016-03-31 04:49 2KB www.blouinartinfo.com 71 Gallery Hopping: "With Institutions Like These... " We bring you the highlights of “With Institutions Like These...,” a large group show in a glamorous old empty hotel in London near Notting Hill Gate. 2016-03-31 03:30 2KB news.artnet.com 72 Bradford Museum Director Defends Move The director of Bradford's National Media Museum has defended the controversial plans to move the Royal Photography Society's collection to London. 2016-03-31 03:30 2KB news.artnet.com 73 Views from the Top with Jonathan Stone on 30 Years of Christie's in Asia Views from the Top with Jonathan Stone of Christie's 2016-03-31 03:14 4KB www.blouinartinfo.com 74 Bharti Kher's sculpture 'Six Women' at The Biennale of Sydney The Biennale of Sydney with the title ‘The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed’ is Asia Pacific region’s largest contemporary visual arts event featuring 83 artists hailing from 35 countries and is presented free to the public across seven venues or ‘Embassies of Thought’ and multiple... 2016-03-31 01:27 5KB www.blouinartinfo.com 75 edoardo tresoldi resurrects archeological remains in puglia using wire mesh on the site of an ancient church in puglia, edoardo tresoldi has built a monumental mesh installation that simulates the town's architectural quality. 2016-03-31 00:15 2KB www.designboom.com Articles

75 articles, 2016-04-01 00:03

1 zaha hadid: the architect's work in her own words (6.04/7) interviews with zaha hadid: the architect's work in her own words interviews with zaha hadid: the architect’s work in her own words image by mary mccartney on march 31, 2016, world renowned architect zaha hadid passed away at the age of 65. born in baghdad in 1950, she studied mathematics before enrolling at london’s architectural association in 1972. by 1979 she had established zaha hadid architects, and quickly rose to global prominence. working with office partner patrik schumacher, the studio utilized a host of innovative technologies that often resulted in unexpected and dynamic architectural forms. last year, hadid spoke with designboom about her upbringing, influences, and creative vision. see her responses in full below, and read on for more thoughts from zaha hadid taken from our previous interview in 2007. DDP, seoul / image by virgile simon bertrand see more of the project on designboom here DB: what originally made you want to study architecture and become an architect, and what particular aspects of your background and upbringing have shaped your design principles and philosophies? for example, you have cited kazimir malevich as a major artistic influence on your work. how – and to what extent – do other creative fields continue to inform your architecture? ZH: even as a little girl, I wanted to be an architect. my earliest memory of architecture, I was perhaps 6 or 7 years old, was of my aunt building a house in mosul in the north of iraq. the architect was a close friend of my father’s and he used to come to our house with the drawings and models. I remember seeing the model in our living room and I think it triggered something, as I was completely intrigued by it. ZH (cont.): from my first days studying architecture at the architectural association, I have always been interested in the concept of fragmentation and with ideas of abstraction and explosion, where we were de-constructing ideas of repetitiveness and mass production. my work first engaged with the early russian avant-garde; the paintings of moholy-nagy, el lissitzky’s ‘prouns’ and naum gabo’s sculptures, but in particular with the work of kasimir malevitch – he was an early influence for me as a representative of the modern avant-garde intersection between art and design. malevitch discovered abstraction as an experimental principle that can propel creative work to previously unheard levels of invention; this abstract work allowed much greater levels of creativity. ZH (cont.): today, our collaborations with other creative industries provide us with an opportunity to express our ideas through different scales and in many diverse media. we see it as part of a continuous process of our on-going design investigation. it’s a two way process – we apply our architectural research and experimentation to these designs – but we also learn a great deal from the process of collaborating with others who lead their own industries. a brilliant design will always benefit from the input of others. of course there is a lot of fluidity now between art, architecture and fashion—a lot more cross-pollination in the disciplines, but this isn’t about competition, it’s about collaboration and what these practices and processes can contribute to one another. DB: you work at a range of scales, from chairs and tables to skyscrapers. do you have a singular approach, which underscores all your work? your work often embraces new forms of technology and materials, how important have these advances been in allowing you to fully realize the full scope of your creative vision? ZH: in terms of form, all the projects interest me equally, although there are obviously large differences according to the scale and process of each project. the idea for a building or an object can come up just as quick, but there is a big difference in process. they all come out from the same thing; all the projects are connected somehow. there is the perception of architecture is different because it is a more immersive experience – it’s about is how the person places herself in the space – whereas fashion is about how you place the object on the person. jockey club innovation tower at hong kong polytechnic university / image by doublespace see more of the project on designboom here ZH (cont.): indeed, our designs become more ambitious as we see the new possibilities created by the technology of other industries. there is a strong reciprocal relationship whereby our more ambitious design visions encourage the continuing development of the new digital technologies and fabrication techniques, and those new developments in turn inspire us to push the design envelope ever further. the current state of architecture and design requires extensive collaboration and an investigative attitude and we continue to research and develop new technologies. interview from 2007 – DB: describe your style as a good friend of yours might describe it. ZH: virtuoso of elegance. personal investigation, research, it’s laden with so many ideas that one cannot extrude a single one, there is no formal repertoire. two years ago I focused on one apartment to see how many variations you can come up with in a given space with the same parameters. I would work on this repeatedly for days and you see that there is maybe seven hundred options for one space. this exercise gives you an idea of the degree at which you can interpret the organization of space, it is not infinite but it’s very large. imagine if you multiply that to the scale of a bigger space, and the to the scale of a city. it is like a pianist constantly practicing – it’s the same level of intensity. it increases the repertoires immensely – it is unpredictable. some people really live and work within the same doctrine, the same diagram with the same logic. we produce many diagrams to start with and that’s why we have a large repertoire. MAXXI museum of XXI century art, rome / image by richard bryant see more of the project on designboom here DB: can you describe the evolution of your work? ZH: there are some very similar moments in the early work where the focus was on drawing, abstraction and fragmentation. then it moved to the development of ideas. lately it has become what architecture should be, which is more fluid organization. there has not been so much ‘a change’ but ‘a development’. DB: which of your projects has given you the most satisfaction? ZH: ‘the peak project’ (a leisure club in china) because that was a very important departure for me. there are many, every time you make a discovery… I can’t really say because different projects give you satisfaction in different ways. the BMW center in leipzig and the phaeno science center in wolfsburg, they were very exciting. I just went to see the contemporary arts center in rome which translates many ideas that I have been wanting to do. messner mountain museum corones / image by inexhibit see more of the project on designboom here DB: who would you like to design something for? ZH: it would be very interesting to design objects for everyday life, something where the ideas that are expressed can be launched into society. with products the form is almost the finished piece, but with architecture it is not. I’ve also always been interested in combining architecture with a social agenda, and I really think you can invest and be inventive with hospitals and housing. DB: do you discuss your work with other designers or architects? ZH: within the office of course. with other designers… I don’t like to talk about myself so much. one discusses the ideas of friends. DB: where do you usually work on your projects? ZH: anywhere. I don’t use the computer. I do sketches, very quickly, often more than 100 on the same formal research. heydar aliyev center, baku / image by hufton+crow see more of the project on designboom here DB: what is the best moment of the day? ZH: it used to be very late in the evening… if I’m in london it can be different than if I’m somewhere else. DB: what kind of music do you listen to at the moment? DB: do you read design and architecture magazines? ZH: we have lots of these magazines in the office, but we usually don’t read them. DB: where do you get news from? DB: are there any clothes that you avoid wearing? ZH: vintage clothing. also I don’t like the masculine style, jeans. I like issey miyake… and black dresses. london aquatics centre / image by luke hayes see more of the project on designboom here DB: is there a designer or architect from the past that has influenced you or that you particularly appreciate the work of? ZH: yes, there are a lot. erich mendelsohn, mies van der rohe, le corbusier, the constructivists… ZH: many. but too many are too obsessed by method. it becomes a dogma. DB: do you have any advice for the young? ZH: you have to be very focused and work very hard, but it is not about working hard without knowing what your aim is! you really have to have a goal. the goal posts might shift, but you should have a goal. know what it is that you are trying to find out. DB: is there anything that you are afraid of regarding the future? ZH: yes, the conservative values that are emerging, it may not effect architecture immediately but it will effect society and that’s what worries me. the world is looking more and more segmented, the difference between people is becoming greater. one has to strive for a very open liberal society. 2016-03-31 19:29 Philip Stevens

2 Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Head Cheyenne Westphal Out After 25 Years (2.00/7) Westphal in front of a Hirst. COURTESY SOTHEBY’S Cheyenne Westphal, the worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s, is leaving after 25 years in what is another high-profile departure in the string of defections from the auction house’s upper ranks following the fall sales. Alex Rotter, her co-head of the contemporary department, left Sotheby’s a month ago. Since CEO Tad Smith announced voluntary layoffs in November, more than 80 staffers have left, including David Norman, vice chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, and Henry Wyndham, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe. During her decades at the auction house, Westphal organized such sales as Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, in which every lot was a new work by Damien Hirst, who helped create the auction. It totaled £121 million ($174 million), a record for a one-artist sale. Since 1999, she has overseen every Sotheby’s contemporary sale in Europe. In January, the house acquired the advisory firm Art Agency, Partners for $50 million upfront and a provisional $35 million, a move that some saw as risky. Last month, it announced that it would take a fourth- quarter loss of $11 million, due in part to tax charges and after-tax charges relating to repatriating foreign earnings. 2016-03-31 12:59 Nate Freeman

3 Directions & Parking At Pier 92, 900 on-site parking spaces are available for cars, and an additional 15 spaces are available for commercial trucks and shuttle buses. Open rooftop parking at Pier 92 is $35 for 10 hours or $40 for 24 hours. Please access Pier 92 parking via the automobile ramp at the intersection of 55th Street and the West Side Highway. All vehicles should follow signs for the NYC Passenger Ship Terminal parking. Please note that height restriction is 8’6”. *Parking spaces are dependent upon cruise activity. Click here to see additional nearby parking options. Take George Washington Bridge to 178th Street (Truck Route). Turn right onto Broadway. Follow Broadway to 55th Street. Turn right onto W 55th Street. Cross over the West Side Highway and turn left into the Passenger Ship Terminal – Pier 94. Lincoln Tunnel (from 95) – take 40th St. to 10th Ave. and a left on 55th St. George Washington Bridge – From NY Side take Rt. 9A, Henry Hudson Parkway south/downtown. Proceed south on Henry Hudson Pkwy to last exit at 56th St., stay right for thru traffic. Passenger Ship Terminal is 1 block ahead on right. Paid parking on roof. Rt. 80 or Palisades Parkway – to George Washington Bridge to NY side and follow directions for Henry Hudson Parkway. Proceed south on Henry Hudson Pkwy to last exit, at 56th St, stay right. Passenger Ship Terminal is 1 block ahead on right. Garden State Parkway – To exit 153 or N. J. Turnpike to Exit 16E (better). Then Rt. 3 E to Lincoln Tunnel, follow signs for Lincoln Tunnel. Exit tunnel and make left turn, travel north on 10th Ave., and left onto 55th St. Cross 12th Ave. and follow signs to Passenger Ship Terminal. Drive up the Ramp. Paid parking is on the roof. Holland Tunnel – follow signs for “Uptown” right on Hudson, left on Canal. Proceed four blocks to West St. and turn right. West St. becomes 12th Ave. Follow “Thru Traffic” signs. Continue north on 12th Ave. and follow signs to Passenger Ship Terminal. (Left at 55th St.) Queens Midtown Tunnel – when exiting bear right to 34th St. Go west on 34th to 12th Ave. Make right turn, go north to 55th St., make a left at 55th St. and follow signs to Terminals. Triborough Bridge – Follow signs to “Manhattan” and FDR Drive South. Take FDR S to 53rd St. Exit. Take 53rd St. crosstown to 11th Ave. Turn right, go two blocks (55th St.). There are several options for using public transportation to access Piers 92/94. The M31 and M57 buses run close by Pier 94. Click on the Metro Bus Schedule for map & schedule details. 2016-04-01 00:02 artexponewyork.com

4 Official Logos Spread the word and advertise your upcoming exhibition at FOTO SOLO 2016 with our official logos. Use them in your website, for online advertising, in promotional emails, print invitations and print marketing! Simply click any logo to download. Use this HTML code to add the banner to your website: 2016-04-01 00:02 artexponewyork.com

5 Ricardo Lowenberg, 2016 Spotlight Artist Gleaning artistic influence from an amalgam of art history’s greatest painters, Mexico-born painter Ricardo Lowenberg transforms the canvas with his skillful manipulation of shape, color, texture, and rhythm. In his portrayal of the everyday world, Lowenberg transforms scenes of the mundane into spiritually infused pieces of art. Strongly influenced by the work of Frida Kahlo, Lowenberg uses dreamlike colors, symbolic props, and textural paint application to produce a modern surrealism relevant to contemporary life in Mexico City. In much of his figurative work, Lowenberg concentrates on the human face to capture the emotions, thoughts, and subtle nuances portrayed within the telling eyes of the subject. His still life and landscape paintings portray a post-Impressionist sensibility reminiscent of those late 19th century masters of hue and light, including Cézanne and Gauguin. Using a refined and muted color palette, Lowenberg carefully models the form, to create a surprising canvas that is dually flat and three-dimensional. His work has been collected and exhibited throughout the U. S., Mexico, and Europe. A much-anticipated programming element of Redwood Media Group’s other art shows, the Spotlight Artist Program is being featured for the very first time at Artexpo New York in 2016 and will continue to be a highlight at the show in future years. Ricardo Lowenberg is one of four esteemed artists selected for this year’s Spotlight Artist Program. 2016-04-01 00:02 lmullikin

6 6 Free Freight Program Take advantage of our special year-round Free Freight Program for exhibitors! It’s simple: When you send your artwork to any of our shows to exhibit, we’ll transport it to the next show … and the next … and the next, saving you thousands of dollars in the process. Just imagine the convenience—after Artexpo New York this April, we’ll carefully store your artwork and ship it to whichever Redwood Media Group show you’ll be exhibiting at next. Just pick the show and we’ll make it happen! Exhibitors, don’t miss the opportunity to save big with the Free Freight Program! Call us today to take advantage of this exclusive deal. 2016-04-01 00:02 artexponewyork.com

7 Hours & Location At Pier 92, 900 on-site parking spaces are available for cars, and an additional 15 spaces are available for commercial trucks and shuttle buses. Open rooftop parking at Pier 92 is $35 for 10 hours or $40 for 24 hours. Please access Pier 92 parking via the automobile ramp at the intersection of 55th Street and the West Side Highway. All vehicles should follow signs for the NYC Passenger Ship Terminal parking. Please note that height restriction is 8’6”. *Parking spaces are dependent upon cruise activity. Click here to see additional nearby parking options. Take George Washington Bridge to 178th Street (Truck Route). Turn right onto Broadway. Follow Broadway to 55th Street. Turn right onto W 55th Street. Cross over the West Side Highway and turn left into the Passenger Ship Terminal – Pier 94. Lincoln Tunnel (from 95) – take 40th St. to 10th Ave. and a left on 55th St. George Washington Bridge – From NY Side take Rt. 9A, Henry Hudson Parkway south/downtown. Proceed south on Henry Hudson Pkwy to last exit at 56th St., stay right for thru traffic. Passenger Ship Terminal is 1 block ahead on right. Paid parking on roof. Rt. 80 or Palisades Parkway – to George Washington Bridge to NY side and follow directions for Henry Hudson Parkway. Proceed south on Henry Hudson Pkwy to last exit, at 56th St, stay right. Passenger Ship Terminal is 1 block ahead on right. Garden State Parkway – To exit 153 or N. J. Turnpike to Exit 16E (better). Then Rt. 3 E to Lincoln Tunnel, follow signs for Lincoln Tunnel. Exit tunnel and make left turn, travel north on 10th Ave., and left onto 55th St. Cross 12th Ave. and follow signs to Passenger Ship Terminal. Drive up the Ramp. Paid parking is on the roof. Holland Tunnel – follow signs for “Uptown” right on Hudson, left on Canal. Proceed four blocks to West St. and turn right. West St. becomes 12th Ave. Follow “Thru Traffic” signs. Continue north on 12th Ave. and follow signs to Passenger Ship Terminal. (Left at 55th St.) Queens Midtown Tunnel – when exiting bear right to 34th St. Go west on 34th to 12th Ave. Make right turn, go north to 55th St., make a left at 55th St. and follow signs to Terminals. Triborough Bridge – Follow signs to “Manhattan” and FDR Drive South. Take FDR S to 53rd St. Exit. Take 53rd St. crosstown to 11th Ave. Turn right, go two blocks (55th St.). There are several options for using public transportation to access Piers 92/94. 2016-04-01 00:02 artexponewyork.com

8 Show Guide Ad Upload Please include your gallery name on all files. Files larger than 15MB can be sent to: [email protected], using one of these free services: • Dropbox: www.dropbox.com • WeTransfer: https://www.wetransfer.com/ • Hightail: https: https://www.hightail.com/ 2016-04-01 00:02 artexponewyork.com

9 First Look: Erin Markey - Magazine - Art in America View of Erin Markey’s performance A Ride on the Irish Cream , 2016, showing (left to right), Emily Bate, Becca Blackwell, Markey and Mike Marcinowski; at Abrons Arts Center, New York. Photo Maria Baranova. Advertisement Looking over my notes on Erin Markey’s A Ride on the Irish Cream , an outrageous musical comedy that premiered at New York’s Abrons Arts Center in January, I find this line in all caps and underlined (twice): “dumpster cheeseburger ass.” I can’t remember who said it or why. But reading it weeks later made me laugh out loud. The bio that the artist prefers to give—“Erin Markey makes stuff for stage and video that has music in it”—has the same effect on me. Directed by Jordan Fein, Irish Cream is wildly psychedelic despite its bare-bones set and costumes. A versatile band deftly navigated the tuneful but meandering score, written by Markey with composer Kenny Mellman and bandleader Emily Bate. Markey also wrote the obliquely mirthful lyrics and dialogue, and stars as Reagan, an adolescent girl in Michigan. Reagan is in a tumultuously passionate romance with Irish Cream, her family’s pontoon boat, which appears in her imagination as a horse. Irish Cream’s intentionally preposterous nonbinary boat-horse identity had a New York Times critic throwing his hands up in frustration. 1 Markey and Becca Blackwell, the painfully funny trans actor who plays Irish Cream, are a couple offstage. Their genuine adoration of each other pulses through the mysterious narrative; their natural chemistry sustains the show as Reagan and Cream’s relationship cyclically matures and immatures. The 90-minute musical is Markey’s most ambitious production to date, but she has been captivating and freaking out audiences for years. Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail (2010), which premiered at PS 122, tells the story of the artist’s post-college stint as a pole dancer. Joe’s Pub, another East Village performance stronghold, repeatedly features her in their “Our Hit Parade” series, where artists perform the top 10 songs on Billboard’s chart. Markey’s creepily intense delivery makes her an audience favorite. The same venue hosted a run of her 2013-14 self-titled production, a musical standup-routine-as-memoir. Markey blissfully ignores the disciplinary boundaries of performance art, theater and comedy. She often appears in online sketch-comedy videos. One highlight is her recurring role as Madison, a Brooklyn mom who responds via webcam to negative social media comments by snorting rails of cocaine off her baby. Like other genre-blurring comedic performers of her generation, Markey infuses performance-art traditions of tackling identity politics with gut-busting humor. This unofficial comedy movement treats diversity not as a buzzword but as a matter of fact. When I asked Markey if Irish Cream was intended, politically, to be queer, she sipped her coffee and replied, “No. It’s just queer.” 2016-04-01 00:00 by Sean

10 studio davidpompa combines traditional mexican crafts in cupallo lamp studio davidpompa combines traditional mexican crafts in cupallo lamp (above) the pendant lamp uses 100% recycled and hand-shaped glass for the lens all images courtesy of studio davidpompa local-based studio davidpompa was born out of the desire to create contemporary design with a strong commitment to create contemporary design with a strong commitment to mexican identity. they work with an ethos of innovating craftsmanship and materials while respecting its heritage. ‘cupallo’ is a pendant lamp that uses 100% recycled and hand-shaped glass for the lens, resulting in an irregular surface with surprisingly tiny air bubbles enclosed. the glass creates a charming light effect and enhances the distribution of it through irregular flares. the lenses are made piece by piece in a small glass factory in hildago, mexico, while the outside shape is made of polished brass in a metal spinning process by artisans in the country’s capital. the glass creates a charming light effect and enhances the distribution of it through irregular flares the pendant lamp can be used in an elegant, horizontal arrangement, as well as in a playful way by hanging them in a disordered chandelier. because of the artisanal hand driven process, every piece shows a unique personality. ‘cupallo’ will be presented at salone satelite during salone del mobile 2016 in milan the outside shape is made of polished brass in a metal spinning process by artisans because of the artisanal hand-driven process, every piece shows a unique personality the pendant lamp can be used in an elegant, horizontal arrangement, as well as in a disordered chandelier designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here. 2016-03-31 22:01 www.designboom

11 dominique perrault completes renovation of pont de sèvres towers in paris originally built by architects badani and roux-dorlut in 1975, in 2008 dominique perrault was charged with transforming and renovating the the pont de sèvres towers located in west paris. now renamed to ‘citylights’, the vast scheme has seen the site becoming reconnected to the urban infrastructure with new connected transportation systems and ultimately, bring the architecture into the 21st century to suit program today. based by the seine, the towers are an integral part of paris’ recent expansion towards grand paris image © andre morin recently celebrating its inauguration, the rehabilitation of the towers has seen a new central area that anchors the building in the city. this includes a new plaza, a second entrance on the forum area, a main central hall, large terrace for the restaurant an the construction of a fourth tower – with the same petal shape – attached to the tower two overlooking the seine river. only the concrete petal shaped structure of the 3 towers has been preserved throughout the project image © andre morin the towers were originally cut off from their surroundings and with the introduction of pedestrian routes, the site is now connected to the new trapèze district. there, the wasteland of the former renault factories has now been replaced by office and residential buildings, both new and refurbished. ‘the rehabilitation process of the pont de sèvres towers, while respecting their historic value, allowed for a thoroughly new structure, in line with current norms and new sustainable development performances.’ – dominique perrault a new tower has been constructed, bearing a similar petal-like shape image © vincent fillon the form itself has been retained but illustrates a subtle and new envelope made of aluminum cladding, with a third of the building covered with a folded façade creating ‘bracelets’ around the towers. these ‘bracelets’ are organized at contrasting positions in response to the different heights. additionally, a LED lights have been installed in the folded elements resulting in a rhythm and luminous beacon. the building will be occupied with diverse programs such as commercial, office and corporate restaurants image © vincent fillon the main central hall, designed by gaelle lauriot prevost expands on three levels. this generous light-filled space, provides a unified design for the different towers. simultaneously, the atrium acts as a compass to orientate visitors and employees. the site has been re-connected to the public transport system, with a métro stop right outside the building image © vincent fillon the large albatross chandelier in the atrium is made up of 14 birds, with a 20-foot wingspan each image © vincent fillon the hexagonal floor plan,with its central core of floors of office offers 360°views of paris and natural light image © dominique perrault architecte a third of the building is covered with a folded facade creating ‘bracelets’ around the towers image © dominique perrault architecte a specific night LED lighting has been installed in the facade folded elements image © vincent fillon the rehabilitation process respected the historic value, while allowing for a new structure image © vincent fillon the towers before the renovation image © badani et roux dorlut § the original building was designed in 1975 image © badani et roux dorlut 2016-03-31 18:30 Natasha Kwok

12 Our Favorite Enamel Pins of the Week #9 Every week is a good week in the pin and patch game. Despite Instagram beginning to roll out its controversial new updates, spirits remain high and people who are really good at what they do (usually not flavor-of-the- month celebs) don’t really seem to care about the implications of Instagram’s update. But that’s old news. People who do the most interesting work tend to navigate their way around barriers rather than whine about them. My hat’s off to you, pin and patch game. Keep on keepin’ on. Here are my 5 favorite products of the week, all of which are about half the price of an artisanal Brooklyn cheeseburger and will help you reclaim the clothing you already own (that's priceless). If your millennial brain has the attention span to read this whopping 600 words, you’ll be rewarded with a special 20% discount code to my shop, Strike Gently Co , at the bottom of the article. You can also just scroll— Thanks to the corporatized accessibility of rap, people who have nothing to do with it really love cultural symbols like Philly blunts, 40’s, purple drank, and street art. I’m including myself in this category. This "40" pin is guaranteed to make you look less lame and more like a cool hip-hop person—right, kids? Dropped Pin also have a Bowie lightning bolt pin and a Bart Simpson DEVO bootleg on their site. $10 here . One of the more obscure (and funny) bootleg pins I’ve seen in awhile, Weirdo Weapons brings us Kanye and his endearing South Park counterpart. There are two variants of this pin, presumably because the first one sold so well. Weirdo Weapons also sells a pin that says PODCASTS in the Metallica font, which I can get down with. Podcasts are way cooler than Metallica. $8 here . This is run by Isabella Rotman, an illustrator with a vast portfolio of non-pin work and a pretty respectable career under her belt. The cool thing about pins is that the overhead for those who create them is relatively low, so it’s a decent product for an artist who already has a store to add to their collection. Enjoy this fat toad mermaid from Rotman, perfectly designed. $10 here . It’s (almost) the first of the month. Get your legs snapped arm twist ribs cracked wig tapped. Got the inside right from the outside. The outside get inside, ya insides be outside. It don’t matter if you three feet or eight one, you’ll get eight from me, nine and straight blown. Front, back, side to side... $12 for set (with pink Range Rover pin) BONUS PATCH Ziero Muko undoubtedly makes the best patches out of pretty much anyone on the internet. They elevate the form to actual art, producing products that are somehow both insanely high quality and low priced. I’m not quite sure how they do it, but I’m 100% for supporting what they’re doing, because they’re keeping patches legit. Instead of thinking of them as a passing trend, people like Muko remind us that any strange niche can be transformed into something actually interesting when done with care, creativity and a bit of benign psychosis. $7.00 here . This week’s discount code is DANGLE. Use it for 20% off ANY ORDER at www.strikegently.co , where I release new pins and patches every week. Thanks for reading. Check out the previous roundups below. Related: Our Favorite Enamel Pins of the Week: # 8 Our Favorite Enamel Pins of the Week: #7 Our Favorite Enamel Pins Of The Week: #6 Our Favorite Pins of the Week: #5 Our Favorite Enamel Pins of the Week: #4 Lapel Luxuries: Pins of the Week #3 Sharp Sculptures: Pins of the Week #2 Endless Enamel: Pins of the Week #1 2016-03-31 18:30 Charlie Ambler

13 Stella McCartney to Open Second Paris Store McCartney opened her first boutique in the French capital in 2008 in picturesque Palais Royal, also home to such retail banners as Rick Owens, Acne Studios and Pierre Hardy. The British designer will land on one of the hottest shopping strips in Paris, which recently welcomed the first French outposts for Alexander McQueen , Coach and Tory Burch . McCartney’s new boutique is to replace the popular chocolate-maker Jean-Paul Hévin, which is to close its two-level unit, which included a restaurant, on April 2 and relocate to a nearby courtyard. 2016-03-31 16:47 Miles Socha

14 Tommy Hilfiger Sponsors Rolling Stones’ First Exhibit Tommy Hilfiger will be the official apparel sponsor of “Exhibitionsim” an international moving exhibition that will be unveiled at the Saatchi Gallery in London on April 5. The brand has also designed a limited-edition capsule in conjunction with the partnership. The lineup of graphic T-shirts and outerwear, laden with the band’s iconic tongue-y mouth, will launch on tommy.com. The collection features five unisex Ts as well as men’s and women’s jackets, including leather jackets with hand-painted Rolling Stones imagery emblazoned on the back; distressed and bleached jackets with vintage Stones artwork; satin bombers with embroidered tongue logos; and utility jackets with patches. “Exhibitionism” is a retrospective of sorts, a comprehensive compendium of the band’s musical heritage. It features more than 500 rare and original Rolling Stones’ artifacts, ranging from never-before-seen dressing room paraphernalia to instruments, iconic costumes, personal diaries and artwork, rare audio recordings and video footage. It’s divided into nine galleries at the Saatchi Gallery, where it will be on display until Sept. 4 when it will head out on a global tour over the next four years. 2016-03-31 16:43 Taylor Harris

15 DVF to Receive Honorary Degree from The New School Diane von Furstenberg, actress Laverne Cox and Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson are among the honorary degree recipients who will speak at The New School’s 80 th commencement exercises on May 20 at 11 a.m. The graduation takes place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and will be presided over by David E. Van Zandt, president of The New School. Media critic Anita Sarkeesian, International Rescue Committee president and chief executive officer David Miliband, and forensic anthropologist Mercedes Doretti will also speak and receive honorary degrees. The event will be broadcast live on Livestream. Van Zandt said the recipients “have worked tirelessly to confront pressing issues such as racial and gender inequity, LGBT rights, and crimes against humanity.” 2016-03-31 16:34 Lisa Lockwood

16 Zalando Teams With Beyoncé’s New Ivy Park Label More Articles By The singer revealed the name of her first collection for Topshop on the Ivy Park YouTube channel. The name is a nod to the star’s young daughter Ivy and the park where the teenaged Beyoncé spent her time working out and doing sports. The brand Ivy Park is equally owned by Topshop and Parkwood Athletic, with Beyoncé and Sir Philip Green serving as business owners and co- founders. The brand’s design and management team is based in London. Further design and distribution details of the collection, which spans women’s functional sports and stylish leisurewear and will be sold in Topshop and other stores, are still under embargo. However, European online shoppers can look forward to both shopping and interacting with Ivy Park on Zalando as of April 14, Europe’s leading online fashion platform revealed a few hours later. Zalando’s latest brand collaboration is a follow-up to its successful Topshop@Zalando Wherever You Are Summer 2015 campaign featuring Cara Delevingne. As Ivy Park’s designated “premier partner,” Zalando will offer an exclusive campaign and activation called #My Park parallel to the April 14 online launch. Via #My Park, consumers will be invited to share “their park” on social media and its digital hub. The Ivy Park collaboration also underscores Zalando’s sharpened focus on ath-leisure and sports fashion, and comes on the heels of the recent spring 2016 Fashion x Sport promotion featuring Anna Ewers. “We are extremely excited to collaborate with Ivy Park for Europe,” commented Carsten Hendrich, vice president of brand marketing at Zalando. “The collection for both on and off the field embodies the vision of empowerment, strength and well-being for all women, wherever they are.” Based in Berlin, Zalando is active in 15 European markets, and generated sales of 2.96 billion euros, or $3.28 billion, in 2015. The site had 17.9 million active customers in 2015, 3.2 million more than the previous year, with 57 percent accessing the site from mobile devices, up from 42 percent in 2014. 2016-03-31 16:30 Melissa Drier

17 nendo designs marble sway table for marsotto edizioni nendo's sway table for marsotto edizioni gives marble an agile appearance nendo’s sway table for marsotto edizioni gives marble an agile appearance all images by akihiro yoshida nendo has designed a marble side table for marsotto edizioni that visually expresses the material’s innately heavy qualities. ‘sway’ actively exploits the weight of marble — often perceived as a negative factor — by tilting to one side, appearing as a horizontally slanted slab. despite its seeming instability, the table is balanced due to the considered distribution of weight in its legs, which apportion more density to one side. in turn, its precarious appearance provides a new expression of agility and dynamism to the otherwise heavy marble material. ‘sway’ is available in high and low editions, in both black and white marble. ‘sway’ actively exploits the weight of marble by tilting to one side alongside the debut of ‘sway’, nendo has conceived the interior scheme for marsotto edizioni’s exhibition space at spazio bigli during milan design week 2016. the design of ‘light & shadow’ plays upon the brand’s specialization in marble furniture — emphasizing the fact that its products are made from a single material in either black or white, without the combination of any other mediums. with this in mind, the exhibition space is be divided in two halves, where the right side is orgaznized with black objects, and the left is occupied by white ones. in turn, this effect reconsiders the architecture of the space, turning the building’s support pillars into visual dividers. furniture is arranged symmetrically in each area so that immediately upon entry, visitors are positioned at the boundary of the spaces. a visual effect is created as if the two halves seemingly reflect each other like a mirror, along with the pillars that are rhythmically arranged through the space. the distribution of weight in the legs allows the table to remain stable the legs are carefully considered to support and distribute the weight to one side detail of the angled corner of the feet the ‘sway’ tables are also available in black marble 2016-03-31 16:15 Nina Azzarello

18 An Experimental Horror Film Marries Grotesquery and Feminist Poetry [Premiere] A Dream of Paper Flowers from Leila Jarman/Mad- as.hell on Vimeo . A “giant lactating tit slug” serves as the star of the short film A Dream of Paper Flowers , which premieres today on The Creators Project. The slug and the film are the creations of filmmaker Leila Jarman and puppet artist and poet Chelsea Bayouth. Jarman and Bayouth have teamed up with artist and producer Luka Fisher , artist MRK , digital artist Mike Leisz , and electronic musician and head of Proximal Records Sahy Uhns to create a work that combines puppetry and poetry, black-and-white filmmaking, and electronic sound design, into a surreal portrait of the female experience. The film is utterly abject. Close-ups of the film’s “star” pan across leaking conic growths, patches of rough hair (human hair?), and hills and valleys of uneven, alien skin. And yet, these images are also clandestinely beautiful: filmed in black-and-white, their harshness becomes softened and the precise detailing of their designs comes to the fore. As the film progresses, Bayouth’s beast begins to pulsate with greater intensity and, with a final, natal push, MRK emerges, naked like a newborn and covered in a tangling of material that harkens strongly of the organic gore of childbirth. Screenshots by the author Behind the action runs a score and sound design produced in collaboration with Leisz and Uhns. Inspired in part by the first ever completely electronic film score composed for cult favorite Forbidden Planet , Uhns uses his own generative synthesis sound system, a.k.a. “Little Devil,” as the voice for the film’s abject protagonist. Built upon this narration is a score of sounds produced by Uhns from the recording of organic phenomena, “such as the warping of burning wood submersed in water.” As Fisher describes, “It was important to remove the vocal of its relatable contexts so that the source of the vocal felt somewhat fluid, as if it was sometimes emanating from the beast and sometimes sounding like a thought within the character's head.” See all these elements of A Dream of Paper Flowers collide in the film, shown above. Click through to visit the websites of Leila Jarman and Chelsea Bayouth . Related: Trip into a Dark Sci-Fi World in ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ [Premiere] An Astronaut and a Neanderthal Walk into an Experimental Short Film [Premiere] Meet Calder Greenwood, 'The Cardboard Artist' 2016-03-31 16:15 Sami Emory

19 PayPal Exec on Consumers’ Financial Health, Making Credit a ‘Democratized Process’ As income inequality increases and wage growth remains under pressure, household spending is tight for many families. Some turn to debt — especially credit cards — to make ends meet. Last year alone, there was a $71 billion net increase in credit card debt, according to research from CardHub. And why analysts expect consumers to use tax refunds this season to whittle down that debt, what often occurs is a cycle that is anchored by too much reliance on debt to manage expenses. In 2004, Congress anointed April as Financial Literacy Month with the intention of educating consumers on the topic of reducing household debt. The topic is close to the heart for Kathleen Pierce- Gilmore, vice president and general manager of credit for the Americas at PayPal. Pierce- Gilmore, a veteran in the financial services industry, is deploying strategies aimed at helping consumers address their finances and create better fiscal health as a result. Here, Pierce-Gilmore discusses these strategies and how it also benefits retailers. Even if I was not entirely conscious of it at the time, my upbringing seated in me a deep passion for financial discipline and independence. After several years in the financial services industry, first at American Express then at Capital One, I realized this personal passion could be best expressed in helping people who are in vulnerable financial situations use their money more wisely. Fast forward a few years, and I started hearing the things [PayPal chief executive officer] Dan Shulman was saying about reimagining money, financial inclusion, and making it less expensive for people access, manage and move their money. The message simply hit home. As luck would have it, an opportunity opened to lead the company’s credit business in the Americas, and I instantly saw it as a way to bring my personal mission around financial fitness to a platform that is real. And here I am. In practice, it’s more about common sense. Did you miss or need to delay payment on any of your debt obligations in the past year? If so, you probably aren’t as financially healthy as you might hope. PayPal Credit products are designed to help people see not only what credit can do for them in their particular situation, but more importantly to understand, through transparency, how to manage credit use more wisely. PayPal’s technical prowess and merchant relationships allows us to “short-circuit” the traditional process of applying for and using credit. We are able to offer credit to people who may not qualify under purely traditional underwriting rules, more quickly, and more simply. Most customers can be approved for instant-use credit within minutes, without leaving the checkout process. That’s certainly a unique twist we bring to the experience. When our ceo talks about financial inclusion, this is one of the things he’s getting at: making credit a democratized process, especially for those at the lower end of the financial spectrum who traditionally have been subject to the most burdensome fees and expenses. Even those who have ready-access to credit don’t necessarily see it as way to improve their financial position. Rather, credit so often gets viewed with skepticism and confusion. PayPal is working to change that dynamic. But more than that, PayPal Credit provides a very unique checkout experience and helps merchants build trust with customers. Many merchants are specifically working right now to grow their Millennial customer base, and doing so requires some new approaches. PayPal Credit is a perfect match for this prized demographic, with Millennials moving away from plastic credit cards and showing preference for “digitally native” payment methods. 2016-03-31 16:09 Arthur Zaczkiewicz

20 Colin Furze Demos His DIY Thermite Launcher GIF and screencap via It's tempting to call the work of YouTube star Colin Furze "functional art," but then you'd have to think of a rational reason to use his latest invention, a thermite launcher, besides, "It's so coooool! " A combination of DIY craftsmanship and punk rock filmmaking has earned the Brit over two million subscribers, who have seen him create IRL X- Men powers , a jet fuel go-cart , a motorized toilet , and a fully-equipped underground apocalypse bunker. He's been on a launcher kick recently. He built a bazooka for fireworks not long ago, and his newest piece looks like a minigun but it shoots handmade thermite shells. Watching him decimate wheelbarrows, gas tanks, and even a load of fireworks with the heavy weapon fires a quick shot of dopamine right into your inner 14-year-old, but is also informative in case a robotic uprising ever happens. Based on what Furze does to a washing machine in this video, this information will come in handy. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait for the implosion of the government in order to make one of your own. Furze got special permission to make a thermite shell launcher, but if you tried this at home you'd almost certainly be arrested. Look, don't touch, in the video below. Watch the making-of videos here and here. See more of Colin Furze's work on his YouTube channel. Related: Introducing: Colin Furze's Bread Toasting Knife Stand Inside A Fireworks Spectacle With This DIY Suit Of Armor Watch 300 Rockets Explode to Dirty British Punk 2016-03-31 16:05 Beckett Mufson

21 21 Ordinary Pictures teaser trailer Here is the teaser trailer for our exhibition Ordinary Pictures, cut by our videographer Andy Underwood-Bultmann. The show, curated by Eric Crosby, surveys a range of conceptual picture- based practices since the 1960s through the lens of the stock photograph and other forms of industrial image production. You can take a walkthrough of the exhibition here. […] 2016-03-31 18:57 By

22 Writhing, Sweaty, and Ecstatic: The Realist Paintings of Dan Witz This article contains adult content. Dan Witz, Brite Nite II. All photos courtesy of the artist Sweaty, writhing bodies caught in the heat of the moment: Dan Witz is a voyeur. His academic paintings of mosh pits, and now raves and orgies, capture people at their most intense, ecstatic, and animalistic. While his previous subject matter has included mainly subjects he shot in the mosh pits of hardcore shows, his latest series, Mosh Pits, Raves, and One Small Orgy expands his oeuvre to include different settings, but similar groups of strangers gettin’ down in various ways. To find out more about his process and his relationship to mosh pits and painting, The Creators Project talked to Witz in advance of his show, which opens April 2 at Jonathan LeVine Gallery. On the way, we also stopped on topics like ditching your tour mates to visit art museums, Donald Trump rallies, and Walt Whitman. Byronesque 3 The Creators Project: First off, can you tell me about the origins of your Mosh Pits paintings? Dan Witz: I’m a little reluctant to admit this, but the greatest single influence on my painting hasn’t been any fancy art-smart aesthetic theory. It comes from the music I’ve grown up with. The artists I most admire have almost always been musicians, and most of my best ideas come from the transgressive energy of rock'n'roll. In my early 20s I played in post punk New York noise bands. I was never much of a musician but it was a lot of fun, and as important a part of my education as art school. While on tour in Europe, during the day, I’d sneak out and visit art museums. I’d usually be sleep deprived and hungover, a raw, exposed nerve from my nightly escapades over-romancing the punk lifestyle, but in that dilated condition the bizarre sense of space and presence in those old master paintings completely cracked me open—I mean it left me totally dumbstruck. It took awhile to process those two worlds colliding, but eventually it occurred to me to paint hardcore shows in an academic realist style. Can you walk us through your process, from show, to studio, to show? The whole thing starts long before the actual putting of brush to canvas. It all begins at the right kind of hardcore show (crowded, unregulated), where I photograph the mosh pit for source material. The painting lives or dies on the level of chaos and abandon I find at the concert—and my ability to get in there and capture it. That’s why I prefer old school bands like Agnostic Front or Vision of Disorder—the audience really lets themselves go for those guys. After I start photographing I slip into the moment and improbable amounts of time passes without me. Which is something I dearly love—a state of flow similar I imagine to what athletes describe. Drained and sometimes a bit bruised, I drag myself home and hole up with Photoshop, which is another lovely lost world for me. Puzzling together the compositions can take months. Each grouping is made up of separate photos, which requires a lot of fiddling and minute adjustments if it’s going to look natural. Then comes the long hard slog of the actual painting, a gestational feat which, to be honest, is frustrating and difficult but never becomes routine. Somewhere in my youth I had the misfortune of picking up the cliché that great art involves suffering. It’s hard for me to accept that I’ve consciously set myself out to suffer, but this process, although very rewarding, seems to qualify as that. These shows can last for several hours—how do you choose which moments you want to depict? After photographing in the mosh pits for a while the musician in me began to get familiar with patterns in the songs. Eventually it got to the point where I could sense the moment coming when the crescendo is building and the crowd will go totally berserk. I keep the camera on a pole so I count down with the bass player and lift the camera over the eye of the pit hoping the shutter will click at the optimum moment. It’s mostly luck but when I nail one it’s as satisfying as performing. Sick of it All Your work shows a definitive Baroque influence, both naturalistic and theatrical. Do you see a connection between the violent imagery of Baroque paintings and the contained aggression of the pit? While I’ve looked long and hard at the baroque artists, and use a lot of their methods, I‘m actually not a huge fan of their work (except for Caravaggio and some of his followers). The other day I was admiring some photos of those spiky, obstreperous wild-style graffiti murals, and thinking that those are an excellent visual corollary to the experience of a hardcore concert (and that contained aggression you’re referring to). Rubens and all those theatrical Baroque painters were chiefly concerned with their narrative, always circling back to it. Mosh pits defy all conventions: by definition they’re going to fly off the handle. Concerning my actual painting technique, I’d have to say that my attitude is much less dramatic than the Baroque painters—more like 19th century academic painting. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve found that an approach of quiet observation better captures the barbaric yawp and roar of the pit than if I worked fast and tossed paint around. Amid the chaos, your work also depicts humans in varying states of vulnerability; the agony and the ecstasy. Can you talk a bit about this paradox? Yes, I never get bored with this. I’ve been watching clips of these crazy, violent Trump rallies and really want to go photograph one. There’s something extremely wrong there of course, but I feel that if I was to explore it, in a similar way to these concerts, it would be revealing on many levels. When I quit playing music and devoted myself exclusively to painting I was concerned that I’d lose my edge. But making art has turned out to be a pretty crazy life, full of challenges. Every time I think I’m done with the chaos thing, and it’s time to move onto a new topic, something like Trump comes along and I’m back to feeling like I’m barely scratching the surface. A Small Orgy Finally, what are you working on right now? In the studio, I’m working on some big rave canvases, based on some pretty insane photos I’ve taken. And I’m about to embark upon some major street art installations. The working title for the hardcore series is, YAWP! -- after that Walt Whitman quote, “I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.” For the rave paintings I’m using, WOMP! which is a similar type evocation, this time for that primal body slamming bass sound at those concerts. Brite Nite I For more on Dan Witz, visit his website. Mosh Pits, Raves, and One Small Orgy is on view at Jonathan LeVine Gallery from April 2 - 30, 2016. Related: Hyperrealism Thrives at Jonathan LeVine Gallery This is What a Cardboard Box Moshpit Looks Like The Physics of the Mosh Pit Could Help Design CG Crowd Scenes 2016-03-31 16:00 Alyssa Buffenstein

23 Forget 'Batman v Superman,' the Original Superman Cartoon Rules Screencaps via The first Superman cartoon was a masterful, essential portrayal of the most iconic Superman there is, rivaling the prowess of Walt Disney and essentially founding the genre of animated action adventure series. At least, that's the conceit of a new video by indie film essayist Kaptainkristian. Superman - The Golden Age of Animation argues that Max Fleischer, whose name you recognize from iconic cartoons like Popeye and Betty Boop, injected a professionalism and attention to detail into the series that continues to outperform the superhero's most recent iterations. Fleischer was exploring the intersection of art and technology even back in the 1940s. His invention of the rotoscope, a tool used even today to capture human movements and convert them into animated frames, lends the original series a sense of life unmatched by some actual live-action movies. "Every element in these films, from the movement to the color to the sound design worked so synergistically that sometimes you forget these cartoons were made in the 40s," Kaptainkristian says in the video. "Even the lighting is realistic. It looks almost like an oil painting, being dark and shadowy while maintaining that beautifully saturated color. " Kaptainkristian also dissects the impact Fleischer's series had on popular culture, with apparent influence on titles as diverse as Godzilla and Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. With Batman v Superman earning mixed reviews, now's a great time for casual fans to investigate the classic series, and hardcore superhero connoisseurs to revisit it. See more of Kaptainkristian's work on his YouTube channel . Via Devour Related: How Sci-Fi Invented the Superman Memory Crystal Superman, Stray Bullets, Guardian of the Forest, Usagi Yojimbo Batman, Superman, Hip Hop Family Tree, Welcome to Typhon Watch A Dreamworks Animator Turn His Son Into A Superhero 2016-03-31 15:30 Beckett Mufson

24 Versace Kicks Off Bag Contest TAKE YOUR SHOT – Versace launched a competition called “7 bags for 7 cities” on Thursday, asking participants to help customize limited editions of the brand’s Palazzo Empire bag model, taking inspiration from seven cities around the world. To join in on the opportunity, participants have to photograph an iconic building or unique moment in their respective cities — Beijing, Hong Kong, Milan, New York, Paris, Sao Paolo and Tokyo — and submit the image on the contest’s Web site palazzoempire. versace .com by May 16. The brand’s design team will then pick one standout image from each city, which will be used to create seven personalized Palazzo Empire bags that are limited to ten pieces each and will be sold in Versace stores in the seven cities. The seven chosen contestants with the winning submission will win a trip to Milan in September and attend the Versace women’s fashion show for spring 2017. Current uploads to the Web site include multiple shots of the Eiffel tower in Paris, the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building in New York and a view of Milan’s Piazza Duomo. 2016-03-31 15:26 Lucie Janik

25 "Marilyn Monroe” Music Video Features Sevdaliza Becoming a Cyborg Screencaps via Sevdaliza , the dark, minimal songstress based out of Rotterdam, has been making waves since her debut EP The Suspended Kid was released last year. Her video for "That Other Girl" tapped experimental CGI artists Pussykrew to create a lavish world of Neo-Baroque imagery and cyborg technoshamanism. Of the album, “Marilyn Monroe” is a standout, and now the airy ballad is brought to life through the directorial vision of Iranian artist Hirad Sab. Sab’s 3D digital art in the video is highly structural and precise, which is an impressive feat for a self-taught artist. In the video, Sevdaliza metamorphs into a sort of cyborg statue of herself, dripping in a fluid silver and coated in TRON -like glowing wireframes. It's hard to tell where the technology ends and the human begins—kind of reminds us of having a smartphone. Watch the video for “Marilyn Monroe” below. To hear more of Sevdaliza’s The Suspended Kid , check out her SoundCloud , and stay up to date with new work from her Facebook . Related: Illustrating a Migrant's Experience in 3D Art [Music Video] A Lavish Trip Inside an Empress' 3D-Scanned Palace Virtual Organisms Writhe in Generative Music Video "Tehraj" 2016-03-31 15:25 Annie Armstrong

26 Fitbit’s On Fire – Ships 1 Million Blaze Units More Articles By Fitbit Inc. said it has shipped more than 1 million units of the Fitbit Blaze device in its first month of availability sending the stock higher by more than 6 percent to trade at $14.30. This number has exceeded the company’s internal sales forecasts and captured the number- one ranking as best-selling device in the smartwatch and heart monitor categories on Amazon. The product has received 1,200 customer reviews giving it a 4 or 5 star rating. The Blaze retails at $199 and is more expensive that the Fitbit Alta , which retails for $129. The Blaze has more features like heart rate monitoring and music control causing the price to be higher. The Alta device is one of the top selling fitness tracker and pedometer devices on Amazon. Fitbit Blaze will begin shipping to Asia later this spring and is currently available in North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Fitbit Alta is available in North America, Hong Kong and Japan. It will begin shipping to Europe, Asia and Africa later this spring. Coverage on Fitbit was initiated with at Longbow Research with a Buy rating and a price target of $20. Fitbit stock has had a rough year. It has dropped 51 percent , plunging from a 52 week high of $51.90 down to a low of $11.91. Fitbit competes against Nike’s Fuel band and Jawbone’s Up device. There are also products from Samsung and Lumo Body Tech and the Apple smartwatch. A recent report from Argus Insights found that consumers are happier with their devices, than they are with the fitness apps that work with the device. The Fitbit app rated low consumer satisfaction, while the Nike and Jawbone apps received high praise. Along with this tough competition comes lawsuits. Jawbone and Fitbit have been suing each other over trade secrets and patents. So far, Fitbit has defeated four of Jawbone’s six claims, but the bad blood isn’t over between the two and more suits are expected. 2016-03-31 15:17 Debra Borchardt

27 The Healing Scars of Land Art Robert Smithson - Spiral Jetty, via Wikimedia Landscapes speak to us. Soaring mountains, deep canyons, wide seas—all fodder for song lyrics. But what is it that these expanses of natural space say to us? In the 1970s, a number of artists attempted to discover the answer by venturing out into that space, moving from the realm of representation into manipulation. There was something monumental to these works. Artists like Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson crafted on massive scale, human attempts to transfigure the landscape into an ideal image, to replicate the environment in an orthogonal direction, cutting it with marks not unlike the Nazca lines in Peru, or building upward like the pyramids of Central America and Egypt. By positioning projects in the outdoors, these artists broke outside of the limiting confines of the museum, to consider the world, in its totality, as the situating place for art. As Smithson wrote: “Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning into a museum.” Outside of those walls, monuments could move, the wind and rain could blow through them, and the art could connect with the world again. Artists like Nancy Holt and Charles Ross created work aligned to the heavens, to the motion of the stars and sun, seeking to connect to something larger than avant-garde movements, planetary motion as their guiding principle. Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels. Photo by the author But these works were detached from the landscape at the same time. They connected on an aesthetic level, matching the world’s outrageous distance, its scale, and range, but with revelations about anthropogenic climate change comes a new picture of land art. Some work, like Smithson’s Monuments of Passaic New Jersey , ironically celebrates the anthropocene’s effects as a non-museum form of sculpture, documenting human’s environmental legacy. But as much as Smithson wanted to break out from the tomb-like museum and seek those vagaries of nature, that irony came around to bite him, as Spiral Jetty became one more tourist destination for land art fans. As Robert Louis Chianese writes: “Little environmental consciousness seems involved in Spiral Jetty. It’s inert and quite drab, isolated, somewhat elegant in its blunt simplicity, but essentially pointless, though it does somewhat humanize the remote and desolate site.” Lucy Lippard, one of the foremost scholars of the environmental art movement, notes, “Earthworks play their part as the myth of the Old West gives way to the mundane real estate realities of the New West in a region where the land itself is more compelling than any museum; or, more pessimistically, where protected land and beauty strips are 'museumized' in a landscape marred by extraction and greed.” She hints at the similarity of land art and mining industry, noting that many land artists used the scars left by human resource extraction as models, “readymade” versions of the effect an artist might have on the blank canvas of the Western United States. Edward Burtynsky, Mines #22, Kennecott Copper Mine, Bingham Valley, Utah 1983 To treat the earth as a canvas for one’s own creation is little different than to treat its minerals as cash pouring from a natural ATM. Lippard, in her 2014 book Undermining , suggests the gravel pit, a depression where rock has been removed and crushed for concrete or road-building, is perhaps as significant a signature of our species’ actions as the pyramids. As ruins, gravel pits are decidedly unspectacular. Their emptiness, their nakedness, and their rawness suggests and alienation of land and culture, a loss of nothing we care about. Gravel pits transform the incomprehensibly distant geological past into dubious futures. For many, gravel pits represent pure financial potential as the bedrock of skyscrapers and the backbones of highways. Other artists have taken note of this as well. Edward Burtynsky ’s photographs of freeway interchanges, quarries, mines, and dams catalog the devastation we have wrought upon the earth, harnessing the spectacle as artwork. But other artists considered the earth as more than simply an aesthetic canvas. Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series , for which the artist used her body to form shapes in grass, sand, and dirt, connects the impermanence of the human form with the natural world of which we are all an element. Her works, documented with photography, eventually faded in time as the landscape’s own biological motion took over—unlike the pits of Kennecott Copper’s mines, which Burtynsky photographs, or Smithson’s Spiral Jetty , which will remain for unknown lifetimes, perhaps outliving us all. Ana Mendieta, Silueta Series, 1973 The ecology of a landscape is what exists below the spectacle, on the microscopic level, or even in plain sight, but obscured through time. Works like Patricia Johanson ’s Fair Park Lagoon specifically combine sculpture and biology, in this case restoring native species to create a functional ecosystem out of a neglected, algae-ridden lake built for Dallas’ 1936 Centennial Exposition. Basia Irland ’s Ice Books take river water and native seeds, and create an ephemeral sculpture that is then released back into the ecosystem from where it came, decomposing back into natural material as the ice melts. Patricia Johanson, Fair Park Lagoon. Photo via the artist's website Interacting with the earth has been our task even since we became a species, but it is only very recently that we have become conscious once again of the implications of this exchange. How are we to live upon the surface of a planet fraught with unknowns, as we unlearn the habits of history? Environmental art, as much as the science of building cities, should continue to evolve with us. Art’s chances for survival are the same as any of our human bodies'. Perhaps Mendieta’s Siluetas , then, are the perfect image of earthwork's future—the shape of a human body, impressed upon the soil, until the weather we have wrought comes to wash our mark away forever. Basia Irland, Geleenbeek Text. 2015. Photo: Derek Irland Related: An Artist In Prague Wants To Artificially Grow Gigantic Caves Aerial Footage Makes Remote Locales Look Like Other Planets For $6500 You Can Visit James Turrell's Unfinished Observatory 2016-03-31 15:00 Adam Rothstein

28 The Origins of Visionary Art in Los Angeles | City of the Seekers From “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” by William Blake, 1790 (via WikiCommons) In 2009, the Los Angeles Conservancy and its Modern Committee examined LA’s unique religious heritage with a one-day tour of five spiritual institutions. The self-driving sojourn was called City of the Seekers: LA's Unique Spiritual Legacy , and it brought much-needed attention to Southern California's role in the founding of 20th-century fringe religious institutions. It also helped shed light on the way spiritual freedom in Southern California has enabled artists to make visionary work as part of their creative practice. Inspired by the Los Angeles Conservancy's project and a spiritual-themed bus adventure from LA’s own offbeat tour company, Esotouric , "City of the Seekers" is a column about how Southern California has enabled creative people to make art as an expression of their spiritual practices. Saitic Isis by J. Augustus Knapp, 1926 (WikiCommons) In 1928, mystic, lecturer, and occult book-collector Manly P. Hall published The Secret Teachings of All Ages , a dazzling encyclopedic compendium of ancient texts, esoteric traditions, and musings on metaphysics that became an instant bestseller, in part because of the incredibly detailed and visually striking illustrations by J. Augustus Knapp. Due to the book's success, Canada-born Hall moved to LA and opened the Philosophical Research Society in the 30s. It has become one of the stops on the “City of the Seekers” tour. Illustrator Knapp also relocated from his home in Kentucky to continue making art in LA, creating a tarot deck with Hall in the meantime. Through the artful marriage of images and words, the seeds for the derided but nevertheless important New Age movement was planted in Southern California. Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall; illustrated by J. Augustus Knapp (via WikiCommons) After Hall made his way out West in the 30s, many other broad-minded people did, too. Most of them settled north, as LA was still just known as a frenzied free-for-all feeding off the nascent film industry. Nonetheless, captivating orators such as Charles Webster Leadbeater and Annie Besant—theosophists who espoused groundbreaking notions such as women's rights— established centers in Hollywood and inspired the likes of Aldous Huxley. Like Hall, Huxley moved to LA in the 30s and fell in love with the freedom that the rapidly developing area offered. Mirroring Hall's DIY approach to crafting his own credo, Huxley set out to find his own brave new world in the City of Angels, quoting a line from the late-18th century artist and writer William Blake's " The Marriage of Heaven and Hell " in his slim volume, The Doors of Perception , published in 1954. The book describes Huxley’s experience with mescaline, which would in turn inspire the name of the band, The Doors. Huxley Over William Blake's Urizen Praying, by Tanja M. Laden (originals via WikiCommons) Left to right: Vedanta Swamis Ramakrishna, (1836 – 1886); Sarada Devi (1853 – 1920); Vivekananda (1863 – 1902) and Brahmananda (1863 – 1922) (all via WikiCommons) 2016-03-31 14:55 Tanja M

29 More Than Gaming, Playstation VR Provides an Experience Scavenger’s Odyssey Just like the internet back in the day, VR isn't a trend that the public can just sit back and expect to pass. It's here to stay — and grow, and develop — and while no one knows for sure what form or medium VR/AR will take in the end, it's safe to say that there's a lot of noise out there concerning headsets, cameras, programs, gaming systems, and accessibility. Recently at SXSW, I had the chance to experience Sony PlayStation VR, and as someone who's tried her hand and head at countless different kinds of VR gear, I was just as impressed as I was when I tried out Project Morpheus at E3 2015. It didn't come as surprise, then, when I learned that Morpheus was actually PlayStation VR's codename at the time. Full disclosure: I am a major PlayStation fan, because it's the only console I've been able to experience gorgeous casual games like Journey , or compelling story-driven games like Life is Strange. I'm not a fan of first-person shooters, and a puzzle game has to be really clever in order for me to reach the end. But for me, gaming is a form of relaxation more than anything else. Danger Ball What makes PlayStation VR different than other headsets is that the games themselves automatically come with PlayStation's awe-inspiring resolution and high attention to detail, and since many are designed with VR in mind, there's no weird distortion, blurred vision, motion sickness, or any of the obstacles that come with the increasing array of other VR headsets out there. That's not to say there probably weren't major challenges while developing PlayStation VR, it's just that they've paid extra-careful attention to the hurdles, studying the neuroscience of VR in order to apply their findings to the product. In traditional games, obstacles and enemies are often taken for granted as a type of necessary evil. Vanquishing or defeating them becomes almost a job — a repetitive task that is part of the end goal of the game itself. But for casual gamers like me, VR offers an increased sense of scale, as well as a more visceral relationship to the environment. Instead of just electronically controlling components of a computer program on a screen, I'm participating, not just playing. So even for those who aren't gamers by definition, PlayStation VR affords opportunities just to experience something that may not be otherwise possible. Into The Deep (working title) When trying out Into The Deep (working title), I had the chance to become a professional diver, submerge myself deep underwater, and in a cage while a large, very realistic-looking and menacing shark ripped the metal railings off my cage, slowly tearing apart the only barrier between myself and the sea. There was no gameplay involved: I did not control the cage or the shark. I only turned my head in terror as I waited to see what would finally happen. (Take a guess.) This ability to look around, interact, and just take in the environment, rather than trying to rush through a game in order to achieve some sort of unspecified end goal, is exactly what affords VR designers the unprecedented opportunity to pay more attention to detail in order to enhance the player's experience. It's also what gives the player the "experience" itself, thereby elevating the practice of gaming into a type of newfound metaconscious activity that relies on inherent human curiosity, which isn't exactly encouraged in the real world — at least not for adults. 2016-03-31 14:00 Tanja M

30 A Network of LED Antennas Brings a Neighborhood Together Photo: Lee Dobson A network of light and sound let people engage with their neighbors in the town of East Durham last weekend, a symbol of connection in a place increasingly deprived and isolated due to pit closures in the mining industry in the 1980s and 1990s. The residents of a couple of streets in England's north east were able to communicate thanks to a public art installation called VoiceOver , commissioned by Forma Arts and created by Umbrellium for East Durham Creates. Participants readily admitted they don't often talk to their neighbors. After talking with the locals, Umbrellium , who specialize in working with urban communities, created VoiceOver to bridge the distances between the people who live there. "We were very much inspired by the Hands Across America project from the late 80s, that achieved the seemingly impossible task of getting millions of people to hold hands across the USA at the same time," artist and co-founder of Umbrellium, and also the Wifi-Camera , Usman Haque tells The Creators Project. Photo: Richard Kenworthy Haque calls the installation a "participatory cultural infrastructure" and says residents were interested in sharing stories of the old mining days, singing, speaking on political or religious matters, and reading bedtime stories. To build the piece, the group designed a "mesh network" which involved connecting up custom built "light antennas" and "radio boxes. " The antennas were made using frosted acrylic tubes and LED strips connected to suction cups, the radio boxes each had a Raspberry Pi and speaker, enabling a signal conversion and bridge to the antenna. These were placed on various houses. "It means that each device is a node in a shared network carrying data for other nodes," Haque explains. "Such technologies are sometimes used to help deliver internet or phone coverage to areas that have very little signal/coverage. " Photo: Richard Kenworthy The result was an interactive channel of people's voices transformed into light and sound that lit up the neighborhoods and got people out of their homes and into the streets to wander and wonder through the night. "The project has been very much about using technology to connect people together in ways they may never have been connected before, and using the 'visual spectacle' as both a call to action and as an excuse to talk with each other," Haque notes. "Rather than simply being an ‘efficient’ communication tool, the aim has been to get as many people as possible together at the same time communicating with others they might not even know, and meaningfully involved in creating, installing, supporting and bringing to life a cultural infrastructure, one that actively encourages performance, sharing, and storytelling. " Photo: Richard Kenworthy Click here to learn more about VoiceOver. Related: Immerse Yourself In Reactive Pools Of Light With This Interactive Installation Picture This—Reinventing The Camera As A Social And Anti-Technological Object In South Korea, Fingerprints Are Symbols of Protest 2016-03-31 13:35 Kevin Holmes

31 A Day with California's Stoned Nuns [Photos] All photographs from the “Sisters in the Valley” series. Photographed by Shaughn and John, 2016. Photos courtesy of Shaughn and John Photography duo Shaughn Crawford and John DuBois of Shaughn and John know a good photo op when they see one. After watching a local California news story about a pair of nuns growing pot in the valley they realized this wasn’t just a good opportunity, it was a drop-everything, must-shoot, once-in-a-lifetime event. The duo just released a stunning set of photographs of these “Sisters of the Valley” on Booooooom and speak to The Creators Project about their process, the nuns, and the temptations of the devil’s weed. Shaughn explains that this whole series started when he was home with family over Thanksgiving, and saw a local news story “I was like ‘what the fuck, this is crazy’ and I immediately hit them up because we always have our ear to the ground looking for weird stories.” After a bit of searching, Shaughn and John finally connected with the nuns, and “they were totally stoked on our photos, and the idea we had to come and do a more documentary- style project. John and I are really curious about people, and we’re always looking for subcultures within subcultures. We’re very curious about the world.” Though they wear a habit similar to a catholic nun, Sisters Kate and Darcy have their own set of beliefs and their own system of faith. Even their look, white habits with denim skirts, are uniquely their own. As John explains, “They were really open with us, as far as what their beliefs are, and what kind of nuns they are. They, right off the bat, said ‘oh back in 2009 I ordained myself’ and they were very open about the fact that they’re not affiliated with the catholic church.” The nuns went on to explain that they hold ceremonies, burn sage, and make their products by the cycles of the moon. “It’s kind of more spiritual than religious,” says John. The nuns have just opened a GoFundMe page to help save their business after Etsy shut them down. During Shaughn and John’s visit, the nuns were very candid about the legality of their work. Even though medical marijuana is legal in California, and they claim the CBD Oil they create doesn’t contain anything that gets people high, they still don’t run a legal business because of permit and license issues. As Shaughn explains, the nuns “didn’t care, or didn’t worry about it, she was just going to see what happens.” Does that lack of worry about repercussions stem from their faith? John doesn’t think so, “They don’t seem to operate with assumptions based in any spiritual belief. They’re just headstrong women who are really passionate about what they’re doing and believe in the cause.” Shaughn adds that, “A lot of their ‘religion’ has to do with helping people. They’re very into the idea of helping people with their medicine. That’s one thing they talk about non-stop.” “That and politics,” says John. “They have political opinions that they’re very open about. A lot about social justice, and they’re big Bernie Sanders fans.” John says the nuns don’t just care about legalizing cannabis, but that they’re interested in a whole host of other progressive social issues. How did the duo make the nuns feel comfortable before shooting? Shaughn says “With all of our projects we try to get to know the people. We don’t just run in there and start shooting. Sometimes John and I will shoot two cameras separately, but in the case of this project we worked together and went slower than some of our jobs, and were just really focused on finding a few amazing shots instead of covering tons of shots.” John says that they spent the first hour just sitting and talking with the sisters. From there the most important shots became clear, as he explains, “Sister Kate, when she gave us the tour of the house, she opened up this refrigerator that was just full of bags of weed. We immediately were like ‘Okay, we’ve got to get a great shot of that.’” So, the big question is: did the duo get to smoke with the Sisters of the Valley? “No,” says John, “They offered. But we were there to do a job, so we politely declined and focused on the task at hand. We let them do the smoking.” What fortitude! As Shaughn explains, “It was definitely a tough one to turn down.” John concurs, “It’s hard when a nun is sitting there holding a joint up to, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.” Check out more of Shaughn and John’s work at ShaughnAndJohn.com . And donate to the Sisters of the Valley via their GoFundMe page . Related: Shakespeare Smoked Pot | The Creators Project A Pot-Themed Art Show Heads to California: Last Week in Art Stimulating Photos of a New Campaign for Pot Products 2016-03-31 13:30 Giaco Furino

32 toyota setsuna concept for milan design week 2016 toyota uses traditional japanese wood joinery to assemble setsuna concept vehicle all images courtesy of toyota scheduled to debut at milan design week 2016, toyota’s ‘setsuna’ concept defies the notion that cars should always be seen technological marvels with the latest gadgets. the unique wooden roadster was conceived to embody the affection owners grow to feel for their cars and to show how cars continue to change and offer real value over time. toyota engineer kenji tsuji and his team used wood that responds directly to longevity with color changes that can be passed on from generation to generation. despite being a concept, the ‘setsuna’ offers basic vehicular performance and is able to drive, turn and stop. to achieve this, each type of wood was selected for a specific application. the body is composed of 86 handmade panels. considerable thought was given to the design and creation of each panel from the outset, and eventually, when repairs become necessary, individual panels can be replaced rather than needing to replace the entire body. looking at a panel that has been repaired, owners will be able to see the traces of where work has been done by hand, and sense the memories that have been passed down. for the exterior, japanese cedar was selected for the refinement of its wood grain and its flexibility as a material. for the chassis, japanese birch was selected for its strong rigidit. for the floor, japanese zelkova was selected for its strength and excellent durability, and for the seats, the smooth-textured castor aralia was chosen. two different grain patterns were used for the ‘setsuna’ two forms of cedar can be seen to making up the exterior panels of the ‘setsuna’. these patterns are the straight grain, cut toward the center of the logs, and the cross grain, cut at an appropriate distance from the center of the logs. the straight grain gives a formal impression with the grain showing sharply and evenly. in contrast, the cross grain is softer and more irregular, with different types of grain visible in each piece of wood, creating a quaint and friendly impression. the team used traditional japanese techniques such as ‘okuriari’ and ‘kusabi’ so that the wood could be joined without nails or screws. ‘okuriari’, which allows the exterior panels to be fitted and taken off without using any nails, not only increases the strength of joints but also makes it possible to make partial changes to dovetailing and mortise joints if the fastenings have worn down. the interior cabin is also made of wood ‘when we created the setsuna, we envisaged a family pouring its love into it over generations so that the car gains an irreplaceable value,’ explains kenji tsuji. ‘continuous development is possible in the form of bonds between the car and the family, like the growth rings of a tree. to proceed with the development of a car utilizing the appeal of wood, we directly spoke with experts with wide-ranging knowledge, including carpenters specializing in temple and shrine construction and ship’s carpenters.’ two types of japense joinery were used to keep the car together ‘furthermore, during this project, sumitomo forestry, a company that fully understands our concept, shared their knowledge of wood construction with us, and together we engaged in various types of joint development from the early stages, including wood selection and proposals for processing techniques and assembly methods. while we used wood as the main material, we also poured lots of time and passion into the car itself with our colleagues, creating a prototype and evaluating it so that the car would offer basic performance in the form of driving feel and comfort.’ no screws or nails were used to assemble the car ‘by displaying the setsuna, which was created with these hopes in mind and receiving a wide range of opinions, we believe that we can further improve this concept. one piece of feedback that we received in particular was the hope that we would incorporate this concept into car manufacturing in the future.’ 2016-03-31 13:15 Piotr Boruslawski

33 5 April Fool's Pranks Inspired by Art Just in time for April Fool's, we've rounded up a list of artists whose playful works remind you that can't always trust your eyes. Don't be tricked by what you initially thought you saw— slow down, and take the time to appreciate these altered perceptions of reality. While your friends are busy saran wrapping your toilet, take your own pranks to a more sophisticated level by channeling the following artists. Take a close look at Yrjö Edelmann 's photorealistic paintings, such as his compelling A More Powerful Way of Defining Trompe L'Oeil. His works many be contemporary, but they notably employ techniques used by Old Masters to achieve an illusionary 3-D effect. At first glance, viewers may question whether this piece is a sculpture or a painting—use this to your advantage by telling your significant other that you left a gift for them in the bedroom. Sit back and enjoy their confusion while they try and unwrap it, and pat yourself on the back for an excellent execution of a prank. Not into paintings? Strategically place these Sarah Oppenheimer sculptures around your house to create a disorienting maze. Invite your pals over to admire your latest art acquisition, and silently laugh as they trip over it (because you're a good friend and laughing out loud would be mean). From afar, Oppenheimer's works are translucent, and their lighting and positioning allow them to totally disappear from certain angles. Just make sure the joke isn't on you and no one breaks anything. Photographer Cindy Sherman is well known for tricking her viewers with a range of costumes and characters, most notably her landmark Film Stills series. For this April Fool's, take a page out of her book and assume a new identity, then pretend like nothing happened. If anyone questions your appearance, don't break character! Sherman's attention to detail and setting are what convinces viewers that they are looking at an authentic scene. Even if you can't fool your friends, you'll be sure to fool others on the street, and that counts as a prank, right? What do you see when you look at this painting? A father and son? A bachelor in coattails? An animal on its hind legs? Similar to Rorschach tests, Latvian artist Janis Avotins leaves the interpretation of his works up for debate. Enjoy an eerie April first, and put this painting in a dark room and scare the living daylight out of your unsuspecting guests. For a truly a dedicated prankster, we suggest hosting a dinner party with furniture by Franz West and putting up signs that read: “Installation: Do Not Sit. " West defines his furniture as sculpture and plays with the question, what is design and what is art? He succeeds at blending both disciplines by making something that is normally straightforward into something abstract and ambiguous. See if your friends play into the trick and ask where the installation is, then watch them struggle to eat dinner while standing. Flawless joke. Pour yourself a drink. 2016-03-31 13:01 artnet News

34 34 LA-Based State & Manor is All About American Made Naked Undies’ founders Molly Shaheen and Rachel Zimmerman are rebranding their loungewear company as a lifestyle brand called State & Manor. In their third year of business, the two Los Angelenos have a celebrity following but are more concerned with keeping jobs and creative control stateside. Although innerwear was the focus early on, the brand developed into more of a lifestyle label. With distribution in 65 specialty stores, hotel and resorts and all production based in the U. S., the name change is meant to be a reference to the company’s U. S. manufacturing. All of the apparel including the fabric is made in downtown Los Angeles factories where the founders visit three or four days each week. “We check on the product, meet with the people who are working it, go through the sample making process, check the fabric before its cut – all those things that we wouldn’t be able to do if we made product overseas. As a smaller company, it’s a win-win – our minimums are lower, we get to make product in America and employ people here. We understand how important that is to the economy.” Zimmerman said. “We’ve had major hotel chains drop other brands and pick us up simply because we’re made in America and they appreciate what that takes.” The pair met BET cofounder and serial entrepreneur Sheila Johnson, after Naked Undies ranked on Oprah’s Favorite Things for Holiday 2014 and that led to Salamander hotel and spa staff wearing State & Manor for their uniforms. (Johnson and Oprah Winfrey are friends, Zimmerman explained.) A dynamic duo that relies on independent contractors, Shaheen and Zimmerman each hail from self-made families. Shaheen’s mother Jeanne is the first American woman to serve as a U. S. governor and senator (for New Hampshire) and her father, a former U. S. attorney and judge, who now has a law firm, has also seen success, steering a smattering of family businesses including jewelry stores and restaurants in New England. “My cousin is a gemologist. My family’s a lot like ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ – except we’re Lebanese, with all the different businesses, everybody’s kind of involved and around. Everyone lives on the same street. Zimmerman’s father started the retail chain Office Products Nationwide from the ground-up by selling office supplies from the trunk of his car. “Both Molly’s family and mine really started from nothing. It was the American dream – hard work, never ask someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself – so we have quite a few common threads.” Having seen how the Oprah effect jolted online and retail sales by 300 percent, Shaheen and Zimmerman said they expect this spring’s rebranding to increase annual sales by 100 percent. As a Los Angeles -based company with a good number of local accounts including the Portofino airbrush tanning salon in Beverly Hills, they have noticed a number of celebrities have taken to the collection without gifting. Reese Witherspoon , Sofia Vergara , Jennifer Anniston, Monique Lhuillier, Kim Kardashian and Courtney Cox are among the VIPs who have been spotted wearing their designs. “We’ve see the photos. But you know how that works – it’s always confidential. I saw her buy something from your line but I can’t tell you when or where or how.” Zimmerman said. Friends from the University of San Diego, Shaheen and Zimmerman fell out of touch while pursuing other goals. After working on her mother’s first senatorial campaign, Shaheen took a job at Endeavor (before it was acquired by William Morris) and Three Arts Entertainment. She married “Pretty Little Liars” actor Huw Collins last year. Zimmerman started out at the Nouveau model and talent agency, the La Jolla hub for Janice Dickinson’s reality show and later opened her own image-consulting company in Portland, Ore. and Beverly Hills. Zimmerman said she often found herself having to remove drawstrings and customize her clients’ apparel to make it loungewear. The pair reconnected in 2013, when Shaheen phoned her about launching a business together, knowing they had a similar moral compass and were intent in avoiding “all the horrible working conditions [that had been documented] in Bangladesh” and other parts of the world. State & Manor is now sold in 65 specialty stores, resorts such as the Montage spa and high-end athletic clubs like Equinox and barre3. Children’s wear is expected to be added in the next six months and customized throw blankets, along with a few men’s items. Pop-up shops will bow at select Salamander and Montage resorts for Mother’s Day weekend. With wholesale prices of $53, $67 and $108 respectively, current bestsellers are the Billy long- sleeve shirt, Chandler jogging pant and a Whitney coat, a blazer that is meant to feel like a sweatshirt. Each item has self-styling features and is meant to fit a range of body types. “The Ashton sweatshirt is named for the [campus] building we lived down the hall from each other in. And the Billy sweatshirt is named for my Dad because I like to say, ‘He brings me good luck.’ And I must say it’s working – the company is doing so well.’” 2016-03-31 13:00 Rosemary Feitelberg

35 Five Minutes With Halsey: Singer Talks MAC Lipstick, Changing Hair Looks and Coachella Electropop artist Halsey, nee Ashley Frangipane, debuted the second of MAC Cosmetics’ Future Forward Collaborations , the matte grey Halsey lipstick, which goes on sale today, at the company’s Hollywood and Highland store. The 21-year-old singer sat down with WWD to discuss her makeup inspiration, ever-changing style and upcoming Coachella debut. 2016-03-31 13:00 Marcy Medina

36 CNN Relaunches Fashion-Centric TV Show Called ‘CNN Style’ CNN is bringing its digital style site to television. Aptly named “CNN Style,” the show will debut on April 9. The monthly, half-hour show will premier on CNN International, and will be a companion to the network’s digital style vertical, which was launched in July. According to CNN, the TV show will be informed by the work of Elsa Klensch , who produced and hosted “Style with Elsa Klensch” for the network from 1980 to 2001. The new show, which will be hosted by Derek Blasberg, will cover luxury, art, fashion, autos, architecture and design, CNN said, offering that the first episode will feature pop star Rita Ora , Qatari art collector Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, British artist Tracey Emin and F1 star Lewis Hamilton. This year, CNN Style will cover a variety of events including New York’s Met Gala, Milan Design Week and the Venice Architecture Biennale. “We are taking inspiration from CNN’s rich past in style and reverse engineering the DNA from our hugely successful digital product to bring CNN Style to TV viewers worldwide,” Ellana Lee, senior vice president of CNN International said. 2016-03-31 13:00 Alexandra Steigrad

37 ninkipen! plants jabuticaba tree inside organic café in osaka aiming to foster a harmonious balance between inside and outside, this cafe in osaka is designed by local japanese studio ninkipen!. complementing the organic ingredients offered at the eatery, the space uses greenery to highlight its menu. at the entrance, a jabuticaba tree has been planted and serves as a main focus in the interiors. the ito-biyori café is illuminated by the large entrance looking out towards the landscaped outdoors the intimate café uses the large glazed entrance as its source of natural light – illuminating the simple, but refined material palette. a combination of wood, brick and concrete is used on various surfaces and with the introduction of greenery, this has culminated a welcoming atmosphere. a jabuticaba tree has been planted at the entrance furthermore, a sense of geometry is achieved with the straight lines, angles, careful organization of tables. this is interrupted by a large circular mirror that hangs on the concrete wall. the materials and theme is consistent in the outside of the café; the continuation of concrete,stone paved paths and plants creates a clear progression of inside and out. simple and clean, the interiors aim to reflect the café’s organic menu the detail of the simple bulb pendant lamps used inside 2016-03-31 12:55 Natasha Kwok

38 Study: Teen’s Shift From Juniors to Plus Sizes as Petite and Tall Also Rise When asked if they ever buy apparel considered to be in “special sizes,” teens revealed that they were purchasing more plus, petite and tall sizes and shifting away from the more “style conscious” junior segment. U. S. teens purchasing junior size apparel dropped from 81 percent in 2012 to 73 percent in 2015, according to the latest research from The NPD Group Inc. Meanwhile, 34 percent of respondents aged 13 to 17 said they were buying plus sizes, which compares to 19 percent in 2012. Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD, said, “Teens are reinvigorating the plus-size market. “Today’s young consumers know what they want and won’t settle for less,” Cohen said. “This energy will turn up the volume at retail for the plus-size apparel market overall, which is important but sometimes overlooked.” The NPD report noted that taken as a whole, plus-size shoppers desire “a wider variety of styles in their current wardrobe, with half of them wanting to buy apparel brands that make both regular and plus-sizes.” But there’s a clear disconnect to what teens want and what the market offers – at least from their perspective. “Teens are most likely of all age groups to feel that ‘brands design plus-size clothing as an afterthought’ and ‘plus-size clothing should be offered in the same styles available for my smaller friends,'” the researchers said in the report. For the juniors business, which NPD describes as “the largest of all teen special-size segments,” the shoppers are “more style-conscious consumers, as they have specific apparel likes and dislikes that set them apart from the other special size groups.” However, the researchers noted that at the same time, juniors are also on a “limited budget.” NPD said juniors also “shop more frequently for tops and bottoms compared to other size groups. In contrast, plus-size women make the fewest shopping trips per year for bottoms compared to other size groups.” Regarding tall sizes, NPD reported that 30 percent of teens are purchasing in the segment, which compares to 23 percent in 2012. And 49 percent of teens said they were purchasing petite sizes, which compares to 40 percent in 2012. Cohen said a “one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for most clothing, and it doesn’t work for marketing to consumers either.” “The junior-size and plus-size mindsets are converging in the growing plus-size teen consumer segment, and it is just the beginning,” Cohen explained. “Addressing the distinct differences in the way we market to, and deliver product for, junior and plus-size consumers is the first step to maximizing the potential of the entire special-size apparel market.” 2016-03-31 12:51 Arthur Zaczkiewicz

39 Here’s the Exhibitor List for Spring Masters New York 2016 The 2015 edition of Spring Masters New York. LEANDRO J./BFANYC. COM Spring Masters New York announced the exhibitor list for its 2016 edition today. This year’s fair opens on May 6 and will include 48 exhibitors from Europe, America, and Asia. Now in its third year, Spring Masters is focused on connoisseurship, and it tends to skew less contemporary in its offerings than most other fairs during Frieze week. Next year Spring Masters codirectors Michael Plummer and Jeff Rabin will refocus their efforts on a joint venture with TEFAF, which recently announced that it will bring two fairs to New York , the first of which will be in October. The exhibitor list follows in full below. Abellán , New York ACA Galleries , New York Armand Bartos Fine Art , New York Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts , New York Boulakia & Co. Limited , London Bowman Sculpture , London Cahn International , Münchenstein Chowaiki & Co , New York Colnaghi , London and Madrid Daphne Alazraki Fine Art , New York David Benrimon Fine Art , New York Didier Aaron , New York Didier Ltd. , London Dolan/Maxwell , Philadelphia, PA Drucker Antiques , Mount Kisco, NY Erik Thomsen , New York Galerie Lefebvre , Paris Gerald Peters Gallery , New York Hammer Galleries , New York Heather James , Palm Desert, CA Jerome Zodo , London and Milan John Martin Gallery , London Lillian Nassau , New York Long-Sharp Gallery , Indianapolis, IN Maison d’Art , Monaco Martin du Louvre , Paris Michael Pashby Antiques , New York Opera Gallery , New York Osborne Samuel Gallery , London Phoenix Ancient Art , New York Primavera Gallery , New York Richters of Palm Beach , Palm Beach, FL Robert Simon Fine Art , Tuxedo Park, NY Ronald Phillips LTD , London Rosenberg & Co , New York Schillay Fine Art , New York Simon Teakle , Greenwich, CT Sladmore , London Sladmore Contemporary , London Soraya Cartategui , Madrid Sundaram Tagore Gallery , New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore Sylvia Powell Decorative Arts , London Taylor | Graham , New York Thomas Colville , Guilford, CT Tomasso Brothers Fine Art , Leeds and London Trinity House , New York, London, and Broadway, England Vojtech Blau , New York Waterhouse & Dodd , London and New York Yufuku Gallery , Tokyo 2016-03-31 12:30 Alex Greenberger

40 franck bohbot's cinematic photos of new york form a sentimental study of storefronts franck bohbot's cinematic photos of new york form a sentimental study of storefronts franck bohbot’s cinematic photos of new york form a sentimental study of storefronts all images © franck bohbot while the new york city landscape is a seemingly endless sprawl of sights and spectacles, brooklyn-based photographer franck bohbot hones in on specific facets of urban life. for the series ‘light on – the color of the night’, bohbot forms a sentimental study of storefronts through a series of expressive and cinematic architectural ‘portraits’. shot over the course of two years, the collection highlights these commercial spaces nearly devoid of the human activity that usually populates them, turning the storefront into a stage for both nostalgia and modernity. some of the boroughs’ hidden gems — the sunshine cinema, veniero’s italian bakery, midtown comics — are animated through a hazy fog of subdued pastel fluorescence and a wash of dimly lit neon. theaters, delis, peep shows, corner stores, and hotels display marquees from a time past, or contemporary exterior façades, further illustrating the diversity and complexity of manhattan’s perpetually buzzing landscape. 2016-03-31 12:26 Nina Azzarello

41 “It Gets Dislocated”: The Evocative Cinema of Chantal Akerman In tribute to the late Chantal Akerman, the Walker presents the three-film series Chantal Akerman: 1950–2015, March 31 through April 3 in the Walker Cinema. Here, University of Minnesota English Professor Paula Rabinowitz reflects on Akerman’s art. A woman alone sits, sits alone repeatedly spooning white sugar from a bowl into her mouth. She stares […] 2016-03-31 14:06 By

42 Soft Sounds: Ben Vida Rethinks the Boundaries of Composition Related Venues Lisa Cooley Gallery Artists Ben Vida Ben Vida, “S. C.356 (Blue/Pink),” 2015 / Photo: Brica Wilcox, courtesy of 356 S. Mission Road In his 2008 essay “Resisting Language,” Nicholas Bullen—a writer and artist who was a founding member of U. K. grindcore band Napalm Death—works to situate the “grindcore voice,” or “death growl,” alongside the arc of avant-garde experiments with language in the 20th and 21st centuries. In doing so, he also defines the voice more broadly, positing it as a site onto which we project coherence, making it a locus, then, of cultural anxiety: “In a textual culture,” he writes, “the voice occupies the position of primary communicator. It is the facilitator for creating meaning, operating as a form of social adhesive by creating cohesion through a communication structure which conjoins individuals in a shared whole. Cultures which validate visual concepts through a mesh of phoneme and syntax (a mesh which assigns language a value as a repository of meaning) implicitly fear the breakdown of this system of communication, particularly at its most primal level—the voice.” This makes it vulnerable to experimentation—Bullen’s work with Napalm Death representing one possible approach, an act of near destruction through extremity and illegibility. The artist trained as a musician—his mother was a piano teacher, and he grew up playing that instrument, and later trumpet and guitar. After studying music at Webster University in St. Louis, he was involved in Chicago’s improvisational scene in the mid 1990s, playing in a number of ensembles including the all-acoustic Town and Country and recording for labels like Kranky, Thrill Jockey, and Drag City. “I was never interested in being an instrumentalist, first and foremost,” he says. “I was always interested in sound, in form and content— and concepts, too, frameworks that you would improvise within or compose within.” His recent compositions have employed a mix of analog synthesizers and electronics, the choice influencing the composition. “If I use an old Buchla synthesizer,” he offers, “I’m in some way in dialogue with Don Buchla himself, the way he thought an audio path should work. And with analog synth, my decision- making process changes: A generative system produces a lot of content without my being hands-on with it. But, ultimately, I want the tools to disappear.” At a certain point, Vida’s experiments in what he thinks of as “expanded composition” led him to consider how nonmusical media might carry his ideas. He recalls an initial experiment with “applying a logic system from a different medium to help decide how to make edits.” Vida used a skateboarding video as a springboard for sound: “I sonified what I was seeing on the screen,” he says, “really corny stuff, like squishing sounds as someone dropped onto a half-pipe. Then I decoupled the soundtrack from the imagery, and I thought, man, I wouldn’t have made any of those formal decisions before. That was such a liberating moment.” While Vida still essentially identifies as a composer, his practice is now liable to manifest in text, image, video, or nonmusical performance, with the conversations among all these processes perhaps generating new systems. Vida’s new body of work for Lisa Cooley starts from an interest in sociality and conversation, at the microlevels of intonation, affect, and inflection. Drawing once more from phonetic language and concrete poetry, his minimalistic black-and-white, text-based wall works are made to resemble scripts, with emphasis loosely on stage direction—the physical actions and internal monologues that accompany speech. Text operates somewhere between narrative and texture. “In the most basic sense, these are impressionistic narratives, or character studies, or snapshots of a little bit of conversation,” Vida explains. Words stretch, and so does coherence: “I think there’s something to it” becomes “ahyeeeeeethinkthrrsss sumthng tuh eht,” in response to stage directions instructing the speaker to utter the phrase such that it’s, alternately, “drifting,” “blurry,” or “dead drunk.” That the works are written out by hand lends, he thinks, “a certain amount of intimacy,” and also encourages viewers to spend more time with the text, rather than reacting to the works solely as images. “Once you start reading them,” he says, “that’s where the content exists.” Occasionally, Vida seems to locate an oddly transcendent moment when banality melts into abstraction. This negotiation speaks to a particular relationship with abstraction resulting from Vida’s background in sound; after all, in its most dis- tilled form, “sound is sort of a functional abstraction,” he says. Returning to Bullen’s brief history of the voice and the fundamental instability it might represent, one could say that in Vida’s hands, the voice—so burdened with carrying language, and consequently meaning—becomes a site of play. One might wonder what Vida actually expects of his audiences—especially given that his work is presented in a variety of contexts, from a European experimental music festival like Unsound to a white-cube contemporary art space. He recognizes that the points of reference that drive his compositions might remain elusive for some: “I don’t worry about communicating something concrete,” he says. Human relation, after all, is in his work characterized by unpredictability— and he consistently uncovers pleasure in that volatility. And ultimately, what Vida does is rooted in his personal interactions with sound and language. Does working on a piece intended to recalibrate a listener’s relationship to time slow him down too? “I want it to,” he says. “I like the idea of my work going out into the world, but I’m also living through everything I do. I want to be able to occupy that presentness, and I want to be able to access it more readily, every day.” 2016-03-31 12:01 Thea Ballard

43 Gerard Darel Launches Capsule Collection Inspired by Jackie Kennedy The line, which goes on sale this week in a selection of stores in France and on the French fashion label’s Web site, is designed to coincide with the exhibition “Elle s’appelait Jackie” (“Her Name Was Jackie” in English) taking place at the Galerie Ferrero in Nice until the end of May. The pieces are inspired by the former First Lady’s off-duty style, with casual chic items such as cashmere sweaters, cotton poplin shirts, flared jeans, a trench coat, a striped top and sailor pants. Prices range from 45 euros, or $50, for a T-shirt to 375 euros, or $425, for a suede skirt. In 1996, Gerard Darel purchased Kennedy’s pearl necklace at an auction at Sotheby’s in New York and subsequently produced replicas of the necklace in various colors. 2016-03-31 11:42 Joelle Diderich

44 Margarete Hahner Explores Vision in “Smaller Than Life” at Zwinger Berlin Related Venues Zwinger Galerie Margarete Hahner’s paintings at Zwinger Galerie in Berlin explore the concept of “vision,” as a synonym for both the physical ability to see, as well as the artistic sensibility. Titled “Smaller Than Life,” the exhibition examines the weight of its subjects, scrutinized by the artist’s penetrating gaze. There is a degree of historicism in the way Hahner executes her works, which are stylistically reminiscent of German Expressionism and New Objectivity. The subjects are painted with broad, sketchy brushwork and muted, earthy colors. The subjects’ and, by proxy, the creator’s vision is never completely objective, always obstructed by one object or another. Hahner examines the distortion produced on our vision of the world by hopes and despairs, symbolized in “Voll Leer” (2015, oil on wood panel) by two glasses, one full of water and the other one empty. The artist’s attitude is likewise poised between two extremes, self-mockery and earnestness. In another example Hahner draws the gaze inwards, as the subjects of her paintings examine themselves. The modern, fragmented self multiplies in front of the viewer, as in one of the untitled works (2014, oil on canvas, monoprint) which portrays a therapy session. Hahner’s style is invariably linked to the subjects they represent, with the emphasis placed on heightened emotions, strong, subjective vision and the use of the grotesque. 2016-03-31 11:37 Natalia Masewicz

45 perkins + will winds bicycle track through SRAM's chicago HQ global architecture and design firm perkins + will has completed an office in chicago that features an indoor bicycle track. located inside a former cold storage warehouse in the city’s fulton market district, the 72,000- square foot facility promotes collaboration among employees through a light-filled, open floor plan. commissioned by SRAM, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of bicycle components, the brief called for an interior that connected staff by providing a range of collaborative spaces. an additional component of the design is the integration of the firm’s product development spaces, including a working lab and a machine shop. the 1/8 mile test track winds through the office, connecting each area of the plan. along the route are several types of open and enclosed meeting spaces that provide multiple options for collaboration. a café functions as an all-day work space — offering a venue for casual meetings as well as facilitating larger gatherings, such as viewing stages of the famous tour de france. informal meetings also occur on the outdoor terrace, which wraps around the office and overlooks the city. corporate functions that require confidentiality are still connected to the rest of the office with glazed meeting rooms that open out onto public spaces. SRAM executives had several objectives for their new headquarters: increased flexible space for communal collaboration; privacy for human resources, legal, and product development; workspace for machining and testing parts; and support features, such as a bicycle cleaning station, locker rooms, showers, tire air-filling stations, a bike repair shop, and bike racks for the more than 100 employees who cycle to work each day. ‘we believe in the power of bicycles to transform lives, and, in this new space, our culture celebrates that,’ explains david zimberoff, vice president of marketing for SRAM. ‘people are really stoked. how could you not walk a prospect or a new employee through here and not have them want to work here?’ the track connects each area of the plan along the route are several types of open and enclosed meeting spaces the bicycle theme is evident in all areas of the scheme areas are provided for casual meetings as well as larger gatherings 2016-03-31 11:15 Philip Stevens

46 Eerie and Sinister Worlds: RONiiA on Their New, Walker- Inspired EP The Minneapolis-based trio RONiiA—Fletcher Barnhill (Joint Custody, FUGITIVE), Nona Marie Invie (Dark Dark Dark, Fugitive), and Mark McGee (Father You See Queen, Marijuana Deathsquads)—will release a new EP, Sisters, this Friday, March 25. Filled with richly atmospheric music, it derives its hypnotic power through its intricate dance between subtle intimation and emotional verve. On tracks […] 2016-03-31 09:40 By

47 Noveller on performing with Iggy Pop and making a guitar sound like a synth – SXSW 2016 Mar 24 2016 This year, FACT TV’s Bryan McKay, Claire Lobenfeld and John Twells packed up and headed to Austin, Texas for South By Southwest 2016 and talked to some of the festival’s most exciting artists. Noveller’s shimmering ambient textures had us mesmerized on last year’s epic Fantastic Planet , and since then she’s not only toured with St. Vincent, but been asked to tour with the one-and- only Iggy Pop. We caught up with her at SXSW following her debut performance with Iggy, and she caught us up on the experience (“Iggy walks in and I just dropped the phone and stood up”) as well as telling us what’s in store for the next album. Fantastic Planet is out now on Fire Records. Read next: Noveller details her process in a talk with FACT’s Ned Raggett . 2016-03-31 09:53 www.factmag

48 São Paulo Art Guide March 2016 We should warn you: 2016 will be a busy year for Brazil. Very soon, Rio de Janeiro will be at the center of the world's attention with the launch of this year's Summer Olympic Games on August 5. But for art lovers, the upcoming São Paulo Biennale and SP-arte are what we're most looking forward to: from April 7 until April 10, the 12th edition of SP-arte, Latin America's leading art fair, will bring together over 120 galleries from Brazil and beyond to present the very best in contemporary and Modern art. Ranked as the most populous city in the country, São Paulo has plenty to offer in terms of entertainment, finance, and arts. Just take a look at the number of local art galleries—if you want to find some quality time outside the art fair, you'll be spoiled for choice. Whether you favor tapestries, paintings, sculpture, or installations, we gathered the very best exhibitions to see in São Paulo throughout April. Print out the list and get moving, since the most difficult part will be trying to decide between all these exciting shows. It might be impossible to see it all, but as Pierre de Coubertin once famously declared, “The most important thing […] is not winning but taking part. " Exhibition: “ Montez Magno " When: March 30–May 21, 2016 Where: Galeria Pilar, Rua Barão de Tatuí 389, São Paulo, Brazil Exhibition: “ Glowsticks: David Batchelor " When: March 15–April 23, 2016 Where: Galeria Leme, Av. Valdemar Ferreira, 130, São Paulo, Brazil Exhibition: “ Di Cavalcanti " When: March 18–May 28, 2016 Where: Almeida e Dale, Rua Caconde 152, São Paulo, Brazil Exhibition: “ Iran do Espírito Santo: Fuso " When: March 19–April 30, 2016 Where: Galeria Fortes Vilaça , Rua Fradique Coutinho, 1500, São Paulo, Brazil Exhibition: “ Antonio Maluf: Construções de Uma Equação " When: March 29–May 28, 2016 Where: Galeria Frente , R. Dr. Melo Alves, 400 – Cerqueira Cesar – SP, São Paulo, Brazil Exhibition: “ Emmanuel Nassar | Henrique Oliveira " When: April 2–April 30, 2016 Where: Galeria Millan, Rua Fradique Coutinho, 1360, São Paulo, Brazil Exhibition: “ Papéis do Nepal 1977–1997: Antonio Dias " When: April 2–June 4, 2016 Where: Galeria Nara Roesler, jd Europa, São Paulo, Brazil Exhibition: “ Ester Grinspum: Fausto " When: April 4–May 28, 2016 Where: Galeria Raquel Arnaud , Rua Fidalga, 125, São Paulo, Brazil Exhibition: “ sp-arte " When: April 7–April 10, 2016 Where: Baró Galeria , Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo, Parque Ibirapuera, Portão 3, São Paulo, Brazil 2016-03-31 11:00 Audrey Fair

49 Elisabeth Murdoch Creates Artist Award Philanthropist Elisabeth Murdoch aims to boost mid-career women artists with a big new cash prize. The Tate trustee, philanthropist, and daughter of media mogul Rupert Murdoch has created the Freelands Artist Award , an annual £100,000 (approximately $150,000) prize. The award will provide its winner with a solo exhibition at one of six regional arts institutions, to be named this summer. Besides the gender specificity, the award sets itself apart from Tate's Turner Prize in two key ways: there is no maximum age restriction, whereas only artists under fifty are eligible for the Turner, and the purse is four times as large. The inauguration of the award follows a 2015 report that Murdoch's Freelands Foundation commissioned from Charlotte Bonham- Carter, who heads the master's program in arts and cultural enterprise at London art and design school Central Saint Martins. The report studied the representation (or lack thereof) of female artists in Britain. Among its findings are that in 2014– 15, just 25 percent of solo shows at major London institutions went to women. The selection committee includes artist Phyllida Barlow , Camden Arts Centre director Jenni Lomax, writer and independent curator Teresa Gleadowe, and Bergen Kunsthall director Martin Clark. The winner will be announced in the fall of 2016. "Women artists in mid-career are still woefully under-represented in the art world and this award aims to raise their profile," Murdoch said in a press release. "Of course it is a challenging place to be for all artists but, as our research has shown, this is particularly the case with women. I want this award to be about pushing boundaries and helping regional arts organisations fulfill their potential. " Bonham-Carter's report found that while female art and design grads outnumber men, once women reach the mid-career mark, their representation in galleries and at museum exhibitions dwindles. "Indeed, in major career highlights, such as representing Britain at the Venice Biennale, men substantially outnumber women," Bonham-Carter writes. "When I began to have informal conversations with female artists, I found that a surprising number of them voiced concerns about attitudes towards female artists. . . particularly during the mid-career stage. " Follow artnet News on Facebook. 2016-03-31 10:59 Cait Munro

50 Amanda Levete to Redesign Galeries Lafayette in Paris Related Venues Galeries Lafayette Artists Amanda Levete British architect Amanda Levete and her studio AL_A have been selected by Galeries Lafayette to completely remodel its famous building on Boulevard Haussmann. Levete beat both Rem Koolhaas’s OMA, and Farshid Moussavi. “The great poem of display chants its stanzas of color”, wrote Balzac in the first half of the 19th- century, describing the emerging landscape of affordable luxury shops that would mark Paris as the capital of the industrial revolution. Enclosed shopping arcades, magasins de nouveautés, culminated in the development of department stores, the grand magasins of Paris. For the first time in European history shopping became entertainment, and the grand magasin a “phantasmagoria which a person enters in order to be distracted”, as Walter Benjamin wrote in “The Arcades Project.” Benjamin would place the Parisian department store as the cathedral of an emerging new social order, re-articulating the relationship between people and goods. If today we take it for granted that our clothes, home furnishings, and decorations, must be a reflection of our taste and sensibility, and not simply the things we need to stay warm and dry, this is an emotional exchange that was invented in the department stores of Paris, the cultural center of early capitalism. Galeries Lafayette is a relative newcomer among the grands magasins – it started off as a small haberdashery in 1893 only – but the spectacular architecture of its home, the 1912 building on Boulevard Haussmann, has made it one of the best-known. Dreamed up as a luxury bazaar that would consolidate a number of small buildings in the possession of the owner Théophile Bader, designed by Georges Chedanne in 1907, and decorated by the great artisans of the École de Nancy in the style of Paris Art Nouveau, the Galeries Lafayette flagship building is today one of the great historical examples of luxury retail architecture. It has a grand staircase by Louis Majorelle, inspired by the Opera House, Neo-byzantine stained glass windows by Jacques Gruber, a rooftop terrace, and a dome that reaches 43 meters in height, filtering golden light on the merchandise below. “This store is an institution that has a special place in the life and identity of the city of Paris,” says Levete . “The exquisite craftsmanship of the original building and its location in the heart of Haussmann’s city are both elements we seek to celebrate, as we move forward.” Today, the Boulevard Haussmann building is the second most popular tourist attraction in Paris, second only to the Eiffel Tower. It makes more than €2 billion in sales annually, with only a third of this amount coming from French pockets (the remaining two thirds are evenly divided between the Chinese tourists, and everyone else). The company wants to reimagine the building for the 21st century, offering a total shopping experience in which architecture will play a key component. “Amanda has demonstrated her talent for radical thinking and imagining built heritage,” says Nicolas Houzé, CEO of Galeries Lafayette, and belonging to the fifth generation of the family that founded the business. AL_A has been involved in a number of projects to reinvent emblematic historical buildings in Europe, currently working on an extension of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Levete has also worked on a number of flagship retail projects: its previous studio, Future Systems, is responsible for the ‘blubitecture’ of the Selfridges department store in Birmingham, while AL_A is currently working on a new lifestyle mall in Bangkok’s trendy Thong Lor, 72 Courtyard. “We are delighted to start this collaboration,” says Houzé, “to conduct the reinvention of the iconic “Cupola” building, which is also the soul of the Galeries Lafayette brand.” The remodeling of the 40,000 square-meter store will start in early 2017. Like many department store giants, the group has been on a quest to move away from the image of the grand magasin as a monument of a glorious past. The future of retail is complex: mail delivery, specialist retail, on-line sales, and discount shopping, as well as the rise of the ‘total lifestyle’ shops, have led to a decline in department store sales that has now been trending for over two decades. “The department store is dead, long live the multi-specialist lifestyle retailer,” said Houzé’s father, Philippe Houzé, in 2013. The “Cupola” may be the soul of its brand, but with 62 stores in France and overseas, including Beijing to Dubai, and new stores planned for Istanbul, Doha, and Milan, the Galeries Lafayette brand has to delicately balance its historical luster with its contemporary reality. In accompanying news, in February, the Galeries Lafayette announced the opening of a new flagship store on the Champs Élysées. Danish architect Bjarke Ingels has been selected to lead the design of the Art Deco building, which previously housed a Virgin Megastore, and was briefly in the ownership of Théophile Bader, who intended to build a second department store in the building in the 1920s. With architectural plans yet to be unveiled, it is too early to assess how the ‘focus on architecture’ will move the grand magasin into the 21st century. Ingels’s firm BIG is known for its radically disruptive architecture, rather than sensitive historical renovation. With 7,000 square meters of retail space, the new flagship will be approximately one tenth of the size of the building on Boulevard Haussmann, and it may mean a move away from the ‘cathedral of consumption’ look. As of the “Cupola,” while AL_A has a mandate to carry out a “visionary metamorphosis” of the building, its heritage architecture is likely to remain respectfully preserved. As Levete says: “Our commission is a fantastic opportunity to build on tradition, to make a living contribution to the cultural life of Paris.” 2016-03-31 10:41 Jana Perkovic

51 Justin Swinburne Michael Thibault / Los Angeles The very beginnings of something and the debris from its demise can seem interchangeable — perhaps most especially when that thing’s life and purpose have been totally and exhaustively consumed. In Justin Swinburne’s exhibition “ Relief ,” a series of oversized coins from various currencies have been molded from what appears to be dried mud. In fact, the discs are meticulously carved from professional-grade Chavant sculpting clay. They dot the walls of the exhibition space in varying states of integrity; some are almost round, just missing an edge, while others are completely fragmented to reflect a particular moment in the lunar cycle, as noted in the works’ titles: Waning Gibbous Koruna (2015–16); Waxing Crescent Euro (2015–16); Full Quarter (2015–16). The artist’s father is one of the last working industrial clay modelers for automobile manufacturing; father and son made the coins together. Relief A series of architectural models, built from foamcore and plastic and set in concrete, are contained within cardboard box tops — the kinds of boxes that hold eight or ten or twenty reams of multiuse copy paper. Taken from plans for high-rise buildings, museum interiors, storefronts or locations of personal significance to Swinburne, each has been singed with a blowtorch, leaving only the smoky traces of the foundation as a sort of graphic puzzle. Hanging for inspection from gleaming canary-yellow industrial scaffolding on accommodating wheels, they line up on a neat diagonal to fill the gallery’s main space. A folded felt airline blanket, suitable for transporting a fragile work of art or comforting a burn victim, is stacked on top of each. The charred negatives are just as much reliefs as they are remains. by Jennifer Piejko 2016-03-31 10:37 www.flashartonline

52 Don't Miss Out on the Affordable Art Fair The Affordable Art Fair held its latest New York edition, featuring 72 galleries from six continents, on March 30 at the Metropolitan Pavilion. (Now in its 15th year in New York, the fair holds 15 editions each year, in cities including London, Stockholm, Seoul, and Singapore.) The art on offer all ranges from $100 to $10,000, and at least half of the work on sale at each booth is required to be less than $5,000. Throughout the week, Affordable Art Fair staff will be offering tours with themes like "Female Voices," "Photography" and "Finds Under $500. " "The Affordable Art democratizes art," New York fair director Cristina Salmastrelli told artnet News. "The idea that art can be for anyone is our mission and our motto. " Here's what you can find at various price points below. $100 and under You'd be forgiven for mistaking the booth of Tel Aviv's Mika Gallery for a grocery store, thanks to the work of Lucy Sparrow. Using felt, cotton, and acrylic paint detailing, she perfectly has created fluffy facsimiles of supermarket staples. Although she takes a page out of Andy Warhol 's book with Campbell's soup and Brillo boxes, Sparrow impresses most with the sheer variety of products, which include everything from moon pies to instant grits. Individual pieces are priced at $100 each, and you can also get a full set of shelved and framed items for $4,000, if you don't want to buy à la carte. Under $500 At London's Panter and Hall , Orson Kartt has on offer a number of mixed media prints on view, which are layered on top of literary texts, for $250 each. Storm in a Teacup , with a massive tsunami arising from a presumably soothing cup of tea, features Shakespeare 's Much Ado About Nothing. Small glazed ceramics by Steve Gayler are just $250 a piece at London's Tag Fine Arts. His artwork, Gayler told artnet, is "a hobby," and the quirky elephant is the last of its kind, as he sadly managed to break the mold. Under $1,000 French illustrator Serge Bloch 's joyful drawings feature a delightful economy of line at New York's Michele Mariaud Gallery. The simple, effortless prints can feel like elegant Parisian fashion sketches, but these witty cartoons get their splash of color from carefully places vegetables, like a snap pea mouth in Bloch 's Pea Smile , or the single piece of red leaf lettuce in Red Salad Skirt. Under $2,000 Brilliantly blue, large-scale floral cyanotypes by Tessa Shaw bring Anna Atkins into the 21st century at Tag Fine Arts. Grab Out of a Bed of Love , displayed in a bespoke white wash box frame, for just $1,300. Under $5,000 Art meets vintage cartography in Elisabeth Lecourt 's cheerful " Le Robes Geographiques " series, which transforms antique maps into gorgeously-pleated girlish little pinafores. You can buy Petit Coquillage Rose et Pierre Bonheur , which features the streets of Paris, for just $4,500 at Cambridge-based Byard Art. At the same price point, and of a similarly fashion-oriented bent, you can snap up Célia Pardini 's My Beige Destroyed Converse , crafted from cardboard and painted and varnished to perfectly mimic your favorite kicks, at Paris's Envie D'Art . Under $10,000 Brussels's Vogelsang Gallery has a number of large-scale painting and photographs by artists including Soraya Doolbaz and Irene Mamiye , but the showstopper is a larger-than-life $20 bill, crumpled and tacked to the booth's wall. Part of Yann Guitton 's "Outsized Artifacts" series, the careworn bill appears to date from the 1980s, but Andrew Jackson's familiar face is replaced with that of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Guitton was inspired by the Women on 20s campaign, which aims to have a woman honored on American currency , and selected Tubman as voters' preferred pick. (Ultimately, it is Alexander Hamilton 's place on the $10 bill that looks to be phased out.) For the artist, Guitton told artnet News, the $9,000 work of art represents "a kind of bent reality that could be plausible," where the switch took place some 30 years ago. Under $10,000 The Affordable Art Fair is not the place you expect to find blue-chip artists, but London's Manifold Editions features a selection of prints from mainly British artists including Damien Hirst , Anish Kapoor , and Marc Quinn. From the latter, you could walk with a $3,000 digital print of neon flowers titled Icelandic Lava Plane. Hirst topped out the fair's $10,000 upper price limit with The Wonder of You , a set of six polymer-gravure etchings with lithographic overlay, although he also had slightly cheaper offerings on hand, including Perillartine , a $7,500 print from his spot paintings series. Follow artnet News on Facebook. 2016-03-31 10:35 Sarah Cascone

53 ICI Founder Susan Sollins New York Apartment- The late Susan Sollins, founder of Independent Curators International and the acclaimed PBS series " Art 21 ," was a tireless promoter of contemporary art. Now, a piece of her history—a sleek apartment in Manhattan's fast-growing Madison Square Park neighborhood—is about to hit the market for a cool $5.3 million asking price. According to a report in the New York Post , the 14th-floor apartment has two bedrooms, two-and- a-half bathrooms, a home office, and 11.5-foot- tall ceilings. It also boasts views of "the nearby green space," presumably a reference to Madison Square Park? Other attractive amenities include a spa-like bathroom, an open chef's kitchen, dual-zone wine storage and Brazilian walnut floors. Sollins thought of the nonprofit ICI as "a museum without walls," as the Post noted, producing traveling art exhibits and bringing avant-garde work to small cities and college towns across the country and overseas. Sollins passed away in 2014 at the age of 75. A New York Times obituary described the Art 21 series as being "aimed at demystifying and popularizing contemporary art. " According to the Times , Art 21: Over 100 artists have already been profiled by the show, including art stars such as Ai Weiwei , Maya Lin , Sally Mann , Laurie Anderson , Richard Serra , Susan Rothenberg , and Fred Wilson. Follow artnet News on Facebook . 2016-03-31 10:33 Eileen Kinsella

54 Ross Bleckner Is Having a New York Moment New York artist Ross Bleckner has work in six new shows on now or opening soon, including his first solo show in the Middle East, opening in April at Leila Heller Dubai, followed by what is sure to be the art happening of the Hamptons this summer, a group show that unites him with his fellow 80s art-world it-boys David Salle and Eric Fischl at the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island. While this much attention is akin to what Bleckner enjoyed in his heyday in the early 1990s, don't call it a comeback. “I don't like to use that word," says his New York gallerist Mary Boone, in an interview last month in her uptown gallery overlooking a corner of Central Park. Before Boone struck out on her own, she first showed Bleckner's work in 1977 at her loft on Bond Street; she has mounted a Bleckner show every couple of years since 1983. And Boone is able to do that because, through booms and busts, much like New York (the city with which he has become closely identified), Bleckner just keeps at it. He works. And he re-works. Indeed, among the six shows—even those that include artwork that was not yet dry during a late January interview in Bleckner's Chelsea studio—viewers will see paintings with deep roots in the last century, as far back as the 1970s, from several series that brought Bleckner fame —"Dome," "Stripe," "Bird," and "Burn," as he calls them. To some, Bleckner may be known less for his work than as a namecheck on an early episode of the television show Sex and The City in which Kim Cattrall's character sleeps with a guy who offers to show her his newly acquired Bleckner painting. Or from the society and gossip pages where, according to the New York Times 's Michael Kimmelman , Bleckner's name was mentioned "as often as his friend Bianca Jagger's. " In 1995, Bleckner was the youngest artist ever to have a major solo show in the rotunda of New York's Guggenheim in the museum's nearly six decades of existence. Then came several less than encouraging reviews presaging that collectors might cool on Bleckner soon into the new century. Kimmelman accused Bleckner of appropriating Op Art and making it about AIDS. The critic railed against the artist for replacing the genre's bright colors with a muted (if not sober) palette and for abstracting—through the patterns, tropes, and titles of his artwork—not only the virus but also the fear of death among gay men in that era. Kimmelman acknowledged Bleckner's tireless advocacy on this issue but went as far as to say "it's hard to know whether it is better for him that it be thought of as sincere or as ironic, because if the first, he is a sentimental purveyor of pseudo-Victorian kitsch, and if the second, he is exploiting a serious issue. " Three years later, Roberta Smith , parroting some of Kimmelman's language, took Bleckner to task for his ubiquity: a museum show and two gallery shows. (Today one would call it synergy). She criticized his then-current ads for Absolut vodka. And then she went all-out with adjectives, calling one series of paintings "dull and pointless," another "greasy, finicky and way over the top" and signaling what she saw as his work's “extreme" sentimentality. " But disparagement from one's hometown paper, even if it is the paper of record, does not a career-ender make. Bleckner kept painting and kept selling. He had nearly five years of steady prices from 1988 to 1993, when his total sales value ranged from $151,305–357,555, respectively, according to the artnet Price Database. Then, in 1994—just before his Guggenheim show—his total sales value fell to $58,650 (though only four pieces came up for auction that year). But his sales reflect steady growth, which also suggests that activity in his market is not speculative. The number of Bleckner works offered at auction has risen steadily over the years, from eight in 1988 to 45 in 2015. And it might surprise some that the highest price ever achieved at auction for a work by Bleckner—who has been criticized for his meteoric rise and subsequent ubiquity— is just $192,000. The sale was in 2006 for Oceans , a canvas from his Stripe series (described by the Times in 1987 as "among the most sought-after works of any contemporary artist"). By contrast, the records at auction for his peers in the upcoming Parrish show are $576,000 for Salle and just under $2 million for Fischl, both also achieved in 2006. But auction prices aren't the full picture, of course. Boone emphasized that the auction price does not necessarily reflect value. “Remember that when Andy Warhol died in February 1987," she said in an email, “his top price was $650,000; as opposed to Johns who had already sold for $17 million or Rauschenberg at $6.3 million. " Boone maintains that Bleckner's work is very undervalued. “That is why many of them buy the work," she said, “ including Andy Hall , who is one of the smartest and most sophisticated collectors out there. " Now that years have passed since he first stirred the art world, it's back to the future for Bleckner with the show this summer at the Parrish. “Unfinished Business: Paintings from the 1970s and 1980s by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, and David Salle" comprises work from those decades by the trio, who met and became friends at Los Angeles's CalArts in the 1970s, and all gravitated to New York and Long Island's East End in the 80s. Even the exhibition's title begs the question, “Where are they now? " But it's too early in the Parrish's curatorial process to know whether the museum will attempt to answer that question. We know one place where Fischl and Salle are not: the hallowed rooms of Mary Boone's gallery. Though she built the careers of all three, only Bleckner is still with her. Salle and Fischl are both with Skarstedt Gallery, which announced its representation of Fischl this past November. In the Parrish show, the Bleckner works, all from his own collection, comprise approximately 10 canvases (oil and acrylic) and eight works on paper (all oil, some with charcoal too), including a study for one of his well-known early Stripe paintings and a 1983 still-life of a vase with flowers redolent of Odilon Redon. Then there's the exhibit entitled "New Work" opening April 29 at Leila Heller's gallery in Dubai , a 15,000-square-foot space that, according to Heller, became the biggest commercial gallery in the United Arab Emirates when it opened in November. If it seems hard to imagine Bleckner succeeding with collectors in the Arab world given that he is gay and grew up Jewish, which would make him persona non grata in the region, then consider that among the works Heller is hanging are a half-dozen new Dome paintings, which build on the series that served as the cornerstone of his Guggenheim retrospective 21 years ago, and work from a newer series Bleckner calls Prayer Rugs. Bleckner has long described his Dome paintings as inspired by the Pantheon and, even more so, the massive dome of Istanbul's Hagia Sofia , the former Christian basilica that with the changing tides of history became one of the world's most important mosques for nearly 500 years. He recalls first visiting what is now an awe-inspiring public museum in the mid-to-late 80s: “Hagia Sofia had been the M. O. of these paintings for a long time. " The Dome paintings, through their scale and emphasis on flat, hand-painted surfaces, capture a feeling of the sublime while also emphasizing the artifice used to create its effect. “There's an astronomy to it absolutely," Bleckner explained, pointing out details in the newer works in his Chelsea studio, even as they were being crated for shipment to Dubai. Since Bleckner's new technique involves using bleach to pare back the paint buildup, his newer Dome paintings appear more luminous, spatial, celestial, and even spiritual, in contrast to the more obviously architectural structures depicted in his earlier work. “I knew of the Dome paintings and every time I went to the Hagia Sofia I thought of Ross," says the New-York based, Iranian-born Heller. “I had been planning the Dubai gallery for seven years, and so for years, showing him and his Dome paintings in particular was always in the back of my mind. " Spirituality and prayer also play into his newer Prayer Rug series, begun about three years ago, he says. The rugs feature personal prayers composed by the artist, and rendered in his own handwriting in silk and wool, like this one: These are Bleckner's most obviously personal works ever. “I don't like to reveal that side of me, but it comes out in your work anyway," he says, "which is always the interesting part. " Indeed, the art works destined for Dubai are rooted in Bleckner's own spiritual and social practice, which both he and Boone cited as inextricably linked to his artistic practice, and something that distinguishes him from some of his peers who came of age and gained recognition in the same era. This includes Bleckner's much-lauded work for HIV and AIDS research and his commitment to young artists, especially those he has taught for more than a decade at NYU's Steinhardt School. Related to his role as a master is Bleckner's inclusion in two group shows that opened quietly during the mayhem of New York's Armory Week and are on view through April 16. First, there is the cleverly conceived exhibition, “The Making: Artists, Assistants, and Influence," at New York's Luxembourg & Dayan , which includes a Bleckner oil on linen, Burn Painting (2015). The show posits a family tree of artists who go on to respond to techniques of their progenitors. Then, another 2015 painting that is part of the Burn series is also in a group show, “ Nice Weather ," on view at New York's Skarstedt Gallery. Curated by Salle, the show borrows its title from a Frederick Seidel poem about how tomorrow's weather comes from today's and highlights multiple generations of painters from Rosemarie Trockel to Sterling Ruby. Additionally, four Prayer Rugs from 2015 and one Prayer Painting are also on view in New York at Third Room, the collaborative art-meets-design space by Leon Tovar Gallery and Cristina Grajales Gallery. And a smattering of recent Bleckner paintings will also be on view beginning May 1 at Rafael Jablonka's Böhm Chapel in Hürth-Kalscheuren, Germany. When talking about everything Bleckner has going on right now, Boone leads the conversation back to his legacy; she compares Bleckner to “a John Miller , a Jim Shaw , a Barbara Kruger " whose importance is not just in the ongoing work but, as a member of the establishment, both in his pedagogy and in “how many young artists follow them. " “ In the Making: Artists, Assistants, and Influence ," through April 16 at Luxembourg & Dayan, 64 E. 77th Street, New York “ Nice Weather " through April 16, at Skarstedt Gallery, 550 West 21st St. and 20 East 79th St., New York “ Ross Bleckner: Prayer Rugs ," through April 29 at Third Room, 152 West 25th Street, 3rd floor, New York “ Ross Bleckner: New Work ," April 29 through June 15 at Leila Heller Gallery , I-87 Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE “ Architecture of the Sky ," May 1 through Oct. 31 at Böhm Chapel, Hans-Böckler-Straße 170, Hürth-Kalscheuren, Germany “ Unfinished Business: Paintings from the 1970s and 1980s by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, and David Salle ," July 31 through October 16 at the Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway Water Mill, NY Follow artnet News on Facebook. 2016-03-31 10:32 Laura van

55 The Cyborg Anthropologist: Ian Cheng on His Sentient Artworks Ian Cheng, Emissary in the Squat of Gods (still), 2015, live simulation and story. COURTESY THE ARITST L ast February, shortly after the opening of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s show of recent computer-generated art, called “ Suspended Animation ,” Ian Cheng received an urgent text message. Cheng’s work in the show, Emissary in the Squat of Gods (2015), is about a prehistoric girl trying to decide how to respond to the threat of a volcanic eruption. But there was a problem—the girl had been idling and staring at an ash particle for two hours. Was that supposed to happen? It was, and it wasn’t. Cheng makes what he calls “live simulations,” and each one, he says, is something like “a video game that plays itself.” He doesn’t know what will happen in his works because they are infinitely mutating, never finished, and quite literally evolving. Cheng may not have intended for the girl to get stuck for two hours, but if she did that, he accepted it. The girl’s actions were no longer up to him. The work wasn’t under his control anymore.“I can’t fully hone in on the emotion that it should capture because I honestly don’t know what it’s going to do,” Cheng told me on a chilly February day in his small, one-room office in New York’s Chinatown. “You can resolve that into something really elegant or beautiful. But it is, in fact, in a feeling of confusion.”Describing Cheng’s simulations can be a challenge. The characters in them look like computerized versions of real-life animals and humans, but, because Cheng is working with a video-game engine that keeps creating new combinations, the figures can smash into each other and break into overlapping geometric planes. Though what the work will do is left up to chance, Cheng has a narrative in mind before he starts working, and his works loosely follow it. When I met him, Cheng had just returned from Zurich, where he had opened a solo show at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, and he was still jetlagged. Cheng had also recently overseen the installation of his simulation at the Hirshhorn, and another work of his had just gone on display in MOCA Cleveland’s “ Stranger ,” which surveys artists who depict humans in odd, new ways. All three shows opened in the past three months, and all speak to the way Cheng creates scenarios in which humans have to rethink their relationship to technology. What if software updates and new models aren’t the only way technology is evolving? What if technology is evolving us, rather than the other way around? Ian Cheng’s Emissary Forks at Perfection (2015–16), as installed at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, 2016. NICOLAS DUC In his studio, Cheng had a white desk with two computer monitors and a flat-screen television. He wore all black. The only object that stuck out in the room was a copy of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind , Cheng’s favorite book. Most of Cheng’s work happens in the computer, opening what seems to be a highly organized space into something random and uncharted. Raphael Gygax, the curator of Cheng’s Migros Museum show, said that this randomness even extends to how Cheng’s work is displayed. “As soon as you have technology as a partner at your side, unforeseen things can happen,” he wrote in an email. “Loss of energy, loss of Wi-Fi signals, updates, conversion problems. A new set of problems—but nothing that can’t be resolved.” When he was growing up in Los Angeles, Cheng’s mother took him movie-hopping on Saturdays. They sometimes saw six and a half movies in one day. After he graduated from UC Berkeley in 2006 with a dual degree in art and cognitive science, he worked at Industrial Light & Magic, which has done special effects for the Star Wars and Transformers movies. Then, after a year of doing visual effects, he later went back to school and received a M. F. A. from Columbia University in 2009. “It’s a little bit weird because I love movies, and I sometimes love movies more than I love art,” Cheng (who has also written speculative fiction based on the structure of Game of Thrones ) said. Ian Cheng, Thousand Islands Thousand Laws , 2013, live simulation. COURTESY THE ARTIST But Cheng also mourned the fact that films have fixed narratives—in a theater, you can’t change how they’ll play out. Video games, he explained, put narratives in the hands of players. Cheng loves The Sims , a computer game in which the player controls a person, and guides him or her through life. The genius of The Sims , Cheng said, is “this idea that intelligence is not just in your head. It’s distributed between you and all the objects and other people that are around you,” so by having a Sim interact with an environment, players create stories. In a sense, Cheng’s work is movies plus video games: they can be watched like a film, but the film progresses seemingly through its own willpower. Gianni Jetzer, the curator of “Suspended Animation,” compared Cheng’s simulations to bird-watching. “It’s not really a Frankenstein moment where the figures walk off-screen,” Jetzer said, but viewers come to see the live simulations “as a form of reality. That’s an important part of Ian Cheng’s work—that you really get into the skin of a cyborg anthropologist, that you watch this strange digital tribe, which reflects the history of human evolution, basically.”For instance, in his simulation Thousand Islands Thousand Laws (2013), an urban soldier with a gun, who is appropriated from a real video game, stands in a white landscape that also has birds and plants. The birds keep attacking the soldier, something Cheng never even anticipated. The soldier, the birds, the plants, “They each have their own laws,” Cheng said, “but in overlaying them, the idea was that some kind of implicit law would emerge in how they organize themselves, how they negotiate being together with conflicting scripts.”Since then, Cheng’s narratives have become more intricate—he’s now conceiving the third work in a trilogy of simulations about cognitive evolution. The trilogy begins in the distant past and ends in the far future, in a scenario that Cheng described as an “abstract” ecology that is “definitely not human.”The first, Emissary in the Squat of Gods , the one in “Suspended Animation,” is set in prehistoric times and follows a shaman, who gets hit on the head after an earthquake. The seismic shift is the result of a volcano, but the shaman doesn’t know it yet—he’s never seen an eruption. Should he uproot the community or not? He and his apprentice disagree. “It’s precisely in this moment where it’s the threat, and not the actual disaster, that humans find the most anxiety-provoking and the most stressful,” Cheng said. “You don’t actually know which way to go. It’s an uncertain moment, and so the shaman’s bias is roughly toward wanting to stay, and then the emissary apprentice character’s bias is toward wanting to convince everyone to leave.” Ian Cheng, Emissary Forks at Perfection (still), 2015, live simulation. COURTESY THE ARTIST In the semi-sequel, Emissary Forks at Perfection (2015), which is now on view at the Migros Museum, a dog character named the Shiba Emissary, a descendant from the first simulation, appears 3,000 years later. The landscape is the same, but now it’s populated by artificial animals that resurrect a dead celebrity from the 21st century. The dog, Cheng said, is “a means of talking about where consciousness can go, without eradicating powerful emotions like fear and anxiety, which can be very useful.” (The artist is currently working on an app for the Serpentine Galleries called Bad Corgi , in which users play as a dog herding sheep.) Cheng has been known to describe his work as a “neurological gym,” and Jetzer said that it’s this quality of Cheng’s work that intrigues him. “His work makes people more fit, more adept to dealing with digital relations,” Jetzer said. A large part of Cheng’s Migros Museum show is devoted to a new installation that uses Google’s Project Tango devices, which can sense where a user is in a room. Museum visitors can use the tablets to follow the Shiba Emissary. The dog will say “Follow me” to viewers, and, once viewers move close to it, the dog will make the clicking noise animal trainers make to reinforce good behavior. “It’s a virtual dog quite literally forcing your physical behavior to become different,” Cheng explained. In other words, as he later clarified, “You are its pet.” 2016-03-31 10:15 Alex Greenberger

56 Journalism and Art: Complementary and Collaborative Storytelling Alex Nabaum C arrie Roy saw it in her head before the conversation was even over—a giant wooden sculpture of the back half of a cow, atop a square brown plinth of manure. She was sitting in a bar in Madison, Wisconsin, talking over beers with Kate Golden, who at the time was multimedia director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Golden was lamenting the difficulty of representing statistics in ways that get people to pay attention, like the fact that Brown County, Wisconsin is home to more than 100,000 cows (more than half a cow per acre of farmland), which each produce up to 100 pounds of manure a day. That waste threatens to pollute private wells in the area. “These numbers can have astonishing impact when you encounter them for the first time, but they don’t translate well into the story,” says Golden. “Too many numbers make people’s heads swim.” Roy, an artist who grew up in rural North Dakota and concentrated in visual and environmental studies at Harvard, creates work that helps people navigate numbers. In the spring of 2015, she and Golden packed a half-dozen artworks—including the aforementioned cow, a wool sculpture in the colors of a brook trout depicting the “fuzziness” of climate change statistics, and a farm faucet mounted on a pedestal of different-colored woods to represent pesticide contamination— into a U-Haul for a seven-city Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism roadshow. Roy and Golden went to Madison, Eau Claire, Green Bay, and La Crosse, among other cities, where Roy’s visualizations of the state’s water issues sparked conversations about pollution, conservation, and other environmental problems. Carrie Roy’s sculpture draws attention to the link between cow manure and water pollution Carrie Roy The exhibits brought in people who may never read through an investigative piece—or go to a typical art show for that matter. Roy and Golden found themselves talking with a retired water engineer, a veterinarian who was also a woodworker, and a beer brewer concerned about clean water, among others, each spurred by the art to talk about the issues around water use in the state. “We ended up getting a lot of people who were thoughtful about these issues,” says Golden. “I’m interested in media that people can feel and see in person because it makes things more real for them. Sometimes charts and graphs can really lack an emotional connection. When [Roy] turns them into art, it helps connect those numbers to what is really happening and affecting people.” The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism project is one example of how journalists are employing the arts to get important issues off the page and screen and into people’s lives. At the same time, artists are beginning to employ reporting techniques, using interviews, public records, documentary footage, and photo captions to create work addressing social, economic, and political topics that usually fall within the purview of journalism. In the early 2000s, the Russian art collective Chto Delat (“What Is To Be Done?”) published a newspaper filled with trenchant political commentary on post-Soviet Russia. Since 2008, Chicago-based Temporary Services has produced over 100 booklets, pamphlets, and newspapers—through its publishing house, Half Letter Press —that frequently criticize the art world’s exploitation of unpaid labor. More recently, Dushko Petrovich, a surrealist painter and adjunct professor at Yale, released a one-issue satirical newspaper called Adjunct Commuter Weekly (subsequently relaunched as the webzine ACW ). The publication highlights the predicaments of legions of part-time professors who travel between campuses by plane and train to make ends meet. Through projects like these, journalists and artists alike are finding complementary ways to tell stories and engage audiences. Art and journalism began converging sometime around the French Revolution, when images representing contemporary social conditions and politics began to appear in the work of artists like Francisco Goya and J. M. W. Turner. For his 1819 oil painting “ The Raft of the Medusa ,” depicting with savage realism the wreck of a French frigate and subsequent stranding of the crew, in which all but 10 of the 150 people onboard perished, Théodore Géricault exhaustively interviewed two of the survivors. And, of course, political cartoons have been a staple of American journalism since Ben Franklin published a fractured snake with the caption “ Join, or Die, ” creating a mashup of art, satire, and politics that has been distilling complex issues down to pithy images ever since. In the 20th century, photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange documented the poverty of the Great Depression for the Farm Security Administration with bleak but highly stylized images, while Henri Cartier-Bresson made pictures that are works of both art and reportage. Even Norman Rockwell—best known for his saccharine lithographs of rural Americana for The Saturday Evening Post—painted a series of canvasses in the early 1960s exploring the civil rights struggle. By the 1960s and ’70s, conceptual artists like Hans Haacke and Dan Graham were using the language and structure of investigative journalism to comment on controversial social and political topics. In a project at the Museum of Modern Art , Haacke set up two plexiglass ballot boxes and, using the language of newspaper polls, asked museumgoers to voice an opinion about the fact that New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who was a museum trustee, had not denounced President Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia. In another show, this one at the Guggenheim, Haacke used public records to expose the real estate and financial networks behind one of the Lower East Side’s biggest slumlords, presenting the information with photographs of buildings, captions, charts, and graphs. The museum cancelled the show before it opened, deeming it “inadequate” for an art institution. “All art bears witness in some way to history or individual experience,” says Jennifer Liese, director of the writing center at Rhode Island School of Design and editor of “Artists Writing, 2000–2015,” a collection of writing by contemporary artists due out this summer. The difference between journalists and artists, she argues, is “art does this explicitly and intentionally” while journalism tries to take a more objective, or at least dispassionate, view. “Journalists and artists in a lot of ways play a similar role in society,” says Heather Chaplin, director of the Journalism + Design program at the New School in New York. “They are both supposed to be telling us the truth about our society even if it’s truth we don’t want to hear.” While journalism in its most traditional sense may have focused on factual reportage, there has always been an artfulness to the craft, from how reporters order their material to narrative storytelling techniques. Chaplin argues that digital technology and increased competition have led journalists to employ more creative techniques to capture viewers’ attention, including multimedia storytelling, stylized visuals, and interactive techniques to create a more personal and emotional experience. “It’s no longer possible to say people are going to read this just because it’s important,” she says. To present statistics in a way that fosters public engagement, hire an artist S uch “aesthetic journalism” has dovetailed with a burgeoning activist impulse by artists to engage with politics and world events. If journalism marshals its techniques to provide a view on the world, then art provides a “view on the view,” a way to question our assumptions about how we perceive the world, says Alfredo Cramerotti, director of MOSTYN, a publicly funded art gallery in Wales, and author of the book “ Aesthetic Journalism.” “Journalism proposes a certain perspective and uses a number of elements to make it valid. The work of an artist and the value of artistic practice is in taking a perspective and shifting it slightly so it becomes something else.” In creating that shift in perspective, argues Cramerotti, artists have long assumed the tools and techniques of journalism without making them apparent—or perhaps without even realizing it themselves. Cramerotti had firsthand experience with this when, in 2003, he was commissioned to make a work about a bridge in Istanbul connecting Europe and Asia , and produced a sound installation involving interviews with residents. “I realized I was commissioned to make an artwork, but came back with a journalistic installation,” he says. The same digital technology that has allowed journalists to experiment with new artistic forms has also propelled artists to experiment with new means of documentary production and dissemination. One artist who has played with such forms is Santiago Mostyn, who was born in San Francisco, grew up in Zimbabwe, Grenada, and Trinidad, studied at Yale, and is currently based in Stockholm. Back in 2012, Mostyn was in a month-long residency in Istanbul, and asked people what places in the city were special to them. By chance, they coincided with places the Turkish government monitored via security cameras, which could be viewed online. Mostyn went to those places and was filmed himself. In 2013, he was back in Stockholm when the Gezi Park protests broke out in Istanbul. He immediately went to the surveillance websites again and began editing footage of the battles between protesters and police—then put them together in an art piece called “ Double Take: Istanbul’s Streets Then and Now ,” which juxtaposes images of relaxed crowds shopping in urban markets with riot police hosing down protesters with water cannons. As much as it foregrounds the familiar scenes of violence, the contrast equally draws the viewer’s attention to the normalcy of the previous footage, humanizing the scene in a way most media reports of the Middle East and surrounding areas don’t. He is currently at work on a project in which he rowed an open boat across the sea from Turkey to Greece, a treacherous crossing for migrants, changing the view of that area from the one we are familiar with from news footage. Mostyn’s work was commissioned by Creative Time Reports , a Web-based platform for artists to comment on national and world affairs. The publication—a project of Creative Time , an organization that has commissioned public art in New York City for decades—has partnered with The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera, among other titles, to publish articles, on everything from government surveillance to mass incarceration to racial discrimination, by artists like Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. “We’ve always believed in the power of artist’s voices to weigh in on society and bring something unique and engaging to the public,” says Marisa Mazria Katz, a journalist who has been published in The New York Times, Financial Times, and elsewhere, and has edited the site for four years. Another artist the organization has commissioned is Trevor Paglen, who has used photography and filmmaking to investigate surveillance and security issues. For “ Watching the Watchers ,” Paglen flew a helicopter over the headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA) and other U. S. government surveillance agencies to capture nighttime aerial photographs of their campuses. He published the images on The Intercept , a news site—created by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill—that focuses on government secrecy. Paglen’s landscapes are moody and deliberately sinister, revealing the massive size of the agencies at the same time failing to provide any glimpse at what goes on inside. The artworks present a view of the U. S. surveillance apparatus dramatically different than the one that would appear in a strictly journalistic work, says Katz: “A journalist can write about the billions of dollars these agencies are receiving and unpack a trove of rare documents, but what [Paglen] strives to do is create a visual culture around something that is so obscure.” Trevor Paglen intends to provoke questioning with his images of the NSA’s campus Trevor Paglen I n past work, Paglen partnered with investigative journalist A. C. Thompson, then with SF Weekly and now with ProPublica, to research and photograph sites related to the U. S. government’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which suspected terrorists were held without charge and interrogated at secret locations outside the United States. That work was published in 2006 in “ Torture Taxi.” While Paglen follows journalistic ethics in fact-checking information and not misrepresenting himself during reporting, he doesn’t see himself as journalist. “Art doesn’t necessarily have to give you an answer. Images don’t explain themselves really. For me, it’s more about developing a way of seeing rather than a way of understanding,” he says. In fact, he sees his role more as raising questions in the minds of his audience than providing any kind of answer or explanation. Others have seen art photography and photojournalism as less in opposition to one another so much as on a continuum. “The image has an uncanny authority which can cut both ways,” says Susan Sterner, a former staff photographer for the Associated Press who heads the New Media Photojournalism program at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design in Washington, D. C. On the one hand, a photo can seem like a much more authoritative vision of reality; on the other, a photograph always includes an element of contrivance that moves it toward the realm of art “through the lines you are choosing and what you decide to photograph.” Sterner’s program consciously works to break down distinctions between art and journalism, helping journalists to experiment with new ways to make their images stand out. As a successful example of that trend, she points to Washington Post journalist Dave Burnett, who shot the 2004 presidential campaign with an old-school 4×5 black-and-white camera. With the large-size negatives he was able to produce photos with much greater detail and contrast in a way that seems to slow down and isolate the subject in space. “You can create more nuanced work when you allow yourself to think outside the profession’s boxes,” says Sterner. More recently, Dallas Morning News photographer Mona Reeder set out in a photo essay called “ The Bottom Line ” to illustrate Texas’s skyrocketing youth incarceration rate and other statistics with provocative, highly stylized photos of children in prison and inmates on death row. Outside of some ethical guidelines—for example, that photojournalists in general document events as they transpire, while fine art photographers are more apt to compose and orchestrate the subjects of their images—Sterner says that the difference between the genres has much more to do with audience and intent, and sometimes, simply the venue in which it’s shown. We look at a photo very differently in a newspaper from one on a gallery wall. “When something is on the wall, the scale changes,” she says. “You have to move and approach it. It’s a more physical experience. You are meant to lose yourself in the work.” Visitors to the Laura Poitras exhibit are invited to gaze at a video of the skies over Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan where drone wars are conducted Jake Naughton/The New York Times/Redux T hat’s certainly the feeling of a new art exhibit at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York by journalist and filmmaker Laura Poitras, who directed the documentary “ Citizenfour ” about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The exhibition “ Astro Noise ,” on view through May 1, pulls viewers into the last decade and a half of the “war on terror” in a visceral way, starting with video footage of Ground Zero following the 9/11 attacks and interrogations in Afghanistan put side by side in harrowing confusion. Visitors continue through darkened hallways peering through thin slats at classified NSA and CIA documents, or lying down on a bed to stare up at the sky as drones fly by. They view images of Poitras’s own surveillance, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to the government. And at the end of the exhibition, they discover that they too have been subject to surveillance, as images of other museumgoers lying on the bed are broadcast to them, and coded information from their own cellphones scrolls down a screen. The end result is an experience that covers much of the ground of Poitras’s print and documentary work, but in a more physical, personal, and emotional way. An art exhibit by Laura Poitras builds on her print and documentary work, but in a more personal and physical way That’s also true of the arresting drawings of Molly Crabapple , an artist who has travelled from Gaza to Guantánamo Bay to write and illustrate pieces for The New York Times, Vice, and Vanity Fair. As a teen, Crabapple was drawn to the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who hung out in cafes with writers and anarchists and painted the demimonde of Paris. “I always dreamed about this role for artists as very much involved in the world and as documentarians of it,” she says. “I am much less interested in art that is of someone’s internal state but impenetrable to others.” Back in 2011, Crabapple was living across from Zuccotti Park as the Occupy Wall Street protests broke out. Her apartment became an ad hoc pressroom for reporters who needed a place to plug in their laptops. “The more time I spent with journalists,” she writes in her recently published memoir, “ Drawing Blood ,” “the more their techniques rubbed off on me—like glitter, or a rash.” Her work became increasingly political, and she spent weeks researching dense allegorical works taking on topics from the Tunisian revolution to the global financial crisis. In 2012, she started practicing journalism herself, travelling to Greece with British journalist Laurie Penny to create the e-book “ Discordia ,” about the Greek debt crisis. Crabapple sketched subjects while Penny interviewed them. “It’s much easier to disarm people when you are sketching,” Crabapple says. “People feel very alienated when they have a camera shoved in their face. I am kind of quiet when I am doing a sketch, and people will really talk to me.” She also feels her artist’s eye allows her to notice details other journalists might miss—like a chart at Guantánamo Bay encouraging guards to rate their “spiritual health” on a five-color scale from red to green—and by sketching scenes she can cause a viewer to look differently at themselves and the issues. With her sketches based on a photographs, Molly Crabapple provides Vanity Fair readers with a look at wartime scenes from Aleppo, Syria Molly Crabapple. Originally Published in Vanity Fair C rabapple’s latest project for Vanity Fair involved taking cell phone photos of daily life in Syria and Iraq from an anonymous source in Raqqa and Mosul and transforming them into colorful sketches. “Usually what they are documenting is violent and graphic, and very often there is not a lot of dignity to them,” she says of the material with which she worked. By taking a fleeting image and turning it into a studied—even beautiful—work of art, she hopes to restore some of that dignity and cause readers to look longer at images from which they might ordinarily be inclined to look away. Each sketch took more than eight hours for Crabapple to make; each has only a few colors, with some parts finely detailed and other parts hastily sketched, with ink blotches scattered across the page. Since publishing the first part of the series in the fall of 2014, however, Vanity Fair story editor Kia Makarechi says the publication has been overwhelmed by the positive response, with many people sharing the images on social media. “Many people remarked on how beautiful the package was,” says Makarechi, a strange response for what is essentially a piece of war reporting. The contrast between the ugliness of the subject matter and the attractiveness of Crabapple’s art, however, helped draw readers into the package, including the accompanying text by Crabapple’s source, who wrote a heartbreaking essay about how rebel rule has transformed life in Aleppo. Jointly hiring an artist-in-residence is a first for three Alabama newspapers While artists like Crabapple, Mostyn, and Paglen use journalistic techniques to create their unique views of the world, some news outlets are using artistic techniques to change the way they connect with audiences. Hoping to expand the scope of its storytelling, the Alabama Media Group, which runs The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times, and Mobile’s Press-Register, as well as statewide news website AL.com, hired its first artist-in-residence—Jennifer Crandall, a video journalist who produced a successful series of short profiles for The Washington Post called onBeing , featuring a diverse range of Washingtonians sharing their “musings, passions, histories, and quirks.” Each video features a person—a Muslim beauty pageant winner, a 7- year-old fan of rap and metal, a white guy in a blazer talking about his pet peeves—presented against a white background simply talking to the camera about what his or her life is like. In the aggregate, they are touching, intimate, surprising, and strangely addictive. It’s no surprise, meanwhile, to hear that, although she attended journalism school at the University of Missouri, Crandall never quite felt at home as a journalist. “I’ve always been someone who has been asked to fit within these boundaries,” she says. “I straddle them somehow.” For the Alabama Media Group, she crossed boundaries, literally and figuratively, as she traversed the state, recruiting Alabamians for a video project about their state and Walt Whitman. Participants read one of the 52 sections in Walt Whitman’s “ Song of Myself ,” which Crandall invited them to do in the way they wanted and in an environment of their own choosing —from high school football games to horse farms to living room easy chairs. Crandall chose Whitman, a white Northerner who worked as a nurse during the Civil War, to play with the contradictions and complications of American identity. “Walt Whitman is seen as the American writer, and yet he’s a Yankee,” she says. “I wanted to cheekily co-opt that.” As the Alabamians— young and old, black and white—read the words, they let down their guard revealing a more vulnerable side of themselves, at the same time the poet’s words offer a grand celebration of humanity—making the videos feel individual and universal at the same time. The Alabama Media Group plans to release the 52 sections serially over the next year, as a collaborative project among the artist, the journalists, and citizens. The project “allows this to feel so much bigger than when people narrowly speak from their own experiences,” says Michelle Holmes, vice president of content at Alabama Media Group, citing Whitman’s exhortation that his readers, “not look through my eyes” but “listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.” By asking readers to step outside their comfort zones, Holmes and Crandall hope viewers will be inspired to consider, even re-consider, what it means to be an Alabamian, an American, and a human being—something both great art and great journalism do especially well. Artists and journalists went mobile to engage with Oakland residents Bibiana Bauer While journalists have experimented with reader collaboration through citizen journalism and crowdsourced news, “social practice art”—which emphasizes working with communities, often those marginalized or disenfranchised—offers an avenue through which readers can engage with news stories on a more personal and emotional level. In many cases, the art lies as much in the process of creating the piece as in any product resulting from it. That was certainly the case with “ Eyes on Oakland ,” a collaboration between the Bay Area’s Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and the Oakland-based social practice art collective, Mobile Arts Platform. For several years, CIR had been reporting on the increasing use of surveillance technology at the Port of Oakland. What started as a network of cameras at the port had “ballooned,” according to CIR’s reporting, into a citywide network comprising closed-circuit cameras, license-plate readers, microphones to detect gunshot locations, cell phone calls, and social media into a unified police database, with little public debate about its use. When Mobile Arts Platform’s Chris Treggiari was invited to participate in an art exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California under the theme “ Who Is Oakland? ” the two groups saw a unique opportunity to collaborate. The team outfitted a van as a sort of mobile newsroom, parking it in locations in the neighborhood and at commercial centers. Cole Goins, a CIR senior manager for engagement and community collaborations, greeted visitors with a clipboard, asking them to take a quiz to test their knowledge of surveillance technology. Participants could also use a screen-printing station in the van to make signs reading, “Surveillance is …” and write in their responses, which included lines like “A tool that cuts” and “In my pocket.” The reactions ranged from outrage over the extent of surveillance to support in the name of public safety. Treggiari photographed participants with the signs they’d made and displayed the images as part of the “Who Is Oakland?” exhibit. “I am not advocating for whether these tools should be used or not used,” says Goins, “but the public has a right to know how they are being used and what they are being used for.” While the project was a collaboration among artists and journalists, ultimately the biggest collaboration was with members of the public. Rather than the one-way mode of transmission typical with an article, participants actively created the story as they contributed their own experiences. “We were giving people information in a way that they can process it and internalize it and create something with it,” says Goins. “We are not telling people what to create. We are providing the pieces and the platform so they can create and respond and act for themselves. If you think of journalism as the collection and dissemination of information, we were doing that. That information is going to stick with them much more than just another thing they read online.” — Michael Blanding 2016-03-31 12:57 @michaelblanding

57 Raw Material: An Interview with Google Design The SPAN Reader, a book released by Google Design in conjunction with its SPAN conferences in New York and London, is an eclectic collection of design thinking that investigates a variety of contemporary issues, such as the ethics of interface design, the implications of smart homes regarding privacy, the nature of time in digital space, the WYSIWYG paradigm, handmade computing, the haptic joy […] 2016-03-31 12:57 By

58 Public Art Saint Paul names new city artist Public Art Saint Paul , which seeks to bring art into everyday life, has named Aaron Dysart as its new City Artist. He will join current resident City Artist Amanda Lovelee in April. Since 2005, the City Artist program has integrated art and the work of artists into the daily and long-term work of city departments. "City Artists create a new artistic, social, and civic practice. Minnesota’s capital city is sprinkled with projects dreamed up and implemented by City Artists, including Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk , Urban Flower Field and Pop Up Meeting ," according to an announcement from Public Art Saint Paul. Dysart brings 14 years of experience in visual art "focused on environmental preservation, civic engagement, and exposing and simplifying hidden infrastructure and systems," officials said. His connection with Public Art Saint Paul dates back to 2008 when he was a Sustainable Art- Making Fellow, which led him to a fellowship in the City Art Collaboratory program. Most recently, Dysart was one of four artists involved with District Energy St. Paul on the Plume Project , an idea that emerged from field trips and conversations in the Collaboratory and was funded by a Knight Foundation Arts Challenge grant. “My work stems from a fascination with how an individual relates to their surroundings and furthermore how a self-aware part of a system can understand their role in the larger interconnectivity of this system,” Dysart said. “The many projects that have come out of the City Artist program have always captivated me and this position is truly a dream come true.” He has won awards from Franconia Sculpture Park and the Minnesota State Arts Board. His work has been featured regionally and nationally at Northern Spark Festival, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Josephine Sculpture Park. He has a BFA and MFA in sculpture and has taught sculpture and other art classes for ten years at Anoka Ramsey Community College. “Aaron brings an inventive mind to our organization and a record of increasingly complex and beautiful art projects,” said Colleen Sheehy, Public Art Saint Paul executive director. “He is a real maker, but also a strong conceptualizer. That is exactly what will propel our work forward, working inside the City of St. Paul and thinking about how we can integrate art into City systems to create a more vibrant and equitable community. I’m excited to see the ideas and projects that Aaron will propose.” 2016-03-31 12:57 www.startribune

59 formula E announces chief design officer of new racing series with concept reveal formula E announces chief design officer of new racing series with concept reveal formula E announces chief design officer of new racing series with concept reveal all images courtesy of FIA FIA’s electric series formula E, announced daniel simon as their chief design officer for their next racing competition ‘roborace’ – a driverless, electric and connected race car. the futuristic automotive designer is renowned for his work on hollywood sci-fi films such as ‘tron: legacy’ and ‘oblivion’. he was also a senior designer at bugatti and later went on to design drones, motorcycles and spaceships throughout his career. ‘we’re living in a time where the once separated worlds of the automobile and artificial intelligence collide with unstoppable force,’ explains daniel simon. it’s fantastic to be part of this journey; it triggers all my big passions – motor racing, design and advanced technologies. my goal was to create a vehicle that takes full advantage of the unusual opportunities of having no driver without ever compromising on beauty. racing engineers and aerodynamicists have worked with me from the beginning to strike that balance. the roborace is as much about competition as it is entertainment.’ ‘therefore – and quite unusual in today’s racing world – beauty was very high on our agenda and we work hard to merge the best performance with stunning styling. it was important to us that we generate substantial downforce without unnecessary parts cluttering the car to maintain a clean and iconic look. this is largely made possible by using the floor as the main aerodynamic device and we are currently developing active body parts that are more organic and seamless than solutions today. I am excited to be part of the daring team of people who are making this happen.’ ‘roborace’ will make its debut during the 2016/2017 formula-e season showcasing safety and extreme driving capabilities. 2016-03-31 10:00 Piotr Boruslawski

60 Treble—Bright—Daylight Savings: Michael Gallope on Tristan Perich and Vicky Chow To spark discussion, the Walker invites Twin Cities artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, musician and assistant professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the […] 2016-03-31 12:57 By

61 Trump Says Nothing on Cultural Policies— Though Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has expressed opinions on many things, he is seemingly wary about taking a stance on arts and culture. He is the first presidential candidate this election season to respond to Washington Post blogger Alyssa Rosenberg's recent questionnaire on these subjects, however. Rosenberg's questions, which she sent to five candidates (Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders), touch on important issues like the United States' positions on defending artists and writers abused by repressive governments; policies to foster economic growth in the arts sector; government funding for the arts; and the candidate's priorities for the Smithsonian Institution, which runs an extensive nationwide network of museums. In most cases, Trump uncharacteristically declines to take a position, at times deferring to Congress, an institution he has often described as ineffectual. For example, asked about whether he would promote arts education, he mostly defers to the states, though he does say that “a holistic education that includes literature and the arts is just as critical [as reading, writing, and math] to creating good citizens. " Trump has shown he's perfectly willing to talk about potential legislation, saying in a February speech that his administration would “ open up our libel laws " so that politicians and candidates can sue newspapers that write about them critically. But when the Post asks about copyright law, Trump replies, “Your questions seem to imply that the President can make law. Even though some Presidents have acted that way, I will not. " In other cases, he dodges the questions entirely. For example, when asked how the US would defend artists and writers persecuted abroad, he shifts to address only the US's defense of American citizens. And when asked "How should the United States respond to Internet censorship by foreign governments? " he leaves the question blank. For those interested in learning more about positions the candidates have actually taken, and what their past policies have been, the Americans for the Arts Action Fund has published a guide. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, for his part, has promised to be “ an arts president. " Follow artnet News on Facebook. 2016-03-31 09:55 Brian Boucher

62 Cao Fei Escapes in Her MoMA PS1 Show When people in New York talk about Cao Fei, it's usually in terms of her identity. She's Chinese. She's from an industrial city. And she's living in a country governed by communism, or at least whatever of it remains in the People's Republic. All these things are true, but this is not the point. The 37-year-old Beijing-based, Guangzhou-born artist's concerns aren't localized—she tackles an internally relevant topic: the numbing state of modernity in the era of globalization. Her upcoming show at MoMA PS1 in Queens will be the first museum solo exhibition for the artist, and it is an ambitious one, involving multiple media, and identities. In her 2004 work COSPlayers, for instance, Cao immersed herself in a community of anime devotees in her hometown, observing how the fans dressed as idealized characters from Japanese movies and comics amid a jarring industrial backdrop. Three years later, she developed the character China Tracy, an avatar in the role-playing game Second Life, for RMB City , which presents a futuristic Chinese city in the middle of the ocean. And in her 2006 video Whose Utopia? , the artist enlists lighting factory workers to present strange and wonderful fantasy lives under florescent lights and Taylorist machine set-ups. "When it comes to alienation, this is not a temporary reaction," she writes in an email to artnet News, "it is a continuous, long, and gradual process. We are in the stalemate. The highest grossing Disney animated film Frozen— that's what we present [as] a perfect description of the times. " This alienation is only becoming more evident as technology advances, and retreats, at a rapid pace. Microsoft's fun teen chat bot, Tay, aka "AI Experiment Fail," was unleashed on the public March 23, and was taken out of commission the same day, after trolls taught the artifically intelligent being how to post racist garbage online. Cao is more interested in how we create utopian situations on and offline, however. She notes that when she created RMB City in Second Life, she wanted it "without impurities and conflict. " But "now is the era of VR, augmented reality," she writes, "and the 'virtual world' cannot satisfy people's senses anymore. " "There's this idea of resisting the circumstances of the everyday through this immersion in a fantasy life," says Jocelyn Miller, assistant curator at MoMA PS1, in a phone interview with artnet News. Capturing cosplayers in their element is just one example of this process of moving beyond the drudgery and circumscription of our daily lives. In Mangatopia: Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World , Frenchy Lunning speaks of cosplay as "therapeutic," and quotes Gary Genosko as stating that it is "radically open. " Cao's work echoes these sentiments, as she drills down into the muck of everyday life, going beyond what is expected in the current contemporary art conversation. "Art works [are] getting weak, [and] cannot grasp our real feeling anymore," she writes. "Universal Studios theme park seems to be more perfect than all the immersive art works. " There are numerous ways to cope, and to escape, as Cao teaches us time and time again. This weekend at MoMA PS1's Sunday Sessions , the artist will perform Straight out of Times with the New York-based Asian American rap group Notorious MSG. She first came across their music in 2006, and they quickly ended up in her video work Hip Hop: New York , which appeared at Lombard Freid Gallery in New York that same year. "They carry themselves with a gangster sensibility, born out of the lower echelons of society, or built from the alternative cultural imagination of Chinatown itself," Cao writes. "Chinatowns give rise to modalities of social organization not quite the same as the mainstream order of their 'host' countries. They run according to an underground order, providing a safe haven for Chinese and other similarly situated immigrants as well as the disadvantaged generally. Out of this grows a kind of resistant power. " This "resistant power" is what drives Cao's work, whether she's immersing herself in cosplay, or hip hop, communities. For the artist, there is always a way out, even if it is an imaginary one. Follow artnet News on Facebook. 2016-03-31 09:35 Kathleen Massara

63 Red Dot 2016 Product Design Winners Announced Related Venues Red Dot Design Museum Artists Philippe Starck The winners of the prestigious Red Dot Awards 2016 have been announced in the category of Product Design. “It is inspiring to see designs from all over the world,” said Danish fashion designer David Andersen, one of the jurors. Notable winners of the Best of the Best Award in furniture are Philippe Starck ’s Uncle Jack sofa for Kartell, the world's largest sofa made from a single piece of molded polycarbonate, and Patrick Norguet’s Kayak Chair for Italian brand Alias Design, a chair designed to create an impression of extreme lightness. Ikea won Best of the Best award for the bicycle Sladda. It is only the second time the Swedish mass manufacturer has won a Red Dot, after its PS 2014 light pendant received an Honorable Mention in 2015. The collaboration between Montblanc and Marc Newson, the Montblanc M Collection, won in the Fashion category. The other category winner is Bluesmart Carry-On Case , a piece of carry-on luggage that doubles as a USB charger, has a built-in scales, and offers a digital lock, location tracking, and a distance alert should it be left too far behind the traveler. Indeed, the integration of smart technologies into consumer objects is a big feature of this year’s awards. Some of the other winners include Automist Smartscan , a residential fire protection system that features a heat detector, an in-built infra-red sensor to detect the seat of the fire, and fills the air with fine fog to keep the overall temperature down, and Microsoft Hololens , a first- generation holographic computer. The wristwatch winners were the ultra-thin Minimatik watch by NOMOS Glasshütte, and RB 14 PANAMA take five by Rainer Brand, both German brands, while independent jeweler Johanna Otto and KISSdesign won Best of the Best for jewelry. China and Taiwan topped the awards in interior design. The winners are A’tolan House, a coastal residence built by Create + Think Design Studio with the rocks excavated during the construction of the house; Blue Lake Restaurant in Beijing, by Fenghemuchen Space Design Center; and Bright, Open Space, by Tien Fun Interior Planning Co, in Taiwan. The award is non-hierarchical: all objects deemed to achieve high quality in design are awarded the Red Dot – this year, the sought-after label has been awarded to 1,304 products. Only 79 among those have been given the top award, Red Dot: Best of the Best, assigned to outstanding products in a category. The Honorable Mention, given to products with a well- executed design, was given to 107 entries. “The huge diversity of the entrants and the sheer number of products, devices, and designs, that have been entered, goes far beyond any other award I’ve ever seen,” said Chris Bangle, former Chief of Design for the BMW group. “Almost everything had to have a deep discussion about it.” This year, the jury has included Alexander Neumeister, the designer of the German ICE trains, as well as the Japanese Shinkansen “Nozomi 500”; Hideshi Hamagushi, the inventor of the USB flash drive; and Raj Nandan, founder of Indesign Media Asia Pacific, a highly regarded design and architecture publishing company. The Red Dot Design Awards, organized by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany, are given annually to the best design in three distinct disciplines: product design, communication design, and design concept. Considered one of the most prestigious design award globally, and one of the biggest in the world, the award has been bestowed since 1955 by a jury of freelance designers, design professors, and specialized journalists. Designers employed at companies potentially participating in the awards are not allowed to take part in the jury. 2016-03-31 09:17 Jana Perkovic

64 T weekend house by process5 design overlooks coast in western japan japanese studio process5 design has created ‘T’, a weekend residence located a short while from osaka city in western japan. the team worked with the client in order to create a quiet, relaxed space where the little things lost in the chaos of urban living could be found once again. ‘T’ is composed of three levels (two above, one below ground), with a voluminous stairwell that connects each area. the architectural element is centrally located, and thus directs light, circulation, and movement throughout. described as a place to spend time as you wish, the ‘T’ house is a collection of distinctive rooms where inhabitants can escape the bustle of everyday existence. name: T weekend residence location: western, japan program: architectural design, weekend house construction: reinforced concrete and wood area: three levels (two above grade, one below) site area: 511.90m2 building area: 95.45m2 floor area: 175.55m2 year: completed oct. 2015 design: process5 design team: noriaki takaeda, ikuma yoshizawa, taichi fujiwara structural design: euplan sekkei co. ltd. structure team: hiroshi beppu, mitsuru ozaki, kazuyuki niki contractor: intertec co. ltd. photography: YFT (keishiro yamada) designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here. 2016-03-31 08:45 www.designboom

65 Rolling Stones Get Gritty, Geeky and Grumpy at Mankowitz Show in London Related Artists Gered Mankowitz London is about to go Rolling Stones crazy. Gered Mankowitz , the man who knew the Stones best, is opening “Off the Hook”, displaying his best images at Snap Galleries and a limited- edition book “Backstage”. (The show opens before “Exhibitionism” at the Saatchi Gallery.) In an interview with Blouin ARTINFO, Mankowitz speaks of taking everything from the band’s passport photos to famous LP sleeves such as “Between the Buttons.” The reason why the passport photos haven’t been widely seen is because for the best part of 50 years I was rather embarrassed by them, to be honest. My first session with the band took place in 1965 around February and then I was getting on really well and their manager said to me, ‘by the way, could you knock off some passport pictures?’ I went into a complete tizz of anxiety and worry because I suddenly thought that I had to conform to a pre-established look, which I really didn’t know how to do. Anyway, I set up a very basic white background and terribly flat lighting. I think that the pictures sufficed for the purpose for which I took them. About three or four years ago as a part of the process of reviewing, looking at it again with older but fresher eyes, I thought they had a charm and geeky innocence and a vague resemblance to those police lineup, shots minus the numbers! We are showing them in the form of a cross, printing them in a very unique and special way aluminum using a fantastic process called Chromalux. Yes, it was never returned by the printer back in 1966. That shoot was very early in the morning. I was with the band while they recorded through the night, which was their habit in those days, and then tumbling out into the dawn from Olympic Studios in Barnes, looking and feeling in a way just like you felt the Stones should. They just looked fabulously Stones-like and so I proposed that we shoot a session. The reason I went to Primrose Hill was that it was high and I rather innocently thought that I would get better light there early in the day. I made this rather crude filter of glass and gasoline and black card which I stuck on the front of my Hasselblad to try to impart a sort of weird stoned acid-like vibe to the pictures, and it worked. The guys were great: they were absolutely all up for it, and they were fabulous for about half an hour. Then they got tired and cold and told me to get on with it! All just banter really. I don’t know how many shots I took in that time but an awful lot of them were good and effective and I have been showing outtakes of that forever. Ormond’s Yard was the other side of Mason’s Yard, where I had my studio. I photographed a lot of famous people such as the Yardbirds there. It was a great place to take pictures, a cobbled mews with no traffic. At the time I shot the Stones there was a big rebuilding program going on. I just posed the guys on the bricks on the brick cage and around the hoardings because it seemed to me to be unglamorous, gritty and as grainy and dramatic as I felt the Stones were and a complete contrast to the rather sort of glamorous shiny Beatles images that were being produced at the time. I showed the location to (Snap gallery owner) Guy White and that’s where he got the inspiration to call the publishing company after it, also because the books are a yard wide when you open them. I’ve also done a book with Terry O’Neill called “Breaking Stones” - it’s going to be a big Stones year. I got on best with Keith and Charlie, but I felt very close to all of them. They were extremely welcoming to me and they made me feel extremely at home and comfortable and from the beginning of 1965 all the way through until they broke up with Andrew in 1967. I felt very much at one with them. When I toured with them, I felt very much like a Rolling Stone and I was treated as such. There were no problems between me and the band although Brian was always difficult. I still talk to Bill a bit. I was having the best time, I was in heaven. I was 18 when I first started out and working with the band and I just thought this was the greatest possible activity to have. The extraordinary thing about the 1960s was that at the time it was just our lives - we were just doing the best we could, we were having the most fun. It was all baby steps, we didn’t know where we were heading, what we were doing but it was working,. Nobody for a second imagined that it was going to have any meaning or value beyond the following few months. 2016-03-31 07:57 Mark Beech

66 Kanye West Under Fire for Copying Jacket Design Magnum photographer Jim Goldberg is up in arms, as a jacket worn by one of his most famous young homeless subjects has been recreated as a fashion item and worn by Kanye West, who in turn has copied and sold his own version of the jacket at a price of $400. West, who has just launched a very popular clothing line in conjunction with his recent The Life of Pablo album, was photographed during New York Fashion Week this past February wearing a replica of a jacket customized by Goldberg's subject, the late Tweaky Dave. Dave wore the jacket in a well-known photograph taken by Goldberg for his 1995 book Raised by Wolves , which documented young homeless people living on the streets of Los Angeles. A very similar jacket, inscribed with the track listing from The Life of Pablo , then went on sale at West's pop up store, which has caused Goldberg great upset. "For the jacket to become sold as fashion—it really put me over the edge," Goldberg told i-D. "The spirit and intention of Kanye could be right, but the manner in which he is presenting it is wrong. All meaning has been lost. [He's] forgetting history—not acknowledging where that design came from is wrong. " Tweaky Dave ran away from home aged nine and lived on the streets of Los Angeles working as a child prostitute and became addicted to heroin before dying of leukemia. His charismatic personality lead to him becoming a key member of the street scene in Los Angeles, and he even appeared on the Jerry Springer Show, shedding light on the plight of young homeless people. Goldberg is now considering legal action as he thinks that West should at least acknowledge Dave in some way, which given his tragic circumstances is hard to argue with. “Ultimately all I would want from them is acknowledgement of Dave, and maybe they give something to homeless kids," Goldberg told i-D. "I don't know how to achieve that, but that's what I would want to achieve. " Meanwhile, West took to Twitter— after claiming his tweets were contemporary art —to announce how strong his sales at the pop-up store had been. So perhaps a donation to a charity for homeless children is in order? Follow artnet News on Facebook. 2016-03-31 07:01 Amah-Rose

67 Maarten Baas Burns Up Design's Modern Past– (Photo by Fran Parente) THE DAILY PIC (#1523): In 2000, when Maarten Baas came up with the idea of burning old furniture to give it new life as modern design, he launched one of the most compelling series of the new millennium. It reached its apotheosis, however, in the new chair I'm Pic-ing today, which was made for a group show curated by the photographer Andrew Zuckerman at Chamber design gallery in New York. It's one thing to scorch a dumpy old club chair. It's quite another to carbonize a Gerrit Rietveld Zig Zag , one of the signature pieces of 20 th -century design. It's an especially daring move given that Baas is Dutch and Rietveld is a god in the Netherlands. This means that Baas has gone beyond finding a new way to create a compelling surface and look, with a clever backstory. The modest symbolism in the earliest Where There's Smoke pieces becomes almost a manifesto with this one: Designers need to adopt scorched-earth tactics to finally free themselves from the clichés of their modernist past. Does the new piece show Baas doing that, or is it still caught in the orbit of the modern? For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive . 2016-03-31 06:00 Blake Gopnik

68 Mei.com, Alibaba Stage Fashion Show The red carpet featured celebrities from abroad, including Olivia Palermo, who styled one of the runway looks, as well as Chinese singers Chris Lee and Tia Ray – with the latter performing a few numbers during the show. Several hundred VIP clients and customers of Mei.com and Alibaba’s TMall, along with China’s fashion media, attended the event, held at the former site of Shanghai’s 2010 World Expo. The show featured looks from Mei.com styled to represent the fashion ethos of the world’s four major style capitals – London, Paris, New York and Milan. Eighty of Mei.com’s luxury brand partners – including Sergio Rossi, Proenza Schouler, Stuart Weitzman, Carven, Zegna and Moschino – had their clothes and accessories featured as part of the show, which was live streamed to an expected audience of 10 million consumers who were able to buy looks as they made their way down the runway. A TMall spokeswoman said the company was very pleased with sales results from the event, although she declined to give specific figures. “We are combing technology, entertainment and retail together, the idea is that people will be able to buy as the show happens and it’s the first time we are doing anything like it,” said Mei.com chief executive officer Thibault Villet. “The reason we are able to do it is because of our allegiance with Alibaba. This partnership is giving us access to the great technology they have, there’s no doubt about that.” This was the official launch for the Mei.com luxury flash sales channel on TMall’s mobile app, which has actually been operational for a few weeks already. The partnership brings together the reach of China’s largest business-to-consumer e-commerce platform, in TMall, with the expertise and brand partnerships of Mei.com, who have been selling luxury through a flash sales e-commerce model to Chinese consumers since 2010. 2016-03-31 05:59 Casey Hall

69 Athens & Epidaurus Festival Bizarrely Filled with Belgian Dance by Jan Fabre Related Venues Benaki Museum Artists Jan Fabre Belgian multidisciplinary artist Jan Fabre has accepted the invitation by the Greek Ministry of Culture & Sports to head the annual Athens & Epidaurus (International) Festival as Artistic Director for the period 2016 – 2019. However, he's since renounced the title in favor of “Curator,” and what was formerly known as the Greek, then Hellenic, Festival, and last known as Athens & Epidaurus Festival, now appears to be a Belgian event held in Greece. A tragicomedy, indeed, extravagantly placed in such an ancient theatre as that of Epidaurus, built by Polykleitos the Younger in the 4 th century BC. The festival was founded in 1955 and has since hosted performances by notable artists including Maria Callas in 1961 and Rudolf Nureyev in 1963. But it lost much of its lustre during a depressed nineties. Georges Loukos, former director of the Lyon Opera Ballet, attempted to reinvigorate proceedings since his appointment in 2006, but was sacked this past December after an indictment for defrauding the festival of 2.7m euros. Loukos will be succeeded by Fabre, who renamed the Festival yet again to incorporate the word “International,” despite what appears to be a distinctly Belgian focus. One would imagine that the future of the Festival, despite its debts, would be in good hands, given the breadth and scope of Fabre's work. But Greek artists, especially from the performing arts sector, expressed outrage on social media as Fabre unveiled plans for the following four years at a press conference, which took place March 30 at the Amphitheatre of the Acropolis Museum in Athens. In his speech, he spoke about nothing except Belgium. Not even once was Greece mentioned. He pointed to Belgium as a role model for the arts: “In 1980 the ‘Flemish Wave’ was born when a group of interdisciplinary artists overturned artistic conventions and influenced the art scene to become what it is today.” 2016 is to be dedicated to the “Belgian Spirit.” The Festival kicks off with an exhibition of Fabre’s drawings, models, photographs and videos as a retrospective of his stage work since the 1970s, entitled “Stigmata. Actions & Performances 1976 – 2013.” Opening June 15 at the Benaki Museum, it is to travel to the Musée d’art contemporain in Lyon this coming September. 2017/18 will feature an “international” orientation and focus on the notion of “Consilience”: a synthesis of different artistic genres including the visual and performing arts, music, theatre, cinema, and literature. 2017 will focus on visual and performing artists, as well as various writers, who have worked and are still working with Fabre, while 2018 will examine the relationship between writer and actor with contributors including Isabelle Huppert, Michael Baryshnikov, Robert Wilson, and Theodoros Terzopoulos. For these two years, at least one third of the artists will be of Greek origin, culminating in 2019 with the theme “Greek Matrix,” when, hopefully the main stage will see a handing of the torch to a new generation of Greek artists. But can the blame rest squarely on Fabre’s shoulders, who can honestly claim he didn't know the Greek scene? Or perhaps attention should turn to the Greek Ministry of Culture for not assigning someone Greek. Either way, the new festival appears to be overshadowed for the foreseeable future by its financing and promoting of Belgian arts ​– as if the Greeks have none to showcase. 2016-03-31 05:26 Robert Michael

70 Art Wuzhen: Ann Hamilton’s Giant Loom Weaves Present and Past Related Artists Ann Hamilton For Art Wuzhen, the international contemporary art exhibition that opened last weekend, Ann Hamilton created a site specific installation, “Again, Still, Yet,” that fills an atmospheric old theater in the West Scenic Zone, a restored historic water town at the center of Wuzhen, China (Read full story here). Inspired by the rich silk making history of the 1,300-year-old town, the American visual artist placed silk bobbins on the seats, as if forming a silent audience, and took the thread from each of them to feed a traditional, functioning, weaving loom on the stage. Speaking to Blouin Artinfo at the opening, the artist said she decided on the location as she had just worked on a theater piece and was particularly interested in how to activate or work with the relationship between the collective and the singular gesture. “I was interested in bringing that together with the traditions that are here,” she says. Hamilton explains it is “also about the metaphor of cloths, and two things crossing and connecting. So one of the crucial things for me was that we open the window at the back of the stage, so that the theater is opened all the way; it’s also about these lights meeting each other, the light of the present meeting the light of artifice of the theater. The weaver can see the outside in the mirror (installed on the loom) and she mediates two worlds.” A performance aspect of the installation involves a weaver working the loom, also weaving in small threads unraveled from old sweaters to join the red silk threads coming from the auditorium. “It’s like she’s weaving in the community that is not actually here,” Hamilton says. The threads on the bobbins in the seats were dyed a uniform red to match the seat— a significant color in China with all sorts of social and political connotations — and the artist says, “If you think of each one as a body that is absent, the thread is given to the performer and the performer is taking it from that space.” She adds, “The work has different layers, but everything is about the crossing, between the light and the dark, the collective and the singular action. But it also asks that question: what is the place of these traditional processes in a technologically-extended world.” 2016-03-31 04:49 Sonia Kolesnikov

71 Gallery Hopping: "With Institutions Like These... " “With Institutions Like These…" is a large contemporary group show in a glamorous old empty hotel near Notting Hill Gate in London. The brainchild of Victor Wang of the K11 Foundation —who also curated the exhibition—and Alex Meurice of Slate Projects, the exhibition has been put together with the idea of defying the increasingly rigid art world. The exhibition includes Emma Hart, this year's winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women ; Maria Taniguchi, last year's winner of the Hugo Boss Asia Art Prize ; Richard Wentworth; Elad Lassry; and the recent graduates, Rebecca Ackroyd and Lewis Betts. There is a range of work including film, painting, and sculpture. The exhibition is in the unique setting of a large luxury hotel— repurposed as exhibition space while waiting to be transformed into living accommodation—where Wang and Meurice will be holding exhibitions until October 2016. “Victor and I were thinking about this ‘threshold condition' whereby a work, an exhibition, an artist, a building, an idea, etc., is always in a state of becoming, started but not quite finished," says Meurice of the project. "The hotel itself is a place of displacement, encounter, transience, foreign bodies, a layering of time, memory, nostalgia, longing etc. and a lot of these themes have animated our choices in the exhibition. " This is not only a chance to see work, but also to buy it, as all the work featured in the exhibition for sale. See more works from the exhibition below: " With Institutions Like These… " is on view at the Averard Hotel, London, until April 10, 2016. Follow artnet News on Facebook. 2016-03-31 03:30 Amah-Rose

72 Bradford Museum Director Defends Move The controversy surrounding the move of the Royal Photography Society's collection from Bradford to London's Victoria & Albert Museum rages on. Earlier this month, over 80 British cultural luminaries , including David Hockney , condemned the Science Museum Group's (SMG) plans to transfer up to 400,000 items to the London museum , calling it a "backward step" and “cultural vandalism. " Now, Jo Quinton-Tulloch, director of Bradford's National Media Museum (NMM), where the collection is currently hosted, has stepped in to defend the plans. The Guardian reports that Quinton-Tulloch spoke at a Bradford Council committee set up to assess the controversial plans, and argued that the NMM had been forced to take the decision in light of a 30 percent cut to its government funding. The director also argued that the move wasn't about privileging London over Bradford, but about making the collection accessible to the largest amount of people. However, a Freedom of Information request by the Guardian yielded a rather contrasting result: an exhibition showcasing 200 works from the Royal Photography Society's collection garnered in fact 8,000 more visitors when shown in Bradford than when it travelled to the Science Museum in London. At the council meeting, Quinton-Tulloch—who was head of exhibitions at London's Science Museum before taking up the helm at the NMM—also added that the slashed budget had prompted the Bradford museum to rethink its funding strategy and focus on the science of photography, as opposed to fine art photography, which in turn made the V&A a more suitable location to host to take care of and display the collection. The RPS collection gathers historical works by pioneering photographers such as William Henry Fox Talbot , Julia Margaret Cameron , Paul Strand , Alfred Stieglitz , and Ansel Adams . Moreover, two weeks ago, according to the Guardian , the RPS revealed that it had not been consulted about the move and that it would in fact prefer the holdings to remain in Bradford. Follow artnet News on Facebook. 2016-03-31 03:30 Lorena Muñoz

73 Views from the Top with Jonathan Stone on 30 Years of Christie's in Asia Related Venues Christie's On May 30, Christie's will celebrates 30 years in Asia with a special 30 lots sales. Ahead of the anniversary sale Blouin Artinfo talked to Jonathan Stones, Chairman and International Head of Asian Art for Christie's Asia. Having joined Christie’s in London in 1989, initially on the front counter and then as a specialist, Stones moved to Tokyo in 2000 as a representative director, and has now been in Hong Kong for nine years witnessing first-hand the rise of the Asian art market and the evolution of Asian collector’s tastes. The initial January 1986 sale in Hong Kong of jadeite jewelry and Chinese paintings started us in Asia, then the next milestone was the introduction of the Imperial Sales in 1996 with Chinese works of art associated with the imperial family. In 2005 there was another major step forward when we started holding our sales at the Convention Center, which enabled us to expand our sales on a much grander scale and enabled us to do a whole presentation of what we offer. This was also the year when we had our first sale dedicated to Asian contemporary art, which was another step to the market. Then the first evening sale in Asia was introduced in 2008, which put Asian contemporary art in the same sphere as the evening sales for post-war and modern and impressionist art in New York and London. And in 2011, we integrated Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art into the platform of Asian 20th century and contemporary art, putting it on a broader stage. In the last couple of years the expansion of a gallery space and the introduction of mid-season sales have also been steps in the evolution of what we’re trying to do in Asia. I think we’ve just made a step toward that direction with our inaugural First Open sale (March 25), which comprised both. That sale was also a lot about accessible and affordable art being aimed at first-time collectors who would like a lower entry point. So you have works by established artists maybe in a different medium and works by emerging artists. When we started, our collectors were mainly in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Mainland collectors first began to emerge in the 1990s — we opened our office in Shanghai in 1994 and in Beijing in 1996. But of course, it’s only post 2005 that we’ve seen a great growth of interest from the Chinese mainland. What’s fascinating to see is the evolution in taste. The breadth of and the interest in many categories is evolving very fast. We began to see this with Chinese buyers, who were initially very much focused on traditional areas like Chinese fine paintings and imperial works of art. But gradually, they expanded outward through a number of benchmark sales for jade, Chinese furniture, lacquer. Now they’re looking at international and Asian postwar and modern art. In the last year, we’ve also seen an evolution toward abstract art, more particularly postwar abstract from the 1960s to ‘70s from Japan and Korea. We don’t have plans for those. But one of the things we have been doing is having more tours of highlights. We’ve already had impressionist painting highlights and we had on view this month a range of old master paintings that are to be offered in New York in April. It’s important to give people the opportunity to see some of these highlights and in the broader sense educate them about the wealth of art that is for sale in other places. But no, I don’t envision we will have Old Masters sales in Hong Kong for the time being, but I do envision more highlight tours so collectors can participate in confidence if they wish to in our other sales in New York or London. It’s 30 lots for 30 years; each department was asked to select highlight items, not always the most expensive ones, but those that told a story, those of significance and importance, and great works of arts. 2016-03-31 03:14 Sonia Kolesnikov

74 74 Bharti Kher's sculpture 'Six Women' at The Biennale of Sydney Related Venues Biennale of Sydney Artists Bharti Kher Painter and Sculptor Bharti Kher Indian painter and sculptor, Bharti Kher ’s artistic practice is nonetheless highly diverse in its approach to materials, methods and subject matter. Bharti has lived since the early 1990s in India, where she explores the construction of culture and identity. Bharti uses the forms and ideas of minimalism, abstraction and the readymade to engage with a range of ideas, including gender politics, language, mythology, hybridity, dislocation, transmogrification and narrative. At the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Bharti is showcasing ‘Six Women’, 2013–14, a series of life- sized, sitting female sculptures, cast from real women in her New Delhi studio. Critically, the vulnerability of the women stems only in part from their nakedness; Bharti’s sitters were sex workers, paid by the artist to sit for her, in a self-conscious transaction of money and bodily experience. Throughout the process, Bharti asked herself: ‘If the body can carry the memory of other bodies as well, what does this mean? Can a body carry narratives that don’t belong to it?’ Located within the Embassy of the Real, Bharti’s sculptures address the physicality and inherent vulnerability of the body and quietly challenge our perceptions of the body in contemporary culture. As tender portraits of women, with their resolved sense of calm and gentle rolls of flesh, the works distil a very human set of emotions, beyond simply the rendering of their figurative form. Talking about the sculptor Bharti says, ‘It’s a strange and cathartic process, casting. When you caress the skin and rub the plaster gently over and over so as all the pores and creases are etched and filled with plaster, it’s like encasing and mummifying a living being. You are trying to capture their breath, to find the imprint of their minds and thoughts, and the secrets of the soul. What the cast carries, only the model can give. I have no idea what people think about when their heads are encased in plaster. The head is truly the most challenging and awkward part for them. It is always the last part. It involves complete trust and absolute calm in the model. Everyone seems to summon into being who they need to be to complete the casting.’ Bharti sees the body as a literal and metaphorical site for the construction of ideas around gender, mythology and narrative. In the mid-2000s, she began to create a series of strangely beautiful, but quietly grotesque, hybrid figurative sculptures of women that fused human and animal body parts. Kher described them as ‘mythical urban goddesses, creatures who came out of the contradiction of the idea of femininity or the idea of womanhood, she is the goddess, the housewife, the mother, the whore, the mistress, the lover, the sister - everything’. “The ‘Embassies of Thought’ in the 20th Biennale have been conceived as temporary settings without set borders, representing transient homes for constellations of thought. The themes associated with each of these ‘embassies’ are inspired by the individual histories of each venue, whilst the ‘in between’ spaces speak to one of the key ideas in this Biennale exploring the distinction between the virtual and the physical worlds. We’re asking visitors to consider our interaction with the digital world, as well our displacement from and occupation of spaces and land, along with the interconnections between politics and financial power structures,” Artistic Director Stephanie Rosenthal says while speaking about The Biennale of Sydney show. More than half of the 200 artworks in the exhibition have been specially commissioned for the 20th Biennale of Sydney. More than a third of artworks are presented at venues in Sydney’s inner west. In addition to artworks presented across the seven embassies, the 20th Biennale commissioned twelve site-specific projects taking place at locations throughout inner Sydney, including a new work by Swedish artist Bo Christian Larsson that will unfold over the course of three months at Camperdown Cemetery. In a former gallery space in Redfern, artist collective Brown Council (Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore, Kelly Doley and Diana Smith) present a new participatory performance about how we recall the past and imagine the future. Bharti Kher has exhibited extensively internationally, with solo shows including ‘ Bharti Kher : Misdemeanours’, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2014); ‘ Bharti Kher ’, Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London (2012); and ‘Reveal the secrets that you seek’, Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah (2012). Major group exhibitions include ‘Whorled Explorations’, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014; ‘Seeing through light’, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (2014); and ‘Paris-Delhi-Bombay’, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2011). Follow@ARTINFOIndia 2016-03-31 01:27 Bibhu Pattnaik

75 edoardo tresoldi resurrects archeological remains in puglia using wire mesh in the southern italian town of puglia, the historic park of siponto is known as a site of great archaeological significance. abandoned after earthquakes in the 13th century, the area formerly assumed the role as one of the principal harbors in the region. alongside several artifacts emblematic of apulian-romanesque architecture, the land hosts the ancient remains of an early christian basilica, illustrating the town’s role as one of the most important dioceses in the region. the installation is located in the archaeological park of siponto in puglia on the site of this early church, italian artist edoardo tresoldi has constructed a monumental wire mesh installation that simulates the ancient town’s architectural quality. the sculpture, titled ‘basilica di siponto’, occupies the vast space as a light and transparent volume, resurrecting the archaeological remains as a sculptural form for visitors to experience and explore. layers of mesh metal intersect and overlap to form cavernous archways, soaring columns and a romanesque roof. together with MiBACT (the ministry of cultural heritage and activities) and the archaeology superintendence of puglia, tresoldi has added his contemporary artwork to the archaeological context, giving new life to the ancient church. ‘the work of edoardo tresoldi appears as a majestic architectural sculpture that tells the volume of the existing early christian church and, at the same time, is able to vivify, and update the relationship between the ancient and the contemporary,’ curator simone pallotta says. ‘it is a work that, breaking up the secular controversy of the primacy arts, summarizes two complementary languages ​into a single, breathtaking scenery.’ the sculptural work is built on the remains of an early christian church light and transparent mesh sheets allow visitors to observe the surrounding landscape each of the metal pieces has been sculpted to create an architectural form ‘basilica di siponto’ occupies the vast space as a light and transparent volume the installation seeks to give new life to the ancient church layers of sculpted mesh form an architectural outline within the vast space mesh figures are integrated into the sculptural landscape soaring columns are made from the sculptural material the installation becomes an almost ghost-like monument to the original structure 2016-03-31 00:15 Nina Azzarello

Total 75 articles. Created at 2016-04-01 00:03