Tono Stano: White Shadow

Tono Stano: White Shadow at Pace/McGill. More... Works by Tono Stano at his personal site.

Kunié Sugiura: Photographic Works from the 1970s and Now

Kunié Sugiura: Photographic Works from the 1970s and Now at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks. "...For more than forty years, Kunié Sugiura has investigated the various uses and manifestations of photography, producing a large and varied body of work that includes unique color abstractions from the mid-1960s, photographic works on canvas from the 1970s, and life-sized depictions of people, animals, fish, botanical specimens and other living things made from the early 1980s to the present using the photogram process."

Motoyuki Daifu: Lovesody

Motoyuki Daifu: Lovesody at Lombard-Freid Projects. "...The young Japanese photographer, based in Tokyo, uses photography to document the highly personal chaos of domestic life with his family and loved ones. Motoyuki’s portraits of people, rooms and objects are filled with energy and color, all of which intermix to generate a natural narrative that feel simultaneously honest and unlikely. Motoyuki’s subjects are unfazed by the continuous presence of his camera, offering up their most intimate moments for documentation and presentation to the outside world."

Alec Soth: Broken Manuel

Alec Soth: Broken Manuel at Sean Kelly Gallery. "...Broken Manual will be Soth’s premiere exhibition with the gallery and the first opportunity to view such a large selection of this important body of work in New York. The majority of photographs that comprise this compelling series were taken over a four-year period, from 2006-2010. They reflect Soth’s increasing interest in the mounting anger and frustration that some—specifically male—Americans feel with societal constraints and their subsequent desire to remove themselves from civilization. The resultant work is a group of portraits of men and the landscapes they inhabit that are poignant, disturbing and mysterious. Soth’s uncanny ability to gain the trust of those whom he photographs gave him unprecedented access to these notoriously elusive individuals, in moments, variously, of brooding, deep reflection or vulnerability."

Ubu Roi

Alfred Jarry... Ubu Roi (1965, directed by Jean-Christophe Averty) at UbuWeb Film & Video. "...The plays of Alfred Jarry are considered by many to be the first dramatic works of the theatre of the absurd. They are credited with a great number of literary innovations and are seen as major influences of the dada and symbolist movements in art. Ubu Roi (translated as King Ubu and King Turd) is Jarry’s most famous work. Ubu Roi eliminates the dramatic action from its Shakespearean antecedents and uses scatological humor and farce to present Jarry’s views on art, literature, politics, the ruling classes, and current events.
Ubu Roi first saw life as schoolboy farce, a parody of Felix Hebert, one of Jarry’s teachers. Co-authored with his friend, Henri Morin, the skit was transformed into a marionette play through several versions. In 1891, Jarry published a story, 'Guignol,' reminiscent of the Punch and Judy performances popular throughout Europe, which showcased a vile and murderous Pere Ubu. A two-act version of Ubu Roi with songs for marionettes, Ubu sur la Batte, appeared in print in 1906."

Jet Ninjin

Go!Go!7188... Jet Ninjin ("Jet Carrot" 2000, Toshiba/EMI TOCT-22102 .mp3 audio 03:30). Their debut single. Sayonara Go!Go!7188.

Works by Colin Christian

Works by Colin Christian. "...Colin now works full time on his original sculptures, finding inspiration in old sci-fi movies, pinup girl/supermodels, anime, ambient electronic music and H.P. Lovecraft. In 2004 he started using silicone in his sculptures, a difficult material to use but one that helps him achieve his goal of true cartoon realism, a line drawing made flesh. He is not looking to create every imperfection and flaw, but to take the exaggerations and perfections of cartoons and make them into a realistic 3D form."

The Blank Generation

Amos Poe and Ivan Kral... The Blank Generation (1976) at UbuWeb Film & Video. "...CBGB, the small Bowery Avenue club that spawned and nurtured American punk and New Wave music in the mid-70s, closed earlier this fall after a three-decade run. Fortunately, New York filmmaker Amos Poe was hanging out at CBGB in its early days and began filming performances by many of the musicians who would become the stars of the late 70s/early 80s as the rest of America embraced punk and New Wave music and style. Taking his silent 16mm footage and separate audio cassette recordings, Poe and co-director Ivan Kral (guitarist for Patti Smith) put together a documentary, 'Blank Generation' (1976), that exemplified a punkish attitude toward film structure with handheld zooms, angled compositions, floodlight lighting, extreme close-ups, elliptical editing, flash pans, and a general in-your-face and 'up-yours' stance. Sound and image purposely do not synch. In many cases music and image were recorded on separate nights more economical because of the high cost of raw film stock with sound, but also an aesthetic nod to Jean-Luc Godard who had slashed the umbilical cord uniting sound and image. Out of the French New Wave came the New York No Wave. Neither a collection of music videos nor a straightforward documentary, "Blank Generation" captures in embryonic form vital appearances of the Talking Heads, Blondie, the Ramones, Television, and, most belligerently of all, Patti Smith."

Edmund Eisenscher's Milwaukee Union Photographs

Edmund Eisenscher's Milwaukee Union Photographs at the WHS. "...The Eisenscher gallery showcases 133 photos taken by Edward Eisenscher (1909-1995), photographer for the 'Wisconsin CIO News.' Today only about 11 percent of American workers belong to a union. But when Eisenscher was working, more than a third of working Americans were union members. Milwaukee was one of the nation's leading manufacturing centers and, after four decades of socialist government, one of its strongest union communities, too. Residents considered labor unions a basic part of the social fabric like schools and churches. Eisenscher's images document the role unions played in people's lives during this vanished era."

Shepard Fairy «120!» - Retrospective

Shepard Fairy «120!» - Retrospective at Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Rome. "...Mondo Bizzarro Gallery is credited with having organised the first large Shepard Fairey exhibition in Italy, in 2011 that paid tribute to American street artists. We now offer a retrospective of works which include limited editions and unique pieces spanning from way back in 1997 up to the present day and which include over 120 pieces signed by Obey. This unmissable exhibition is a must-see for anyone who wants to get closer to the masterpieces of an ultra-contemporary artist like Shepard Fairey, who succeeds in marrying sensitivity with creative genius."

Boîtes aux lettres

Boîtes aux lettres - the letter boxes of Saint-Martin-d’Abbat. (fr)

Other Bodies: A Collection of Vernacular Photography

Other Bodies: A Collection of Vernacular Photography at ZieherSmith. "...65 found photographs spanning the American 20th century, celebrating its conspicuous beauty and encapsulating a lifestyle of exquisite hubris, baffling habits and poetic leisure. Focusing on the eerie and bizarre found in everyday life, including odd family units, perverse couplings of awkward figures in vaguely familiar places, and solo views of predominantly male figures, the patina of the vintage prints are often enhanced by blurring caused by misfired flash-bulbs, over and double exposures, crude processing and care-worn edges. This singular grouping invites the viewer to see a crooked world through straight and narrow eyes and 65 ostensibly unrelated (and virtually untraceable) sources reinvented as a new, fleeting narrative."

Underground: Russian Photography 1970s-1980s

Gennady Bodrov... Untitled, 1988. From the exhibition Underground: Russian Photography 1970s-1980s at Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York, NY. "...During the Khrushchev’s cultural thaw, nonconformist art and literary movements, involving such figures and activities as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Josef Brodsky and samizdat, had a great impact on the evolution of Russian photography in the 1970s, and laid the foundation for a new generation of photographers during glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s. Photographers in the exhibition challenged the government-prescribed optimistic style of socialist realism by photographing forbidden topics, and like other unofficial artists, they risked personal safety in pursuit for individual expression and freedom. In the 1970s, Boris Mikhailov, a pioneer of Russian conceptual photography, used the medium to reflect skepticism about both approved photography and the false realities it presented."