New from Kaws and Original Fake, the iconic Kaws Companion character returns this Summer in a Karimoku Wood version. Priced at a round $3000 and about 30 centimeters in size, the toy comes limited to only 100 pieces and will be signed and numbered by Kaws, release of the figures from May 30th, 2011.
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“Domestic Goods,” is a group show organized by Ryan Wallace.
Mr. Wallace, a New York City artist who has been a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient, has included 27 contemporary artists in this show that addresses both the external and internal notions of domesticity: memory, family, comfort, or material surroundings. The artists are mostly culled from the neighborhoods of New York where emerging artists today make their home, such as Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Opposite – Andrew Kuo, Flower Face 4, 2011
Exhibition runs through to June 28th, 2011
4425 North Campbell Ave
Tucson
Arizona
85718
USA
This is first major survey in London of the work of one of the UK’s most renowned and celebrated artists. The exhibition features key works from all periods of the artist’s career, including seldom-seen early works and more recent large-scale installations as well as a new series of outdoor sculptures created especially for the Hayward.
Some of the Highlights include, a series of 16 neon art works which illuminate emotions, memories, feelings and ideas, including a new heart-shaped neon Love is What You Want (2011) are displayed along a darkened wall evoking the atmospheric nightlife of bars, clubs and amusement arcades. The ashes of The Shop, the enterprise that Emin and Sarah Lucas set up together in the East End in 1993. For six months they made and sold their own merchandise. When The Shop closed Emin burnt its remaining contents so it could never be recreated and Running Naked (2000/2011) – a new photographic work which shows the artist running naked down an East London street, reworked from a film shot originally by her ex-boyfriend the artist Mat Collishaw in 2000.
Exhibition runs through to August 29th, 2011
Hayward Gallery
Belvedere Road
London
SE1 8XX
Antti Laitinen latest performance entitled “Bark Boat”, is documented through a series of photographs and video.
On the 7th of August 2010 at 4am, a rudimentary and yet authentic sailboat was launched for the first time in the Finnish peninsula of Porkkala and was about to embark on its inaugural journey across the Gulf of Finland. At its command was a young and resilient journeyman who has made a name for himself through his adventurous-spirit and his ritualistic quests for achievement, and known by the name of Antti Laitinen.
This is the latest in a series of performances where Antti Laitinen embarks on a personal journey, pushing the boundaries of his physical endurance and braving the natural elements, to engage with the world in a collective mission to stage mythologies and erase the boundary between success and failure. As in most of his previous projects, “Bark Boat” originates from classical Finnish tales and cultural imagery – in this instance, the title is taken from a Finnish childhood game whereby pieces of tree bark are used as rafts and are set sailing onto the vast sea until they disappear out of sight. The children would imagine their miniature boats sailing all the way to faraway lands.
Opposite – Bark Boat V, 2010
Exhibition runs through to June 19th, 2011
Nettie Horn
25b Vyner St
London
E2 9DG
This new body of work continues Kooi’s exploration of the Dutch landscape as well as her ability to create hyper realities. Kooi situates people in natural settings and through distinct technical feats creates narratives that recall fairytales, movies and dreams.
These large scale photographs, which are always shot in the daytime, allude to various tales that are hinted at but never revealed. Kooi’s background in theatre is evident by the way she stages her photographs. Using a large format camera, she sets up elaborate lighting to create a set within the natural landscape. She stages the character(s) to dramatize and bring into focus the moods and stories of the scenes being created. The natural elements are transformed, becoming more than mere backdrops. Kooi’s intense method of producing and processing her images exaggerates the unnerving realness of the situations being depicted.
Opposite – Velsen-lampen, 2008
Exhibition runs through to June 18th, 2011
P.P.O.W
535 West 22nd Street
3rd Floor
New York
NY
10001
In his most recent series comprised of images taken from April to May 2010 in Japan, Gersht traveled between cities that were affected by World War II as well as ancient locations in remote western Japan, examining the shifting symbolism of the cherry blossom. While initially associated with Buddhist concepts of renewal, the celebration of life, and good fortune, the cherry blossom was re-appropriated during Japan’s 19th century militarization and colonial expansion. Once celebrated as a healthy and abundant flower, the falling of the petals from the tree became the symbol of Kamikaze soldiers. Gersht furthers this discussion of life and death symbolism in his exploration of trees planted before the war in unaffected remote areas, contrasting them against trees in Hiroshima that were planted in nuclear soil.
The artist made use of digital cameras that allowed for images to be taken under extreme light conditions, further questioning the ability of photography as a medium to convey a singular truth or story. Presenting documentation of what is assumed to be an exact location, Gersht’s digital process allows for the absolute light and color veracity of these landscapes to be questioned and by extension the viewer’s interpretation of this location’s history. Unlike previous series which focused on geographic journeys (Walter Benjamin following the Lister Route in Gersht’s Evaders (2009) or The Forest (2006), in which the artist’s family found refuge from Nazi persecution during WWII in the Ukraine), Falling Petals offers imagery that conveys past and present without a specified linear narrative; Gersht’s photographic process implies the passage of time without providing an exacting start or finish to the life of the depicted.
Opposite – Against the Tide: Isolated, 2010
Exhibition runs through to June 25th, 2011
CRG Gallery
548 W 22nd Street
New York
NY
10011
