JANE WEAVER – I NEED A CONNECTION
2015-09-28Jane Weaver drops a video for her new single I Need a Connection, an animation put together by her label boss (and husband) Andy Votel of Finders Keepers.
TweetMONGRELS – LOWBUDGET/HIGHCONCEPT 10″ EP
2015-09-28The MONGRELS are: (DJ) Benjamin & (MC) Kid Acne
• 6 track EP
• Limited edition 10″ vinyl
• 300 copies worldwide
• Hand-pulled screenprint sleeves
• Signed, numbered and embossed by the artists
A1. CHOKEHOLD
A2. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
A3. SKY L.A.R.PING
B1. ABOVE AVERAGE
B2. MIC TYRANT
B3. FANTASY RAP lll
WILEY X ZOMBY – STEP 2001
2015-09-28Wiley’s Step 20 is rebuilt from scratch by none other than Zomby.
Zomby grew up listening to Wiley, and that shows in this thrilling production that harks back to OG grime whilst nudging the template a step or two forward. Wiley is one of the all time great MCs, and here Zomby lets that show by keeping the fired-up-and-then-some vocal always at the forefront.
TweetADAM FUSS
2015-09-28Born in London in 1961, Fuss has lived in New York for over thirty years. Known for his experimental work with the earliest photographic techniques, notably daguerreotypes and photograms, Fuss has long explored the natural world and its symbolic manifestations. His camera-less images, captured by a flash of light on a light-sensitive surface, are at once immediate and timeless, spontaneous in conception but profound in the emotional responses they provoke. In his new work, Fuss continues to balance this and other dichotomies (dark/light, presence/absence, life/death), but introduces a new approach to his process. Instead of assembling his imagery on a horizontal surface, shooting from above, Fuss creates the images vertically. An agitated pool suddenly becomes a waterfall.
In Fuss’s photograms of water, verticality and its implied movement are integral to his intentions. The image-making process is less predictable, and the work is focused instead on the event and its result—which, as he says, is “a photographic representation of energy”—rather than on its materiality. Monumental in scale at just over 9 feet tall, the images engulf the viewer, and in this way are reminiscent of Abstract Expressionist canvases, particularly the gestural drips of Jackson Pollock or the cool verticality of Barnett Newman’s “zip” paintings. History, however, does not weigh Fuss’s work. As with much of his imagery, the seeming simplicity of his sources (water falling, snakes slithering) is belied by the depth and variety of possible readings, allowing for complex associations and interpretations. The expressiveness conveyed in these works is also contrasted by the impressive technical feats by which they are made.
Exhibition runs through to October 17th, 2015
Cheim & Read
547 W 25th St
New York
NY 10001
PARTISAN
2015-09-22On the edge of a crumbling city, 11-year-old Alexander (Jeremy Chabriel) lives in a sequestered commune, alongside other children, their mothers, and charismatic leader, Gregori (Vincent Cassel). Gregori teaches the children how to raise livestock, grow vegetables, work as a community – and how to kill. As Alexander nears his first job as an assassin, he begins to question the ways of the commune, particularly Gregori’s quiet but overpowering influence. Threatened by Alexander’s increasing unwillingness to fall in line, Gregori’s behavior turns erratic and adversarial toward the child he once considered a son. With the two set dangerously at odds and the commune’s way of life disintegrating, the residents fear a violent resolution is at hand.
In theatres October 2nd, 2015
TweetEMILY MAE SMITH – MEDUSA
2015-09-21In Smith’s meticulously rendered oil paintings, references merge and collide, forming a precise visual vocabulary of scopophilic desire and consumption. A broom—perhaps a reference to the faceless domestic laborer from Disney’s Fantasia, whose sole role was to clean and reproduce-serves as a protagonist; a surrogate for the artist glamorously made-up with lipstick, disguised as a mustachioed man, or monstrously rendered as Medusa herself.
Other tropes slip in and out of the work, providing a framework (or even literal frame) in which to view her narratives of screwball humor, sex, and violence, which become inextricably linked. Sunglasses, binoculars, and mirrors serve as reflective lenses into the paintings, suggesting both the insatiable desire to look and the horror of looking. Flatness gives way to deep astral planes, as space folds and divides within the canvases.
Implicit throughout Smith’s work is a feminist critique grounded in the histories she so deftly cites-from the Pop legacies of the Chicago Imagists and Lichtenstein to Magritte; from Art Nouveau to 1980s Cyberpunk sci-fi. Her paintings are clearly not just about the act of looking, but rather painting looking self-reflexively over its shoulder, drawing on both art history as well as her own work, enticing the viewer with its lurid sexuality, only to be made stiff as you catch its gaze.
Opposite – The Mirror, 2015
Exhibition runs through to October 25th, 2015
Laurel Gitlen
122 Norfolk Street
New York
NY 10002
