Hasta La Ideas

Apparently the city of Berlin isn’t as welcoming of branded art projects as New York is. The BMW Guggenheim Lab, which was met with relatively positive marks when it premiered this past August in the East Village, was expected to next move to Germany, where all 2,200 square feet of the mobile structure, designed by Tokyo’s Atelier Bow-Wow, would set up shop beginning in mid-May and run through the summer. As announced back in January, the site selected to host the next stop on a planned world tour was the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg, “known for its engagement with social action and public art” and “centrally located.” Unfortunately for the traveling exhibition, they didn’t expect massive push back from left-wing activists. Bloomberg reports that due to numerous threats, “elevated risk,” and planned protests, the Lab has decided to cancel its plans and move elsewhere. Where that “elsewhere” might be (somewhere in Germany? Or moving out of the country entirely?) hasn’t been announced yet.

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Alex Prager explores drama and death through new eyes in her upcoming exhibition

Since exhibiting “Week-End“—her last solo show at NYC’s Yancey Richardson Gallery in 2010—photographer Alex Prager has been busy at work, but mostly with projects outside her own personal endeavors. Whether shooting the 1960s-inspired Missoni for Target campaign, villainous celebrities for the New York Times’ annual Hollywood issue, or lending her talents to Bottega Veneta’s “The Art of Collaboration” campaign last spring, Prager keeps her signature cinematic style at the forefront of her work while successfully bringing to life a new vision for each commercial and editorial assignment she takes on.

Prager’s work returns to gallery walls next month, in a new solo show called “Compulsion”. Simultaneously taking place in New York, London and Prager’s hometown of LA, the three-city exhibition will include an array of photos that reflect her interest in the emotion expressed solely through a person’s eyes, and the powerful foundation they provide for provoking mystery. The eyes show how the young photographer has evolved since “Week-End” without departing entirely from her penchant for heightened drama and voyeuristic compositions. In “Compulsion”, the eye close-ups also allude to the anonymous characters found within her tragic scenes, titled like newspaper reporting, such as “1:18pm, Silverlake Drive” or “11:45pm, Griffith Park”.

This strong interest in emotive eyes is perhaps inspired by the intense baby blues actress Bryce Dallas Howard worked for Prager’s camera in her short film “Despair“, several stills of which were exhibited at MoMA as part of their “New Photography 2010” group show. “Compulsion” will feature a new short film as well, one that also toys with the idea of death. “La Petite Mort”—a French phrase for orgasm—stars actress Judith Godrèche, who is, according to a description of the film, “experiencing the boundaries of her body and those of this world”.

A soft-spoken self-taught artist who fell into photography after a little soul-searching and a life-altering trip to the Getty Museum (where she came across the work of William Eggleston) just a decade ago, Prager has since become an exciting and integral part of contemporary art. Her latest series, combined with her commissioned projects, really showcases her growth within her chosen medium and her ability to constantly push herself in new directions.

“Compulsion” opens 5 April and runs through 19 May 2012 at Yancey Richardson Gallery (NYC), then follows with openings at M+B (LA) and Michael Hoppen Contemporary (London).

A year after leaving the world-was-his-oyster east coast for the harsh-light-of-constant-sunshine that is Los Angeles, LA MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch finally had a hit on his hands last year with the opening of “Art in the Streets,” an exhibition, as the name implies, all about street art. There was controversy, crowds, constant press, and even arrests. Chase that with a possibly-exploitative benefit hosted by Marina Abramovic, and it was official: Deitch had arrived. For those of you who weren’t able to make it out to LA for the spectacle that was this show, director Alex Stapleton has put together this great documentary about the exhibition, Outside In: The Story of Art in the Streets. So here’s what you’ll be looking at for the next 30 minutes:

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Like the Bicycle Film Festival, ARTCRANK has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a celebration a specific intersection of cycling culture and creative culture. The bike-themed poster exhibition started in Minneapolis in 2007 and has since expanded to nearly a dozen locations, adding more cycle-happy cities every year.

As in the tech sector, I think it’s safe to assume that graphic design is a particularly cyclist-centric vocation, making the art poster a perfect medium for visually-inclined creatives to express their passion for human-powered alternative transportation. While poster series we’ve covered in the past (Crayonfire’s 2011 Tour de France graphics and Guilherme Henrique’s “Ville vs. Velodrome”) are characterized by a narrative or infographic element, ARTCRANK hearkens back to the roots of graphic design. The exhibition features local artists’ work in small editions, presented as “affordable, original works of art,” showcasing the full spectrum of graphic design.

ARTCRANK Creative Director & Curator Charles Youel was happy to share a quick overview of their most recent show in Austin (which includes all of the artwork shown here):

Since its birth in Minneapolis in 2007, ARTCRANK has staged bike-themed poster shows featuring hundreds of artists in ten different cities, including Portland, San Francisco and London. On February 24, we made our long-overdue debut in Austin, Texas. Our show featured hand-made, bike-inspired posters created by 30 Austin-area artists, with limited edition, signed and numbered copies of all posters available for $40 each.

One of the big ideas behind ARTCRANK is to make art as accessible as bicycles are. There’s certainly a financial dimension to that—it’s pretty cool to be able offer handmade posters for less than 50 bucks. But beyond that, we love introducing people to the artists who live in and work in their community. In Austin, my favorite part of the opening was being an anonymous observer who got to watch as people were drawn in, by the genius of individual posters, and by the sheer volume of imagination inspired by this simple machine we all love.

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Among the buzziest booths at this year’s Armory Show is that of Sean Kelly, which features work by the likes of Marina Abramović, James Casebere, Alec Soth, and Kehinde Wiley. The New York gallery is also spotlighting three recent additions to its stable of artists: Idris Khan, Nathan Mabry, and Peter Liversidge (on Tuesday, Sean Kelly announced its representation of Terence Koh). Just around the corner from Khan’s mini-museum of clouds trapped in lucite is “Wooden Mail Objects” (2011), a shelf of rulers, protractors, and chalkboard erasers that London-based Liversidge mailed to Kelly, sans envelopes, over the course of three months. Beside the stamp-covered objects is the artist’s deadpan installation proposal, written on his trusty manual typewriter. Liversidge is also represented by what he describes as a text piece: a hand-held embosser placed on a white podium. It, too, is accompanied by a framed noticed. “Whoever reads this proposal is invited to take a one-dollar note from their pocket, wallet, or purse. In their other hand they should take up the embosser and place the note within it’s [sic] jaws,” he explains. “Then apply pressure and emboss the note with the text piece concealed within.” Pull out your dollar to reveal the imprint of a single word: free. No word as to how much this work sold for.

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