CARRIE YAMAOKA — RECTO / VERSO

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CARRIE YAMAOKA—RECTO/VERSO, at Henry Art Gallery, “explores the recurring themes of visibility, perception, and subjectivity across Yamaoka’s work from the early 1990s through today. It brings together her text-based explorations and chemically altered photographs centered on erasure and double meanings with her process-oriented works in reflective polyester film and resin…

“Conceived with the artist, the layout of the exhibition draws connections across Yamaoka’s cumulative body of work and underscores the iterative and synchronous nature of her practice over the last thirty years.”*

CARRIE YAMAOKA—RECTO / VERSO

Through November 3.

Henry Art Gallery

University of Washington

15th Ave NE & NE 41st Street, Seattle.

Carrie Yamaoka, recto/verso, Henry Art Gallery, July–November 2019, from top: In the Studio, 2016, archival inkjet print; 72 by 45 (wall), 2016, reflective polyester film, urethane resin, and mixed media on wood pane; Archipelagoes, 1991–1994/2019 (detail, installation view), twenty-three unique chemically altered gelatin silver prints; 72 by 45 (deep blue #3), 2011/2017, reflective polyester film, urethane resin, and mixed media on wood panel, collection of Chandra and Jimmie Johnson; Steal This Book #2 (from the Banned series), 1993, chemically manipulated gelatin silver print; 10 by 8 (black bubble #1), 2015, reflective polyester film, urethane resin, and mixed media on wood panel; 90 by 7 + 30 by 11.25, 2004 (installation view), cast flexible urethane resin, reflective polyester film, and mixed media; UV/VU, 1992, etched glass and mirrors. Images courtesy and © the artist and Henry Art Gallery.

COLCOA 2019 — LADJ LY’S LES MISÉRABLES

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COLCOA—the annual French film festival in Los Angeles—gets off to a dynamic start this week with the local premiere of Ladj Ly’s acclaimed banlieue drama LES MISÉRABLES, which won the Prix du jury at the 2019 Festival de Cannes and will represent France at the Academy Awards in February.

Inspired by the work of Spike Lee, Jacques Audiard, Raymond Depardon, and Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine, Ly’s debut feature tracks the power games and unchecked aggression between the gangs of Clichy-Montfermeil and three of the cops—played by Djebril Zonga, Alexis Manenti, and Damien Bonnard—attached to the district. Jeanne Balibar co-stars as the police chief.

It’s easy to live with each other when you have money. When you don’t, it’s a lot more complicated: you need compromises, arrangements, little deals… It’s a matter of survival. For the cops too, they are in survival mode. [With] LES MISÉRABLES, I’ve tried to be as fair as possible… I was ten years old when I was first stopped and searched by the police, which tells you how well I know cops, how long I’ve lived close by them. — Ladj Ly

On opening night, the director will be joined by cast members Zonga and Bonnard for a post-screening conversation. Bonnard will return on Friday for the encore presentation.

LES MISÉRABLES

Monday, September 23, at 7:30 pm.

Friday, September 27, at 5 pm.

Directors Guild of America

7920 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Ladj Ly, Les Misérables (2019), stills, from top: 2018 World Cup victory celebration in Paris, which opens the film; Damien Bonnard (left), Alexis Manenti, and Djebril Zonga; banlieue residents; Zonga, in front of wall mural by JR—part of the artist’s 28 Millimètres, Portrait of a Generation series—depicting Ladj Ly holding video camera; confrontation between Manenti and banlieue resident; young actors; film scene. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, the producers, Wild Bunch, and Amazon Studios.

CARO JOST — WALK THE TALK

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The exhibition CARO JOST—WALK THE TALK—in its final week in Munich—features work from her new Public Paintings series, drawn from the archive of found materials and photographs she assembled in New York City in the summer of 2001, when she was a young artist in the Art Students League.

The origins for WALK THE TALK are the pamphlets for evening courses Caro Jost had “picked up and collected on the streets, in the subways, or in public places. She transfers these pamphlets to the canvas as paintings, whereby she intentionally omits individual information. In a next step, she deconstructs the transferred text by hiding certain words with camouflage-like overpainting and by singling out others as catchwords. In doing this, the artist comments on the content of advertising and reveals a critically ironic and humorous attitude towards the promises these evening classes make. The short, catchy texts with memorable slogans that directly appeal to us have been tailored to the everyday language of the public. They reflect the social climate of the summer 2001 prior to 9/11.

“The theme of self-reflection is taken up in a mirror work that is 1.80 meters high and 2.50 meters wide and extends across the entire wall of one of the exhibition rooms. This mirror not only reflects the exhibition space opposite it as well as the visitors to the gallery, but also the street outside, which creates a reference to public space. To accompany this, the artist is showing photographs from 2001, in which she captured her impressions of New York City with a digital camera.”*

CARO JOST—WALK THE TALK*

Through September 27.

Galerie Britta von Rettberg

Gabelsbergerstrasse 51, Munich.

Caro Jost, walk the talk, Galerie Britta von Rettberg, July–September 2019, from top: In a couples world, 2001/2019; $$ 3.07, 2001/2019; Everyone can be a Star, 2001/2019; Stop being nice, 2001/2019; Last Chance, 2001/2019; Beat the Clock, 2001/2019. Images courtesy and © the artist and Galerie Britta von Rettberg.

LUCIO CASTRO — END OF THE CENTURY

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I’m getting closer to the coast and realize how much I hate arriving at a destination. Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom. — David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives

The passage from Wojnarowicz’s “memoir of disintegration”—inscribed onscreen two-thirds of the way through END OF THE CENTURY, the remarkable debut by writer and director Lucio Castro—suggests a directive for both the film’s characters and its audience as we parse distinctions between imagination and reality, dream reunions and deathless regret.

Marked by a fluidity that sets the present against a non-objective past, the film is a mysterious evocation of a passionate fling and its possible reminiscence—Ocho (Juan Barberini) and Javi (Ramón Pujol), both traveling for work, meet as strangers in Barcelona… but what happens next? Javi’s “Kiss” T-shirt—which functions, in a Lacanian sense, not unlike the small blue box in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive—may offer a clue.

END OF THE CENTURY / FIN DE SIGLO (2019, Argentina)—co-starring Mía Maestro as Sonia—won Best Film at the Buenos Aires Film Festival and Best First Film at Frameline in San Francisco.

Join the director for opening weekend Q & A’s at the Nuart. (See link below for details.)

END OF THE CENTURY

Now playing.

LUCIO CASTRO Q & A

Friday and Saturday, September 20 and 21, at 7:30 pm.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

Lucio Castro, Fin de siglo / End of the Century, from top: Juan Barberini (foreground) and Ramón Pujol; Barberini (2); Barberini (left) and Pujol; Barberini (2). Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, the Cinema Guild, and Cinema Tropical.

TRAJAL HARRELL — TRANSCORPOREALITIES

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The Museum Ludwig ex­hi­bi­tion TRANSCORPOREALITIES “re­flects on the mu­se­um as a perme­able body in which vari­ous bi­o­log­i­cal, so­cial, tech­no­log­i­cal, po­lit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic sys­tems flow in­to each other. Like all hu­man and non­hu­man en­ti­ties, it en­gages in per­pe­t­u­al metabolic pro­cess­es with its en­vi­ron­ment.”

On opening night—as well as Saturday and Sunday, November 30 and December 1—Trajal Harrell will perform a new work Dancer of the Year.

TRANSCORPOREALITIES participating artists also include Jesse Dar­ling, Fla­ka Hal­i­ti, Paul Ma­heke, Nick Mauss, Park McArthur, Os­car Muril­lo, and Son­dra Per­ry.

TRANSCORPOREALITIES*

Opening night:

TRAJAL HARRELL—DANCER OF THE YEAR

Friday, September 20, at 8:30 pm.

Exhibition open through January 19.

Museum Ludwig

Hein­rich-Böll-Platz, Cologne.

From top: Trajal Harrell, Dancer of the Year, 2019, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Centre Pompidou, Brussels, © Trajal Harrell, photograph by Orpheas Emirzas; Oscar Murillo, Human Resources, 2016 (detail), installation view, Carlos/Ishikawa, London, courtesy and © Oscar Murillo and Carlos/Ishikawa; Jesse Darling, Virgin Variations (working title, detail), 2019, courtesy and © Jesse Darling; Paul Maheke, Seeking after the fully grown dancer *deep within*, 2016–19, courtesy and © Paul Maheke and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019, photograph by Henry Chan; Sondra Perry, Ecologue for [in]HABITABILITY, 2017–2019, installation view, Future Generation Art Prize, Venice, courtesy and © Sondra Perry, the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, and Bridget Donahue, New York; Flaka Haliti, What are they thinking that we thinking that they thinking we going to do next? #1, 2019 (draft), courtesy and © Flaka Haliti; Park McArthur, Polyurethane Foam, 2016, courtesy and © Park McArthur and Essex Street, New York and Lars Friedrich, Berlin. Below: Trajal Harrell. Images courtesy and © the artists, photographers, and institutions.