Category Archives: PHOTOGRAPHY

MADE IN L.A. 2020 CATALOG — HEDI EL KHOLTI

The beautiful exhibition catalog for MADE IN L.A. 2020: a version—available to order from the Hammer Store—includes a folio of collages by Hedi El Kholti bound into the book, as well as a conversation with El Kholti and Chris Kraus. The artist-designer-editor has also created two posters, available as exhibition takeaways at the Hammer Museum and the Huntington.

El Kholti’s work can also be seen in Because Horror by Johnny Ray Huston and Bradford Nordeen—a recent publication from Dirty Looks Press and Semiotext(e).

All images © Hedi El Kholti—courtesy of the artist, the Hammer Museum, and the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens—from Made in L.A. 2020: a version (2020), the catalog for the exhibition curated by Myriam Ben Salah and Lauren Mackler, with Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi.

MICHAEL CLARK — COSMIC DANCER

I never really had a plan, except to express myself as purely as possible… I still make work on my own body first, as I always have. I can only understand it from the inside. — Michael Clark

MICHAEL CLARK—COSMIC DANCER, recently at the Barbican, was the first comprehensive retrospective of the British dance artist. Interrupted by the pandemic shutdowns, the exhibition lives on in the catalog, edited by Florence Ostende.

Bringing together materials from his choreographic work and collaborations with artists—including Elizabeth Peyton, Silke Otto-Knapp, Sarah Lucas, Wolfgang Tillmans, Leigh Bowery, Peter Doig, Cerith Wyn Evans, and Duncan Campbell—the book is a beautiful complement to MICHAEL CLARK, a 2011 monograph edited by Suzanne Cotter and Robert Violette.

See link below for details.

MICHAEL CLARK—COSMIC DANCER

Edited by Florence Ostende.

Prestel Publishing

From top: Charles Atlas, Hail the New Puritan (1986), Michael Clark, stills, 16mm film transferred to video, image courtesy and © Charles Atlas and Luhring Augustine; Michael Clark and Company, I Am Curious, Orange, 1988, photograph by Richard Haughton, image courtesy and © the artists and the photographer; Michael Clark, Before and After: The Fall, 2001, in Berlin, Lorena Randi and Victoria Insole, photograph by Andrea Stappert, image courtesy and © the artists and photographer; Clark during the filming of Hail the New Puritan, photograph by Alexander James, image courtesy and © the artists and the photographer; Wolfgang Tillmans, man with clouds, 1998, image courtesy and © the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Maureen Paley, and David Zwirner; Elizabeth Peyton, Michael Clark, 2009, image courtesy and © the artist and Sadie Coles HQ; Silke Otto-Knapp, Group (Formation), 2020, watercolor, image courtesy and © the artist, Galerie Buchholz, and Greengrassi; Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer (2020), edited by Florence Ostende, exhibition catalog cover image—Clark, Mmm, photograph by Hugo Glendinning—courtesy and © the artist, the photographer, the Barbican, and Prestel Publishing; Leigh Bowery and Rachel Auburn in Hail the New Puritan; Clark at the opening of Derek Jarman’s 1984 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, photograph by Steve Pyke; Hail the New Puritan, courtesy and © Atlas and Luhring Augustine; Ellen van Schuylenburch and Clark in Hail the New Puritan, photograph by Haughton. Images courtesy and © the artists, the photographers, and the Barbican.

LUCAS BLALOCK — FLORIDA, 1989

Lucas Blalock was ten in 1989, when his thumb was crushed beyond repair in a freak accident on Disney World’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride and surgically replaced with his big toe. The procedure was somewhat experimental… but Blalock was able to maintain nearly normal use of his hand, thanks to his novel cut-and-paste digit…

As you might imagine, the psychic and physiological aftermath from the event has been ongoing. Some of this fallout was jarring, disruptive, paradigm-shifting… There is no aspect of Blalock’s work that was not shaped by this personal tragedy.*

A show of new work by Blalock is in its final weeks in New York. See link below for details.

LUCAS BLALOCK—FLORIDA, 1989*

Through April 10.

Galerie Eva Presenhuber

39 Great Jones Street, New York City.

Lucas Blalock, Florida, 1989, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York, February 27, 2021–April 10, 2021, from top: Vessel-Heater Frankenstein, 2020, dye sublimation print on aluminum; Animated Dad Shirt, 2020, dye sublimation print on aluminum; M_M_M_M_M (Daisychain), 2020, dye sublimation print on aluminum; Haunted Hearth (Witchcraft Advertising), 2017–2020, dye sublimation print on aluminum; Perforated Landing I, 2020, dye sublimation print on aluminum; Pool Music, 2018–2020, dye sublimation print on aluminum. Images © Lucas Blalock, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber.

SHIRIN NESHAT — LAND OF DREAMS

Gladstone Gallery presents LAND OF DREAMS, a new body of work by Shirin Neshat.

Comprised of more than 100 photographs and a two-channel film installation, LAND OF DREAMS marks a significant visual and conceptual shift for the artist, who has turned her lens to the landscape and people of the American West. For this exhibition, Neshat will present the entire collection of photographs from this series as well as both films, which will be complemented by an online viewing room and virtual screenings throughout the show’s run.*

See link below for details.

SHIRIN NESHAT—LAND OF DREAMS*

Through February 27, by appointment.

Gladstone Gallery

515 West 24th Street, New York City.

See The Future of Art Acccording to Shirin Neshat.

Shirin Neshat, Land of Dreams, Gladstone Gallery, January 16, 2021–February 27, 2021. Images © Shirin Neshat, courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery.

LINDA SIMPSON AND REYNALDO RIVERA

Across his body of work, Reynaldo Rivera depicts people enmeshed in their own private worlds who completely transcend their surroundings through the force of imagination and their inner lives. This remains true, whether the subject is photographed in a garden, a public toilet, or a house party in pre-gentrified Echo Park. I think this is a primary difference between Rivera’s work and Nan Goldin’s, to whom his portraits of drag queens, trans women, and other friends might be compared. Goldin’s subjects in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency are downwardly mobile: middle class kids who took a wrong turn, captured in louche dens of bohemian squalor during emotionally intimate scenes… Rivera’s photographs of drag performers taken in Latino gay bars in LA between 1989 and 1997 reflect a different kind of collaboration. He sees his subjects less as they “are” than how they most wish to be seen, lending himself to their dreams and illusions of glamour. And why shouldn’t these dreams be realized?Chris Kraus*

This week, Linda Simpson and Reynaldo Rivera will present their new books—The Drag Explosion and Reynaldo Rivera: Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City—and join artist and editor Alex Jovanovich in conversation.

See link below to register for the online event.

AN EVENING WITH REYNALDO RIVERA and LINDA SIMPSON

Artforum / Bookforum

Tuesday, December 15.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

*Chris Kraus, from her introduction to Reynaldo Rivera: Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2020).

Linda Simpson (images in color, from top): RuPaul, 1992; group of drag performers, including Lady Bunny (far left); Dean Johnson, 1987; RuPaul; event card image courtesy and © Artforum and Bookforum. Images © Linda Simpson, courtesy of the artist.

Reynaldo Rivera (images in black and white, from above): Echo Park (self-portrait), 1996; Vaginal Davis, Downtown, 1993; Cindy Gomez, Echo Park, 1992; Elyse Regehr and Javier Orosco, Downtown LA, 1989). Images © Reynaldo Rivera, courtesy of the artist