Pop Surrealism, Lowbrow, Graffiti, Street Art + Culture

If you haven’t yet explored LACMA’s Manly Pursuits exhibition, here’s another possible incentive. Los Angeles-based photographer and video installation artist Tad Beck provides a supplement to the show with Palimpsest, a response to Thomas Eakins’s Grafly Album, a collection of near-nude photographs of Eakins’s students.

With a precise sense of modernity, Beck emulates Eakins’s photographs using his contemporaries as models, their bodies repositioned and placed in the original photographic settings. Underscoring his manipulation of the Eakins images, Beck includes anachronistic elements such as wristbands and modern hairstyles.

To create the body of Palimpsest, Beck surrounded the photographs with silver repousse frames, occasionally obscuring heads and limbs. Beck then photographed each framed image against a monochromatic black background, enlarging and printing the images in 42-inch squares. This process generates an austere, minimal product, standing in stark contrast to the ornate, softened nature of the late-19th-century aesthetic ethos.

Find more at LACMA.

Tad Beck / Palimpsest
LACMA
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 857-6000
publicinfo@lacma.org

Not unlike downtown Los Angeles, Mexico’s art world will soon benefit from a billionaire philanthropist. Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, is overseeing the construction of a new museum in one of the country’s most affluent areas to house his considerable collection of sculpture by Auguste Rodin.

The museum, expected to open in November, will be the second opened by Slim, whose $50-billion fortune is rooted in Latin America’s leading cell phone services provider. Slim’s initial museum housed works by such celebrated artists as Salvador Dali and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

A six-story, chimney-shaped structure, the museum will be the crux of a new $750-million, western Mexico City development including offices, apartments and retail.

Visit Reuters for more information.

Nick Walker’s first major solo show in two years, “In Gods We Trust” opens Wednesday October 13th, 2010 at ART SENSUS in London.  Known for his graffiti-based street works, the artist is now moving back the gallery space and debuting twelve powerful new pieces.  The tightly focused exhibition confronts cultural practices and dogmas through an exploration of political and religious themes.

Julian Farrow, director of ART SENSUS said: “In Gods We Trust is a groundbreaking exhibition for us here at ART SENSUS, as for the first time ever, we are representing and promoting a home-grown British artist. For me, Nick Walker’s art is symptomatic of this turbulent time in politics and religion, as he alludes to the latent hypocrisy and heterogeneous mind-set fostered in contemporary culture.  ART SENSUS is delighted that Nick Walker has chosen to complement his street graffiti with this tightly focused exhibition. I hope that the important issues raised in In Gods We Trust resonate across all the generations who are familiar with this seminal artist’s work.”

Nick Walker: “In Gods We Trust”
Opening: Wednesday October 13th, 2010
ART SENSUS
7 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1BB

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Dailydujour had the pleasure of visiting Dabs Myla in their studio just as they were getting ready to shift to work in the project room @ thinkspace for the opening of Tokyo Deluxe this Friday, September 3rd 2010 (7-10 PM).

As you might guess by the title, the show is based on the urban landscape of Tokyo which Dabs Myla visited with research on their mind and cameras at the ready.  While culling down the imagery to a select few for the new paintings was difficult, the duo remarked that they had a blast working on the show, more than ever before.  Their vision of Japan as a land of wondrous pop culture and fantasy led to considerable creative freedom.  From Godzilla (and his mate) making cameo appearances (naturally) to an old-man they observed solving Rubik’s cubes to their take on the pervasive culture of casual gaming (the… ‘claw’), the new work blends Dabs Myla’s signature detailed architecture with an infectious sense of joyful discovery.

As you’ll notice in the pics after the jump, the artist couple has been seemingly spending just as much time cutting out numerous cardboard shapes as they have been painting.  Hell bent on asserting their  mastery of the site specific installation, they are upping their game by mixing painted wall scenes with the painted cutouts including multi-layered elements as well as two-sided hanging pieces.  One question that is often asked of artists is ‘how do you know when you’re done’ ? With respect to installation work, Dabs Myla’s answer is simple – work right up to the very last minute making as much  as is humanly possible.   That dedication sets them and their whimsical installations apart.

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Colorado artist Max Kauffman will be bringing his detailed and layered works of art to Chicago next week as he opens his new solo R’Fauh at Pawn Works in Chicago. Max is also planning a sculpture installation which you can see an early stage of after the jump. If you’re in the area you should definitely check it out, as his work almost takes a new form when seen in person.

From the artist:

R’fuah: a renewal of spirit. A way of looking at things you hold dear, without idolizing them: knowing that these inanimate things you keep are important because of the emotions you impart on them. Are they real? Are the emotional ties meaningful because of the item or because of the emotion itself?

These thing we hold dear: they keep us happy, bittersweet, positive, appreciative of the things in our life. Why? Are they simply coping mechanisms or do they actually uplift us? From prophets and idols and relics to symbols and talismans of today, we alternately assign them power and draw power from them. We are actually pulling on the strength within ourselves, our thoughts and spirits when we look to these things. When we fall on dark times, we become even more attached to the inanimate—sure and committed to the power we believe they bring, until the storm passes and we relinquish them until next time.

This renewal, this evolution, this cycle of spirit and material. Does it make us more or less human? By putting our faith in objects, are we overpowering or overpowered by them? They calm us; they bring us peace. R’fuah.

R’fuah will feature new mixed media paintings on paper and wood, ceramic works and a site specific installation.

Pawn Works
1050 N. Damen Ave
Chicago, Il

(312) 841-3986

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This week, the art-following public’s access to the minds of the curators of some of the most internationally renowned museums will grow with ease. On Wednesday, “Ask a Curator,” a collaborative online program involving museums from 23 different countries, will host a Q & A session via Twitter between several top curators and curious tweeters.

Anyone with a Twitter account can post a question with the tag #askacurator to the end of the tweet, to which a curator will reply using the institution’s Twitter account.

“Ask a Curator” is organized by Museum Marketing, a group that employs social media to promote museum awareness. Its previous events include “Follow a Museum Day,” another project of encouragement facilitated by Twitter.

Participating museums include MOCA, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, the Tate, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Kimball Art Museum, the Field Museum and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Find more at Culture Monster.

BIGFOOT’s Ominous Compositions from the Magic Mountains Opens September 11th at Hurley’s )( Space Gallery

Hurley, welcomes artist BIGFOOT to its )( Space gallery. BIGFOOT will team up with Hurley’s resident artist, Jason Maloney, to create a must-see art installation.

Bay Area-based, nature-loving artist BIGFOOT has been a major influence in the skateboard industry for more than a decade.  Despite his reclusive nature, Bigfoot has a very active presence in both the sports and art world, designing skateboard graphics and footwear. He has exhibited in galleries in the US and Japan, and in 2004 unveiled his first vinyl figure through Strangeco.  His eponymous character and love of heavy metal – especially the masked rock group KISS – play a major role in his studio work, as well as his highly recognized street art.

)( Space art gallery is located at Hurley’s headquarters — 1945 Placentia Avenue, Costa Mesa, CA 92627. The gallery is open Monday–Friday, 10am–5pm. www.hurley.com/hspace

DJ JOSHR will open for KISS tribute band Dressed to Kill. Food will be offered by the infamous Kogi Taco Truck and the heavy-metal-themed food truck Grill ‘Em All, currently in the final four of The Great Food Truck Race on the Food Network. Thanks to Pabst Blue Ribbon our alcohol sponsor! The skate park will also be open during the exhibit!

WHAT: “BIGFOOT: Ominous Compositions from the Magic Mountains”
WHEN: Saturday, September 11, 2010, 6-10pm
WHERE: Hurley’s )(SPACE Gallery, 1945 Placentia Avenue, Costa Mesa, CA 92627. FREE

If you haven’t heard about Machotaildrop, then well you better go see it.  Director and writer Corey Adams’ bizarre and funny skateboard movie will be screening as part of the L.A. Skate Film Festival and from the looks of this trailer . . is something you shouldn’t really miss.  Get your seat while you can!!!   A while back the people at www.fecalface.com posted this interview with the director Mr. Adams about his film!

Tuesday Screening – $12 @ 4:45 pm

Wednesday Screening – FREE @ 8 pm

http://www.vimeo.com/10191216

Stephen Aldrich’s second exhibition with Foley Gallery opens  on Thursday September 9th 2010 and runs through October 23rd.  His work is marked by a surrealist quality revealed through juxtapositions of contradictory source materials and asserts the idea of connectedness of all things.

The gallery has selected 10 black-and-white paper collages which he meticulously cuts from existing Victorian era woodcuts and steel engravings.   Aldrich selects imagery from a variety of books including science, religion, mythology, art and travel.  Engravings by the anonymous or the famous (Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil, 1513) make an appearance.  The obsessive quality of his work is a hallmark of his composition. The way in which cut shapes of contoured paper are rhymed and repeated with the imagery creates a pattern unique to each composition, alluding to his rich personal history of creating his own musical scores.

Stephen Aldrich, “All the World’s a Stage”
Opening: Thursday, September 9th 2010
Foley Gallery
548 W 28th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY  10001
212.244.9081

From the title,  Hope’s Reply,  Herakut’s next show seems set to consider the pervasive and unsettling sense of doubt that the duo gave vision and form to with their last show, Happy Doubt Day. To hold you over until the opening on September 18th @ LeBasse Projects in Culver City, we’re happy to bring you several exclusive teaser shots of the new work.

Herakut / Hope’s Reply
Opening: Saturday September 18th, 2010
LeBasse Projects
6023 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
310.558.0220
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