The new issue of V Magazine is still days away from hitting the stands in New York, but we already have the previews of Iris only girl story with Willy Vandeperre and Olivier Rizzo. The editorial was shot in Paris on May 2nd, and features Iris in some of this season’s greatest looks, complete with fishnets worn over the clothes. A special thanks to V Magazine for sending us these images!

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Yui Kugimiya’s Moshi Moshi

The Journal Gallery is pleased to invite you to Leaves of Ash, a group exhibition curated by Michael Nevin and Julia Dippelhofer, featuring some of their friends - and contributors to the journal - from Brooklyn, at Suzanne Tarasieve in Paris.

Inspired by the poet Walt Whitman, Michael Nevin and Julia Dippelhofer set out to gather the work of artists that are contributors to the journal, and their friends and neighbors in Brooklyn. The fragmented natural world, portrayed by the six artists who make up this show, is both a reflection and a fabrication, a witty questioning of their surroundings as well as an observant documentation of them. From Yui Kugimiya’s painting-based animations of cats brushing their teeth and speaking on cell phones to Kon Trubkovich’s existentialist oversized vanity plates that question the nature of identity to Joe Bradley’s symbolist canvases, there is a sense of joy in their observing, absorbing and transforming of the everyday into something transcendental and profound, something that speaks of what it is to live in a specific place, at a peculiar time.

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Duane Hanson’s Illusion Perdues is currently being shown at Emmanuel Perrotin’s gallery in Paris. It is super super awesome… Duane’s known for his realistic works of people, cast from real life people, and made from various of materials such as polyester resin, fiberglass, clothed and painted. The skin coloration is well done, and you can even sense their feelings through their posture position… it’s just how you would perceive them as you would in real life. Go see it for yourself… in Paris… show’s up until July 11th.

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Future Of The Left – Travels With Myself and Another
(4AD 2009)

Two of the dudes formerly of the band McLusky are in Future Of The Left, which means I’m obligated to say something about McLusky or risk having the three of you reading this who were McLusky fans think I’m an idiot. From what I can recall, the standard blurb for the first paragraph of a FOTL review is something like “McLusky…blah blah…underrated…bleh…ferociously catchy…blah…causticly witty…blahb…blahblah blahb…FOTL…blub…continue…bleck…in…buh…same…bluh…trad…muh…dition…gah.”

I think I’ve always been into McLusky in principle, but that doesn’t mean I ever bothered to listen to them. Which is great, because I get to listen to this Future Of The Left album without having to judge it in regards to whatever historical baggage it’s dragging around. The impression I get is that it is angry music made by intelligent (young?) men who aren’t especially concerned with current musical trends or whether or not the cool kids like them. In fact, I think they probably hate the cool kids. I know this album is good, but I’m not sure how much I’m going to actually listen to it. It feels kind of cold and metallic and I’m still all warm from the acid I did last weekend and this isn’t really suiting my vibe.

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Tonight’s Up The River film night will be Copper on the Chopping Block by Kai Orion and Welcome by Kirsten Dunst… featuring Winona Ryder… should be interesting!

THE SUM AND ALL PARTS

Still from video of coins melting

In the usual Thursday tradition, I’m sure that last week, Manhattan was home to a number of exciting openings. However, on that particular day the weather kept me from venturing over the bridge. It turned out to be just my luck because the most unusual work I had seen in months was right here in Brooklyn.

Most striking was LeRoy Stevens’s “From The Bird’s Mouth.” Fitting to the title, a metallic form takes a shape resembling a dried mass of bird feces. Despite the vulgar implications of the sculpture’s shape, the artist’s process – exposed through video and photographic documentation – accompanies the piece in a way that makes lyrical the precise, experimental nature of his work. A DVD Video loop and 2 c-prints explain to the viewer that the framed lens sitting across the gallery was used to melt monetary coins onto one another, forming the sculpture organically.

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Douglas Kirkland’s latest book, Mademoiselle - Coco Chanel Summer 62, captures and brings back to life the iconic designer exactly as she once was – stern, charming and meticulous. A prolific photojournalist whose lens has captured decades worth of personalities, Kirkland does justice to a woman whose vision still influences fashion today.

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Up the River’s film night will now be held every Monday at the Jane Hotel, 113 Jane St.
This Monday’s, June 22nd, short film selections are “Takoma Park” and “The Braggart” both directed by David Adalman.
Get there at 9pm!

Lyricism, which is visible in all of Man Ray’s canonized work, is on strong display in the new book, Trees + Flowers – Insects Animals. This book, empty of his more recognizable efforts, focuses instead on motifs picked out and sorted from the Man Ray Trust. At nearly four hundred pages, with two plates per page, this handsome collection is exhaustive, but it is best looked at in one sitting. The benefit of viewing it all at once is that it impresses the exacting nature of Man Ray’s keen eye upon you. His lens captures very well the ordinary, and, where his more famous work is intent on the surreal, these pictures have a documentary element. The single run through viewing also allows his preoccupations to pop up again and again.

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La Rose is back in polaroid form again! The young Dominican has developed leaps and bounds from when we first met her in January. There’s a certain confidence and growth in these new polaroids that really shows Rose’s true talent.

 
(ph: Paul Rowland)

Looking beautiful Rose!