THIS LONG CENTURY

These two photos I took at a car race in Germany.

—

Andro Wekua was born in Georgia, in 1977. He currently lives and works in Switzerland. He has been depicted as a master of suggestion, of small gestures. His narrative structures are deadly focused on their targets, yet remain astonishingly open. Wekua locates his drawn, collaged or sculptural images in a No-Man’s Land between East and West, aesthetic exactness and improvisation, confidence and melancholy. He creates his own highly visual scripts which play with his past and stylize it into fiction

www.gladstonegallery.com

— I am making a new body of work about painting, geometry and dance. I came across a picture of a dancer called Erick Hawkins performing in Martha Graham’s Stephen Acrobat, from 1947, and decided to make a poster starting with his body over a watercolor ground. Here are three outtakes for the poster, which were not used.

—

Sarah Crowner received her BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her MFA from Hunter College in 2002. Recent solo exhibitions include ZIG ZAGS AND CURVES at Helena Papadopoulos Gallery in Athens, Greece, in 2011 and PAINTINGS AND POTS at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York in 2009. Crowner participated in the 2010 Whitney Biennial and exhibitions worldwide, including PAYING TO VISIT MARY PART 2, Kunstverein, Amsterdam; LOOKING BACK: THE WHITE COLUMNS ANNUAL, New York; and FOR THE BLIND MAN IN THE DARK ROOM LOOKING FOR THE BLACK CAT THAT ISN’T THERE, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (traveling). Crowner is currently working towards two upcoming solo exhibitions in 2011 at Catherine Bastide, Brussels; and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York. Crowner also works on various collaborative projects with Dexter Sinister.

www.caseykaplangallery.com
www.simonleegallery.com

— In 1962 Alex Liberman, the artistic director of Vogue, asked me to do a series in which he wanted to reflect different shapes, different than what we normally see the model doing. He wanted this because the collections from Paris were of different shapes.

I used to spend a lot of time at the Palladium on Broadway, watching the real people dance the Cha Cha Cha and although their clothes were not what you would find in Vogue, I thought their movements were as elegant as anything I had ever seen. So I hired two dancers from West Side Story and in my studio I had them dance, and when I liked a movement, I would have the model copy it. In order to make it appropriate for Vogue I would just give them a little extra to do like ….holding a glass of wine, holding a compact, managing a cat or dog and the accompanying photos were the result. Whenever I look at them I can hear the music and feel their movements.

—

Jerry Schatzberg was born in 1927 in Bronx, New York. Over the past three decades Schatzberg has excelled in both the realms of photography and filmmaking. Published in Vogue, McCall’s, Esquire, Glamour, and Life in the 1960s. Schatzberg captured intimate portraits of the generations most notable artists, celebrities and thinkers (from Bob Dylan to Robert Rauschenberg), and he pushed on in the 1970s to the medium of film and participated in the renaissance of American cinema, directing films such as: PUZZLE OF A DOWNFALL CHILD, THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK, and SCARECROW. His films mark a significant time in the history of film when the importance of solid and introspective narrative proved paramount. WOMEN THEN, a collection of Schatzberg’s rarely seen black-and-white photographs, taken of women in the 1950s and 1960s, was published by Rizzoli in 2010.

www.jerryschatzberg.com

BLESS Nº42 PLÄDOYER DER JETZTZEIT

The German title defines precisely the actual BLESS state of mind. A plea for the here and now, the present time, this very instant and the joy that comes along with being ‘present’.

— This video below shows a selection of winners, taken from an evening of ‘pleas’; an event that we held at both the MMK in Frankfurt and the Ofr Bookshop in Paris. The usual, very simple, monetary exchange between consumer and brand object was transformed into a dialog, in which the consumer was given the opportunity to elaborate on their needs and make their very own product. Rare thoughts as a currency for rare products: Rather than buy our products we asked participants to engage in a creative exchange; to indicate clearly the product they would like and then “plead” for it. The responses could either be brought or posted to the BLESS SHOP, or sent in via email.


—

Bless is a fashion/design studio created in 1997 by Ines Kaag, based in Berlin, and Desiree Heiss, in Paris. The two designers escape from any calibrated definition of fashion, faithful to their initial concept, dividing and combining creation, between fashion, art, design and architecture, they engage an independent work method, which often implements collaborations and interactions with friends, customers and other contributors. BLESS is a project that presents ideal and artistic values by products to the public. Recent group exhibitions include N°26 CABLE JEWELLERY, N°35 CARCOVER (2011 Festival de la Mode à Hyères, France) and large scale accessories as some sort of livingtools for every day life (2011 Arnhem Mode Biennale, The Netherlands). Recent solo exhibitions include WINDOW GARDEN INSTALLATION (2011 Craft Victoria, Australia).

www.bless-service.de

POINTS ON A LINE, 2010, 35:48 min
—

Sarah Morris is an internationally recognized artist known for her complex abstractions, which play with architecture, design and the psychology of urban environments. Morris views her paintings as parallel to her films – both trace urban, social and bureaucratic topologies. In both these media, she explores the psychology of the contemporary city and its architecturally encoded politics. Born in 1967, Sarah Morris lives in London and New York. Solo exhibitions include the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, Palais de Tokyo Paris, Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover and Hirshhorn Museum Washington D.C.

www.whitecube.com