August 7, 2013

IN THE NAME OF LOVE @ the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art

Slava Mogutin, Sticks and Stoned (Brian), 2010

 IN THE NAME OF LOVE
Slava Mogutin and Brian Kenny
Curated by Karla Romero
August 2-September 21
Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art

(from the press release)
iMOCA is proud to present In The Name Of Love, a solo exhibition by Slava Mogutin, showcasing a series of 24 recent medium format portraits produced by the artist as traditional analog C-prints.
“For over a decade Slava Mogutin, a New York-based Russian artist and author, has been known for a photographic body of work that ranges from highly stylized, iconographic images to portraits that blend the boldness and honesty of police mug shots with the fantasy and desire of vintage pornography.
While still inviting voyeurism, his recent work hinders the viewer’s ability to see and decipher an image. He merges landscape backgrounds, which seem to be based on vernacular conventions and snapshot photography of people in front of scenic landscapes, with human forms. Nuanced explorations of changes in atmosphere are obtained by transforming a simple observation—a deer skull on a chair—into a complex photographic experience describing perception and the passage of time. It is as if the artist has carefully stitched together different moments in time.
Lushly colored images test connections between the descriptive clarity of photography and the haze of memory. Layered shots of people and nature come together and seem to blend into or grow out of nature itself. The work has become more optical and doesn’t have a static composition. It implies movement both by the camera and whatever activity that is motivating the image.
Throughout the exploration of the formal aspect of his work, Mogutin continues to look for other ways to use the camera as a voyeuristic tool. He explores the character and emotion of his subjects and simultaneously exposes their insecurities and vulnerabilities. The pictures’ success lies in the fact that Mogutin continues to tell stories of real people and real experiences and that, throughout his work, he remains a true poet.”  –Jimi Dams
Also part of the exhibit is Entropy Parade, a collaboration with Brian Kenny. Mogutin and Kenny created a series of multi-layered collages based on photographs, drawings and text. Kenny says on the series, “An ‘entropy parade’ is like a parade that just degenerates into more and more chaos. I feel like this idea goes well with the series because it’s a parade of beautiful boys in ever more ridiculous outfits (no pants, thongs, and crazy props on their heads), with chaotic drawings and collages that further degenerate any sense of order into a more chaotic (and thus exciting) vision.”

Crocodile Tears, 2011
Entropy Parade: collaborative portfolio with Slava Mogutin
C-print, 16" x 20" image on 20" x 24" sheet
Edition of 10

Explain Yourself, 2011
Entropy Parade: collaborative portfolio with Slava Mogutin
C-print, 16" x 20" image on 20" x 24" sheet
Edition of 10


More info HERE
See Slava's entire 'Suddenly Last Summer' series HERE
See our Entropy Parade series HERE

July 3, 2013

FACELESS Part 1 OPENS at the MUSEUMSQUARTIER in VIENNA!

 FACELESS Part 1






Artists:
Marina Abramović (SRB/USA), Marc Bijl (NED/GER), Thorsten Brinkmann (GER), Ondrej Brody (CZE) & Kristofer Paetau (FIN), Asger Carlsen (DEN/USA), Nezaket Ekici (TUR/GER), Shahram Entekhabi (IRI/GER), Caron Geary aka FERAL is KINKY (GBR), David Haines (GBR/NED), Ren Hang (CHN), Sabi van Hemert (NED), Ursula Hübner (AUT), Damier Johnson aka REBEL YUTHS (NGR/ITA), Brian Kenny (USA), Ute Klein (GER), Nienke Klunder (USA), Manu Luksch (AUT/GBR), Zachari Logan (CAN), Maison Martin Margiela, Slava Mogutin (RUS/USA), Veljko Onjin (SRB), Bernd Oppl (AUT), Tanja Ostojić (SRB/GER), Gareth Pugh (GBR), Eva-Maria Raab (AUT), Ana Rajcevic (SRB/GBR), Tarron Ruiz-Avila (AUS), Viktor & Rolf (NED), Daphne Rosenthal (NED/USA), Mustafa Sabbagh (JOR/ITA), Olivier de Sagazan (FRA), Daniel Sannwald (GER/GBR) for WOODKID, Frank Schallmaier (NED), Hester Scheurwater (NED), Jan Stradtmann (GER), Sergei Sviatchenko (UKR/DEN), Jun Takahashi for UNDERCOVER (JAP), Marc Turlan (FRA), Levi van Veluw (NED), Philippe Vogelenzang & Majid Karrouch (NED), Addie Wagenknecht (USA) & Stefan Hechenberger (AUT), Katsuya Kamo for Junya Watanabe COMME des GARÇONS (JAP), and Bernhard Willhelm (GER/FRA). Some of them will live and work at the MQ as Artists-in-Residence.

Length: Jul 4 to Sep 1, Tue to Sun, 13:00-19:00, free admission
Press preview: Wed, Jul 3, 10:00
Opening: Wed, Jul 3, 19:00
Location: freiraum quartier21 INTERNATIONAL/MuseumsQuartier Wien
www.quartier21.at
www.facelessexhibition.com (launched at the end of June)

Exhibition FACELESS part I Opens at MuseumsQuartier Wien

The exhibition “FACELESS part I”, opening at freiraum quartier21 INTERNATIONAL/MQ on July 3 at 19:00, presents contemporary works from the worlds of art and fashion in which faces are hidden, transformed, or masked. For artist Bogomir Doringer (SRB/NED), curator of the exhibition together with Brigitte Felderer from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the exhibition was chiefly inspired by the sociopolitical consequences of 9/11. As the value of facial identifiability has risen, abstracted forms and representations of faces have become increasingly common in artistic production. Bogomir Doringer, for one, has been exploring the theme of facelessness in fashion and art for years. “Our unstable identity yearns for a return to the mask,” he says. “Like in times past, we are attracted to wearing masks as a form of protection or camouflage, as a prop, or just for entertainment. The grotesque faces the media bombards us with not only affect our sense of self, not only confront us with unequal reflections, but also ensnare us in excessive self-control,” says Brigitte Felderer. “They have long since left marks that are indelibly engraved in the almighty web. Eternalized in the book of faces, we become findable, identifiable. Ultimately, all our projections and desires are revealed, and worse yet are divulged to entities of control both legal and secret. We emerge and can never disappear from view again. 'FACELESS’ explores the various strategies and projects of revolt and self-empowerment in the face of these overpowering standards we can never satisfy.”


A look at the two TARGET drawings I am presenting in the exhibition: (left) RUN, 2010, mixed media on vintage American shooting target paper, 22.5 x 34 inches. (right) CONSERVATORY, 2010, ink and acrylic on vintage American shooitng target paper, 20 x 29 inches.




March 11, 2013

Shout out of my film in the NY Times!

Quoted from "‘I Killed My Father, I Ate Human Flesh, I Quiver With Joy’: ‘An Obsession With Pier Paolo Pasolini’" by Holland Cotter in the NY Times:

 "Film images turn up in Terence Hannum’s boxed zines and in two very different videos, one by Doug Ischar, the other by Brian Kenny. Both are based on Pasolini’s “Medea,”with Mr. Kenny’s short piece, “Today You’re 5 and I Want to Tell You the Truth,” a funhouse-mirror version of the myth of this murderous mother."

 Read the whole article HERE

and watch the film!


If you're in New York anytime until March 23, check out this interesting Pasolini-inspired group exhibition at Allegra LaViola gallery.


February 22, 2013

I Killed My Father, I Ate Human Flesh, I Quiver With Joy: An Obsession With Pier Paolo Pasolini.


INVISIBLE-EXPORTS is pleased to present





I Killed My Father, I Ate Human Flesh, I Quiver With Joy: 
An Obsession with Pier Paolo Pasolini 


at Allegra LaViola Gallery, New York.
Opening Friday, February 22: 6-8PM

February 22 - March 23, 2013
179 E. Broadway

Participating Artists: Michael Bilsborough, Lizzi Bougatsos, BREYER P-ORRIDGE, Asger Carlsen, Troels Carlsen, Walt Cassidy, Andy Coolquitt, Vaginal Davis, Carlton DeWoody, Joey Frank, Paul Gabrielli, Ludovica Gioscia, Luis Gispert, Terence Hannum, Karen Heagle, Timothy Hull, Doug Ischar, Brian Kenny, Jeremy Kost, Aaron Krach, Yeni Mao, Leigha Mason, Mark McCoy, Robert Melee, Lucas Michael, Jennifer Needleman, Brent Owens, Paul P., Paolo Di Paolo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franklin Preston, John Russell, Xaviera Simmons, Duston Spear, Scott Treleaven, Ramon Vega, Jordan Wolfson, Dustin Yellin


(from the press release)

Pier Paolo Pasolini - the filmmaker, poet, sentimental leftist, and transgressive legend - lived a life marked by curious contradiction and unimpeachable integrity. Sculpted by a nomadic Italian childhood filled with religion, war, Socialism, Facism, and run-ins with the law, Pasolini reconceived, in a prodigious obsessive body of remarkably diverse work, the entire patrimony of post-WWII-Italy as a personal mythology refracted by the urgent demands of modern continental life and contemporary politics in an age of extremes.
Beginning with his first film, Accatone (1961) on through to the game-changing Sálo (1975), Pasolini worked in an era in which avant-garde artistic gestures felt still truly dangerous, in which artists retained the power to shock, and in which the imposition of a personal artistic vision felt still like a radical, rather than narcissistic, act. Pasolini made the most of that power, and has become in the decades since an object of personal obsession for thousands of contemporary artists, many of whom offer up here, in a showcase that is as much open tribute as it is narrow appreciation, their own idiosyncratic homage to a person who has had an outsized influence on a whole generation enamored of radical gestures in a skeptical, ironic age.
Pasolini is a mercurial, even arcane influence on the 38 artists whose work is assembled here—sculptors, photographers, video and multimedia artists, romantics and transgressives, advocacy artists and ironists. The tributes are in some cases straightforward — painted portraits of Pasolini subjects, collage and video sourced from his own work — and in others cases more oblique — sculptures addressing the subject of restraint, watery sketches in which figures dissolve into gothic ethereality. Some are hardly tributes at all—idiosyncratic arguments instead with particular corners of Pasolini’s practice, often revealing far more about the work and obsessions of the contemporary artist than the too-divergent-to-be-uncontradictorially-contained miscellaneous Italian master. The result is a social-networking-style and purposefully-loosely curated exhibition that points in 38 directions at once—possibly more.

* * *

I will be presenting my short film Today you're 5 and I want to tell you the truth, made using reworked sound and footage from Pasolini's MEDEA (1969) starring Maria Callas.









 

February 1, 2013

THE NEW MODERN HAIR

SILVIA PRADA, THE NEW MODERN HAIR
 



Pacific Design Center
Blue Building 2nd Floor B255
8687 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood CA 90069



January 18th to February 26th, 2013
 


Contributions by Marc Balet, Damien Blottière, Bruce LaBruce, Michael Forrey, Kim Ann Foxman, Robert Knoke, Brian Kenny & Robert W. Richards, Slava Mogutin, Xevi Muntané, Jimmy Paul,  Daniel Riera, Collier Schorr & Holli Smith, Saya Solana, A.L. Steiner + OTHERWILD, Daniel Trese and Luis Venegas.

Produced by cultureEDIT
Link to press release:
http://www.culture-edit.com/thenewmodernhair/


Hairy Secrets (2009)
Brian Kenny + Robert W. Richards
Ink and gouache on paper

Slava's scarf for the exhibition

January 16, 2013

SUPERM's latest Cover!


Slava’s and my “SPORES HOLES” from our ENTROPY PARADE series, now on this week’s cover of THE STRANGER (Seattle). You can see the entire ENTROPY PARADE series HERE

December 17, 2012

"Yes we are two people but we are one artist."





Check out Slava's full shoot and interview for the cover of Whitewall Magazine HERE

November 18, 2012

BEAUTY and HELL




BEAUTY





 HELL







"I think I am in Hell, and therefore I am" -Arthur Rimbaud


Beauty / Hell
Nov 15-29 (131 Chrystie Street) + Nov 29-Dec 31(87 Rivington Street)
envoy enterprises is pleased to present BEAUTY and HELL, a two-part exhibition by the art duo SUPERM. BEAUTY will be on view at the gallery's 131 Chrystie Street Location followed by HELL which will be on view at the gallery's 87 Rivington Space.

Inspired by the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and the art of Hans Bellmer and Pierre MOlinier, this dual exhibition combines a new series of collages entitled SKINGRAPHS, which represent BEAUTY, with the latest SUPERM video featuring Francois Sagat with contributions by Josh Lee, Nick Theobald, Gio Black Peter and Erica Keck, which represent HELL.

SUPERM is a collaborative art project by Slava Mogutin and Brian Kenny. Their work has been exhibited at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, The Haifa Museum of Art in Israel, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon in Spain, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and, most recently, at Station Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston. This show marks 8 years of fruitful collaboration between the two artists. 

June 12, 2012

I swear to tell


THE HOLE TRUTH
a solo exhibition by BRIAN KENNY


envoy enterprises
131 Chrystie St, NYC
20 June - 22 July 2012. Wed-Sun. 12 - 6
Opening Reception Wednesday June 20 6-8 pm


Here been soft
alONE born
tap tap tap
Caught red handed
Bare bones
Face HERe!
Cross the on fire line
How we reinvent the trophy
That’s how we roll
Rain again fallen stars
Lets not fight out of order
The hole truth
Sewn together
Fingers for the people of fate
Sage race
Time walk
Rest in hide and seek peace
Under the totally honest influence
Held no further questions hostage
Brian I rest my case Kenny 2012

envoy enterprises is pleased to present The Hole Truth, our first solo exhibition with New York based artist Brian Kenny.

Working with fabric for the first time, Kenny learned how to sew to construct a series of iconic objects – altered and reconfigured US flags, reflecting on what it means to be a disaffected gay American in the age of Occupy, the issues of social inequality and injustice. Devalued and depraved symbols, fallen or removed stars and stripes, the distortion and disfiguration evoke feelings of this discontent.

Mastering his primary medium of free-associative drawing, Kenny also created a series of large scale drawings on vintage police shooting targets – obsessive and intricate compositions depicting personal fantasies, fears and fetishes, as well as esoteric symbols and hand signs borrowed from sign language and urban subcultures. This new body of work serves as both artist’s intimate diary and passionate commentary on gender and sexuality, religion and guilt, finding inspiration in chaos while fighting the demons within – The Hole Truth and nothing but the truth.

Brian Kenny is a New York based American artist. Born 1982, in Heidelburg, Germany. He works across drawing, painting, sculpture, text, sound, video, and blogging. In 2004, Brian and his partner Slava Mogutin formed SUPERM, an ongoing collaborative art project.

 
Sewn Together (2012)
ink, acrylic and thread on vintage American police shooting target paper
22.5 x 34 inches