Issue No. 28 – Control

What is the nature of control? The desire for it—and to be free of it—are essential parts of both life and art.

Art Out: Wish, Tommaso Protti, Hassan Hajjaj

Art Out: Wish, Tommaso Protti, Hassan Hajjaj

Torbjørn Rødland, Intraoral no. 2, 2015. chromogenic print 17 3/4 x 22 1/2 inches 45.1 x 57.2 cm

Courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

Wish

Metro Pictures: June 17 – August 6, 2021

Wish brings together works by Reza Abdoh, Jean Genet, Nash Glynn, Torbjørn Rødland, Elliot Reed, Heji Shin, and Nora Turato. In his seminal book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud asserts that every dream is the expression of a wish. However, in dreams these repressed wishes often manifest themselves in distorted form in order to be tolerable to the dreamer. The works in the exhibition can be viewed as dream-images that represent desires considered too uncomfortable, taboo or salacious to the conscious mind. Wish is intended to unfold like a dream, with the wish exemplified by each artwork made available to viewers for interpretation.

In Jean Genet’s 1950 film Un chant d’amour, a voyeuristic prison guard excitedly leers at prisoners in their cells. In one well-known scene, he observes two prisoners struggle for intimacy despite the wall that separates their cells. The first man lustfully kisses around a hole in the wall while the second sticks a long straw through it. Bending in front of the straw, his eyes closed and mouth wide open, he waits to receive something from his neighbor, who delightedly drags on a cigarette and leans down to exhale into it. A great gust of smoke shoots through onto the second man’s face before he wraps his lips around the straw, taking in the exhalation.

Torbjørn Rødland’s Intraoral no. 2 repeats the image of the open-mouthed man in Genet’s film. A figure reclines in a dentist’s chair, the mouth centered in the frame while a latex-gloved hand pulls down the bottom lip. Rødland’s photographs capture unsettling or bizarre moments in otherwise mundane scenes similar to everyday life. This incongruity, emphasized by a slick formal language that is informed by commercial photography, suggests narratives of seduction, perversity and disquiet. 

Novo Progresso, Brazil - August 17, 2020. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

CARMIGNAC PHOTOJOURNALISM AWARD 10TH EDITION: 'AMAZÔNIA' BY TOMMASO PROTTI

Saatchi Gallery: June 9 - July 18, 2021

The 10th edition of Carmignac Photojournalism Award is dedicated to the Amazon and the issues related to its deforestation. Chaired by Yolanda Kakabadse, Minister of the Environment of Ecuador between 1988 and 2000 and President of WWF from 2010 to 2017, the jury met in November 2019 and awarded Tommaso Protti.

From January to July 2019, Italian photojournalist Tommaso Protti, accompanied by British journalist Sam Cowie, travelled thousands of miles across the Brazilian Amazon to create this reportage. From the eastern region of Maranhão to the western region of Rondônia, through the states of Pará and Amazonas, they portrayed life in modern day Brazilian Amazon, where social and humanitarian crises overlap with the ongoing destruction of the rainforest.

Photographer Tommaso Protti recounts the retreating of the region and the damage inflicted by its deforestation, with scenes of illegal gold mines gnawing voraciously into the subsoil, jungle cemeteries where stranded trees form tombstone crosses, abject killings to steal a few acres of land or a pinch of drugs, unhealthy favelas burned by devastating fires, scenes of drunkenness, prostitution or cocaine-laced insanity in the heat of these tropical mean streets.

Tommaso Protti has taken his keen-eyed camera into the deepest corners of Amazonia to illustrate uncompromising testimonies of its inhabitants: a forester crying over a fallen tree; a gold digger, his fingers gnawed away by his fever for the metal; a little girl lost after her homeland has been flooded by a hydro-electric dam; a drug dealer arrested in the middle of an interview. All subjects share the same feelings: saudade for the past, distress about the present and despair for the future. Protti’s keen-edged camera captures the reality of the Amazon that has already been wiped out in the last 50 years, with up to 30% more expected to be lost by 2050.
The photographs raise awareness of the local, and global, degradation currently taking place in the Amazon due to climate change and human activity, while offering a glimpse into the modern everyday life of one of the world’s most extraordinary regions and its inhabitants.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive bilingual French-English catalogue co-published by Fondation Carmignac and Reliefs Editions, available for purchase at Saatchi Store, featuring photographs and committed text on the 7-month reportage in the Amazon.

Hassan Hajjaj ‘My Rockstars’ Installation Image © Hassan Hajjaj, Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Hassan Hajjaj, My Rockstars [Closing Soon]

Yossi Milo Gallery: Closing June 12, 2021

Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to present the New York premiere of Hassan Hajjaj's celebrated My Rockstars series featuring exuberant and playful mixed media portraits of performers, musicians and friends of the artist taken all over the world. My Rockstars will open on Thursday, March 25, with extended hours at the gallery until 8:00 PM, and remain on view through Saturday, June 12. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery.

In his series My Rockstars, Hassan Hajjaj pays tribute to the individuals by whom he has been artistically inspired, capturing a range of international performers, from recording and visual artists such as Hank Willis Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Cardi B., to lesser-known music bands like Arfoud Brothers and Nigerian singer-songwriter Keziah Jones. From the year 2000, Hajjaj has photographed these figures in colorful pop-up studios constructed from textiles and plastic mats typical of Morocco and North Africa, which he sets up in the streets of London, Marrakesh, Dubai, Kuwait and Paris. Outfits designed or styled by the artist, including custom suits, shoes and hats, pop with loud colors and dazzling patterns, empowering his subjects to explore larger-than-life personas before the camera. Each portrait is bordered with a custom handcrafted frame outfitted with miniature shelves and actual consumer products, such as cans of tomato sauce, car paint tins and soda cans, often with Arabic logos. The products are chosen for their origins, names, content as well as colors and aesthetics. The uninterrupted border of commercial packaging and corporate logos mimics with irreverent Warholian flare the repetitive motifs framing traditional Islamic mosaics and offers clues about the subject of each photograph.

Events:

Artist Talk with Lynn Johnson & Patricia Lanza

Sat, June 12, 2021. 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT

Snap! Orlando presents an online Artist Talk with award-winning photographers LYNN JOHNSON and PATRICIA LANZA.

Traveling in Van Gogh’s footsteps, Lynn Johnson and Patricia Lanza have conjured hauntingly intimate images in black & white [Johnson] and impressionist-imbued color [Lanza] in their exploration of Van Gogh’s quest to master the use of color as he studied, tracked and paid tribute to his most enduring muse— the sun.

Working in collaboration with the Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy, Johnson & Lanza were granted special access in their retracing of Van Gogh’s time spent in the still-functioning sanitarium and the village of Auvers-sur-Oise where he died under mysterious circumstances in July of 1890.

To register for the event, click here.

“It Came From the ‘70s: On the Unmade Decade That Made New York“

Thursday, June 17, 2021. 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. (EST)


IRL at ClampArt & Zoom: “It Came From the ‘70s: On the Unmade Decade That Made New York“—James Panero, Cultural Critic, moderates Q&A with Senator Thomas K. Duane (NYS Senate, 1999-2012) and Meryl Meisler.

To learn more about the exhibition or to register for the event on Zoom, click here.

JEFFREY STOCKBRIDGE & MARK E. TRENT  (VIRTUAL) BDC CONVERSATIONS

Bronx Documentary Center: June 18, 2021 6pm EST

Join photographers Jeffrey Stockbridge and Mark E. Trent for a virtual conversation moderated by BDC Executive Director Michael Kamber. The photographers will discuss their experiences documenting communities in Philadelphia and West Virginia battling the opioid crisis.

Kensington Blues by Jeffrey Stockbridge is a decade-long documentary project about the opioid crisis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Featuring large-format photography, audio interviews, journal entries, and video Stockbridge utilizes a combination of styles and formats to humanize those suffering from addiction.

Love, Loss, Despair, a long-term photo essay by Mark E. Trent chronicles opioid abuse in Rainelle, West Virginia, the state with the country’s highest death rate from opioid addiction.

Learn more and RSVP here.

Film Review: MISSION: JOY – FINDING HAPPINESS IN TROUBLED TIMES

Film Review: MISSION: JOY – FINDING HAPPINESS IN TROUBLED TIMES

Book Review: A Dream of Europe

Book Review: A Dream of Europe