Jack Hanley Gallery puts on the kind of shows that make me want to squander my meager savings on a weekend escape to NYC. The gallery represents a number of my favorite artists including Chris Ware, Jo Jackson, Tyson Reeder and Chris Johanson. Next Friday they will be opening a solo show from Austrian born photographer Bernard Fuchs entitled “Autos.” This haunting series of photographs focuses on abandoned vehicles in quiet, unpopulated environments. Fuchs stumbled on the idea for the series while touring the countryside on his bicycle. The artist explains, “On bicycle tours I would come across cars just standing there in the countryside. I guess my first reaction was to look out for the owners. Most of the time, I would see no one and thus was left alone with the situation, developing a relationship to those vehicles that I hadn’t expected. From then on I started to regard these abandoned cars in the scenery as if they were actors on a stage and started to collect their wit and tragedy.”

Without their human drivers, the vehicles in Fuchs’ photographs take on a life of their own. Their kinetic energy creates a mysterious narrative. Where were they coming from? How did they get there? Where will they go next? As tools of transport these vehicles imply motion, yet their stillness resists their prescribed function and imbues them with an autonomous visual power. Beautifully framed, Fuchs’ simple compositions stay with you, teasing at your consciousness with thoughts of a world after we are long gone.

Autos opens September 3rd from 6-9 PM and runs through October 2nd.

Jack Hanley’s San Francisco location has recently closed it’s doors. They will be focusing their energy and talent on their New York City location.

Jack Hanley Gallery
136 Watts Street NYC 10013
646 918 6824
jackhanley.com

A rat lynched from a lamp post, a solemn warning to a snitch. A toddler with a hand gun, curiously and terrifyingly pointing it towards himself, finger on the trigger. Bombed out subway windows; street corners populated by living ghosts, shrouded in their hunger and anonymity. Scenes of desperation, scenes of hope and hungry triumph. Boogie’s photographs are as raw and unbridled as the streets he makes his subjects. It takes a keen eye and fearless approach to get the kind of gutsy, affecting images that Boogie’s lens captures.Nothing seems to scare the man. No scene too ugly, no story too sad. The NYC based photographer focuses his camera on events and people that many of us train ourselves to look right past on a daily basis, particularly those of us with the requisite tough skin of a city dweller. Like Arthur Fellig before him, Boogie uses an objective, documentarian eye to find aesthetic beauty in the harsher, seedier realities of life.

Born in Belgrade, Serbia and exposed to violence and inequality at a young age, Boogie has been traveling the globe giving voice to the typically ignored factions of the world for years. A fine art photographer, who also does phenomenal commercial work, Boogie’s photographs have a highly journalistic feel to them. However, unlike the work of a photojournalist, Boogie has no responsibility to censor his images, or find an easily digestible way to show the world’s pain. His images of gangs, drugs and poverty are stripped entirely bare. Being from the streets himself, Boogie is able to engender a trust in his subjects which allows him to capture the most intimate moments of their pain, frustration and hopelessness. He has traveled extensively, shooting in places like Turkey, Paris, Japan and Brazil (where he captured amazing shots of prostitutes and gangsters for his book Sao Paulo).

Opening next week at Carmichael Gallery in Culver City, CA Boogie will present new works in his show “The Uncovering.” Opening reception will be held from 7-9 Saturday July 10th, with the show running through August 7th.

It is with acknowledged irony that we belatedly direct you to LoBot’s new time themed show “Lapse” which opened this past weekend in Oakland. Curated by Ross Campbell and Jeremiah Jenkins the exhibit includes a refreshingly wide ranging line up of artists, from long established artists such as Paul Kos who has been creating conceptual art since the early 70’s to younger talents such as Brooklyn based installation artist Erica Gangsei. The group of artists in this show include some of the wittiest and most forward thinking artists working today, including Carrie Hott and Adam Hathaway, who are sure to make magic with the theme of time to play with. The co-curators explained their show as such:

“The exhibition Lapse explores perspectives of time. What is time? What frames perceptions of past and future? What does it mean to be timeless? Artists often play with our linear sense of time, compressing historical and cultural places. As well, through the common desire of excavating the past, envisioning the future, and of adding to the voices that offer differing views of collective and personal memories. The artists participating in Lapse each have varying interdisciplinary practices and areas of interest in the subject of time. The works on display convey senses of time through concept and material, sometimes offering added interpretations to the motivating intents of the artists themselves. What the viewer is confronted with is a multi-directional look at visual representations that challenge the perceptions of a more ordered narrative of place and time.”

Known Gallery, one of the top contemporary low brow galleries in Los Angeles featuring the works of David Flores, Ewok, Retna and El Mac amongst many other top names is at it again! Next Saturday May 22nd marks the opening of an exhibition presenting two Chicago based artists. The Chicago based graffiti artist Pose will be exhibiting along side photographer KC Ortiz. While the two artists work in different mediums and with very different thematic influences, there is one overarching theme here – bad ass art.

As the gallery writes: “In this exhibition Pose investigates a traditional style of comic book illustration and painting, infusing it with his own recognizable twist. Complexly layered, his work is bursting at the seams, often stunning and confusing onlookers with an intense amount of intricate detail…These new works explore imagery figuration in bold ways, with traces of his personality… the struggle, humor, sarcasm, love, hate, and always a feverish push towards the new.” In a teaser video of the event the artist puts it much more plainly, for him this exhibit is “the junkyard of my consciousness – the drugs, the sex, the hotrods … the shit, the vomit. In the teaser video the artist also speaks about his affinity for experimenting. “If you have the [foundation you should be] experimenting otherwise put that shit to bed.”

Concurrently KC Ortiz will be showing “Forced Rebellion.” Ortiz’ body of work focuses on photographing the over looked and forgotten people in society. His current series “documents the remaining Hmong’s daily lives and the desperate struggle faced from exposure to the never ending “Secret War” in the mountainous jungles of Laos. Check out Ortiz’ photographs to see an array of rebels, communists and CIA agents.

Aside from being a skateboarding superstar, Pep Williams, is a naturally talented photographer whose shooting style and images can only be described as the freshest kind of raw – odd description, I know, but take a look at the striking portraits of intricately tattooed people from his Los Angeles street scene. The portraits display complex characters in a natural and restful environment.

There is a freedom in the images which is mirrored in William’s shooting style. While he currently shoots with a NikonD300, his beginnings in photography were humble yet daring. Williams recounts memories from his first shoot “My first shoot I did, I got paid 6k and I never even owned a camera. I just hired a kid to be my assistant and watched him.” His street smarts can be attributed growing up in the Huntington Park, Watts and Venice areas of Los Angeles. “It was tough but it made me who I am.” says the artist.

You can catch news of his upcoming shows in the southern California area on his website at
www.pepwilliamsphotography.com