When I stopped by the Marianne Boesky Gallery on an exceedingly chilly Saturday afternoon, just one day after the opening of John Waters’ Beverly Hills Johnexhibition– the raunchy filmmaker’s been featured in a number of solo shows across the country since 2000– the place was packed with an awkward mix of tourists and people who seemed to be in the know. One woman snapped a photo of a sculpture depicting a mini-living room, a memorial dedicated to the late Mike Kelley, an artists who continues to be an inspiration to Waters. In a speech given at UCLA, Waters dubbed Kelley a “terrorist and a hero.” More →
Untame is a new erotica “men’s cultural lifestyle” mag for the thinking man (or woman) from the perspective of the female gaze, but it’s not just a ton of butt-centric photographs of nice looking ladies. There’s also artwork and articles by collaborators and friends of founders Wendi Marissa and Alessandra De Benedetti. More →
Kristin Henderson reads a story with her son Griffin at a previous Brooklyn Book Fest (Photo: Meghan White)
Great news! Brooklyn Book Fest has now updated its website to include a comprehensive event calendar for the imminent 2014 fest, which means we at B+B are able to supplement our recent rundown of upcoming literary shindigs. More →
NOT × Chris Saunders on display now at Wallplay Gallery (Photo: Kirsten O’Regan)
Lest Fashion Week leave you feeling jaded (about the superficiality of the industry, and the inanity of the clothing and the persons therein), allow me to offer an antidote of sorts: NOT × Chris Saunders, an exhibition currently showing at Wallplay that fuses fashion, photography, sculpture and video to explore the complex cultural underpinnings of style—South African style, in particular. More →
If you’re anywhere near 50 Varick Street today, you may want to head over there toot sweet. Not for the Calvin Klein fashion show (yawn), but for something far more colorful that’s happening outside of it at this very moment. More →
This week: everything you generally avoid talking about gets talked about.
Monday, Sept. 15 Hot, Wet and Shaking: Talking About Sex with Kaleigh Trace
Kaleigh Trace is a disabled, queer, feminist sex educator with a mission: to promote “safe, shame-free and consensual sex people of all abilities, ethnicities, races, orientations, and gender identities.” Among other things, she co-wrote and appeared in the above music video in response to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” More →
Detail from Beka Goedde’s Lunch (still life), 2014 from “All Solid Things Hold Together” series (image courtesy of Angela Conant)
It’s a meal that many New Yorkers eat out of plastic containers at a desk, hunched over an LED screen—and like other meals, it’s one we often eat alone. But a trio of artists are cooking up an exhibition in Bushwick that might make you think harder about lunch. More →
All subjects you can contemplate at this week’s thrilling selection of readings and talks.
Friday, September 5
We, The Outsiders Opening Reception We, The Outsiders is an art exhibition that explores several perplexing questions: “Can it be said that art has a consciousness of its own? And if such a consciousness were independent of us, where would it place us in relation to itself?” I have no idea what that means, but I do know that the exhibition revolves around a gigantic egg—which probes, like the classic chicken-and-the-egg conundrum (I prosaically assume), where consciousness begins and ends when it comes to art. More →
Novelists Jon McGoran and Linda Davies will be reading from recent work. McGoran has written about food and sustainability for many years, but has a burgeoning book-writing business on the side. His recently released second novel Deadout, injects his passion for environmental issues into a deftly-handled detective story, complete with genetically modified super bees and dastardly biotech corporations. “McGoran fluidly blends science and suspense in his outstanding second eco-thriller,” according to Publisher’s Weekly. Davies, meanwhile, is a former investment banker, whose debut novel Nest of Vipers has now sold over 2 million copies. Vipers is a financial industry thriller, driven by a risk-taking female foreign exchange trader stuck between a rock (the Mafia) and a hard place (the British SIS). The evening will be hosted by Richie Narvaez.
Who says girls can’t be crime writers? Well, no one actually, because that’s clearly not a valid argument. But just in case some loser out there is preparing his talking points, let me present a succinct rebuttal: Megan Abbott and Chelsea Cain. Abbot is author of recently released The Fever(“a chilling story about guilt, family secrets, and the lethal power of desire” set in a small town whose female teenage inhabitant are in the throes of a mysterious plague), while Cain has produced numerous best-selling books. Her latest, One Kick, is the first in a new series featuring protagonist Kick Lannigan—famously kidnapped as a child, and now called upon to help solve a new missing child case. These ladies are clearly queens of suspense: The Guardian called One Kick “a dark, dangerous journey into evil to find the vanished children, and entirely hide-away-until-you-finish-it gripping,” while the New York Timesfound The Fever “a gripping and unsettling novel.” See the terrible two in conversation at The Strand.
