JOEL SHAPIRO

ExhibitION preview night

19:5:17 - 18:6:17

PACE LONDON

6 Burlington Gardens, London W1S 3ET

We are presently working on a special project, partnering up - and closely working with 6 art galleries.

As part of the upcoming collaboration  we are happy to feature images of Joel Shapiro’s exhibition. The show highlights an installation of seven vibrant, volumetric sculptures and a selection of recent works on paper.

Photo credit: Pagan Carruthers

TEYANA TAYLOR: "Not a tear from you as we watched your father cry"

FLOFFERZ MAGAZINE ISSUE 002

Writing exclusively for our issue 002 artist Teyana Taylor pens an intimate letter written to her young daughter encouraging her towards a path of empowerment in the face of adversity.

Dear Bug,

Since your first breath, life has become so much more. Everything makes so much sense now. You are my motivation and you bring the greatness out in me.

You are my heart. I knew at first glance that it was love. As we gazed into each other's eyes and you thanked me for life, all I could think of is how much I should be thanking you. Not a tear from you as we watched your father cry.

As you grow older, you will understand that life is a long road that you cannot travel without having people pointing fingers at you. We live in a world where people have the right to their opinions, however you have the right to refuse them as your truth. People only have as much power as you give them. Remember that.

Be resilient and let the rain of judgments and insults slide down your umbrella of indifference.

Bug, you have the ability to operate at a whole new level of permission for yourself. Never dim your light so that others can handle your brightness.

Refuse to be objectified because of your race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Define your success, not by the words of others, but by the work, efforts, love and faith that you will pour into all of the things that you do.

Embrace diversity in all kinds of people. In a world in which some leaders choose to exploit people's ignorance and create anxiety, reject their claims. Our lack of understanding of others and lack of open mindedness is what promotes division, rejection, hatred, fear and blame.

I promise you a world filled with love and I'm going to give you that. You were worth every kick, every contraction and beauty mark. You are a beautiful distraction from this imperfect world; my beautiful sanctuary.

As you grow carry yourself as a beautiful black queen without limits. I look forward to watching you develop your own grace, wisdom and patience in the essence of God’s perfect timing.

Remember that you can do and achieve anything. As long as you can see it's real, anything is possible.

Mommy loves you June Bug,

always and forever.

Photographer: Eric Guillemain
Creative Production and Casting - Ramata Coulibaly
Stylist - Anna Katsanis  c/o Atelier Management
Make-up – Joseph Carrillo at Kate Ryan INC using MAC
Cosmetics
Hair - Lyana Winfled c/o Ken Barboza Associates
Assistant - Damien Carvery
Talent - Teyana Taylor c/o Society Management

Graphic designer - Celine Strolz
 

PUBESCENSE

Flofferz Magazine 

The irresponsibility of youth. Wait, irrepressibility. Yeah. Irrepressibility. We hold these truths to be self evident. That we don’t need no education. We don’t need no self control. All sorts of dark sarcasm in the classroom. The phoenix rises from the ashes. With all the confidence and wonder of the newborn. James Dean. Arthur Rimbaud. Henry Miller. The myth of the artist is alive and well. And we’re drinking down every. single. drop.

+ Time, Confidence, Wonder, Hope, Selflessness, Hunger

- Capriciousness, Yearning, Naiveté, Inexperience, Selfishness

Photographer: Renault Cambuzat

Creative Director: Ramata Coulibaly

Stylist: Aurore Donguy

Hair: Cyril Laforet

Makeup: Annabelle Petit @ASG PARIS Using M.A.C cosmetics

Models: Unia Pakhomova @City models Paris

Connie and Olena N @Premium models Paris

Nicolas O and Francois Durel @Rockmen Paris

Location: Paris, France

Written by: BYRON HAWES

STEPHEN SHORE: RETROSPECTIVE

Exhibit Opening night

06:2:16 - 22:5:16

C/O Berlin

Amerika Haus

Hardenbergstraße 22–24 .

10623

Berlin

The exhibition includes over 300 pictures–some of photographer Stephen Shore them never published.This first retrospective of Stephen Shore’s work unfolds chronologically, shedding light on the three most significant aspects of Stephen Shore’s oeuvre as well as his unique contribution to the culture of photography. 

“I wanted to make pictures that felt natural, that felt like seeing, that didn’t feel like taking something in the world and making a piece of art out of it.” Stephen Shore

Curated by:  MARTA DAHO AND FELIX HOFFMANN

Photographer: DIANE BETTIES  

ELECTRONIC SUPERHIGHWAY

Exhibit Opening night

 29:1:16 - 15:5:16

WHITECHAPEL GALLERY - GALLERIES1, 2 , 8 & VICTOR PETITGAS GALLERY 

77-82 WHITECHAPEL HIGH STREET, E1 7QX, LONDON

A landmark exhibition bringing together over 100 works of art to demonstrate the impact of computers and online technologies on various artists from the mid 1960s to the present day.  The exhibition includes new and rarely seen multimedia projects, films, paintings, sculptures, photographs and drawings.

Electronic Superhighway tells the story of an interconnected global culture marked by mass and political change.

Featuring over 70 artists.

Cory Arcangel, Roy Ascott, Judith Barry, James Bridle, Constant Dullaart, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Vera Molnar, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Ryan Trecartin and Ulla Wiggen.

 

Video by: MARCIN LESZCZYNSKI

 

ESPÈCES D’IMAGES

Exhibit Opening night

 21:01 - 18:02:16

Le commun– Bâtiment d’art contemporain

28 rue des Bains 1205 Geneva

 

Species Images is a beautiful exhibition revolving around a device specially created for the Common Spaces: a wall, interspersed with openings and partitioning, which provides a way to survey such a landscape, with views and perspectives. This device accommodates approximatively 20 works questioning the image status, it's determination, installation and its distribution in space and scale. 

Balthasar Burkhard, Giacomo Bianchetti, Charlotte Bonjour, Thomas Cullum, Nicolas Delaroche, Philippe Durand, Julien Gremaud, Serge Fruehauf, Livia Johann, Florian Joye, Jeanne Moynot, Aurélie Pétrel, Pablo Réol, Simon Rimaz, Maya Rochat, Patrick Tosani, Mélanie Veuillet. 

Curator: SEBASTIEN LESEIGNEUR 

Disposition: DELPHINE RENAULT

 

FUCK

Flofferz Magazine

Systematic perversion of cleanliness. The glory. The pain. Clean energy. Clean air. Clean thoughts. Instincts realized.

Copulation takes many forms, pollination through pollution. Pleasure brings rebirth, which brings actual birth, which inevitably culminates in death. All flowers fade, all blooms wither.

+ Pleasure, Fantasy, Raw, Instinct

- Empty, Dirty, Naked, Unprotected, Aftermath, Vulnerability

Artist: Johann Bouché-Pillon

location: Paris, France

Written by: BYRON HAWES 

BODY BODY ( man gave birth to all the animals )

Exhibit Opening night

20:01 - 18:03:16

Location: LA PLAQUE TOURNANTE 

Sonnenallee 99, Berlin, (By invitation only)

300 artworks, multiples, ephemera and videos from 111 artists 

ACCONCI, ACQUAVIVA, AGRAFIOTIS, AGULLO, ALLEN, ALTMANN, ARIAS-MISSON, BAZILE, BLAINE, BOHAREVIC, BRAU, BRENER & SCHURZ, BROUTIN, BURROUGHS, D. & J. CHAPMANN, CHARMOY, CHOPIN, MAÎTRESSE CINDY, CURTAY, DALI, DEBORD, DION, DONGUY, DUCHAMP, DUFRÊNE, DUPUY, EXPORT, FAUSTINO, FERNANDES, FERRER, FÉVRIER, FHIMA, FILLIOU, FLANDRIN, FURNIVAL, GETTE, GILBERT & GEORGE, GILLARD, GIROUD, GRATIO, GREEN, GUYOTAT, GYSIN, HAINS, HANOUN, HANSON, HAUSMANN, HEIDSIECK, HOURY, HUBAUT, ISOU, JANICOT, JESSEMIN, JOURNIAC, KAC, KAPROW, KIENHOLZ, KLEIN, KOLAR, KREN, KUNIYOSHI, LEBRAT, LEMAÎTRE, LEVY, LIXENBERG, LIZÈNE, LLYS DANA, MACIUNAS, MARTEL, MOLINIER, MUEHL, MURAKAWI, NATO, NIBLOCK, NIMOY, NITSCH, NOVARINA, OLIVEROS, ONO, ORLAN, PANE, J-L. PARANT, T. PARANT, PASOLINI, PATTERSON, PIGNATARI, PINONCELLI, POMERAND, POYET, PRÉSENCE PANCHOUNETTE, REBOTIER, ROTH, RÜHM, RUNNELS, SABATIER, SAMBA, SATIÉ, SCHNEEMANN, SERGE III, SIGAUD, SOCHOR, SPACAGNA, SPOERRI, STELARC, TACHA, UGHETTO, ULAY & ABRAMOVIC, ULRICHS, VAUTIER, WARHOL, WISEMAN AND WOLMAN

Photographer : OLGA KHRISTOLYUBOVA 

Curated by: FREDERIC ACQUAVIVA

MARTYRDOM

Exhibit Opening night

16:02:16

THE MINE 

8TH STREET, AL QOUZ- UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

It becomes ever more apparent with each passing day, the revolution underfoot in the creative world. Métiers become indistinguishable. Poets direct videos. Photographers plan clothing lines. Monophonies become polyphonic, and cultures meld.

Case in point, the exhibition Martyrdom, a new series of paintings from Giovanni Leonardo Bassan (protegé of Michele Lamy and scourge of post-millennial laziness everywhere).

A series of nakedly evocative paintings, often depicting religious icons (“the show opens with a triad of martyrs - Saint Sebastian, Saint Giorgio, and Saint Lucia - the ghosts of my Catholic education”) in a thoroughly modern setting - more reminiscent of a Rolling Stone shoot with Jagger than St Peter’s Basilica - Martrydoms raises questions about cultural/geographical perspective, as well as religious.

 

Showing at The Mine in Dubai (admittedly, a prototypical modernist White Cube whose eclectic curatorial leanings have led to recent shows by artists as diverse as Revok and Yasuaki Onishi), there has nonetheless been controversy surrounding the purported clash between the show’s UAE location and European religious iconography and tone. 

 

From the gallery notes: “Martyrdom tells us of what we were and what we have become, of the heroes from the past and the contemporary ones. It sanctifies the reactionaries and shakes those who turn looking through a cry too the realization and liberation. Between figurative and abstract, the characters stand on neutral backgrounds to emphasize even more incisive the urgency of a collective awakening.”

Giovanni Leonardo Bassan

Written by: BYRON HAWES 

Photographed by: MOEZ ACHOUR

L.I.F.E

Flofferz Magazine

Is there a more undefinable word? Other than art, but don’t they kind of mean the same thing? No concept inspires and terrifies us more. Is the future a promise or a threat? Only self-cultivation will tell. Believe in the systemic nature of us, or believe in our instinct to refine it. Fulfillment is more than an anagram, it’s a raison d’être.

+ The Elements, Society, Ecosystem, Urban, Rural, Entertainment

- Danger, War, Pain, Menace, Surveillance, Overdrive

Artist: Synchrodogs

Location: Kiev, Ukraine

Written by: BYRON HAWES 

BREATH

Flofferz Magazine

The absorption of filtered informations builds up, coalesces, contrasts; eventually manifesting as a newly deflated complacency. Inhale, exhale, and think for yourself. New dawns. New dusk. New days. After all, into every Nitrogen/Oxygen mixture a little Argon must seep…



 +  Bring Life, New Day, Connection, Silence, Beginnings, Intimacy

 -   Never Enough, Polluted, Dust, Exhaustion

Photographer: TERESA FREITAS

Location: Portugal 

Written by: BYRON HAWES 

FLOFFERZ ISSUE 001 LAUNCH

Launch party

An infection, a source for pain, a disease that kills the body, very quickly or very slowly, without cure, without reason. It separates us from the life within our bodies, and focusses on deterioration and death. Sickness free from judgement. It does not discriminate based on race, sex, religion, or prejudice - yet separates and denies many of us from the ability to fully heal. We are the problem, and, yet, we are always the solution.

Never never land. Escape; dream of a place where you never grow up or get old. In a land of images that define and change you. Flip through the pages of “Neverland” to see elaborate, skewed fantasies and visions of escape.

The raison d’être for this narrative is for your imagination to embrace the collective meaning of eternal youth. The visuals and words in “Neverland” creatively liberate from a totalitarian mindset/system.

This first issue is dedicated to the fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Just as illness passes through the body without prejudice, our art seeks to inspire through (or despite) the painful human condition. The nemesis of incurable diseases can, without question, be prevented to the point of extinction.

Within the Flofferz community, we have recently been inextricably touched by these illnesses, and now we seek to elaborate on the brutality of the world by analyzing different perspectives germane to this issue. Coming together as artists, we dedicate ourselves to push beyond societal barriers through our creative works. Our collective mission is to align with charitable causes that see beyond stigma, race, or gender.

Each issue is dedicated to a cause for which we raise funds to help gain awareness. Donations are being accepted to keep our community growing at www.flofferz.com/donations.

Creativity made the pages of “Neverland”, and we are it’s Darling children. In experiencing this issue, as entrancing as this new territory may be - be wary - it is ridden with brutal honesty. The envisionment of eternal youth within our content is not flawed, but different than what one would expect, when leaning towards the forever of never Neverland. 

Photographed by: HANNAH SIDER

G.R.O.W.T.H

Flofferz Magazine

Interpretation is for the weak. If your instincts don't point you in the right direction, you're probably going backwards. After all, how are you going to quantify something that happens whether you like it or not? Dig in. Knuckle up. The rainbow doesn't need your kisses, but the future is waiting just around the corner to take your knees out. Don't sleep.

+ freedom, opportunity, limitless, openness, expansion

- lack of constraints, no order, withering

Linus Ricard
Growth.
Neverland, 2015 Photographs
25x25 cm
Location: Paris, France

Written by: BYRON HAWES 

F.A.B.L.E

Flofferz Magazine 

A tale of others leading by example. Messages of socialization to obtain a ritualistic standard in practice. The stories woven these days all have agendas. Narrative implications lost amongst a sea of shiny provocations. The totalitarianism of decaying thought. If Neverland is a place for lost boys, and we all a génération perdue, then where do you think we live? Lick the flames, and taste the moral.

+ A Game, A Story, A Moral, A Legend, Narration

- Offensive, Ill-doing, Mystery

Johann Selles
“The devil is in the details, but God is in the picture”
Neverland, 2015 Photography

90x60cm

Artist’s studio,  Malmö, Sweden

Galerie Olivier Robert. Paris, France

Location: Malmö, Sweden

Written by: BYRON HAWES 

FREEDOM

Flofferz Magazine

What is freedom? In this intellectually bereft Neverland of ours, are we ever truly free? Free to create? Free to consume? Both. And neither. A Picasso hanging on a cracked tenement wall does, in fact, make the same sound. The sound of joy, cracking through the shell of alienation we carry cloaked around us.

René Ricard wrote “you can never explain to someone who uses God’s gift to enslave, that you have used God’s gift to be free”, but what does he know?

+ Joie de Vivre, Balance, Creativity, Preservation

- Self-deception, Naiveté, Alienation

Photographer: Jane and Jane

Creative Director: Ramata Coulibaly

Stylist: Michael Nyarkoh

Makeup artist: Amanda Blair

Model: Winnie Harlow

Location Toronto

Written by: Byron Hawes

JUST LIKE HONEY

Flofferz Magazine

Photographer: Anton Bundenko

Location: Moscow, Russia

COGNITIVE WANDERINGS

Press Release

11:6:15 - 15:7:15

lilly robert

3 RUE DES HAUDRIETTES,75003 Paris

Pursuit of happiness, meaning of life, endless search of the existential purpose, the modern man is a constant nomad. To turn, to give up, to go away, to leave: any form of physical movement aims to improve psychological state, to relieve pain, while re adjusting the lives that prevent us to live subjectively happily. True or false?

To look elsewhere to find comfort, harmony and peace. Drop everything to start from scratch. Life is better, where we are not, as states a proverb. Convulsions of anxiety or lethargy of boredom? "When one has no account in the world, it is found in another," - wrote Voltaire in "Candide ou l’optimisme".

Or optimism, indeed. The quote is easy to criticize, you must be optimistic to believe it, because our ever-changing environment has absolutely no relation to the own happiness and integrity. The discovery of a new environment is exciting and dangerous to a point where we forget the rest, the primal instincts prevail on our cognitive questions. We lose all of our bearings, leaving us to feel vulnerable at the same time that we discover what has been hiding until now within the privacy of our consciousness. A kind of reflex that dominates our predetermined achievements conditioned by our lives as a form of permanent lie.

Certainly, this sentiment, this feeling of finally being able to breath again, to move forward, as though you are being born again is very powerful. Followed by some time after, independently from our own being, we begin to realize that everything is the same in this world initially better. And it is necessary to move forward again to rediscover the feeling of "unbearable lightness of being".

Asger Carlsen — Anton Bundenko — Johann Selles — Didier Clain — Katya Reisher

Written by: MARIA SHAKHNOVA

NOSTALGIA

FLOFFERZ MAGAZINE 

Nostalgia is a chronic condition, both incurable and beautiful at once. Longing for times past, simpler moments, quieter chaos, a childhood, the girlhood that was. We want for things we’ve had, touched, and tasted. Foggy memories made clearer with sentiment; sentiment made tangible through memory. To recount is to take inventory of experience, to add up its sums, and behold a new figure, as real as the memory from which it came.

Written by : Marina Korneeva

Photograper: Maria Yastrebova