Looks like Banksy’s gone to the English Channel to stage his latest commentary on the disaster in America’s Gulf Coast region. Amidst the heavily trafficked attractions of the Brighton Pier amusement park, the world’s most recognized political prankster has installed a modified children’s ride, featuring a dolphin trapped in the muck of a leaking BP crude oil barrel and tangled tuna net. Video documentation surfaced on the artist’s site last night along with images of several other new pieces (including the ones pictured below), and in typical Banksy form, it is perversely humorous. Entitled Pier Pressure, the clip is set to the backdrop of old time carnival calliope music and depicts two children eagerly mounting the suffering animal while their guardian happily snaps a cell phone picture.

Brush Strokes, a joint exhibit from Barry Mcgee (under his Lydia Fong moniker) and Todd James opened this past weekend at V1 Gallery, Copenhagen. Though there are only a couple of collaborative moments, the themes explored by the two long time friends are a perfect match. Mcgee’s street photography and tag-like block lettered text paintings act as a crucial declaration of identity alongside confusing geometric patterns that mimic the mind numbing, dumbing down effects of constant entertainment and media bombardment. Laying somewhere between Saturday morning cartoons and a Noam Chomsky dissertation, the happy faced war planes, bloody sword wielding tanks and gumball filled soldiers of Todd James’ cartoon drawings provide a darkly satirical commentary on the culture of violence and militarism spoon fed by western media in easily digestible packages.

This is not the first time McGee and James have show together. In 200o the two worked with fellow graffiti turned gallery artist, Stephen Powers (ESPO) on their Indelible Market installation at the University of Pennsylvania Institute of Contemporary Art. The trio expanded the concept for Street Market, a large scale exhibition with Deitch Projects the same year, and were later reunited for the Beautiful Losers museum exhibitions.

Up next for McGee – Looks like he’ll be coming to New York soon

Read on for images from the show…

Lydia Fong and Todd James – Brush Strokes
V1 Gallery
Flæsketorvet 69
1711 Copenhagen V, Denmark

(All Images via V1 Gallery)

This year the day job winds to a close one week too late for me to have made it over for Basel. I wasn’t there. These fine people were.

Lindsay Pollock

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In what is being billed as his most ambitious exhibition to date, Brazilian sculpture artist Ernesto Neto will open a new site specific, all-encompasing environment at London’s Southbank Centre Hayward Gallery this Saturday, June 19. Viewers will act as participants, exploring a sequence of connected spaces that merge sculpture and architecture, at times recalling biological systems. For this new exhibition, Neto will create his first outdoor installations, including a sculptural pool that visitors will be allowed to enter.

Neto’s installation is part of The New Décor, an international survey of some 30 contemporary artists whose whose work explores interior design as a means of engaging with changes in contemporary culture.

Ernesto Neto – The Edges of the World / The New Decor
July 19 – September 5
The Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

Since 2006, Danish born photographer Peter Funch has immersed himself in New York City, vigorously documenting the metropolis’ bustling streets. His recent works are a manipulation of both time and space, built from thousands of individual photographs shot at the exact same vantage point over a long span of time. Through this process, Funch conjures images that are as much anthropological as they are fictional, capturing real, existing spaces that seamlessly commingle with fictitious moments in time that never truly existed.

Babel Tales Addendum opens May 7 at V1 Gallery, Copenhagen. With 41 panoramic works that run the line between reality and fantasy the exhibit signals the conclusion of this four year exploration.  Click images for larger views.

Peter Funch – Babel Tales Addendum
May 7 – May 29
V1 Gallery
Flæsketorvet 69 – 71
1711 Copenhagen V, Denmark

Barry McGee will be exhibiting under his Lydia Fong monker at Alice Gallery (Brussels, Belgium), alongside Danish artist HuskMitNavn (Remember My Name). While both are known for their work in street and fine art settings, The Last Night marks the first collaboration for the artists. The joint exhibition opens March 25.

Internationally recognized for his painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography, skate-icon and artist Ed Templeton has several significant projects in the works.

Most immediately, Templeton opens a new photo exhibit at Roberts + Tilton (Los Angeles) this Friday, Feb. 26. The works on display are culled from the artist’s personal archives, and were shot spontaneously from the inside of cars over a span of 15 years. Speaking of the project, Templeton says, “I never went out driving just to shoot pictures. Each one of these was shot going from point A to point B for some other reason, organically; they represent the in-between. Most of it is from my frequent visits to LA from my home in Huntington Beach, 1 hours’ drive south. But there is also a lot from taxi rides in Paris, Moscow, London, Barcelona, and St Petersburg.”

Next up , Templeton’s photography will be included in the 2010 Photography Biennial at MAMAC (Liege, Belgium), which runs Feb 28 – April 25. Lastly, his first solo museum exhibition, The Cemetery of Reason, opens at S.M.A.K. (Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art) in Ghent, Belgium on April 2, and will include works across multiple disciplines.

Ed Templeton – The Duality of Femininity, 2009 (Courtesy of Roberts + Tilton and Tim Van Laere)

Faurschou Copenhagen is currently exhibiting new works by New York based painter, Erik Parker. Along with his previous exhibit at Paul Kasmin (NY), Parker’s tightly rendered, candy-colored psychedelia are easily his most accomplished works to date. As the show’s title suggests, Adapt signals an artist who, after more than a decade of patient development and experimentation, has reemerged with a bold and compelling style that no doubt can catapult him to increased notoriety.

Read On For More Images

Erik Parker – Adapt
Jan. 28 – April 10, 2010
Galleri Faurschou CPH
Strandstæde 21 DK-1225
Copenhagen, Denmark

KAWS’ debut exhibit in Spain with Javier Lopez (sister gallery to New York’s Gering-Lopez, where the artist is also represented) debuted last night in Madrid, coinciding with the opening day of the ARCOmadrid contemporary art fair, where the gallery is also showcasing a new multi-panel painting by the artist. Comprised of three large monochromatic canvases (as well as a bronze sculpture), the show is reminiscent of some of the artist’s earlier black matte and gloss paintings (circa 2000). In recent works from the last year, KAWS has drifted deeper into abstraction and away from the figurative forms he is so well known for. Here, the artist combines his signature characters with these new geometric elements, continuing his claim on popular iconography by reworking them into his own lexicon. What is so compelling is that KAWS has managed to take such recognizable cultural images – the Michelin Man and more recent Sponge Bob character – and so effectively recast them as his own. Given his trademark treatment, with their morbid X’d out eyes the Chum and Kawsbob have quickly become instantly recognizable as part of the KAWS brand.

KAWS
Feb 18 – April 7
Galeria Javier Lopez
José Marañón, 4
E-28010 Madrid, Spain

ARCOmadrid
Feb. 17 – 21
Feria de Madrid (Halls 6,8,10)
28042 Madrid, Spain

(ARCO images via Glltn, Gallery images via Javier Lopez)

With his early influence in the Conceptual Art movement, and with the written word having established a popular presence in Contemporary Art (Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holtzer and Tracy Emin to name a few), Lawrence Weiner’s continuing contributions are as vital today as they have ever been.

Open now through March 28, 2010, are two European exhibitions by Weiner. BAK (Utrecht, Netherlands) presents Dicht Bij, a solo exhibit that continues FORMER WEST, the institution’s long-term research and educational initiative commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by exploring the impacts the event has had on the arts in the Western half of Germany. An edition, produced in a limited number of 300, is on sale at BAK for €8.

Simultaneously, the Castellón Center for Contemporary Art is hosting Weiner’s Under the Sun, comprised of a new exhibit and permanent public sculpture in the city’s El Pinar park.