Showing - Shara Hughes @ Museum 52 - London

Shara Hughes @ Museum 52, 52 Redchurch Street, London E2, from 31st January - 1st March.

Private View Review - Mark Quinn @ White Cube Mason's Yard - London

Mark Quinn’s work never really did it with me. I never quite got that whole Kate Moss yoga thing with 'Sphinx'. But I get it now. Today, I am a total convert - A fan of Quinn’s, a devotee to each and every one of his recent works, which were unveiled at the swanky west one White Cube Mason's Yard last night.

Now Quinn’s clearly got sex, birth and procreation on his mind; this show is all about human and plant style breeding. It’s a fantastic mix, one which Quinn’s given his all to, producing in a whole host of media’s, set out over three spaces of the gallery. Upstairs, in the first room, ‘The Nurseries of El Dorado’, was a real paradise jungle; four enormous hand painted canvases of brightly coloured flowers surrounded the floor space in between, which was covered with podiums topped by bronze, chrometized potted plants. Think shinny lilies, bearing fruit - strawberries, apples and large rather phallic giant jalapeños. Yeah, you get the idea. To a child it would look like the secret garden, to an adult, the secret sex garden – and it was frankly, breathtaking.

Downstairs, Quinn went back to marble, with nine enormous sculptures, depicting the various fetal stages of pregnancy. Now, that might sound a little icky, but believe me, there was nothing vulgar here. These, which are being sold as a set, were clean, solid and stunning. The embryos looked as though they were practically fighting to get out of the stone, while the grain of the marble was ideal, strangely flesh-like and alive. Finally, in the smallest room, Quinn included some working sketches; drawings in water colour and thick pencil, filled with energy and confidence.

Quinn is quite the funny guy. The works at White Cube have been dubbed with some dry, amusing titles like: 'Opening of the Northwest Passage', and 'The Lost Rivers of London' . Oh, and my favorite, 'Early Self-Portrait', a small pick marble fetus, of a stage when we all looked the same.

Mark Quinn @ White Cube, 25 -26 Mason's Yard, London from 25 January - 23 February 2007.

Showing - Michel Gondry 'Be Kind Rewind' @ Deitch Projects - NYC

Michel Gondry 'Be Kind Rewind' @ Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster Street, NY 10013, from
February 16 - March 22, 2008

News - Jeffs Koons Exhibiting at Versailles - Paris

Jeff Koons has made it to the Palace of Versailles. As an addition to the annual ‘Versailles Off’, from September 26 2007, he’ll be exhibiting up to fifteen works. Now, given that Koons is arguable the costliest artist around – this man has armies of artists working for him – I’m figuring, it’s apt that he’ll be showing at Versailles. With huge pieces placed both in and out of the palace, it should be quite the show. And you wouldn’t really expect anything less – and that, frankly, is not such a bad thing.

Showing - Yoshitaka Amano, Deva-Loka @ Galerie Michael Janssen - Berlin

Mr Manga himself, Yoshitaka Amano, is back with a solo show, ‘Deva-Loka’ at Michael Janssen in Berlin – which is, by all accounts, a fair distance from Amano’s Tokyo and New York homes. Still, that’s not to say his genius won’t be appreciated on European soil; it will. His work is international, and crosses all sorts of boundaries. So, it goes without saying, you don’t have to be a video game aficionado to appreciate ‘Deva-Loka’.

The works presented here are diverse. Think large canvases, aluminum panels, ‘psychedelic ornamentation’ and ‘grim superheroes’. While I’m not so sure about the ‘psychedelic ornamentation’, it’s too close to lava lamp for my liking, I’m always sucker for a ‘grim superhero’, and as for the canvases, well, going by the press images, they're bound to be pretty funky too.

Yoshitaka Amano, Deva-Loka @ Galerie Michael Janssen Berlin, Kochstr. 60 D-10969 Berlin, from January 19 - February 29, 2008

Alison Jacques @ Artera - Bologna

Showing - Global Lens 2008 @ MoMA - NYC

Global Lens 2008 @ MoMA, 11 West 53 Street, NY 10019-5497, from 10th - 24th January 2008

Denis Darzacq La Chute @ De Soto - LA

This month, there’s a superb slice of French action at LA's De Soto Gallery. Serving up the first US exhibition, 'La Chute', AKA The Fall, by France’s Denis Darzacq, this one, despite it’s content, is kind of slick. Influenced by the 2005 housing riots, Darzacq has photographed seemingly ordinary people floating, flying, and spinning round mid-air, as if catapulted during flight or flight. Documentary you might think, however, these subjects are hip-hop dancers and athletes. They are those used to getting spun above the nice firm ground. And that means La Chute is a little more staged than the average riot, and in that, a touch more classy and well worth checking out.

Le Chute @ De Soto Gallery, 08 W 2nd St. #104
Los Angeles, CA 90012, from January 12 – February 23 2008.

On a Street Near You - One Week of Art - Daisuke Yamamoto

Graff Production Line Euro-Style

Showing - Final Weekend by Martin Puryear @ MoMA - NYC