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KAWS, one of the most interesting men in art, will soon be joining Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World” as the New York street legend lends his signature “xx’s” to the labels of the delicious Mexican beer (which literally translates to “two x’s”). Unfortunatley for us Americanos, the limited edition brews will only be available south of the border beginning this September. Make sure passports and livers are up to date.

Images courtesy of High Snobriety. Video commisioned by Another Company for Dos Equis.

More KAWS coverage:

• Look. Look Again. at KAWS in Connecticut
• SUNDAY (June 27): Look. Look Again. with Kaws @ The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
• TONIGHT: Get Rich Quick!, Alëxone, Thais Beltrame
• THIS WEEKEND: Hyperdeath, Hyped Out, KAWS, Parra, Wiley, and Ass Kicking
• THIS WEEKEND: Darkness, Trees at Night, The Golden Ass, Hype, Home, and Tokyo!
• REMINDER: A Good KAWS This Saturday!
• SATURDAY: KAWS is Koming!

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Always on the lookout for emerging talent, the ever vigilant Jonathan LeVine Gallery presents their Annual Summer Invitational group show featuring 13 upcoming artists as well as the Brazilian street art themed Two-Way Street which features a new generation of artists making their New York City debut.

Click here for a preview of the Annual Summer Invitational…

and here for a peek down Two-Way Street.

From Jonathan LeVine:

“Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to announce the 2010 Annual Summer Invitational, a group exhibition featuring a fresh array of new work by thirteen emerging artists, exhibiting together for the first time at the gallery.

Participating artists include:
Alex McLeod, Andrew Hem, Becca Midwood, Evol, Judith Supine, Lola, Morgan Slade, Marco Mazzoni, Nate Frizzell, Nicoletta Ceccoli, Oliver Warden, Oscar de las Flores, and Tran Nguyen.

As with summer group shows in previous years at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, the 2010 installment offers a wide range of artistic styles, imagery, and International influences. Works featured in the exhibition include a variety of mediums ranging from traditional paintings and drawings to pieces created with elements of photography, collage, stencil, and digital media.”

Also…

“Jonathan LeVine Gallery in association with Choque Cultural gallery is pleased to present Two-Way Street, a group exhibition featuring work by four Brazilian street artists: Alexandre Tadeu Alves (aka Chivitz), João Paulo (aka NOVE), Márcio Penha (aka Presto) and Ramon Martins, in what will be their debut exhibition in New York.

Two-Way Street is the latest installment in what has been an ongoing cross-cultural dialog between Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York and Choque Cultural in São Paulo, Brazil. Work by the four artists in this show represent the new generation of street art coming out of São Paulo today, as these artists are younger than those who have previously exhibited here in the US.”

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The age old tale of male prostitution and sickly con men in the Big Apple makes it’s way to LA as the 1969 best picture winner Midnight Cowboy, starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in legendary roles, get’s The Hollywood Forever Cemetery treatment courtesy of Cinespia.

From Cinespia:

“An artistic tour de force on its release, Midnight Cowboy is still a brave and moving portrait of an unusual friendship. Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, a naive country boy who travels to the big city to meet rich women. Instead he meets Ratzo Rizzo, a two bit con man played to perfection by Dustin Hoffman. Together they brave 42nd st, Warhol parties, and the wild world of Manhattan in the late 60s. This colorful backdrop is embellished by Schlesinger’s daring filmmaking which incorporates the techniques of the psychedelic underground film scene with one of hollywood’s greatest stories. Winner of three oscars. Co-presented by Outfest, proceeds will go towards 2010 Outfest Film Festival.

http://www.outfest.org/fest2010/index.html

dj turquoise wisdom spins before and after the screening”

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Two of my faves join forces in New York as Orange County’s master painter Jeff Soto returns to the venerable Jonathan LeVine Gallery with his robots and creatures who constantly battle beautifully over love and death in tow as he opens his solo show Lifecycle. “In conjunction with this exhibition, the artist will be painting a site-specific public mural in New York City, and releasing a new limited-edition print.”

Also…joining Jeff and Jonathan in the NYC fun is Dave Cooper with his solo show Mangle in the project room.

Read more from Soto here.

From Soto:

“This new body of work feel like a tipping point or breakthrough to me- I’ve been exploring new themes, new techniques, pushing myself out of my comfort zone and possibly breaking the surface into a new direction. I usually don’t feel like this but it’s been a rollercoaster ride, full of discoveries and failures, emotions and hard work. This show has been more personal than those in the past, as I’ve had to dive into the subjects of family and life and death. It has also been extremely rewarding and I’m excited to share them. I’m going to keep painting and exploring this new path but this will be my last solo exhibit for a while. So come by if you can!”

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Yeah you read that right, my little brother Justin Mesina can now officially claim that he was in A Spike Lee Joint.

It all started a few months back when I was on the phone with Justin, who lives in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, NY, excitedly telling me that Spike was in the hood directly across the street from him taking portrait style photographs of locals. Being a photographer himself, my brother was intrigued and wanted to get in on the action especially since Spike would occasionally shoot a look his way as he scouted the area. Sensing that the Do the Right Thing director would eventually do the right thing and ask him to participate, Justin stayed close by on the phone with me doing his best to feign disinterest just in case Spike would ask him if he was ready for his closeup.

Sure enough, a few minutes later Justin ended our conversation as one of Spike’s associates approached him to talk about the project. What it turned out to be was a collaboration with Absolut featuring Spike’s ode to his beloved BK as well as hip-hop artist Lemon Anderson waxing poetic for the new apple/ginger flavored vodka Absolut Brooklyn.

And that’s how a crook bamboozled his way onto A Spike Lee Joint in the 25th hour. Needless to say, Justin Mesina a.k.a. the inside man, he got game. May as well gratuitously throw in Kobe Doin’ Work too since today is Laker championship parade day here in L.A after all.

Justin straight muggin’ for the man

Also…behind the scenes with Spike coming up with the Absolut Brooklyn commercial concepts.

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The Creators Project is an online network from Vice and Intel dedicated to providing the creative insights of the world’s most creative creators across all forms of media. Initially focusing mostly on musicians such as Diplo, Richie Hawtin, Phoenix, James Lavelle, CSS, Mark Ronson, and our boys N.A.S.A., The Creators Project expand their horizons this summer to include filmmakers, visual artists, and of course live music performances as their highly anticipated event series begins in New York.

Among many talented international creatives, The Creators Project Launch Event NYC features Spike Jonze and special presentations of his robot love story I’m Here, musical performances by Interpol, Mark Ronson, The Rapture, N.A.S.A., and Die Antwoord among others, as well as visual installations from United Visual Artists, Radical Friend, Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and the omnipresent Graffiti Research Lab and many more.

Click here to RSVP for the FREE event (with registration) by tonight at 11:59 eastern standard time!

From the Creators:

“The Creators Project event series—a roving global celebration—launches this summer on June 26, when The Creators rolls into 80,000-square-feet of display and performance space honeycombed throughout the legendary Milk Studios in New York’s Meatpacking District.

The event is going to be a groundbreaking combination of interactive art and installations, panels, workshops, screenings, and live performances. As much as The Creators Project is a digital archive of our digital world, it is also a testament to the enduring appeal of the Real. Many of the artists within the program explore the way that digitally manipulated images, sounds, and motions converge in real time, in real spaces.”

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Three years in the making across several continents, Suitman, Deanne Cheuk, Rostarr, José Parlá, Rey Parlá and Davi Russo come home with their stories told through paintings and illustrations, filmed and photographed high-jinks and new inspired works with The New Grand Tour at New York’s Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

From the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery:

“The goal of The New Grand Tour is to revive, re-invent, redefine, and change the old concept by venturing well beyond a voyage for the privileged elite. Instead, The New Grand Tour would become a mechanism for a group of unique and talented artists to interact with foreign cultures in an appreciative and organic way, rather than simply as voyeurs.

Beginning on October 20, 2007, Young Kim was joined by Deanne Cheuk, José Parlá, Rey Parlá, Rostarr and Davi Russo for thirteen days of travel in the Far East.  They began in Shanghai heading for the remote Yunnan Province, in search of the mystical city of Shangri la. With James Hilton’s novel, Lost Horizon as their guide, their journey took them through the beautiful valleys, rivers and lakes between the border of Yunnan Province and Tibet, through the Mei Li Snow Mountains and eventually to Beijing. While on this journey, each artist created new works within their respective medium, inspired by the places they visited during their travels.

This wide-ranging body of work, now showcased in The New Grand Tour exhibition, brings together a diverse group of voices united through their individual and collective experiences on this tour, which reflects both the visual and sensory inspiration they encountered in the many destinations of this shared travelogue.”

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It’s always mesmerizing to see a master work with their muse: Scorcese and mob movies; Kobe with a basketball; Yoda and the force; Tim and Eric and their Awesome Show. Recently we’ve been fortunate enough to get a peak at a painting master as Pasadena’s Mark Ryden prepped his “Pink Lincoln” for his continuing show at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, The Gay Nineties-Olde Tyme Art show.

From Ryden:

“Pink Lincoln painting by Mark Ryden from the exhibition “The Gay 90’s - Olde Tyme Art show” at the Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York. April 29, 2010. Intro from Disney’s “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln”. “Abraham” song by Bing Crosby from the movie “Holiday Inn” 1942″

More Mark Ryden:

• THURSDAY (April 29): Mark Ryden’s Gay Nineties at Paul Kasmin Gallery
• Mark Ryden Making Meat
• More Meat From Mark Ryden with Incarnation
• SATURDAY (Jan. 30): Mark Ryden Tree Show Signing
• SATURDAY: Mark Ryden Writes in Your Book

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A double dose for the east coast as Giant Robot New York get’s Lost in the Woods with Rhode Island’s Andrea Kang and Scarygirl acclaimed creator Nathan Jurevicius.

From the Robots:

“For Lost in the Woods, the artists will be creating medium- to small-sized works depicting children and animals finding their way through a dream-like forest, in muted colors on variety of media. Their collaborative pieces will combine ink, acrylic paint, and cut paper. For her personal work, Andrea is using ink on cut paper, while Jurevicius is using pens and watercolors. Each will also debut two new silkscreens at the show (including a skate deck design) as well as a limited-edition giclee print. There will be new plush owlets, too.”

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Over the years, Jonathan LeVine’s New York based gallery has become synonymous with contemporary art-be it from the culture of the streets, the academia of art schools or the international buzzing from abroad. This weekend’s openings are more of the good stuff as the gallery takes a double dip with Seattle’s Scott Musgrove’s show How is the Empire? and Manila’s Louie Cordero with his first solo show in NY titled Sacred Bones.

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