Illustration by G.B. Jones.

An amazing graphite illustration by Canadian artist, musician, and publisher G.B. Jones. In the 80s, G.B. Jones published the classic queercore zine J.D.s wilth cult filmmaker Bruce LaBruce who we will be featuring with an amazing interview in our next print edition.

Raymond Unger, born in Hamburg, Germany, who comes from a family of well known painters and is well know for his fantastical, palette knife style, stands in front of his painting Paradise Lost which won the 2011 International Lucas Cranach prize. The painting will be on view as part of a group exhibition of the winners of the prize which is awarded every three years. The theme for 2011 was “human images” and dealt with societal satire and surreal alienation. The exhibition will be on view from March 9 to May 13 at the Cranach Foundation in Wittenberg, Germany.  

American-Venezuelan artist Leslie Gabaldón writes poems & mathematical equations on rose. The Dot Fiftyone Gallery in Miami will display the exhibition “Ink on Roses” from 10 March to 20 April 2012.

There is something uniquely personal and romantic about the photographs of Istanbul based photographer Mehmet Aytekin. Like an exotic dream, his images are awash with preternatural suggestions of light and color and Mehmet’s beautiful Turkish muses are like sirens from a distant era. His photographs, with their stains, scratches, and grain, could have just as easily been discovered in an old suitcase. Pas Un Autre reached out to the photographer to learn more about his inspiration and how he ultimately came to find his medium.  The reasons why he picked up a camera, as you’ll learn more in the following interview, was a touching mix of happenstance and seeking of solace during a moment of grief. Read interview and see more photos after the jump. [SEE MORE....]

In the upcoming week, more than 100 volunteers will join artist Cai Guo-Qiang to create three gunpowder drawings in preparation for his exhibition, Cai Guo Qiang: Sky Ladder, which opens on April 8 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. On Saturday, Cai and his studio set up camp at the museum to meet their volunteers and run tests of the gunpowder. Since this is the first time that Cai’s has made gunpowder drawings in Los Angeles, the artist needed to find out how the gunpowder would react to the local climate, particularly inside the galleries at the Geffen. The chemical composition, color, and shade (once it has been burned) of gunpowder vary slightly depending on the manufacturer and the region in which it is produced, and Cai wanted to know how the powders supplied by the fireworks company Pyro Spectaculars by Souza would fare.

Quality control – Enigmatic Oliver Maxwell Kupper inspecting t-shirts ready for delivery.

“What do I see in Picasso that makes him Picasso?” wondered Edward Quinn, who took a large number of pictures of the Andalusian artist. Besides Quinn, many other photographers – some of whom were great names in the history of photography – Man Ray, Brassaï, Robert Doisneau, Dora Maar, Irving Penn, Edward Quinn, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michel Sima, Richard Avedon and André Villers – also shot portraits of the famous artist, offering their own angle on his work and personality. The result is a profusion of portraits of Pablo Picasso that have become part of our collective imagery and which have contributed to building up a myth around the artist, his life and his work. MemyselfandI, Photographic Portraits of Picasso has been jointly organized by Museo Picasso Málaga and Museum Ludwig, Cologne and will be on view until May 10. After its run at MPM, it will travel to Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, where it will be on display from 2nd August to 28th October 2012.

Love Land Invaders is brought to you by the ingeniously creative minds of Cologne, Germany based artists Lagoi & Lace. Inspired by “entertainment and pop/music culture, Japanese culture, nudity and porn, fashion, design and art,” Ralph Lagoi and Kate Lace create surreal worlds with vibrant, luxuriously psychedelic palettes that contain a certain pop art poetry that is half cartoonish and half brilliantly absurd, but that collectively represents a broader philosophy of freedom, love and art. Love Land Invaders, one of their latest, wildly inventive photographic stories, was shot in Japan’s stunningly decorated love hotel rooms and includes specially designed masks, jewelry, clothing and ribbons. Even the artists themselves posed for the photographs – transforming themselves into elaborate characters with names like ”Miss Takehito Quadruple,” “Mister Hyde Dobuita Speertraeger,” “Mr. Seiuchi Sivuch,” “Shika Shika Chan” and “Miss Ayanami Oenshi” who each represent different ideals of beauty – like the the beauty of dark elegance, the beauty of a gentleman, the beauty of play, the beauty of wilderness, and the beauty of pink. Its the kind of blatant campiness that can make one overlook its originality, but if you see if for what its worth you’ll notice its extremely original artistic merit as a bold statement on the glossy, hyper-surreal, absurdity of post-modern contemporary art. It brings to mind the the balloon statues and installations of Jeff Koons and art of Murakami as larger than life statements of a philosophy that Lagoi and Lace call Luxurious Pop. See more from Love Land Invaders after the jump.  [CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE....]