JEAN COCTEAU ONCE SAID, “Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.” Bear this in mind as iconic artist and designer Stephen Sprouse—famous for his graffiti-covered garments, vampire-themed fashion shows and futuristic vision—is reintroduced to the world this week by way of a particularly flashy three-piece: Deitch Projects opens its Sprouse retrospective, Rock on Mars on Friday, the same time The Stephen Sprouse Book hits stores to coincide and Louis Vuitton releases a new collection of Sprouse-inspired handbags, sneakers and outfits to make the celebration complete. Read more Read it in print

The current exhibition at Hebrew Union College Gallery seems particularly apt for 2008. Envisioning Maps is a giddy investigation of maps and more interestingly, the underlying concept of “mappi Read more

The exhibition entitled “Synthetic Experiments” is a two-person show by Chad Curtis and Greg Stewart. It is a mixed-media show, involving some, but not much clay that purports to examine both the notions of “mutation” and “synthesis.” It’s an interesting and somewhat difficult show that requires explanation to make it all work. Read more Read it in print

You, me, the drycleaner, the banker, your little sister. We’re all doing it: phone sex. “Every kind of person calls it,” says photographer Phil Toledano. “That’s the thing that’s amazing: It’s really, really democratic on both sides of the line. People who work in it and people who call, it’s across all sorts of socio-economic boundaries.” Read more

“On Sixth Street a polar bear asked him for the time.” That’s just one of the dozens of phrases that local artist Nayda Collazo-Llorens handpicked to stream across storefront windows for Voiceover, an art project premiering at the Medianoche gallery, on Park Avenue at 102nd Street in Spanish Harlem, this weekend. The site-specific public installation explores the transience of memory and displacement of cultures and ideas through the fleeting images of text. Collazo-Llorens incorporated a diverse array of (occasionally bilingual) phrases and sentences for the project—from menu items and song lyrics to oral histories from Puerto Rico and her own handiwork—in an attempt to stir the memories of by-passers. Read more

“SELF-PORTRAIT (OCTOPUS Head)” doesn’t sound like it would be beautiful. But thanks to the beautiful, nutty work of Tokyo-born, Brooklyn-based artist Kako Ueda, a human head, grafted onto an octopus’ body and either eating or expelling a giant frog, is delicate and beautiful; it’s man and nature in tenuous harmony. In “Totem,” up through Oct. 18 at George Adams Gallery, Ueda takes the somewhat crafty art form of paper cutouts and turns it into something totally contemporary.The process is labor intensive in the extreme. She hand-draws imagery onto sheets of paper and painstakingly hand-cuts each piece into lace-like creations. Pause too long to muse over this perfection, though, and you might miss the delicious weirdness of the content. It’s the tension between pieces that look machine made and the personal, surreal content that makes the work so enchanting. Read more Read it in print

It looked like it might rain, but the kids and parents lined up at the ice cream truck to get something cold and sweet. “We have grape popsicles and bomb pops left. Red, white and blue,” Aaron Gach told the little girl who tried to hand him a dollar for the free dessert. “Now, what flavor propaganda do you want with that?” He was used to the perplexed look and pointed to the menu that listed an assortment of topics from “Know Your Rights” to “Anar Read more

It isn’t just hipsters leaving the bosom of Brooklyn for the Western wilds of San Francisco anymore. On Sept. 1., McCaig-Welles, the Williamsburg gallery known for hosting silk screening parties and boozy receptions late into the evening, opened a satellite location—dubbed McCaig-Welles Rosenthal due to a collaboration with California gallerist Michael Rosenthal—in the “city by the bay.” According to Melissa McCaig-Welles, the co-owner of the galleries who recen Read more

At first glance, you might not realize the Keith Haring mural on Houston Street at Bowery had recently been bombed. “I walk by that spot all the time, and just the other day I noticed the new paint,” commented Jed Silverman, a nearby resident. Anyone aware of the local graffiti writers or the history of the neighborhood’s art scene might recognize the style and scrawled letters of LA Rock (also known as LAII)—the signature tag of Angel Ortiz, a street artist from the L Read more

Stand amongst the Le Creuset or cop a squat near the rolling pins and KitchenAid appliances and get read to take in a bit of theater. No really. Polybe + Seats, the 5-year-old experimental theater company, is starting out the year by staging seven short plays in unconventional settings—like the Brooklyn Kitchen, a new kitchenware shop in Williamsburg. It’s all part of the 365 Days/365 Plays National Play Festival that’s been taking place across the country since November. Read more