Shirt, Thomsen. Shorts, Sarah Wayne. Necklace and ring, Les Nereides. Wedges, Asos. Photography by Andrea Pola Styling by Marie Dehe Hair and makeup: Sess for Mademoiselle MU Model: Angelique Brochery Dress, Ysterike. Sunglasses, Persol. Click "Read More" for additional images. Left: Top, Toupy. Skirt, Manoush. Right: Dress, Ysterike. Scarf Epice. Socks, H&M. Shoes, C. Petula.

Tom Sachs' new installation Space Program: Mars, opened last week at the Park Avenue Armory. Sachs has filled the entire 55,000 square foot hall with sculptures that transport you on a mission to outer space. The sculptures are all life size, ranging from a Hasselblad camera (made out of a Canon, painted white) to a giant replica of the spacecraft that landed on Mars. It's a mind-blowing, ambitious and exciting show. Space Program: Mars is on view at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., NYC, through June 17.  

Jane is sucking on her bottom lip. She does this when she is concentrating or afraid. When Jane was 8 her father fell off a cliff when he was hiking with her mother. He reached down for his water canister, slipped under the stiff afternoon sun. Jane has been scared of heights and the dry stare of scarecrows ever since. The ferris wheel was my idea. Sitting in the lap of a fresh cut moon, our knees graze and my bones firework. Jane of the lemonade sweat, the bicycle eyes, the pear shampoo that turns me harlequin skinned. Our mothers say we are too young for bras. I see Jane’s nipples through her shirt and feel a fuse flicker in the deep sea of my stomach. A small fish swimming fast. A warm, wet fish breathing blood through the gills, growing a hot flood in my gut. Our chair sways, rocking us to and fro. The tiny feet of Jane’s breath skip over me like a stone on water. I want to make a scarf out of her sighs, wear it like a noose. Jane’s knuckles whiten over the metal bar. I place my hand over hers. Her wrists are so small, they are smaller than the stars spilling silver on our faces and I am a full cup of truth, trembling. * Heights make me thirsty. I think of the stilted man in the giraffe mask, if he is ever scared of falling. The sound of stilts in soil much like the thud of wet firewood, the spit of splinters and tear of grass a lot louder underground. If he were to fall I would not hear it, trapped in the microwave music of the ferris wheel, spinning slowly. The chair in front of us holds two lovers. She wraps herself around him like a glossy snake. She has been found by something that has not yet found me. He can smell it in her, it lives in the crease of her neck, that secret cave where he goes. I imagine I am an island, waiting to be discovered. He will be the one to explore me, sinking his fingers into my sand, turning my rocks over gently, claiming I am his. We are at the highest point now, in line with the spine of the sky, dangling like a bright gem from night’s black neck. My ankles hang over a mess of rainbow machinery, of sticky fists and electric laughter. I am too close to the edge. There is a desert in my throat, a cactus crying. Violet puts her hand on mine and I watch the couple in front. One day soon, I will drop from these metal branches and burst.

On May 4, a series of books by the Italian photographer Jacopo Benassi were showcased at The Milan Image Art Fair. Among the featured work were the set of photos, The Ecology of Image, and two collaborative works with Kubiat Nnamdie and Pete Voelker titled LaSpezia is Not Miami/ Miami is not LaSpezia and LaSpezia is not New York/ New York is not LaSpezia. Though he might be relatively unknown outside his home country, this was not Benassi’s first large-scale acknowledgment. The self-publisher of his own books, Benassi’s works seem to emerge from some place raw and pulpy, still pulsing and bloody, often literally: a girl covers herself in layers of meat, pigs roll in mud, Benassi is naked save for a well-placed mini-coffin, fingers are bloodied, beautiful flowers are so enormous and pink they look like grotesque body parts. Photographers themselves, like Olivier Zahm and Terry Richardson, are some of his most illustrative subjects; it’s a testament to Benassi’s spirit that two purveyors of salacity become subdued in front of his lens. Benassi is good at exposing the lurid, better at vulnerably revealing himself. Jose El Rey by Kubiat Nnamdie LaSpezia is not Miami/ Miami is not LaSpeziais Benassi's first proper collaborative effort. One side of the small, zine-like book is his, the other side is Nnamdie’s. While Nnamdie’s work displays a certain nuanced distance, it is all distilled with the same gritty quality as Benassi’s. Nnamdie is more the voyeur of his scenes, less the maker. Using geography as a lens through which to frame the projects and as a bridge between the artists, they're building a sort of fragmented relationship between each subject. Monica Uszerowicz: How was this project born? LaSpezia is not New York is the first collaboration you've done. Why did you choose to work with others? Jacopo Benassi: This project arose from an idea I had with my friend, Warbear, for a gay film festival. He invented the name "La Spezia is not Los Angeles." Fantastic! This festival has not yet been done, and I asked him permission to use the slogan for my zines. This work's concept is based on a “split,” with the same mood of old punk bands who recorded tapes and discs with an A side of one band and a B side of another. My idea is the same, but with photos. Untitled Image by Jacopo Benassi Monica: How did you select your collaborators, and how did you pick the images? I saw the preview for the book you did with Kubiat and although there are many aesthetic similarities, they’re really distinguished from each other. Jacopo: Kubiat was incredible. We understood the other immediately and I wished to continue this partnership with him. He presented me with Pete, with whom I made LaSpezia is not New York. In my work, I hadn't used photos of my city itself, because a city is just a place where a person lives—not the person itself. And this is the concept I want to expose. I love Kubiat and Pete because they shoot with the same mood you have when you fuck. You have erections naturally, and naturally they make their work. Monica: Kubiat, what kind of moments—visually speaking, of course—ended up in the book? Kubiat Nnamdie: There are funny ones, like my first muse and dear friend, Amanda Wagner, being kissed by a young man yearning for her, and wild nights with my last muse, Jozie Gonzalez, around Miami. And there are very emotional and spiritual moments that give birth to photos like the cow head, taken at my dad's funeral. Efrain Blue by Kubiat Nnamdie Monica: Is it important that the photos you picked represented Miami, since the book's title alludes to it? Or were other ideas being represented? Kubiat: No, I try to not control that. Some works can point directly to Miami, to me as a person who grew up in Miami, or to both. The book's title is also a celebration of both cities. Monica: The concept of place and landscape is a really weighty one. I like the idea of visually comparing two places. When you see photographs of a particular environment, it becomes an idea, something both imagined and real, and it makes me wonder how the photographer saw it. Jacopo: I'm not able to see a place—I try to live it at its best! I can't shoot in a place I have just started to live. I always try to restrict these spaces to just a few photos. In all these years, I have learned to renounce something, in any case, so I can look at my job clearly. Beheading of a King 1 by Kubiat Nnamdie Monica: Then how do you feel about your respective hometowns? How would you describe your relationships with them? Jacopo: I have a love-hate relationship with my city. But I love my city even more than before, especially after having lived in Milan, where I sometimes go for work. I've got a club here in La Spezia with some dear friends of mine: I organize events that I later document and record for my book and CD productions. The name of the club is Btomic, and it’s where I house my AntiBtomic self-publishing label. Kubiat: I have very warm feelings for Miami, even though I also grew up in Houston, Texas. I love Miami, but naturally I feel people need to hit the refresh button on the place they love. I think Miami is refreshing itself. Monica: Jacopo, you titled the books La Spezia is NOT Miami, NOT New York. What are their connections to and differences between each other? You are also using the images to connect people, not just places. Untitled Images by Jacopo Benassi Jacopo: I'm not interested in differences. [The pictures] are not social research about the environment—it's about humanity. When someone looks at The Ecology of Image, they usually ask me how many places I traveled to have accumulated so many photos. I answer "between La Spezia and Milan," and they remain perplexed. Pete, Kubiat, and I work in the same metaphorical landscape. This is what unites us. Monica: Tell me what else you are working on for the future. Jacopo: I feel sick if I think about my future. The future is now. I don't want to go ahead. From left to right Amanda and Luis by Kubiat Nnamdie Top Image: Untitled Images by Jacopo Benassi

New York City based photographer, painter, and videographer Marilyn Minter began her art career in 1989 with an unflinching series of paintings based on still images from hardcore pornography. Since then, the artist's work has evolved through various mediums, while still examining the presentation of sexuality within the confines of fashion, art, and media. Despite, or perhaps because of, her no-nonsense approach to often delicate subject matters, Minter's work seems to effortlessly draw commercial appeal. Her art has been a feature in the Whitney Biennial, her videos have been displayed in Times Square, and her images have graced Supreme skateboard decks. I sat down with Marilyn at the opening of a show at Freeman's to discuss the sexualization of her work as a female artist, her political leanings, and how she feels about the process of becoming successful. Sway Benns: I don’t want to delve too far back in your previous work but I’ve noticed something that comes up a lot when people look at your work with women - they immediately start discussing the sexualization of it. However, when faced with similar paintings that you’ve done of men, there’s rarely any mention of sex. Marilyn Minter: Isn’t that interesting? Sway: It seems to say something about the audience... Marilyn: It’s always been that way. When I did the food porn and I had a hundred paintings of hands taking food apart, I’d say at least a third of them were male hands. No one wrote anything, ever, except about women with long nails. Those images were from cookbooks. Half of the chefs were men, maybe more. I think that was so telling. And if a woman does anything at all sexual - I made those hardcore porn paintings twenty years ago, but everything I do is sexual. I could paint an apple and it’s “Marilyn, the erotic artist.” Sway: Well, even in popular culture, male nudity is typically a joke, but female nudity is sexualized. Marilyn: Yeah. Well everyone likes to look at young flesh. Girls and boys do. I remember the first time I saw a man photographed the way they shoot women. It was in Thelma and Louise, the way Ridley Scott shot Brad Pitt. And I thought “Oh, wow, it’s finally happening.” But of course anyone would do that with Brad Pitt. Sway: A lot of contemporary art is less process based, less detailed, less pretty. As an artist that is known for having a hyper-realistic, visually appealing style, how do you feel about that in general? Marilyn: Well, it’s a movement. The people that are really good, are also aesthetically pleasing with the back story, A really means B and I think the best of those artists are fantastic, but I think the eye starts to crave the opposite after being inundated with... I’ve seen shows that are so academic that it’s stunning. So there’s bound to be a huge backlash. I’m a teacher so all the practices are equal to me. I always look for the best of that practice. But that has been ubiquitous in the past five, ten years. But I don’t know, I think that that’s over. Sway: Yeah? Marilyn: Yeah, we’re already starting to see the backlash. People are writing about “Oh God, not that again.” Marilyn Minter, Meltdown, 2011. Sway: I’ve started to notice that too, outside of art criticism, even in casual conversation people mention they’re tired of it and how they want it to be.... Marilyn: Juicy! There’s something about, you can almost guarantee when it becomes the academy--like it is now, that there will be people in art school, where their entire job is to make the opposite. I tell my students that are doing abstract painting, “Keep doing this because when it turns around you’ll be good at it.” And up until now they would have stopped and started making work about identity. [laughs] Sway: That seems to be the narrative to your success. Because it took you a long time to become.... Marilyn: Famous? You know it’s not like I was never making something interesting. I think what happened was I wasn’t communicating it. The same paintings that no one was interested in - or liked - look pretty good to people now. Sway:What do you think changed? Marilyn: When you’re in it you don’t know exactly what’s going on. I always thought I had something to say when I was told I didn’t. And now everyone tells me I’m the bomb and I don’t believe that. I’m trying to stay right sized about it all. When everyone wants the paintings as opposed to when I couldn’t give them away. Those experiences are anti- the creative process. You can’t believe either one. Somehow you have to put your pith helmet on and just forge through. You have to be a little delusional, when no one’s paying any attention to you. I read Steve Jobs said that you have to have passion. I guess that sounds like I’m comparing myself to Steve Jobs, but I think that to be an artist and to talk about the times you’re living in, if people object to what you’re doing--on moral grounds--then you probably have something interesting to say. Sway: I think there’s something to be said about people who keep working through failure. Marilyn: Oh yeah, I’ve been a failure, or mediocre, through most of my life. Sway: When you look at most people who come out through the other side that have had long stretches of failure... Marilyn: It’s probably a good cliché. I learned a long time ago, probably in college, never to write anybody off. I remember when Richard Prince said “painting is bankrupt.” [laughs] Those things come back to haunt you. Sway: A lot of your work really translates to pop culture now. Marilyn: I’ve always been interested in the times I live in. Movies, I’m fanatical about seeing. They inform me about everything, they tell me how people are seeing. I probably see three or four a week. I love this movie Bellflower. It was really well done, absolutely nothing I could have predicted. Marilyn Minter, Glisterine, 2011. Sway: There’s a lot going on politically in New York, particularly with the protests. To me it seems like more of a European endeavor. Marilyn: We'll see, I can’t say that because I’ve been in so many protests in my life. Sway: I think it’s from my generation’s perspective. Marilyn: Yeah, it’s your generation. Civil Rights, Act Out. I was one of the people that went through the system, followed people that got arrested through the system to make sure they got out alright. I’ve been doing this my whole life. I went to the one the other night, but now I feel like “Nah, it’s your turn.” [laughs] Just go do it, even if you are going to get arrested. It’s so exciting, it’s like getting high! Sway: All of that is typically so far removed from my generation, I’m so used to the apathy, it seems surreal. Marilyn: Well, it’s about fucking time! Before Occupy Wall Street I was so horrified by people like Eric Cantor and the Tea Party, and the job creators not being taxed. Nobody was saying anything about it. I literally said I was going to be an ostrich, I got so crazy. I felt so powerless. New York is not the rest of this country, it’s its own country. I have relatives from the south. The worst policy Barack Obama ever had is the fact that he’s black, but the Tea Party is so sophisticated they call it “everything else.” I want the protests to get bigger and bigger, and stay totally nonviolent. I hope the Democratic Party doesn’t co-op it either. I think it has to be an independent, non-violent thing. Because that’s where people are going to start listening. Sway: I’m not sure that people even felt that anything was wrong. Marilyn: It’s stunning to me. I just hope that it doesn’t become - because every movement that I’ve been in, sociopaths begin to take over. So that’s the one thing... Sway: The charismatic leader? I think apathy is the reason why we don’t have as strong of a visual culture as other generations have, but maybe every generation feels that way. Marilyn: It’s pluralism. It’s a cliché but you can guarantee what the next art movement is going to be: the exact opposite of the current movement. It’s best to be outside of the movement all together. They used to last hundreds of years, now they last 15 months. Sway: It might have something to do with technology, shorter attention spans. Marilyn: Well your generation is so much smarter, they have to be. They have so much access to information. I’m enjoying it. I played video games so I’d never be afraid of technology. I just go in and start pushing buttons. I haven’t read a manual in years. Sway: When I hear criticism of your work it’s often about it being ‘glamorous’. Where do you think that comes from? Marilyn: Well, I understand it. I work with really abject subject matter; fashion, glamour, pornography. These are things that people just despise and they’re shallow and vapid and easy. But the reality is, if it wasn’t for pornography there would be no internet. Fashion is a multi-million dollar industry and it tells you what tribe you’re from. People want to think it’s so insignificant but if you do think that you’re lying to yourself, it’s ludicrous. Academia has a hard time with my work because of the so-called superficiality of it, but that’s self hatred right there! Because you’re dressed in head to toe Prada. [laughs] I watch people with such suspicious projects going; they’re so vapid, but they’re about how A really means B, and they get so much praise because you can write about it. But visually it’s so non-compelling, I see that and I think it’s some level of self hatred just engaging them, somehow you have to not eat, and works just about ideas and not visuals because that’s more important than something about pleasure. If it looks too good it’s suspicious. Sway: Wel,l when you think about it, the sole reason we exist on earth is to procreate. Sex... Marilyn: Rules the world. Sway: But I think as a culture we work to deny that in favor of intellectualism. Marilyn: I know! It’s a joke. I just laugh at it. If that’s my only criticism, please, bring it on! I’ve seen curators hide their Italian Vogues and put out their Octobers. It’s ridiculous how people lie to themselves, all they do is see glamorous images all day long, and it gives you an enormous amount of pleasure, and it’s also going to make you feel like shit because you’re never going to look like that. Marilyn Minter, Cheshire, 2011. Sway: This work sort of touches on that. They’re babies, and the material is this precious metal, this gold, silver, and they take so much pleasure in playing with it. It seems to hint at it being ingrained. Marilyn: Yeah, it’s great because when does it start? They’re blank slates. Sway: A lot of your images use Photoshop, cutting from various photographs. Marilyn: Only in the paintings, all of the photos are analog. I still use film. I use film because I get so much detail. I’m totally anti-Photoshop. I don’t use it. Even when I do commercial work. And I don’t use blonde haired, blue eyed models. These are all mixed raced models. I’m on a mission! Photoshop has become so ridiculous. I don’t even recognize the people on the cover of Vogue anymore. There’s no pores on the skin. I’ve actually had fights - I did editorial for Allure - and I wouldn’t let them Photoshop me. They took it all the way to the photo editor. I wouldn’t let them straighten the teeth, take the fur off the upper lip... I said, “ Why did you ask me to do this project if you’re going to Photoshop it?” No, I’m totally anti-Photoshop... I was just thinking though... When people take my picture I still think, “Could you take this wrinkle out?” [laughs] No, you know I just decided this is how you get old; Don’t get fat, get a good haircut. That’s it. Do not do anything to your face. I grew up in Miami. They didn’t have body surgery then, but it was de rigueur for older men to have young girlfriends. And that was really warped for me. Well... my father [laughs] when I was eighteen my father had a sixteen-year-old girlfriend. And his friends had twenty year old girlfriends. You know, I thought it was normal until I moved up north. Miami was really - I mean this is when it was flip flops and t-shirts and there was nothing cool about it. It warped me terribly. Sway: I know you have a team of assistants that help with your paintings, I’ve noticed that is a source of criticism in art, but not necessarily in fashion, architecture, etc. Marilyn: People get weird about it in art because they’re stupid. All of us do it. They just don’t see women do it. Jeff Koons does it. Murakami does it. Sway: Damien Hirst. Marilyn: I’m the only woman that does it. Yeah, Richard Serra is really going to bend that metal... I mean what am I going to do? I invented this technique, I did it all alone for a few years and then I got another person to do it, and then I hired someone else and she was better than both of us, so what am I suppose to do fire her? [laughs] I made a system. It’s my vision. And I’m making videos and I’m shooting photos. I still paint. I’m just not a finisher anymore, I don’t have time. It’s just stupid. I’ve never heard anyone sophisticated use that argument, it’s only people that don’t know any better. They believe the myth of the artist working alone in the studio and can’t even use a projector. That somehow more heroic! To draw it out by hand. Sway: I read about some of the materials you use in the actual photographs and videos... Marilyn: All of the stuff... vodka and cake decoration. Except for the work with baby, I used non-toxic paint with the babies. The cake decoration suspends in vodka, it cakes up in water. A make-up artist taught me that. Sway: That’s a great choice for material. Marilyn: Yeah, that’s the only way you can do it. So everyone is playing in this goo, kicking it up. Marilyn Minter will be featured in The Riotous Baroque at the Kunsthalle in Zurich opening on May 31, which will travel to Bilbao next February. Marilyn's next solo show will open the new Regen Projects space in Los Angeles next Spring. All images courtesy of the artist.

Born and raised in New York, Jeffrey Lewis leads a double-life, as both an illustrator and a singer songwriter. Both his music and comics are permeated by earnest storytelling and often self-depreciating confessions of his many adventures in the world, from heartbreaks to homeless nights on tour. In his self-published comic book series “Fuff” he constantly tries to fall backwards to see if the world will catch him. And so far it did. With a small but devoted audience, he’s been making a profitable career with his music and art by managing most of his business himself, from booking tours to making his own merchandise. With a shy smile and a shaky voice, he welcomed me to his apartment in the East Village, a little palace of musical and literary treasures where you can glimpse the intriguing puzzle of his creative mind. His work is so self-explanatory that it seemed pointless to ask him about his songs or comics. So we talked about adventures, how art can change the world, the occupy movement and finally dug into some of his personal gems. Meet Jeffrey, the “cult boyfriend” – “lonely or worshipped for a lady in the know”. Written, filmed. edited and sound by Barbara Anastacio