The search, and hunger, for a “wonderland” drives us to forever press on for beauty — to build grander worlds and create alternate realities that will allow us to transcend the bounds of our humanity. Wonderland is a thing forever eschewing graspability, but always riding ahead of us – keeping us moving forward in hopes of reaching ultimate bliss. Indeed, it is this search for wonderland that powers New York-via-Israel artist Ohad Maiman’s newest body of work quixotically entitled “2 Klicks South of Wonderland/Snow White and the Teddy Bear Killers.” Depicting a romantic and hazy liminal world where teddy bears, cartoon characters, and fairy tale humans coexist in the same frame, the work materializes the tensions (and all-out wars) between the real and the chimerical in our imaginations. The photographic prints, which are mounted on wooden boxes and covered with epoxy resin, are vivid and imaginative in their juxtapositions — giving philosophical weightiness to childlike visions.  OAKAZINE visited Maiman in his Soho studio — a mystical magician’s lair meets British gentleman’s parlor — and watched as he worked on some of his pieces. “2 Klicks South of Wonderland/Snow White and the Teddy Bear Killers” is currently  showing at Stephen Webster in LA and will later be showing at Richard Young Gallery  in London and Clic Gallery in New York. Interview after the jump.

While traversing a crosswalk, most New Yorkers cast a disinterested glance at the red hand or white figure (or honking yellow cab) that indicate the appropriate and seemingly obvious modes of conduct when crossing a street. While these signs have become ubiquitous in everyday life and our comprehension of their meaning is taken for granted, a red hand hasn’t always meant “stop,” nor has a white walking figure always told us to “cross”. Such meanings were taught to us via social conventions as well as our own individual experiences. Much of Danish artist Kaser Sonne’s objective is to reveal that our understanding of these and other signs is not as tacit as we believe.

One of the artist’s most recent works, Untitled Sign No. 3, comprised of an installation at the SAPS Museum in Mexico City, made up of the brightly lit neon letters “UTOPIA,” though spelled with an inverse “P.” Confronted with such a piece, an onlooker might interpret an ironic statement about society, or perhaps even cast the same nonchalant glance given to street signs. But Sonne’s reversed letter accomplishes something much more subtle: his small manipulation of the word disrupts our understanding of its original meaning. In an attempt to perceive the meaning of the restructured word, we end up creating it anew based on our own experiences and associations. This reconfiguration, or disruption, of the text brings up another fundamental aspect of Sonne’s art: the recognition of the viewer’s own interpretation of the artwork. Sonne treats the viewer as a kind of participant by acknowledging his or her power over the interpretation of his work. He states that he always attempts to create a space between the object and its concept so that viewers can develop their understanding of the work based on their own references.

Visually, Sonne’s work is muted, unostentatious and largely monochromatic, and in this regard it bears a similarity to Minimalist art. His palate never strays far from black and white, and his sculptures are structurally simple (though deceptively so). His interest in Minimalism is illustrated as an aesthetic – and less so as a philosophy – that serves his exploration of juxtaposition and questioning. His 2009 seriesBorderline (new territory), for example, features monochrome canvases with burned holes in the center, revealing fire-curled edges and stretcher bars beneath the otherwise perfect, smooth surface. The organic nature of the burned holes contrasted with the rigid perfection of the rectangular plane presents a meditation on relationships such as chance versus construction, and perfection versus imperfection, though the viewer’s presence, or interpretation, is never ignored. There exists in each of his works a quietness that leaves space for our own thoughts and interpretations. — Text by Eugenie Dalland. Portrait by Asger Carlsen. More images and interview after the jump.

OAKAZINE caught up with rising Parisian graphic designer/comic book artist Jeremy Piningre. Interview and work after the jump — Corinne Stoll

Lee@Wilhelmina from Elizabeth Perrin on Vimeo.

Production, Casting, and Styling: Peter Berwind Humphrey

Christopher from Re:Quest from Elizabeth Perrin on Vimeo.

Production, Casting, and Styling: Peter Berwind Humphrey

Recently I left a poetry reading feeling agitated. Anxious and overeducated, the poets reading that night had tried in vain to resurrect the spirits of great dead poets instead of creating something of their own. It wasn’t the first time since moving to New York that I left a poetry reading feeling deflated– romanticizing about times past when poets were the outlaw prophets and Rimbaudian punk rockers who ran around downtown New York fizzing over with verse, transfixing everyone in their paths. A time when poetry was composed around the wild, meandering rhythms of the counterculture: stanzas found in impetuous road trips and meter heard as whispers through the walls of darkened motel rooms. When I happened upon the work of Jem Goulding (whose poetry also finds form as experimental cinepoems and photographs) I was thrilled to discover a poet canonizing the spirit of the young, unbridled, and passionate so rawly. “I want to do poetry for the now, make it hot again” Goulding recently divulged over dinner in Williamsburg, her fiery green eyes widened for emphasis. “If this level of intimacy is what it’s going to take to break through the stereotype, then fuck it.” It struck me there and then that not only was I perched opposite a poetry pioneer but, more importantly, I had just discovered poetry’s new sex symbol.

A world-traveller with a free, Laurel Canyon spirit despite her British roots, Goulding’s work is a celebration of post-digital bohemian life, love, and art. In the tradition of female artists like Lenore Kandel, Barbara Rubin, Bette Gordon, Nan Goldin, and Patti Smith, Goulding counterbalances the traditional spectatorial male gaze with an equally powerful feminine one. But feminine agency is just a small piece of Goulding’s ammo,  her true originality laying in her brazen analog meditations on male beauty and sexuality that do not set out to emasculate or dissect. Her photographs and poems about paramours in paradise and surfer boys with angel faces and Mick Jagger haircuts celebrate her subjects as equals. While Goulding’s devotion to analog and warm 60s light resurrects the spirit of a time when poetry flowed more freely, her perspective — powered by an unwavering sense of sexuality parity – is clearly one of the 2010s

Goulding has already made waves in London with her experimental 16 mm cinepoem( based on a written poem of the same name) entitled“The Bone Echo.” Starring British super-muses Alice Dellal, Eliza Cummings, and Josh Beech, “The Bone Echo” features an original soundtrack by The Disappears and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, recorded live in Sonic Youth’s Echo Canyon studio.“The Bone Echo” is a visually stunning paean to  animalistic love; an eroticly charged, darkly magical statement that effectively gives poetry back to the wild-hearted. Goulding’s sentiments — unlike many contemporary poets – aren’t couched in esoteric language or pardoxical allusion in order to remain inaccessable. Instead Goulding treats poetry as a glass vessel in which to pour  truth; as an art form that everyone can and should understand and appreciate once again. After the jump Goulding tells OAKAZINE just who she is and what she’s about. — Text by Marlo Kronberg.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Bone Echo
by Jem Goulding © 2008

How long will you ride other wordly
Night mover, day breaker
While we suffer in muted agony
At your addiction to deceit

Breeding with magic
You are intoxicated with allure still scandalous
Drenched in tainted oblivion, entranced in desire for new fools and old flames
That let the hard heat pour through cigarette smoke
Blinding to you to confessions of our waking
Rhapsody of shadows from within swaying your metaphysical fate

Lawless lover, find atedote in my venom,
Come to core of the more of yourself, and there you’ll see me
In indigo mood and velvet tears
With wet leather skin, metallic to touch that arches and turns
Barbed mouth with seductive poison penetrating your sight like liquid

When danger is habitual, there are no warnings of it
Be ready when the moon is out sweet and hot hound who moans deep and cries for morning Chanting howls of a woman in love as she shakes her sweat free
And licks at your back etched with four satin claws, dripping lips and silver scissor teeth

Your mirror is now blood rusted, and when next you gaze against it We’ll fuck with hatred double and the cold hard stillness will reveal what our heart really is When your mouth is black and your body lays in the dirt Your eyes will not shut from our faces for now all you see is darkness Our impervious darkness.

City

by Jem Goulding © 2011

This place is void of love.
After the city lights there is only death of dreams.
Dark beings unable to see their own suffering
for they are clouded by a monotonous hum,
the sound of black desperation
The grave dance of lost and lonely clones,
the fickle kings and queens, bloodsucking fakes and the numb fuck wits
who tell you the city softens with time…
But it doesn’t
Only does your sight
With which you used to see the city lights.

Window Pain
by Jem Goulding © 2010

I drew the blinds on June
When they told me you were in the park
With Another.

Tempted to hide beneath the ledge
And spy out the swings in dark glasses
I hibernated instead
As the pavement sweat outside
In the heat wave
I played records inside
Danced with bare feet and water in my eyes
Drew the blinds on June
And July too
Made the room black
Damp with stagnant rejection
Until the plant on my mantle
With it single blue flower
Turned white and wilted
So with guilty anxiety
But a dutiful sigh
I opened the blinds to flood the air
With sunlight
Saved the lasting petals
And healed them to a long lost beauty
Not unfamiliar
Though shyer than before.

But seeing the bright blossom return
Mistaking her revival for strength
Tempted by colour
And a nostalgic scent
You knocked on my door again

And I let you back in.

If one stands in a shadowy spot
And allows tiny slices of light through the blinds
You see each glistening dot of dust
Fall lazily to the floor.
I did this lots in August
Watched the dancing dirt turn gold in the sunshine

The sun can do that to bad things
Make them seem pure.

The dust danced and I waited for you to come
Before supper like you promised
But perched by my window
Through the dusky panes
I saw you picnic
With another
So I drew the blinds on August
And wept.

Now it’s late November
And even though the cold air bites
I will open
Not only the blinds
But my window too
Perhaps Winter is as lonely for you
As Summer was for me
And I can watch you weep and wilt
Like my poor house plant did
For you.

Self-described “jackee of all trades” Alexis Blair Penney has a voice like an angel, makes music like Crystal Waters, and has a wicked sense of style that’s a mix of Eurythmics-era Annie Lennox, louche ‘n loafered 80s California prep, and 1997 Gwen Stefani. A San Francisco local celebrity known for his weekly anything-goes “High Fantasy” party at drag bar Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, Penney has recently been garnering buzz outside of SF city limits for insanely catchy house tracks culled directly from the CeCe Peniston/Crystal Waters/Kathy Dennis school of dance floor sassitude. Although Penney is more than au fait with the art of debauchery (just follow his Twitter), it’s clear that underneath that Patrick Nagel girl makeup is a softer, more contemplative side; to wit, Penney cites simple pleasures, yoga, and plants as inspirations.  OAKAZINE caught up with Penney when he played PS1 with SSION in New York — getting so attached that we followed him all the way back to San Francisco where he gave us a tour of his hood. After the jump we discuss a typical day in the life, 90s house, and showbiz. — Photos: Ken Baldwin, Editor: Peter Berwind Humphrey

What’s your name, where are you from, and what do you do?

Alexis Blair Penney, from San Francisco, CA, I’m a singer/performer/dj/promoter/personality/weirdo.

Where did you grow up?

Lenexa, Kansas. A suburb of Kansas City.

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I always wanted to be a secretary, prostitute or stripper. None of those things turned out to be as glamorous as they seemed to me when I was a baby gay. I always harbored dreams of pop stardom, too.

When did you first start performing?

My parents are musicians, so I had various stints singing at church and I did a lot of puppeteering for my mom and her best friend’s kids music review (Joan and Sue’s Excellent Adventure!). We would literally write and rehearse the show the night before we would perform it, and just wing the rest. My mom would always say, “That’s show business!” totally un-ironically. I was pretty indifferent to it then, but now I can basically walk on stage and do about anything and feel totally comfortable no matter how prepared I am…which is a double-edged sword of sorts but I think it’s good. Thanks Mom. This was like age 10 and on.

What do you like best about San Francisco?

The drag queens, the DJs, and the fact that everyone is gay.

What’s a typical day in the life of Alexis Blair Penney?

Lounge in bed, listen to music (all day, every day, I hate silence), cook myself a huge meal, type on the computer, talk on the phone, look out the window, day dream. I’m pretty simple.

What’s a typical night in the life of Alexis Blair Penney?

Take forever putting on a face and trying on a million outfits then either walking to the club or hopping in a Homobile (all gay cab service in the Bay Area, you get em by text message, so chic), grab a tequila sunrise, and find a corner to hold court in, or sit at the bar and watch a drag show or text and enjoy the music, and dance a little if I’m feeling crazy. I’m always closing down the club, I never wanna miss anything.

Tell us a bit about what “High Fantasy” is.

It’s an anything-goes, all-in, everyone welcome party. It’s basically everything me and Myles (my co-promoter) love rolled into one: house music, drag, dressing up, cheap/strong drinks, gay seniors, weird 90s movies and dancing, with a vague fantasy and spiritual element to the decor. Lots of fake flowers, metallic silks and white tulle. It’s a magical space that will become anything you want it to be.

If you had to wear the same outfit, everyday, for the rest of your life what would it be?

Flowy slacks, a bra, a blazer, a rosarie on my wrist, a bindi and some pumps.

What’s your beverage of choice?

White zinfandel or a tequila sunrise.

Drug of choice?

Mushrooms.

Designer of choice?

Gaultier for Madonna’s Blonde Ambition Tour.

Fashion icon of choice?

Grace Jones or Annie Lennox.

Performer of choice?

Madonna.

Define sexy.

Someone who’s confident, humble, intelligent, well-spoken, natural, kind, adaptable and sells flaws as assets.

Describe yourself in five words.

Thinker, survivor, cloud, force, song.

Who’s your favorite person in the world? Why?

I guess myself?! Because I can always rely on myself no matter what happens.

We’re giving you a dinner party and you can invite any five people dead or alive. You can serve them anything in the world — we’ll make it happen. Who  would you invite and what would you serve them? Who do you think will end up making out?

I would have a crazy, drug and wine induced threesome with Elvis Presley and Scott Walker while Stevie Nicks, Courtney Love and Marianne Faithful ate a sumptous feast, drank, watched, and laughed at us.

Describe the Alexis Blair Penney mystique in a sentence.

Run to the truth, not from it.

Freeform list of inspirations.

Music, sunsets, Madonna, ballads, lounge singers, drag queens, 90s looks, hysterical glamour, women who take what they want from life, yoga, simple pleasures, religious icons, plants, personal pride.

Top five favorite artists of any medium.

Madonna, Yoko Ono, I wrote down Andy Warhol but then crossed him out and put Valerie Solanas, Ella Fitzgerald, Cody Critcheloe.

La Bouche, Crystal Waters, or Cece Peniston?

Crystal Waters.

What’s next?

I’m planning to record my first full-length record, get in really good shape, maybe write something more substantial than a blog and keep living my beautiful life and enjoying every moment.

Make up your own question and answer it.

Q: Why do you do what you do? A: Why not?

The marriage of fashion and photography seems ubiquitous in our era of street style blogs, personal style websites and digital fashion publications. What had existed as two separate spheres of society has now become an essential component of both industries. When Deborah Turbeville began shooting images after working as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar and Mademoiselle, neither journalism nor art nor fashion knew just quite what to do with her. At age twenty she was working for designer Claire McCardell, quickly advancing to the mastheads of the best publications of her time. It was only after seminars with Richard Avedon and Marvin Israel that she leapt into the world of photography that encompassed everything she knew– fashion, people and the transformative power of light.

Deborah Turbeville continues to produce work even as the genre she pioneered has become profoundly saturated. In 2002, she traveled to the Baltic School of Photography to fulfill a Fulbright grant teaching a seminar on her craft. She later taught at St. Petersburg’s Smolney institute and completed her book, Past Imperfect. A reflection on  her body of work from 1974 to the late 1990′s, Turbeville gave the world a brief look into her inspiration and rich history. Unknown models peer out from fashion shoot outtakes, strangers in European cities look out and past the camera, and vignettes show clearly that light and intensity are the soul of her work. Even as fashion photographers become a dime a dozen and anyone with a point-and-shoot can throw together a photo spread, Turbeville remains an important figure in the craft she pioneered. She now divides her time between New York, St. Petersburg and Mexico; showing in galleries and being published often in L’uomo Vogue, Casa Vogue and Italian Vogue. — Text by Kelsey Kreiling

Filled with the youthful exuberance of a child king and the austerity of a man born to lead, Christian Deslauriers has become a bright star in the world of menswear design. This Montreal native has built a reputation on dark variations of menswear staples- evoking the idea of both a young man in grown man’s clothes and an older man reaching for youth. As a designer, he values wit and eloquence above all which perfectly explains his knitwear, his graphic prints, his jumpsuits and his undersized hats. His path to Christian L’enfant Roi was swift- after completing his fashion design degree at College LaSalle, he joined the Andy the Ahn team. He eventually became the second in command to one of Canada’s foremost womenswear designers and, after refining his skills, launched his own collection in October 2010. We spoke to Deslauriers about his future travels, his best advice and just what it was like being born on the first star to the left.

Read our full interview with Christian Deslauriers after the jump. -Kelsey Kreiling