Like an arty upscale porn magazine, a new exhibition of experimental photos challenges “the proliferation of glossy, overemphatic, staged images.” Tomorrow night, “Palomar: Experimental Photography” opens at Marvelli Gallery in Chelsea, featuring artist investigations into atypical photo techniques that sometimes challenge the definition of photography altogether. The group show opens tomorrow from 6 to 8 PM and is on view through June 27 at 526 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor. Click the images above for a preview of the experimental work.

Although best known for erotic voyeuristic shots of the barely legal set, a new show offers a more complete picture of the sometimes dark and shocking photography of artist Richard Kern. Next week, RENTAL gallery on the Lower East Side opens “Richard Kern: Photos 1980-1999,” a retrospective of his photographic work. The new exhibition opens June 4th from 7 to 9 PM and is on view through July 5th at 120 East Broadway, 6th Floor. Click the images above for a not safe for work preview or see Kern’s monthly shoots for Vice.

Dubbed the “largest American and European street art exhibition in New York,” local graffiti legends from the 70s and 80s will join European street artists of this century for the opening of “Whole In The Wall: 1970 – Now.” Curated by Parisian gallery owners Chantal and Brigitte Helenbeck, the more than 150 artworks, from artists such as BLADE, Lee Quinones, CRASH, DAZE, JONONE, Rammellzee, Blek le Rat, Banksy, and Jamel Shabazz, will be juxtaposed against a collection of centuries old French furniture and antiques. The exhibition opens tonight from 9 to midnight in the former Splashlight Studios at 529-535 West 35th Street, and is on view through June 27th. Additional video previews after the jump. Read more »

Watch What Women Want or Roger Dodger or Mad Men or ask any Manhattan shrink, and you’ll learn that most ad people are empty souls who hate everything and love nothing (you think copyranter’s an ACT?). Children? Oh yeah, we fucking HATE kids. What fills us with ersatz happiness? Manipulating reality, via wordplay and retouching. And working on anti-child abuse advertising inspires us to come up with some of our most inventive visual tricks. Like glow-in-the-dark pedophilia and verbal strangulation and sexual branding and street mannequin suffocation. This time, via DDB Poland, it’s some macabre flesh + porcelain creations to promote the Nobody’s Children Foundation (the campaign’s retoucher explains the process behind the finished shots). Pretty strong imagery. Will the ads help to stop Polish parents from beating their children? Probably not! They look slick in portfolios, though. |Images: adsoftheworld|

Times Square has always been a photogenic place, but more so now with its newly car-free blocks, the ones Andrea Peyser feels irrationally ranty about. Photographer Jook Leung shot several 360-degree panoramas of the pro-pedestrian project: atop the TKTS booth in Duffy Square and further south at 45th and 43rd Street. Click the images above for a preview but make sure to get the big picture of the new Times Square.