The Best Art Exhibitions to See This Month

Perhaps it's time for those on the East Coast to fly out to California, where a handful of galleries are opening a ton of dope exhibitions.

At Steve Turner Contemporary, for instance, Internet artist Yung Jake has taken a departure from video art and turned to sculpture-making. For his current show "New," he has transformed pop-up ads and familiar websites such as YouTube into physical installations made from scrap metal. In San Francisco, where there's no shortage of talent, POW WOW! Hawaii director Kamea Hadar and artist Defer will soon be exhibiting their Hawaii-inspired take on John Milton's Paradise Lost at 1AM Gallery.

While the majority of shows on this month's must-see list are in California, we've also included some incredible shows happening in New York, Switzerland, Japan, and beyond. Here are The Best Art Exhibitions to See This Month (August 2014).

Location: Steve Turner Contemporary, 6026 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90036

Dates: July 12 - Aug. 23, 2014

People spend a majority of their time online, so much that websites and virtual tools feel more like household goods than digital entities. For his latest solo exhibition, “New,” Yung Jake merged the Internet and the real world. The Los Angeles-based artist took websites and web pages, such as YouTube, VEVO, and pop-up ads, and turned them into tangible sculptures made from scrap metal. The show is a commentary on how the public aspect of the web has crossed over into our private lives.

Location: Hasted Kraeutler, 537 West 24th Street, New York 10011

Dates: Jun 19 - Aug. 15, 2014

The press release for Awol Erizku's new show calls him a “cultural collagist.” It's a fitting title, since he’s the king of merging the highbrow tastes of the elite art world with the imagery and energy from the streets of New York. Erizku scours his daily surroundings for discarded items, turning used records and trash bags filled with recycled soda cans into his own works of art. His installation Oh, what a feeling, fuck it, I want a Billion (which also gets its title from Jay Z's “Picasso Baby”), for instance, consists simply of stacked basketball hoops, yet it resembles something Marcel Duchamp might have made.

Location: SOZE Gallery, 935 N. Fairfax Ave. West Hollywood, Calif. 90046
Dates: July 19 - Aug. 19, 2014

SOZE Gallery, which previously only had one location in downtown Los Angeles, recently opened up a new space in West Hollywood. To kick off the opening, SOZE Gallery invited acclaimed artist Remi Rough to return to LA for a solo exhibition entitled “Remi Rough: Future Adventures in Abstraction.” It's an appropriate move on the venue's part because SOZE Gallery has been representing Remi Rough since the original space first opened three years ago. The latest show sees 50 new abstract works by the UK-based “post-graffiti” painter. The artist's canvases consist of geometric shapes, lines, and bold colors that clash against one another in dynamic compositions.

Location: Howard Griffin Gallery, 189 Shoreditch High St., London, E1 6HU
Dates: July 17 - Aug. 17, 2014

You might shed a tear when you hear John Dolan's moving story. For years, the UK-based artist was homeless and frequently landed himself in prison. It wasn't until Dolan met George the dog that he turned his life around. With George by his side, Dolan began to sketch his new companion (along with the various London streets and buildings around him), selling his works to interested bystanders. The latest show at Howard Griffin Gallery features every drawing Dolan made from each day he spent with his dog.

Location: Subliminal Projects, 1331 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 90026
Dates: July 26 - Aug. 23, 2014

There's nothing like that feeling you get when discovering a new band or album. With the amount of new music being produced and shared throughout the world, however, much of that feeling has been lost. To preserve that excitement, art collective Cross My Heart Hope to Die has created a series of images that challenge the way we look at art and music in their current show “Vita E Morte.” The bulk of the works on display consists of images of the natural world that have been databent, a rather complex process where an image is analyzed as pure data, loaded onto an audio editor, and modified as if it were a song. The file is then re-exported as data and loaded onto an image editor as if it were a photograph again. The whole process results in glitchy, rather ominous photographs.

Location: NanHai Art, 510 Broadway, Suite 301 Millbrae, Calif. 94030

Dates: Aug. 9 - Sept. 13, 2014

“Rebel as Creator” is a more than appropriate name for Liu Kuo-sung's current show at NanHai Art. The artist, considered the father of modern Chinese ink painting, was something of a badass back in the day. Decades ago, Liu decided to break away from traditional Chinese painting. Instead, he began making his own Modernist paintings that seemed more akin to American or European traditions. Many critics deemed him a traitor for abandoning his roots, but in the end, Liu was able to develop a style that was entirely his own. Now his works along with those of his students are currently on view inside NanHai Art.

Location: Shooting Gallery, 886 Geary Street, San Francisco 94109
Dates: July 12 - Aug. 23, 2014

An artist from San Francisco, Meryl Pataky is known mostly for her neon creations and sculptures made from found objects. It turns out, however, that the artist is also a nerd, obsessed with outer space and science. “The Golden Hour,” her current show at Shooting Gallery Project Space, is all about “the elemental life force and power of the sun,” according to the press release. Pataky incorporates elements like gold, silver, and copper in her works, which is no coincidence since these are the three metals born from supernovae explosions.

Location: 1AM Gallery, 1000 Howard St., San Francisco 94103
Dates: Aug. 7 - 29, 2014

You may recognize “Paradise Lost” as the name of John Milton's epic poem, which recounts Satan's temptation of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man. In a way, Kamea Hadar and Defer's show at 1AM Gallery tells the same story, but with a very different paradise. Both of the Hawaii-based artists have created canvases that reflect how modernity and urbanization have changed (and in a way, corrupted) Hawaii's idyllic lands. Hadar, who also happens to be a director of POW! WOW! Hawaii, created hyperrealistic oil paintings of tropical flowers set on fire. Defer, on the other hand, made complex, typographic pieces that touch on this same notion.

Location: Blum & Poe, 2727 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles 90034

Dates: July 12 - Aug. 23, 2014

You can't tell by simply looking at the works featured in Pia Camil's latest exhibition, but her hanging curtains, paintings, and ceramic vases were actually by inspired by letters, numbers, and imagery taken from billboards found around Mexico. For her first her show in Los Angeles, she's turned public advertisements into household items, playfully criticizing the consumer lifestyle. Although the colorful creations call to mind Andy Warhol's vibrant screen prints, each of Camil's paintings have been hand dyed and consist of unique shapes and colors. That's Camil's way of slowing down and challenging massive cultural production.

Location: White Walls, 886 Geary Street, San Francisco 94109

Dates: Aug. 16 - Sept. 6, 2014

Mr. Jago will take over White Walls with his beautiful, vibrant, and lively canvases next month. Free flowing and dynamic, his paintings can also be described as robotic. That's because the artist’s latest works are all abstracted versions of the robotic figures he made and focused on earlier in his career. Mr. Jago painted all of his latest, seemingly subject-less canvases with the robots in mind.

Location: The Hole, 312 Bowery, New York 10012
Dates: July 10 - Aug. 23, 2014

Despite how much graffiti dominates the urban landscape in cities all over the world, few people understand spray paint as a medium. “Go With The Flow,” which opened earlier last month, explores all the different kinds of spray paint, from aerosol to airbrush.

Location: The Hole, 312 Bowery, New York 10012

Dates: July 10 - Aug. 23, 2014

For Bruce LaBruce, “one man's obscenity is another man's art.” In the past few years, Canadian customs officials have snatched up his works and labeled them as being obscene, but not everyone's definition of obscenity is the same. To the Canadian artist and filmmaker, obscene simply describes something erotic. Now on view at The Hole, “Obscenity” showcases a selection of photography that examines sexual and religious ecstasy. It's up to you to decide whether the photos are smut or art.

Location: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen , 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland

Dates: July 26 - Oct. 5, 2014

We have all visited enough art museums to know not to touch the art on display or mess around inside the museum in general, but Maria Anwander disregards all the rules. The artist from Vorarlberg is known for kissing the walls of highly established museums, staging intense scenes of passion as unauthorized performance pieces. Her current solo exhibition at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen includes video documentations of Anwander being a badass throughout the years. In the past, she's left a kiss on a wall at the MoMA and affixed a description of her “performance piece” to the spot. She's also added her name to LACMA's list of museum donors. Not all of the works on view are videos, however. The collection also includes Anwander's appropriation art. For instance, her Foundation After SherrieLevine references Levine's cast-bronze interpretation of a Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal.

Location: The Moving Museum, Istanbul
Dates: Aug. 1 - Oct. 31, 2014

It may be time for you to book a ticket to Istanbul. After two successful projects in Dubai and London last year, The Moving Museum has established a three-month residency program for artists around the world. Istanbul will play home to 38 artists who have been commissioned to work on projects throughout the city. Each of their pieces is meant to “make a lasting impact on the city” and demonstrate their artistic practices. Although we don't have a roster of the 38 artists, it's sure to be an exciting period and well worth the trip.

Location: Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Motoazabu Crest Bldg. B1F 2-3-30 Motoazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0046
Dates: July 25 - Aug. 21, 2014

Mono-ha was an experimental Japanese art movement that lasted from the late 1960s to early '70s. It stands in stark contrast to the loud, easily digestible, glossy artwork popular today coming from Japan and beyond. Instead of embracing pop art aesthetics, Mono-ha artists tended to use materials from their environment to create highly minimalist yet meditative sculptures and installations. It's a style of art that required patience and contemplation. One of the leading artists of this movement is Korean-born Lee Ufan, who has taken his thought-provoking installations to Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki Gallery.

Location: Steve Turner Contemporary, 6026 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90036
Dates: July 12 - Aug. 23, 2014

All of the pieces featured in Jason Gringler's “Labor” exhibition at Steve Turner Contemporary were made from labor-intensive processes, hence the name of the show. From far away, the nontraditional “paintings” look pretty minimal. Upon closer examination, however, viewers will be able to see the craftsmanship and energy that Gringler put into these canvases. Smashed glass, welded steel, and spray paint have never looked so beautiful.

Location: Lazarides Rathbone, 11 Rathbone Place, London, W1T 1HR
Dates: Aug. 1 - Sept. 6, 2014

The Russian government probably feels a bit uneasy about the art Misha Most is putting out. The radical Moscow-based artist recently took up residency in Lazarides Rathbone's London-based studio. While his colorful illustrations may look like mere sketches at first glance, they've actually been done on found Soviet security material. Much of Most's artwork calls to mind Russia civil defense advertising from the Cold War era.

Location: Gauntlet Gallery, 1040 Larkin St, San Francisco 94109
Dates: Aug. 2 - 19, 2014

Although you might not readily recognize the names of the artists featured in “Contemporary Contemporary,” the art will seem very familiar. That's because all of the work in this group exhibition actually alludes and pays tribute to influential artists from the past 50 years. Every big artist from Andy Warhol to Shepard Fairey gets referenced in this fascinating show.

Location: Pace Chesa Büsin, Straglia Pezzi, 34 Zuoz CH-7524
Dates: July 14 - Aug. 31, 2014

Zhang Huan is one of the most masochistic performance artists out there. Case in point: he once spread juices from a fish and honey all over his body and sat motionless on a toilet for an hour. In a matter of just a few minutes, his entire body was covered in flies. Sounds both horrific and epic, right? The Chinese artist opened a show in Switzerland earlier last month. It features some of his most iconic works, which range from performance and video to sculpture and installation. He does a bit of everything, but all of it centers on the limits of the human body.

Location: The Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, 10019
Dates: July 1 - Oct. 12, 2014

Last month, the Museum of Arts and Design kicked off “NYC Makers: The Mad Biennial,” which gives a platform to 100 creative individuals across New York's five boroughs. It brings together artists and designers who demonstrate workmanship and skill in a range of fields, including furniture, fashion, film, architecture, and so forth. The list of participants is long and well worth the trip to MAD.