Since Marc Chagall’s death in 1985, the art world has tended to frown on his reputation, largely because his huge popularity as a romantic fantasist has tended to overshadow the creative daring and inimitable lyrical spirit of his best paintings. This exhibition of many key works from the breakthrough years of 1911-22 should demonstrate Chagall’s take on some of the major themes of the 20th century: massive social and cultural displacement, modern warfare, and sexual and emotional liberation.
Tate Liverpool, Sat 8 Jun to 6 Oct
RC Photograph: PR
The Parallelareal of the title refers to a theory proposed in the mid-20th century by the German scientist Manfred Curry that our world is traversed by a parallel reality of energy lines whose intersections can psychically affect our moods. The theory was of course dismissed by sensible science as a New Age fallacy. Yet the Stockholm-based artist Gunilla Klingberg has taken the idea sufficiently seriously to hire a professional dowser to divine the Curry Lines, as they are known, as they pass invisibly through the Digbeth gallery. A local company was then employed to manufacture a series of curtains from some 27,000 metres of steel ball chain. The curtains form maze-like screens on to which the artist here projects a decidedly spaced-out series of vibrating patterns.
Eastside Projects, Sat 8 Jun to 3 Aug
RC Photograph: PR
James Franco isn’t just an actor. He’s increasingly known for his stories, poetry, art and plethora of degrees. This month brings two chances to sate your Franco curiosity with exhibitions showing off his skills as an artist and curator. At Pace Gallery, under the guidance of Douglas Gordon, Franco taps voyeurism and Hollywood intrigue. His installation reimagines scenes from Psycho’s Bates Motel, with reference to the scandal surrounding Fatty Arbuckle’s murder of a starlet in 1921. At Victoria Miro, meanwhile, he co-curates a show of painters who’ve mined the movies, including Peter Doig and Eric Fischl.
Pace London, W1, and Victoria Miro, N1, Sat 8 Jun to 3 Aug
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In addition to being a painter, Per Kirkeby has written poems and essays, made films and architecture. When it comes to his big canvases, with their complex splodges of colour, though, the bit in his CV that’s most often referred to is his early days training as an Arctic geologist. The layered strata of rock samples excavated from deep in the Earth often come to mind in the face of his organic abstractions, while the palette he’s best known for is earthy with plenty of green, brown and rust.
Michael Werner, W1, to 27 Jul
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This year’s SNAP, the contemporary art component of the Aldeburgh classical music festival, pays homage to the festival’s founding father, Benjamin Britten, whose centenary is this year. The work produced by a lineup of 16 artists is certainly a testament to the composer’s range. Maggi Hambling’s tight installation of paintings of battlefields and their victims are inspired by his War Requiem, while May Cornet’s painted stone sculptures reference his soundtrack to the classic Royal Mail public information film Night Mail. Others mine his lesser-known achievements, including pop conceptualist Scott King, whose musical score on a billboard alludes to the use of Britten’s Playful Pizzicato in an RBS advert.
Snape Maltings, Sat 8 Jun to 23 Jun
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Mike Kelley, who died last year, was indisputably one of the most widely influential artists of our time, working in just about every conceivable medium. So it’s something of a coup for the Site Gallery to secure his Mobile Homestead Videos, for its European premiere. The films feature a replica created by the aging Kelley of the single-storey house in which he grew up in the 50s Detroit suburbs. We follow the house as it is driven on the back of a truck down the Motor City’s main artery of Michigan Avenue.
Site Gallery, Sat 8 Jun to 20 Jul
RC Photograph: PR
To mark its 10th anniversary, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology stages a show that proudly celebrates the gallery’s establishment as “a safe place for risky conversations”, as the director Mike Stubbs puts it. Typically for FACT, the contemporary artists assembled use new media to tackle topical issues ranging from the environmental to capitalism. The renowned Polish artist Katarzyna Krakowiak has transformed the building into a surveillance device so it effectively eavesdrops on itself; and collaborative group HeHe threaten the gallery with disruptive subterranean noise, minor ground tremors and real flames in their new piece imitating an industrial fracking landscape.
FACT, Thu 13 Jun to 25 Aug
RC Photograph: PR
Cornelia Parker has long been concerned with vestiges and relics. Her latest show, which coincides with the release of a crisp new monograph charting her three-decade career, sees her casting her eyes down and into corners, shedding light on overlooked odds and ends with stories to tell. The gaps between the stones in Bunhill Fields cemetery, where John Bunyan, writer of Pilgrim’s Progress, and William Blake, who wrote Jerusalem, are buried, have been cast in bronze to create a wavering grid which hangs above the floor. Meanwhile cast-off bits of wood from old Jerusalem have similarly been left hanging. Finally, photos capture recently filled cracks in the walls of Pentonville Prison.
Frith Street Gallery, WC1, Fri 7 Jun to 27 Jul
SS Photograph: PR
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