It’s Berlin Gallery Weekend, when openings blossom throughout the city like stinking linden trees and the town parades itself to visitors like the naïve girl from the provinces who vamps through the market square in her tacky “best.” This weekend, many weary, Sekt-filled opening goers will do just that and end up at Janus a.k.a : ) : , the recurring party that, for nearly a year now, has carved out a solid place within Berlin’s art-related, non-Berghain nighttime diversions. “This really was what Berlin was like ‘back in the day’,” says a compatriot to me at a recent fog-machine filled Janus event, “when we’d just put speakers on the floor and someone would DJ and we’d do whatever.” Janus has consistently hosted acts like House of Ladosha, DJ Sliink, Total Freedom, Venus X, and Aids-3d, and the clientele – a mix of artists and well-informed teens – has been refreshingly mixed and upbeat. (Wolfgang Tillmans, for one, was sighted lurking around when Mykky Blanco performed). It’s never polite to describe a party to those who weren’t present, and in any case Janus is a future-thinking deity: this Friday they’ll host their “Year Of The Snake” party, featuring DJ Hvad, Why Be, and M.E.S.H., an event that will inevitably turn into the unofficial after-after party for umpteen Berlin Gallery Weekend events.  Fittingly, below a post on their event page on Facebook – a 4chan image of a toddler whose mermaid-like body is the end of an anaconda – Janus wrote: Gallery Weekend Special: If you can prove you’re a Gallerist, you get in FREE*. The joke being that most of the gallerists will have already gone home by then, leaving only the most die hard of art world folks. (Pablo Larios)

Nestled at the intersection of Los Angeles’ main gallery strip, La Cienega and Venice Boulevard, Triple A is a public art project initiated by François Ghebaly, Emma Gray and Mandrake Bar. Located on the exterior wall of Ghebaly’s gallery, a former muffler shop, the project has invited several international artists to create site-specific, large-scale mural installations, accompanied by limited editions of silkscreen prints over the past two years. Playing with our relation to the digital image, the inaugural work, presented by New-York based Nate Lowman in October 2011, created a half-tone transfer wall painting of an iconic yet controversial image of Julia Roberts that the actress barred from a L’Oréal campaign for its abuse of Photoshop. Other projects appeared graphic and visually striking, such as Justice, London-based Polish artist Aleksandra Mir’s black and white stencil mural that recalls Greek Antique aesthetics; or Garth Weiser’s crumbling Klein-blue wall, decaying over the course of its display. Referring to Los Angeles’ memorial murals found throughout the city, Berlin-based Cyprien Gaillard produced a replica of Caspar David Friedrich’s headstone in Dresden, transposing its romantic value into a urban contemporary landscape: a gritty wall south of one of the most trafficked Californian highways. Triple A has just inaugurated its fifth project, realized by Los Angeles–based conceptual artist Channa Horwitz, who has been working with abstract drawing since the early 1960s. Presented as an extension of the in-situ installation inside the gallery, her mural is composed of a geometric orange grid related to her “language series,” and suggests a delicate and Minimalist occurrence in a brutalist cityscape. (Martha Kirszenbaum)

Almanac Projects is a new non-profit space in Dalston Junction, London. Founded few months ago and led by Astrid Korporaal, Francesca von Zedtwitz-Arnim and Guido Santandrea, its second event, “Postscript (p.s. I love you),” a solo show of works by London-based artist Charlie Woolley, sought to test the “potential spaces for the formation of collectivities.” The exhibition featured a text by Rózsa Farkas and Harry Burke, which is part of an extensive program of publications, projects, installations, performances and workshops that, after taking the solo show as the program’s starting point, is conceived to activate it. On the occasion of “Evolution&Comfort,” the Swiss artist Yves Scherer’s first solo show, Almanac Projects hosted Conquer the sky!, a workshop for children aged 5-12 run by Derek Di Fabio and Blarney 5×3, a performance by Luca De Leva. This exhibition too featured a publication engaging several contributors, including the graphic designer David Rudnick and artist Alex Turgeon. The interest in creative collaboration shared by the three founders bears witness to their on-going research on deepening artistic and curatorial practices. On April 20 they will present a solo show by Samara Scott, and then a project of T-A-X-I in collaboration with Cripta 747 next month. Despite its old-school flavored name, Almanac Projects holds a freshly assertive position derived from its constant focus on the public – maybe one of the few ways of believing in cultural change. (Bianca Stoppani)

Artist Martin Soto Climent and curator Chris Sharp’s apartment in the more low-key southern zone of the culturally savvy Colonia Roma (Mexico City, MX) serves multiple purposes—sleeping quarters, artist studio and office space. On April 9th the two will unveil their latest venture, a one-room project space promising a variety of exhibitions fueled by their international backgrounds and the unlimited potential of Mexico City’s art scene. Each of their respective track records abounds with an expansive set of art-based forums bridging Europe, Latin America and the United States. The two have now decided to merge their sensibilities in Lulu by staging exhibitions that may end up renegotiating how art and the spaces that represent artists are understood in Mexico City. At least that’s what supporting young, local artists, while showcasing the work of established international artists should do. When asked about opening a new project space in an already vibrant cultural landscape, Sharp responds with a fervent interest in “pursuing a program whose quality is as consistent as it is ultimately unpredictable and challenging.” Hopefully this will have you knocking on their gate to check out their inaugural exhibition with German, Hamburg-based photographer, Jochen Lempert. While Lempert’s work has been exhibited internationally, the exhibition of 35mm black and white photography titled, “Cherry Blossoms, Rain Drops, Midges and a White Leaf,” will be the artist’s first showing in Latin America. The name of the space, Lulu, is inspired by la Señora who has been famed as “the best juicer in Mexico City.” Her street side kitchen is located two blocks away from the space. Make sure and stop by before or after a visit to Lulu to taste some of the inspiration that conceived the work. (Raquel de Anda)

The art space Forde was born in 1994 after its three founder members took over a space initially allocated to a record label in “L’Usine”, Geneva’s alternative complex. Soon after Forde’s opening, the founders decided to hand over its direction periodically for a fixed period of two years giving total freedom to the appointed programmers. After almost 20 years, the space hosted around 100 exhibitions and was overseen by more than 20 people, including Lionel Bovier (JRP Ringier), artists Mai-Thu Perret, Guillaume Pilet, Kim Seob Boninsegni or curator Julien Fronsacq (Palais de Tokyo). All of these now form a committee (which also includes artists Gianni Motti and Olivier Mosset) naming the future programmers. The latest —the artist Elena Montesinos and Nicolas Wagnières, silk-screen master and HEAD (Geneva’s art school) professor— were appointed last July. Their first exhibition, “eat this” offered visitors the opportunity to eat artworks/hors d’œuvre such as a golden chocolate rubber by Sylvie Fleury, a version John Tremblay’s seminal Targets reproduced as cakes, or a carpet made from hummus and spices. The ongoing project, the “Forde Prize 2013,” allowed anyone to submit a project for an exhibition at Forde through Forde’s website, the best of which will be showed in April. These projects perpetuate what Forde always aimed at: Involving people to multiply the “one” that has continued to draw Forde’s energy and driving force. (Natalie Esteve)

Sandy Brown was founded by writer, editor and curator Fiona Bate in mid-2009 as a commercial gallery in Berlin–Schöneberg. The gallery’s name was conceived as a work in itself and is a reference to the RGB colour model. Coined by artist duo Pennacchio Argentato, it formed part of their contribution to “Warm Summer Days, Indoors“, Sandy Brown’s refreshing inaugural group show. The gallery currently represents six international artists, among them Berlin based Ilja Karilampi, Aude Pariset, as well as Jean-Michel Wicker (J M W papers), whose solo exhibition will be opening at the gallery in late April 2013. In addition, Dena Yago’s show, held at Sandy Brown last fall, aroused a thirst for further interest into her poetic work. Sensual renderings of everyday objects and indexical pieces of bodily impressions, scanned in high resolution, do not just seduce on a formal level. It is undoubtedly a strong artistic and curatorial vision that’s shaped the gallery’s expanded programme of group and solo presentations. These also include special events such as Chris Kraus’ reading from Where Art Belongs, which took place shortly after its publication in 2011. In her chapter on “Indelible Video” Kraus poses the question: “How can the market be used to do what art used to do?” Watch this space; Sandy Brown’s upcoming film and video screening will be transforming the gallery space in a surprising way. (Anja Isabel Schneider)

What is it about power plants? It seems like every city wants to show artwork in one: London, Toronto, and now (of all places) Dallas, Texas. Programming the international cream of the crop, The Power Station, housed in the 1920 Dallas Power and Light building, is putting Dallas on the cultural map, with major New York and global art stars mounting multi-level shows in the building’s raw industrial spaces. Oscar Tuazon recently installed an imposing structure made from concrete and Oregon Douglas Fir, curved steel and sheetrock. Norwegian artist Matias Faldbakken layered the building’s first floor with bullet casings and the second floor with storage boxes, while Virginia Overton parked a Chevy in one gallery, strew the second floor with work supplies and set up an HD television for a recorded NFL playoffs game (Saints/49ers and Broncos/Patriots). Founded by collector Alden Pinnell, The Power Station is not a place to show off his collection. Rather, it’s an endeavor to support ambitious non-commercial shows, filling a major gap in the Dallas scene. After all, while Pinnell may be doing many international artists a favor by enabling them to work site-specifically, off the radar, in a breathtaking space, he’s really bringing in the big guns for the benefit of the locals. Open for little more than a year, The Power Station is doing quite a lot for this gracious Southern city. (David Everitt Howe)

CIRCA Projects is a not-for-profit arts organization based in Newcastle upon Tyne, in northeast England. Formed in 2009 by Sam Watson and Adam Phillips, CIRCA started with individual projects and now focus on bigger programs and commissions. The organization, which now includes Dawn Bothwell, is focused on the presentation and production of new art works and projects within lens- and time-based practices. CIRCA regularly organizes talks and screenings, publishes books, and keeps a video archive. The tagline on CIRCA’s website, “Dialogue with the Present”, indicates their focus on exhibitions and projects embedded in the present and their aim to encourage a critical discussion around contemporary art production. CIRCA is important in its city’s art scene; they function outside of a commercial or institutional model and invite artists from outside of the region to broaden the dialogue. They currently have their own project space in the beautiful red-brick Stephenson Works (a former locomotive workplace) but also present projects off site. CIRCA is currently engaged in a 14-month thematic project called “Space Release“, which explores the possibilities and parameters of the exhibition space. Opening soon are Paul Becker with Space Release # 12 and Rubén Grilo with Space Release # 13. (Maaike Lauwaert)