An Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe sold for $195 Million last night at a Christie’s charity auction, making it the most expensive American work of art to sell at auction. “We did sell the most expensive painting of the 20th century,” says Christie’s specialist Alex Rotter. “This is a big achievement.”
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New York — Gabriel Orozco: “Spacetime” on view 24 West 57 Street, Room 305
May 16th, 2022Third floor of the Gallery Building, 57th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue, in a sinuous corridor, a discreet sign on one of the doors: SPACETIME. The faint lighting inside sets the tone.
An array of artworks is on view: floating sculptures, abstract paintings, a black suitcase facing a plasticine ball, a tree adorned with paper disks, large prints, small models including detergent caps and yogurt lids, a shoebox on a shelf, flying boomerangs, and a Japanese scroll greet the viewer in the first two rooms. The gallery is intimate, and the experience is total. Gabriel Orozco’s ongoing project is a secret which spreads from word of mouth to fortunate visitors and passersby. The show encapsulates 30 years of work masterfully staged in these tight quarters.
Venice — Joseph Beuys: “Fine-Limbed” at Palazzo Cini through October 2nd, 2022
May 16th, 2022
Joseph Beuys, Untitled, 1954. All images courtesy of Aidan Chisholm for AO.
Alongside the 59th Venice Biennale, Palazzo Cini presents a retrospective exhibition dedicated to Joseph Beuys, the acclaimed German-born artist, teacher and theorist. Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History, and presented in conjunction with Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, Joseph Beuys: Fine-limbed is displayed on the second floor of the Campo San Vio, the museum and former home containing the historic art collection of Italian patron Vittorio Cini (1885-1977). Featuring thirty eight works with particular attention to Beuys’s early artistic development and drawings, this solo-exhibition explores his engagement with the body as a malleable conceptual and formal framework. Read More »
New York – Josh Sperling: “Daydream” at Galerie Perrotin through June 11th, 2022
May 12th, 2022
Josh Sperling, To Be Titled (2022), via Galerie Perrotin
Marking a new iteration of his continued engagement with color, geometry and form, the New York outpost of Galerie Perrotin presents Daydream, a solo exhibition by artist Josh Sperling, organized across three floors of the gallery’s New York space, and on view April 28th through June 11th. The exhibition, Sperling’s largest, marks a return to key motifs in the artist’s practice, developed over the course of the last decade and re-articulated by Sperling in this new body of work. Additionally, in Daydream, the Ithaca-based painter will debut a new series, continuing his investigation into the material possibilities of color and form.
New York – Michaël Borremans: “The Acrobat” at David Zwirner Through June 4th, 2022
May 11th, 2022
Michaël Borremans, The Racer (2022), via David Zwirner
On view this month at David Zwirner in New York, the painter Michaël Borremans presents The Acrobat, an exhibition that continues the artist’s meticulous study of the history of painting and the structure and language of painterly composition.Taking place at the gallery’s 525 West 19th Street location in New York, this will be the artist’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery and his first in New York since 2011. Read More »
Greenwich, CT – Spencer Sweeney: “Perfect” at The Brant Foundation Through September 15th, 2022
May 10th, 2022
Spencer Sweeney at The Brant Foundation (Installation View)
Just opened this past weekend during the run of fairs over the course of the last week, The Brant Foundation Art Study center presents an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Spencer Sweeney, the painter and artist whose rich, figurative compositions span a range of modes and practices, from show flyers to portraiture, abstractions to historical interpretations. Read More »
VENICE – “SURREALISM AND MAGIC: ENCHANTED MODERNITY” AT PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION THROUGH SEPTEMBER 26TH, 2022
May 9th, 2022
Leonora Carrington, The Chair: Daghda Tuatha dé Danann, 1955. All images courtesy of Aidan Chisholm for AO.
Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity marks the first major international exhibition focusing on Surrealist engagements with magic, alchemy and the occult. A two-part exhibition first on display at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice before traveling to Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Surrealism and Magic features approximately 60 works from more than 40 international museums and private collections. The exhibition coincides with the theme of the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, which draws its title from the otherworldly book by Leonora Carrington, the English-born painter and storyteller whose work features prominently in both the Guggenheim show and the main exhibition of the Biennale. Read More »
AO On-Site – New York: Independent New York at Spring Studios, May 5th – 8th, 2022
May 7th, 2022
Kenny Schachter at Allouche Benias
Taking over once again at Spring Studios in downtown Manhattan, the Independent Art Fair opened its doors this week on a string of new works, curated exhibitions and special projects that once again illustrated its place as a premier fair event in the city. Now over ten years old, the fair has proven itself as something of a special case in the presentation of an art fair. Smaller in scale and more focused in terms of its gallery selections, the fair’s presentation feels more like a presentation of a series of small gallery shows run side-by-side. Offering a more nuanced, mellow browsing experience in conjunction with the fair’s invite-only exhibitor structure and immense glass windows, the fair has built a reputation as a boutique event with impressive draw.
AO On-Site – New York: NADA New York at Pier 36, May 5th – 8th, 2022
May 6th, 2022
Mickey Lee at One Trick Pony, all images via Art Observed
This weekend marks a return of the New Art Dealers Alliance art fair to New York City, bringing with it a range of exploratory and expressive new work from emerging artists, smaller galleries and new projects. For those looking for new insights and fresh perspectives on contemporary art practice, its hard to ignore the call of the fair, which reprises its role as a central tentpole of a weekend of fairs, even as the city’s string of fairs has split up between several weeks this May. Set up in the sprawling Pier 36 complex on downtown Manhattan’s Eastern edge, the show is a dense pathway through the landscape of new art, mixing playful performance pieces, studied painting and anything in between, making the fair one of the more expansive and freewheeling events of the week. Read More »
Venice – Danh Vo, Isamu Noguchi, Park Seo-Bo at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Through November 27th, 2022
April 29th, 2022
Isamu Noguchi at Querini Stampalia
Continuing a string of curatorial outings during the run of the Venice Biennale, Danh Vo has once again popped up in the City of Bridges, this time with a show co-curated with Chiara Bertola. Drawing on his own work, executed in conversation with that of Isamu Noguchi and Park Seo-Bo, the show makes for a dynamic and shifting series of conversations, delving into perceptions of space and culture, power dynamics, architecture and form.
Venice – Louise Nevelson: “Persistence” at The Procuratie Vecchie Through September 11th, 2022
April 28th, 2022
Louise Nevelson, Persistence (Installation View), via Art Observed
Operated during Venice Biennale as an official Collateral Event of the exhibition, and curated by Julia Bryan-Wilson, professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of California, Berkeley, the Procuratie Vecchie in Venice’s Piazza San Marco plays home to an expansive and expressive body of work by the American artist Louise Nevelson. Persistence, which marks the 60th anniversary of Nevelson’s representation of the United States in the American Pavilion at the Biennale Arte in 1962, it includes more than 60 works created by Nevelson between the 1950s and the 1980s.
Louise Nevelson, Persistence (Installation View), via Art Observed