Friday, September 9th, 2011
Christie’s New York to sell in November $25 million worth of art from the Norton collection including works by Matthew Barney, Robert Gober, Takashi Murakami, Kara Walker and Paul McCarthy. [AO Newslink]
Archive for September, 2011
Go See – New York: Carlito Carvalhosa Sum of Days at the MoMA through November 14, 2011
Friday, September 9th, 2011
Carlito Carvalhosa, Sum of Days (2010). Via MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) presents Carlito Carvalhosa: Sum of Days, a large-scale interactive installation that engages the visitor’s visual, tactile and auditory senses. Brazilian artist Carlito Carvalhosa (born 1961) has suspended a lengthy, white, semi-transparent fabric from the spiral-like support attached to the ceiling of MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, draping a nearly 20 meter tall stucture. The fabric loosely touches the ground forming an elliptical walkway, the audience invited to walk through the installation and touch the fabric walls. Ceiling-mounted microphones record each days’ background noises which are then played back the following day. This “accumulation” of sound through time is reflected through the title Sum of Days. The installation also includes the occasional live music performance.
More text and images after the jump…
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
The Dia Foundation acquires 541 West 22nd Street in Chelsea as an annex for $11.5 million [AO Newslink]
AO On Site- Los Angeles: Edward Keinholz’s “Five Car Stud 1969-1972, Revisited” at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, through January 15, 2011
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
All photographs by Tom Vinetz, © Kienholz Collection of Kawamura Memorial Museum, Sakura, Japan, courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice, CA and The Pace Gallery, New York unless otherwise noted.
Imagine entering an expansive, lowly-lit room, shoes crunching on a sandy dirt floor. You follow the footprints into the ever-expanding room. The scene feels as though you’ve stumbled into a movie set: five cars are parked in a circle, dramatic lighting emanates from headlights, framing the central scene. Tinny blues rift from one of the automobile radios, immersing you more fully in the tableau. Among trees and other vegetation, you are drawn inside until you encounter a horrific life-size scene: five white figures attacking an African American man.
What you have seen is not a dream, it is Edward Kienholz’s work Five Car Stud. Created between 1969 and 1972, its current showing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) marks the first time the work has been shown since its inclusion in documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany in 1972.
More text and images after the jump…
Go See – Paris: “Paris – Delhi – Bombay” at Centre Pompidou through September 19th, 2011
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
The major exhibition Paris-Delhi-Bombay, currently on view at Centre Pompidou through September 19th, displays work by nearly 50 artists mainly based or born in India. Many emerging and high-profile Indian artists have been showing recently in Paris—both the work at Indian Summer, organized at Ecole des Beaux Arts, and Anish Kapoor‘s monumental intervention at the Grand Palais, have included work by Indian artists both already established in Europe as well as those still up-and-coming.
More images after the jump (more…)
Go See – East Hampton: Richard Prince’s “Covering Pollock” at Guild Hall Museum through October 17th, 2011
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
Richard Prince, Untitled (Covering Pollock) (2009-10). All images via art info
Richard Prince is currently showcased at Guild Hall of East Hampton, New York, with “Covering Pollock,” a series in which photographs of former local resident and renowned Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) are covered with miscellaneous porn and punk paraphernalia. The relevance of the exhibition is as geographical as it is artistic: Prince received Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts from the Guildhall in 2009, and is a student of Long Island’s East End, while Pollock lived from 1945 until his early death just outside East Hampton in a house purchased with a loan from art dealer and collector Peggy Guggenheim.
More images and story after the jump…
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
On the impact China has on art sales globally: “Chinese auction houses are now selling works at a pace formerly associated with those in London and New York” with “[Chinese collectors responsible for] some $8.3 billion in sales, which would make them the world leader.” [AO Newslink]
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
Pipilotti Rist will hang 300 pairs of white underwear along the Southbank on the Thames during her solo show at the Hayward Gallery: “they will look like whipped cream. Or sheep’s heads, with the legs of the pants forming the eyes.” [AO Newslink]
Go See – New York: “The Women in Our Life: A Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition” at Cheim and Read through September 17th, 2011
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 
Installation view. All images courtesy of Cheim and Read unless otherwise noted.
For the first time in its fifteen years, Cheim and Read is showcasing all of its female artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, and Diane Arbus, for a celebratory exhibition. Less of a critical show on feminism, the exhibition is more of a simple gathering of varied artists. “The Women in Our Life: A Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition” reminds us of the voice and vision of some of these major players in contemporary art.
More story and images after the jump…
Monday, September 5th, 2011
Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker defaced in Buenos Aires at the Plaza de los dos Congresos by vandals who write: ‘Think what good it did you to think so much before it’s over’ [AO Newslink]
Monday, September 5th, 2011
Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen premiered his film “Shame” in Venice yesterday alongside Michael Fassbender who stars in the film with Carey Mulligan [AO Newslink]
Go See – Sligo, Ireland: Omer Fast’s “The Tunnel” at The Model through November 27th, 2011
Monday, September 5th, 2011
Omer Fast, 5000 Feet is the Best (2011). Digital film still, via The Model
On view at The Model in Sligo, Ireland through November 27th is “The Tunnel,” a large-scale installation and major solo exhibition of Israeli video artist Omer Fast. Three installations occupy The Model’s atrium and gallery space including a two part version of his newest film project, 5000 Feet is the Best, which was commissioned by The Model, Dublin Contemporary 2011, the Hermes Foundation, and the Kadist Foundation. 5000 Feet is the Best will be presented as a unique version specific to The Model, including both the original film and multi-media installation components. Fast is known for his films that weave together multiple narratives using documentary and dramatization methods to explore the complexity in presenting truth, leading the viewer to the realization that fact and fiction are undeniably intertwined.
More text and images after the jump…
Sunday, September 4th, 2011
Matthew Barney interviewed at his studio in Long Island City on the eve of his first solo exhibition in New York in 5 years, opening on September 17th at Gladstone Gallery [AO Newslink]
Don’t Miss – New York: Heads with Tails at Harris Lieberman through September 9th, 2011
Sunday, September 4th, 2011
Josh Tonsfeldt, Untitled (2011), via Harris Lieberman
Bodies and their attendant messes, the connection between the artist and the viewer, and the complicated processes of making and looking at art are all covered in this wide-ranging exhibition which was organized by West Street Gallery but is hosted by Harris Lieberman in Chelsea. The press release tells us that the show was was inspired by William Wegman‘s videos from the 1970s, four of which play in a loop on a television in the installation. One of these, Milk/Floor (1970-78), shows the artist dribbling milk from his mouth and his iconic dog lapping it up, setting the tone for the show by poking fun at the often absurd relationship between the artist (dribbling the milk) and the public (lapping it up). The rest of the works further probe this moment of connection.
More text and images after the jump… (more…)
Saturday, September 3rd, 2011
Gustav Klimt’s previously unknown “Seeufer mit Birken” (lakeside with birch trees), discovered in private home in Netherlands [AO Newslink]
Saturday, September 3rd, 2011
Anish Kapoor to design a mobile, 700 person capacity, inflatable “pneumatic structure” concert hall for Northern Japan to bring music and performing arts to the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami [AO Newslink]
AO On Site – Los Angeles: Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at Los Angeles County Museum of Art through February 12, 2012
Saturday, September 3rd, 2011
Detail of Dog head from Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2011) All photos by Megan Hoetger for Art Observed.
The installation of the first major public sculpture work by well-known Chinese artist Ai Weiwei opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on August 20th, its West Coast stop on a global tour. Encircling the elevator up from the parking structure in the North Piazza of LACMA’s sprawling campus, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads functions as a marker of a heavily trafficked threshold. Its position outside the parking is particularly suited to the car-dominated geography of Los Angeles, but it also allows multiple points of approach for those visitors ambling between the Ahmanson and Broad buildings, or just arriving through the Chris Burden street lamps.
More text and images after the jump… (more…)
GO See – Baden-Baden: Neo Rauch at the Museum Frieder Burda through September 18th, 2011
Friday, September 2nd, 2011
Neo Rauch, Unter Feuer, 2010. Via Museum Frieder Burda
The Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany is hosting a large-scale retrospective of Leipzig-based artist Neo Rauch (born 1960). Showing about forty paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, the exhibition covers the past twenty years of Rauch’s career. Currently an honorary professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Rauch is the representative of the New Leipzig School of painting distinguished by the figurative visual language, narrative content, and technical perfection.
More text and images after the jump…
Friday, September 2nd, 2011
Wealthy private families reportedly realizing current gains in their gold holdings and moving the proceeds into Art as an alternative asset class [AO Newslink]
Go See – NY: “La Carte D’Aprés Nature” curated by Thomas Demand and featuring René Magritte, Rodney Graham, Tacita Dean at Matthew Marks through October 8th, 2011
Friday, September 2nd, 2011
René Magritte, La Carte d’après Nature, numèro spècial (January 1954). All images via Matthew Marks
Matthew Marks is currently exhibiting “La Carte D’Aprés Nature” curated by gallery-represented artist Thomas Demand. It features three rarely-seen paintings by René Magritte supplemented by sculptures, photographs, and films by established and emerging artists that explore themes similar to the late Surrealist’s. Demand has pulled pieces from all over the world, from varying disciplines and times, that speak of Magritte’s “carte d’aprés nature,” or “map of nature.” Demand tells the Observer, “I wanted there to be the feeling of something strange.”
René Magritte, Le grand style (The Great Style) (1951)
More story and images after the jump…
Go See – London: Joan Miró – The Ladder of Escape at the Tate Modern through September 11th, 2011
Thursday, September 1st, 2011
Installation view, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape (2011). All images via Tate Modern.
On view until September 11 at the Tate Modern in London, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape brings together work spanning six decades of the internationally renowned artist’s career. Organized with the help of the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, this major retrospective is a rare opportunity to see over 150 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper culled from collections around the world, as well as five of his large triptychs in their first ever coincident display. In addition to an exceptional viewing experience, the Tate has set out to provide a political context for Miró’s work and thereby shed light on the esteemed Surrealist’s oft-overlooked engagement with and dedication to the world around him.
Joan Miró, Painting (1927).
More text and images after the jump… (more…)
