Marina Abramović, Tree (1972), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

On view at Lisson Gallery in London is a exhibition entitled White Space from Yugoslavian artist Marina Abramović, featuring many works which have never been exhibited before, including two important sound pieces and unseen video documentation of seminal performances. The exhibition will remain on view through November 1st.

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Paul McCarthy, WS SC (Installation View), all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Currently on through Saturday at Hauser & Wirth’s London exhibition space is an exhibition of new paintings by multimedia artist, sculptor, and performance artist Paul McCarthy, marking the artist’s first exhibition devoted entirely to painting since the 1980s.  Continuing his work with the narratives of Snow White, McCarthy delves deeper into the formats and genres of Hollywood film production.

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Karel Appel, Big Bird Flying Over the City (1951), all images courtesy Blum & Poe

Dutch painter Karel Appel was born in Amsterdam in 1921, and worked in Europe for much of his life, passing away less than a decade ago at the age of 85. During the time of the German occupation, Appel studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and eventually left home due to his parents’ disapproval of his decision to be a painter. Perhaps as a result, Appel’s career can’t be defined by any singular characteristic other than discontinuity, and an interest in opposing expectations of normality.

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Pierre Huyghe, IN. BORDER. DEEP. (2014), video still © Pierre Huyghe Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London and Anna Lena Films

Boldly distorting otherwise rigid phenomena, Pierre Huyghe has ambitiously orchestrated and staged alternative recreations of the daily and the mundane. For his current show at Hauser & Wirth’s London location, the Paris-born artist is covering the gallery space with his unfamiliar narratives, which emerge from more familiar territory. IN. BORDER. DEEP. invites the viewers into a hub of various experiments and observations, merging various mediums with science and art history itself.

Pierre Huyghe, IN. BORDER. DEEP. (Installation View) Hauser & Wirth London, 2014, © Pierre Huyghe Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London Photo: Hugo Glendinning (more…)

Marina Abramovic is the subject of another profile this week, this time in Wall Street Journal, where the performance artist discusses her life’s work, her thoughts on retirement, and her piece Generator.  “It’s quite radical,” she says. “It could totally fail, but the real failure would be if I stop believing in myself, that I can do it.” (more…)

DIS has announced the release of a new book, celebrating the oft-maligned form of the #artselfie, and featuring a selection of viewers capturing themselves alongside iconic artworks using their smartphones.  The book, available from boutique press Jean Boîte Editions, is available for €19. (more…)

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Gas, Solid, Liquid (Soap) (2014), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

On view at Lisson Gallery in London is a new series of works by Swedish video and installation artist Nathalie Djurberg accompanied by soundtracks made by Swedish producer and performer Hans Berg. The works will remain on view through November 1st. (more…)

Artist Urs Fischer has reportedly been wed to actress and designer Tara Subkoff this week, during a private dinner ceremony at Soho restaurant Navy. (more…)

The Oslo city council in Norway has approved a proposal for a new Munch Museum design on the city waterfront, created by firm Herreros.  The process in building the museum has moved slowly over the past years, with a number of critics challenging the tilting, “Lambda” design.  A vote on zoning is due to take place in November. (more…)

Prince Albert of Monaco is inaugurating a new Francis Bacon Foundation in the small European country, combining over 2,000 artworks, photographs, works on paper, and working documents, as well as the artist’s furniture and rug designs.  Bacon lived in Monaco for several years in the 1940’s, before moving several years later.  “We’ve discovered that Bacon started painting on the unprimed side of the canvas after losing all of his money in the Monaco Casino,” said collector and foundation founder Majid Boustany, “and as you know, this became one of the trademarks of his style!” (more…)

Wim Delvoye (Installation View), all photos by Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

On view at Galerie Perrotin in Paris is a solo exhibition from Belgian neo-conceptual artist Wim Delvoye composed of around twenty new works that continue the artist’s ongoing interest in assemblages that constantly challenge assumptions of the sacred and profane.  While the show features some of Delvoye’s previously explored formats, the show also includes a number of new formats and practices.

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After five years of renovations, delays and even the replacement of former head Anne Baldassari, the Pablo Picasso Museum in Paris’s Marais District has reopened to strong reviews and even stronger attendance.  “There is a lot of fluidity,” says new director Laurent Le Bon. “One can move around much more easily than before, one has a freedom which goes well with the spirit and the works of Picasso.” (more…)

Artist Marina Abramovic is interviewed in the New York Observer this week, offering additional insight into her new exhibition Generator at Sean Kelly.  “If you deprive two senses, you achieve this kind of experience of the world,” she says. “If you don’t see and don’t hear but you can feel and touch, you achieve this consciousness. We have to develop this—I know that every human being has the potential to develop it. If you change the consciousness, you can change the world.” (more…)

Artist Olafur Eliasson has unveiled a new project in Copenhagen, Denmark, an immense installation featuring 112 tons of ice.  Ice Watch, created in conjunction with geologist Minik Rosing, to commemorate the Fifth Assessment Report on the Climate, a drastic report on the rapidly changing state of the global atmosphere. “I hope that people will touch the inland ice on City Hall Square and be touched by it,” said Eliasson. (more…)

Hans Haacke, the conceptually elusive artist who has for years defied many of the commercial practices of the contemporary art world, is opening a new show at Paula Cooper this month, allowing viewers a look at the artist’s challenging work and personal politics, including a maquette design for the artist’s upcoming Fourth Plinth Commission next year in London. “I’ve always been interested in systems and how they work, and at a certain point you understand that political and social systems are part of that, too, that they can’t be escaped,” he says.  (more…)

The New York Times reports on the recent increase in attempts by museums around New York to increase its focus on digital elements in the presentation of exhibitions and installations, fusing strong curatorship with immersive digital engagement projects.   “You want the way people live their lives to happen in the museum,” says Carrie Rebora Barratt, the Met’s deputy director for collections and administration. (more…)

The New York Post reports on a recent suit filed against former Andy Warhol bodyguard Agusto Bugarin, accusing him of stealing of painting from the artist, and hiding it away for 30 years before trying to sell it in the past year.  “There is no indication that Warhol did or would have given his bodyguard a painting valued at the time in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — several multiples of Bugarin’s annual salary,” the Manhattan Supreme Court filing by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts says. (more…)

The New York Times profiles the increased efforts by Christie’s to build its online sales platform, including a new focus on online only auctions.  “The main objective here is the acquisition of new clients,” said Steven P. Murphy, Christie’s Chief Executive. “We’re building our online business the old-fashioned way, brick by brick.” (more…)

E.V. Day, CatFight (2011-2014) via E.V. Day Studio

On view now at Mary Boone’s uptown gallery is the haunting sculpture series Semi-Feral by artist E.V. Day. The show centers around a large, site-specific sculptural piece comprised of multiple casts of saber-tooth tiger skeletons floating above the floor of the gallery space.  Day’s work, often concerning sexuality and femininity, takes its point of departure here from the slang term “cat fight.”  A phrase that typically robs a fight from any viciousness, Day returns the notion to its original, ferociously natural element.

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A new conservation approach is being used to return Mark Rothko’s badly damaged Harvard Murals series to public view, works that have sat in storage for years to avoid any additional damage to their already badly faded surfaces.  Using a series of colored light projections, the works will restore portions of the surface that had faded from view.  “Where’s the line between what is Rothko and what is the projection?” says Mary Schneider Enriquez, the museum’s associate curator of modern and contemporary art. “What is the original work of art when you project light on it? Is it the same work of art? As a teaching museum within Harvard, that’s the kind of discussion we want to generate.”  (more…)

Do Ho Suh, Rubbing/Loving Project: Dormitory Room at Gwangju Catholic Lifelong Institute (2012)

On view both at Lower East Side and Chelsea locations of Lehmann Maupin, visitors can see a collection of recent drawing works by Do Ho Suh, the influential Korean artist who is broadly known for his soulful architectural installations.  Reinterpreting and immortalizing physical spaces through the creation of subtle reflections and traces, Suh accentuates each object and artworks’ autobiographical importance for him. Using resin or translucent fabric, Suh creates replicas of various interiors, re-imagining his childhood home in Seoul or his New York apartment when he was a teenager.

Do Ho Suh, Rubbing/Loving Project: New York Corridor (2014)

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Jeff Koons is interviewed this week in The Independent, as the artist concludes his monumental retrospective at the Whitney Museum.  In the interivew, Koons discusses his work with Lady Gaga, and his take on the nature of his work.  “I like to smile, I think that my works have aspects to them which are very, very cheerful, that bring about a smile, but at the same time they have the aspect of tragedy,” he says. “So they are not just free of this other side. They want really to be balanced, to be full and rounded.” (more…)

Jenny Holzer, Presently in the United States (2014) via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

On view now at Cheim & Read through October 25th, 2014, Dust Paintings is a series of recent paintings by Jenny Holzer, an artist known primarily for her use of language and political investigation. Culled from the ongoing use of political documents from 2004, months after the United States and United Kingdom instigated the invasion of Iraq, Holzer makes a comprehensive “map”, of sorts, from linguistics to action; from intention to execution, stressing importance and the power of language, while providing a kind of physical and aesthetic proof of this idea.

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