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Chicago Dealer Richard Gray Passes Away at 89 ↠

May 20th, 2018

Richard Gray, via Art NewsChicago art dealer Richard Gray, long a cornerstone of the city’s arts scene, has passed away at the age of 89.  Gray cultivated and supported a range of artists over the course of his life and work, including Alex Katz, Theaster Gates, and David Hockney. “The reality is, sooner or later—but not so much later—it’s all going to be all over for me, and I accept that. I know it,” Gray said in 2007. “It doesn’t change one iota my ability to continue, every day, to be active and involved and committed, to gain from everything around me, what people are doing—artists, musicians, family.” 
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New York — Ellsworth Kelly: “Black & White Works” and “Painting/Object” at the FLAG Art Foundation Through May 19, 2018 ↠

May 18th, 2018

Installation view of Ellsworth Kelly: Black & White Works at The FLAG Art Foundation, 2018. Photography by Steven Probert.
Installation view of Ellsworth Kelly: Black & White Works at The FLAG Art Foundation, 2018. Photography by Steven Probert.

Organized by Ellsworth Kelly’s long-time life partner photographer Jack Shear, Black and White Works at the FLAG Art Foundation sheds light on the pioneer colorist’s paintings using primarily black and white, a body of work occupying one fifth of his entire repertoire. Coinciding with the Blanton Art Museum’s unveiling of Kelly’s monumental 2,715 square-foot architectural work Austin, which also introduced a new path in the late artist’s expansive career, the exhibition proposes a fresh approach Kelly’s legacy. Containing sculptural experimentation and geometric curiosity, the works on view demonstrate his unending interest in pushing the boundaries of abstract precision, architectural balance, and optic illusion within the limits of two seemingly opposite and mute colors. Contrasted with the artist’s signature exuberance and his equally precise monochromatic color palette, the works Shear brought together both evoke characteristics from Kelly’s most iconic while and challenging the viewer to expand their interpretation and appreciation of his larger oeuvre.
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MoMA Announces Major Acquisition of Works on Paper Collection ↠

May 18th, 2018

Valentina Kulagina, via ArtforumMoMa has announced the acquisition of 324 works on paper by ninety-seven artists from the holdings of Merrill C. Berman, a Rye, New York–based investor who amassed a collection of 20,000 early twentieth-century works on paper.  “By representing crucial figures—often women and artists from lesser-known geographies—missing or underrepresented in our collection, this extraordinary body of work is especially welcome as the museum continues its commitment to diversifying modernism’s narratives with its forthcoming expansion in 2019,”says Christophe Cherix, the MoMA’s chief curator of drawings and prints.
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REFERENCE LIBRARY

Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci image via The Brooklyn Rail

b. 1940
Lives and works in:

Brooklyn, New York

Represented by:

Acconci Studio, Brooklyn, NY

Education includes:

College of the Holy Cross BA, Worcester, MA

University of Iowa MFA, Iowa City

Acconci, a New York born and based artist, began his career in the mid-60s as a poet and co-editor (with poet and author Bernadette Mayer) of the journal 0 to 9. The journal published works by important contemporaneous artists and writers such as Robert Barry, Dan Graham, Sol Lewitt, Yvonne Rainer, and Robert Smithson.By the late 60s Acconci drifted from writing and, influenced by the readings he participated in, started exploring performance-based work, video, film, and photography. Much of this work was highly conceptual and focused on the artist’s body within space (Following, an early piece, consisted of the artist being led around New York City by strangers). Another prominent feature of this work was the element of total physicality as pronounced through his engagement with his own body, which at times was quite grotesque and bordered on violent. Perhaps his most notorious piece, Seedbed (1971), consisted of Acconci lying under a wooden ramp in Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating, while his concurrent fantasies were being broadcast through speakers in the gallery. This piece, which employed performance, language, and a direct relationship between the viewer and the artist, would establish the vein in which Acconci worked for years to come.
crash by vito acconci

Crash by Vito Acconci, image via Wikipedia

By the 1980s, Acconci explored more proto-architectural constructions, moving out of the traditional gallery space into more open, dialogical, public space. In 1988 he formed Acconci Studio, an architecture and landscaping firm, with a group of other architects. Acconci Studio, based in Brooklyn, continues to design public buildings.

City of Words, Lithograph by Vito Acconci

City of Words, Lithograph by Vito Acconci, image via Wikipedia

Vito Acconci- Homepage

Wikipedia Entry

Books About Vito Acconci:
More info about the artist coming soon.

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