AO Art Observed™

Inside the Brooklyn Artists Ball at the Brooklyn Museum

The annual Brooklyn Artists Ball took place last week on April 24th, featuring award presentations to Barbara Knowles Debs, Vik Muniz, Wangechi Mutu and Roxy Paine for their collective contributions to the vibrant and growing arts scene of New York’s second borough.  The event also featured a series custom designed table settings from a number of New York artists, including Jules de Balincourt, Njideka Akunyili, Daniel Arsham, FAILE, Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw, a performance by Brooklyn’s The Push Pop Collective, and more.  Art Observed was on site for the event, and took these photos showcasing the highlights of the night.

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Taking the stage at MOMA’s PS1 dome theater on Sunday, April 7th, James Franco and fellow NYU graduate students presented Birdsh*t, a complex, dialectic analysis of Franco’s character and send up of Chekov The Seagull.  While seemingly crude, the piece offered a poignant provocation of the audience’s subscriptions to commercial status, fame and image.

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2 Works by Mark Flood at Peres Projects, photo by Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

The Independent Art Fair returned to Chelsea this year, taking up three floors of Center548 with work from over 40 galleries around the world, offering a markedly fresh take on the busy sales rush of Armory Week in New York. 

Independent, New York, 2013 (Installation View) Courtesy Independent, New York

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Outside the Park Ave Armory for the ADAA Art Show

With another hectic Armory Week comes another edition of the Art Dealers Association of America’s Art Show, open at the Park Avenue Armory.  Now in its 25th edition, The Art Show is the nation’s longest continually running art fair, offering viewers a smaller, more scaled back experience in contrast with The Armory Show held out on New York’s Hell’s Kitchen Piers.  The show’s more focused collection of 72 leading dealers and galleries allow viewers a slightly less overwhelming experience moving from booth to booth, and also provide slightly more space for the work to breath.

Damien Hirst at Van de Weghe (more…)

The View from Outside The 2013 Armory Show

The doors opened this morning on the 2013 edition of the Armory Art show, welcoming press and VIP’s into the massive exhibition halls of Piers 92 and 94 on the waterfront of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.  It was a special year for New York’s biggest annual art event, marking the 100 year anniversary of its namesake, the 1913 exhibition that welcomed the European avant-garde to American shores, and gave many their first glimpses of Marcel Duchamp, Matisse and Edvard Munch, among many others.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg Makes the Opening Remarks at The 2013 Armory Show (more…)

Tracey Emin, Floating, (2012), via Galleria Lorcan O’Neill

Currently open in Rome, Galleria Lorcan O’Neill’s fourth presentation of Tracey Emin’s work is a mature, low-key, yet penetrating selection of the artist’s diverse practice, showcased in both of their spaces on Via Orti D’Aliberti.  Emin has recently been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), as well as a professor of drawing at the Royal Academy (RA) along with Fiona Rae, making them the first two women to be elected into the academy.  Given her entrance into these exclusive circles as an official representative of British culture, the Italian location of this show offers an interesting reevaluation of Emin’s art.
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Daniel Buren, “Electricity” at Petzel Gallery (Installation View) Photo by Elene Damenia

This January, Daniel Buren presents his third solo exhibition across two New York gallery venues; his work will be showcased at the Bortolami Gallery at 520 West Street and Petzel Gallery at 537 West 22^nd Street. The galleries will simultaneously exhibit works from the series Electricity, Paper, Vinyl – WORKS IN SITU & SITUATED WORKS. Bortolami is showing Buren’s recent works from 2012, while pieces from 1968 – 2012 will be on view at Petzel through February 16th.

Daniel Buren, Projection, travail in situ (2012) at Petzel Gallery, Photo by Elene Damenia

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Entrance to Hauser and Wirth’s second gallery in New York, where Martin Creed’s ‘Work No. 1461′ greets visitors

At 511 West 18th Street, in the 24,700 square feet that formerly housed the roller disco known as “The Roxy,” Hauser & Wirth have found their second home in New York. Maintaining their other location on the Upper East Side, the expansion to Chelsea is their fifth location worldwide, and celebrates an important landmark: the gallery’s twentieth anniversary. A hefty book of over 1,000 pages, edited by Hatje Cantz, accompanies the event: Hauser & Wirth 20 Years. The exhibition inaugurating the space could not be more fitting: a father-and-son collaboration which took place over that same twenty year period: Dieter and Björn Roth.

Artist Dieter Roth smokes a cigarette in Roth New York Bar.

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Lost in LA (Installation View) All photos by Art Observed unless otherwise noted

Los Angeles’ Municipal Art Gallery recently exhibited Lost in LA, a group show featuring artists of both American and French origin working in a collaborative dialogue. The immensely popular television show “LOST,” which throughout the last decade acted as both a source of inspiration and speculation for these artists, serves as the backdrop to the themes presented in the exhibition. (more…)

LA Art Show (2013), Installation View

The LA Art show held its opening night premier party on Wednesday, January 23rd at the LA Convention Center. During the Patron Hours, James Franco was the guest of honor and was joined by an eclectic LA crowd, with an incredible mix ranging from the overtly contemporary to the traditionally elegant. Entering its 18th year, the fair has earned a reputation for its well planned juxtaposition of traditional and modern art, and this year’s edition was no different.  The milling crowd moved easily from the traditional to contemporary sections and back, taking their time to comb through the sheer scale of the festival and its one hundred prominent worldwide galleries.

LA Art Show (2013), Installation View

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Andrea Mary Marshall, Gia Condo (Installation View) – All photos by Elene Damenia for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

Blending fashion photography, performance, video and painting, the second solo exhibition by artist Andrea Mary Marshall explores the artist’s alter ego – the drag-embracing, Mona Lisa-fixated painter Gia Condo.  Across 13 canvases and a series of photographs, the artist explores issues of gender and identity that surround the famous painting of the smiling woman, re-imagining them in the style of predominantly male contemporary artists like Keith Haring, Francis Bacon, and Marcel Duchamp.

Andrea Mary Marshall, Gia Condo (Installation View)

Art Observed spoke with Marshall at the opening of her exhibition at Allegra LaViola Gallery about the character of Gia Condo, and her motivations for the exhibition.

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Gert and Uwe Tobias at FRAC-Auvergne (Installation View), via FRAC-Auvergne

The work of Romanian brothers Gert and Uwe Tobias operates in a peculiar space between diverse artistic traditions.  Combining watercolor, woodcut prints, sculptures, typewriter drawings and ceramics, the Tobias brothers have created a body of work that combines Art Nouveau with Romanian folk heritage, Paul Klee with Russian Constructivism, and archaic technologies with contemporary art theory.  Using the broad world of contemporary art as their sounding board, the Tobias brothers seek to reevaluate and re-contextualize their native heritage.  (more…)

Installation view, Cellblock I, Andrea Rosen Gallery. All photos on site by Erica Simone for Art Observed

The Andrea Rosen Gallery opened Cellblock I at its main space on December 1st, 2012, and simultaneously inaugurated its new, second location–just down the street at 544 West 24th Street–with Cellblock II. Both shows, held together under the theme (and anti-theme) of imprisonment, were curated by the prominent scholar and curator Robert Hobbs.

Robert Motherwell’s Dover Beach III at Cellblock II, Andrea Rosen Gallery

Hobbs is well-known for his work as an art historian and writer. He has been the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair at Virginia Commonwealth University since 1991, and a visiting professor at Yale University for eight years. He is known as the definitive Robert Smithson scholar, and has contributed seminal writings on many of the artists he selected to show, including Alice Aycock, Beverly Pepper, and Kelley Walker. (more…)

Artist Nate Lowman at the DJ Booth - All photos by C. Dalaeli for ArtObserved

On Tuesday December 11th, The Whitney Museum of American Art hosted its annual Gala and Studio Party, sponsored by Microsoft and Pamella Roland. Originally scheduled to take place at Hudson River Park’s Pier 57 on October 30th, the annual events were postponed due to Hurricane Sandy. With more than $2.7 Million raised Tuesday evening, a portion of which will be donated to the New York Foundation for the Arts Emergency Relief Fund.

Atmosphere

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Guillermo Kuitca in front of his work at The Drawing Center, photo by H. Hannig for ArtObserved

Argentinian painter Guillermo Kuitca has, for the past several decades, continued to explore the visual aesthetic of organization, the varied architectural and illustrative lines at the heart of the maps, floor plans and aerial views, abstracting these images into his own personal artistic language.  The record becomes a personal interpretation, and vice versa.

Guillermo Kuitca at The Drawing Center photo by Cathy Carver

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The student occupiers at their press conference Monday, December 10th at noon. Photo by Phoebe Pundyk for Art Observed.

The eleven students who have been occupying the Cooper Union clock tower exited at noon yesterday from the Peter Cooper Suite. Sleeping bags in tow, the students (many of whom wore homemade t-shirts with “FREE” scrawled across them) were greeted with cheers. Although none of their original demands were met by the administration, the group felt it was time to end the lock-in: that they had made their point and that their work would be better carried on from the ground. They were accompanied by their dean, who handed each student a single red rose. This is just the beginning of a long road to resolution.

Signs accumulated at the gate in Cooper Square directly below the windows of the lock-in. Photo by Jennifer Lindblad for Art Observed.

Read more…

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Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Carpinteros, Kosmaj Toy (2012).

All images by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved, on location at Art Basel Miami Beach Fair.

Art Basel returned once again in Miami Beach this past week for the 11th annual Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. Featuring over 300 galleries representing 36 countries around the world, the show has exhibited marked growth from last year’s event, with well over 2,000 artists flocking to exhibit at what has become the internationally-renowned closing party for the world art market each year.  It is of course always an irony that tens of thousands will fly down for the events and parties, with many of them never visiting the vast aggregation of what it said to be roughly $1.5 billion worth of art in one (large) room, a collection that few museums in the world could compete with.   Below is a selection of some of the works we thought to be notable from the fair.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, Mark Rothko No. 1 (1957) and Alexander Calder, installation view

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Los Carpinteros  Güiro – Pop up bar on the Beach – All photos in this post by Art Observed

The events surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach have grown noticeably in the past few years, thankfully so has the pixel count in the latest issue cell phone cameras of our Art Observed staff on site (though some photos below seem to belie this capability). Below is a selection of some of the people, art, cars-as-art, parties and events we tweeted and instagrammed live during the week @ArtObserved, in case you missed it.

Azealia Banks at the Standard Hotel for Terrywood on Friday Night

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All photos by G. Hansen for ArtObserved

A Design Miami conversation between Vito Acconci and Mitchell Joachim, both artists and architects often at the verge of one discipline or another, focused on Acconci’s origins in poetry and art and transition into architecture. (more…)

Exterior View, Wolfsonian FIU. All photos by A. M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved

On Friday, December 7th, 2012, the Wolfsonian Museum at FIU held a reception for its shows on view:  “Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection”,  “Esther Shalev-Gerz: Describing Labor” and “Art and Design in the Modern Age: Selections from the Wolfsonian Collection”. The exterior of the Mediterranean-revival style building recently underwent conservation and its dramatically lit 1926 cast stone façade welcomed invited guests.

Maria Likarz Fashion 1911 (more…)

Terry Richardson and Pharrell Williams at OHWOW It Ain’t Fair 2012 photo by Aviva for Art Observed

On December 7th, 2012, at 743 Washington Avenue (on the Miami Beach side and not across the bay in the design district) OHWOW inaugurated the fifth and last edition of It Ain’t Fair (IAF), a venue for avant-garde art across all media. It began in 2008 in Miami, concurrent with the main fair, as another way to view work by emerging artists such as Tauba Auerbach, Ashley Bickerton, Cyprien Gaillard, Clayton Patterson and others.

Atmosphere at OHWOW It Aint Fair Miami 2012, all photos by E. Schwartzberg for ArtObserved unless otherwise noted

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Danh Vo – We The People (detail) – Gallery Chantal Crousel, all photos by G. Hansen for ArtObserved

Copper – tarnished, polished, battered, and even mailed FedEx packages (as with Walead Beshty’s piece at Regen Projects) seemed to make an appearance in many places at Art Basel Miami Beach this year. One amazing example was Danh Vo’s curving, paneled “We The People” at Galerie Chantal Crousel, also perhaps the largest copper piece at the show.

Daniel Buren – Bortolami Gallery

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New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) Art Fair 2012, all photos by E. Simone for ArtObserved

The NADA fair is home to the some of the youngest, and most surprising artists and gallerists during Art Basel week, and is often described as a respite from the big-named, shiny, high-altitude atmosphere of the main fair. Dealers and collectors come to NADA searching out the new artists they think have the most potential, reveling in the discovery.

Keith Farquhar, Leslie Fritz Gallery (formerly Renwick Gallery) (more…)

Inside the occupation of the tower.  All images courtesy the Students for a Free Cooper Union, unless otherwise noted.

Earlier this week, Art Observed reported that students at Cooper Union, the country’s only traditionally tuition-free art school, have barricaded themselves into the top floor of their school in an act of protest against the school’s recent economic scandal. Last year, after years of hiding its financial situation, the school’s administration revealed that they are in a $17 million debt that could leave students paying tuition as soon as 2018.

Although there has been minimal response thusfar from the school’s administration regarding the students’ actions, support has steadily grown, especially from faculty members. The media response to the students’ actions has been far-reaching, from early coverage by Art in America to mainstream media sources including MSNBC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, and The Rachel Maddow Show.

Art Observed’s Jennifer Lindblad reached out to occupying students to hear their experiences and reflections so far.

Occupiers receive a delivery by balloon at the Cooper Union Foundation Building on Tuesday, December 4th. Photo by Phoebe Pundyk for Art Observed.

Click through for more images, text, and exclusive interview…

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