Charles Atlas, A Prune Twin (Installation View), via Luhring Augustine

On view this month, Luhring Augustine presents A Prune Twin, the gallery’s third solo exhibition with pioneering film and video artist Charles Atlas. The showmarks the debut of the titular piece, a multi-channel installation with sound and video originally commissioned by the Barbican Centre, part of the show Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer. Atlas and Clark were longtime collaborators, and this show marks something of both a tribute and compendium of their work together.

(more…)

Leidy Churchman, Niki de Saint Phalle! (1) (2021), via Matthew Marks

On view at Matthew Marks in New York this month, artist Leidy Churchman presents a body of twenty-four monotypes, showcasing an expressive and engaging aspect of the artist’s already dynamic and expressive practice. Turning their hand towards print-making in a series of varied and interesting works, the artist seeks to catalyze the feeling of images and thoughts in human consciousness. By giving attention to each image, the artist hopes to encourage what they have described as “an immersion and transformation of the world from an intimate perspective; a richer, rounder view of the moment from within the mind.”  (more…)

Joel Mesler, RABBI (2022), via Cheim & Read

Painter and longtime gallerist Joel Mesler presents a body of new works at Cheim & Read’s uptown exhibition space this month, bringing together works on paper and new paintings under the title The Rabbis. In a dramatic shift from the artist’s prior work, the pieces here depict a series of Jewish Rabbis, continuing a long history of the depiction of these religious figures. (more…)

Roberto Cuoghi, P(VIPs)po (2020), via Hasuer & Wirth

This winter at Hauser & Wirth’s New York exhibition space, Italian artist Roberto Cuoghi brings a new body of work, Pepsis, to view. Deliberately mixing artistic genres, styles and subjects, the show is presented as Cuoghi’s attempt to free himself from his own stylistic and artistic assumptions and experiences. (more…)

Candida Höfer, Dominikanerkirche Sankt Andreas Düsseldorf II 2011 (2011), via Sean Kelly

On view this month at Sean Kelly in New York City, architect Toshiko Mori curates a show of works by the famed German photographer Candida Höfer. Known for her documentation and exploration of architectual structure, form and space, the exhibition performs an interesting double operation on the artist’s work, presenting her views of architectural space through the lens of one who designs these same environments.  (more…)

Future Shock (Installation View), via Lisson Gallery

Marking a a group exhibition of artists emerging from the 1970s, interconnected among their influences and collaborators as well as the next generation of artists working in video, painting and sculpture, Lisson Gallery‘s current group show, Future Shock, expands across both of the gallery’s New York spaces featuring fruitful collaborations, key early works, and recent, pertinent compositions by the participating artists. (more…)

Chiharu Shiota, Signs of Life (Installation View) via Art Observed

In a hyper-connected world, artist Chiharu Shiota’s work questions the notion of the “web”, a living organism similar to the structures that make up the universe or the neurons our brains are built on. Creating immense interwoven masses of thread, the artist’s work twists and turns through three-dimensional space, creating immense installations and walls of color that present as dream-like, visual riddles. For the artist’s most recent show at Galerie Templon in New York, she continues this practice with a new installation.

Chiharu Shiota, Signs of Life (Installation View) via Art Observed

(more…)

Anne Imhof, EMO (Installation View), via Art Observed

Marking the largest presentation of the artist’s work to date in the United States, Anne Imhof’s solo exhibition EMO, which opened this month at Sprüth Magers’s Los Angeles exhibition space, brings together several bodies of work across multiple mediums, putting each in dialogue with found objects in ways that implicate visitors’ bodies as they move through the space, at turns exalting and frustrating the viewing experience. Imhof, who has pioneered a visceral and impassioned body of work over the past decade, has long drawn on discourses of youth culture, repressed energies, pop signifiers and a range of cultural and social frameworks to explore the body’s relation to society, and the contingent effects each have on the other, here returns to the labyrinthine structures of previous shows to explore these notions once again.  (more…)

Sophie Kitching, Nocturne, 3A Gallery, all photos by Migle Staniskyte

For her latest exhibition on view at 3A Gallery, Sophie Kitching presents new paintings from her Nocturne series, a shadowy and dreamy companion to her Invisible Green series, started in 2019. Both the Nocturnes and the Invisible Green paintings incorporate images of bright flowers and leaves as their main subject matter, but the former is painted onto a background made of black ink mixed with Payne’s gray whereas the latter is on a white canvas. The contrast of both and indeed the title itself—Nocturne—alludes to the opposites representing night and day versions of one another, but moreover they tell a subtle tale of light versus shadow and express entirely different temperaments and moods.

(more…)

Peter Fischli, Ungestalten (Installation View), via Reena Spaulings and Gaga

In his wide-ranging oeuvre, artist Peter Fischli carefully observes and draws from the everyday world to create sculpture, installation, video and works on paper that address similar concerns to those explored as part of his collaborative practice with his late collaborator David Weiss. The artist’s work, so often centered around often overlooked, quotidian aspects of everyday life, sees him posing that same in an experimental and humorous way. For his current show, on now at the shared Reena Spaulings and Gaga exhibition space in Los Angeles, Fischli takes that interest towards a specific set of models: traffic lights.  (more…)

Llyn Foulkes, Birthington (2022), via Gagosian

On view currently at Gagosian’s Beverly Hills exhibition space, artist Llyn Foulkes brings a body of works that continues his wry, expressive and often caustic sense of humor. Highly diverse, tough to categorize, and often wickedly confrontational, Foulkes’s landscape and portrait paintings, mixed-media constructions, and narrative tableaux are presented as a continuation and expansion of his ongoing challenges and critiques of the American mass-media landscape. (more…)

Rita Ackermann, Vertical Vanish (2021), © Rita Ackermann, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo Thomas Barratt

On this month in Los Angeles, artist Rita Ackermann has brought forth a series of new canvases at Hauser & Wirth’s expansive Los Angeles exhibition space, showcasing the artist’s continued exploration and reinvention of the painterly language. Composed primarily of large-scale oil paintings that intuitively recast the interplay of line, color and form, Vertical Vanish makes a game of repeated gestures, figures and motifs.

(more…)

Refik Anadol, Living Paintings (Installation View), via Art Observed

Opening during the run of Frieze Los Angeles this past week, Turkish artist Refik Anadol has installed a body of new works at Jeffrey Deitch’s expansive 925 N. Orange Drive exhibition space, continuing his exploration and elaboration of datasets, visualization models and densely layered digital compositions. Titled Living Paintings, the exhibition will showcase the complete series of Anadol’s artworks that are based on California-related datasets, and explore his fascination with the environments – physical, public, virtual, and multidimensional – that play an instrumental role in shaping his artistic vision. (more…)

Alex Katz, Sunrise (Installation View), via Art Observed

Marking another intriguing iteration of satellite programming over the course of LA Art Week and the run of Frieze Los Angeles, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in West Hollywood is currently presenting Sunrise, a show of new works by painter Alex Katz that underscores the artist’s continued innovation and exploration of the painted canvas and his own, carefully-honed techniques.  (more…)

Emily Silver, all images via Hannah Zhang for Art Observed

Continuing its own intriguing and honed perspective on booth its surroundings in Los Angeles and on the model of the art fair, SPRING/BREAK has once again made arrived in the California city, launching a supplementary event that offers an ample supply of artists and galleries presenting in a concept that stands as a stark contrast to the traditional fair model. Returning this year to its location in Culver City, new space continues the scrappy, raw atmosphere of past years. (more…)

Liza Lacroix at Magenta Plains, via Art Observed

As Frieze opens up shop for the week on the West Coast, the bevy of satellite fairs and event openings are underway across the city, including the always hotly anticipated Felix LA Art Fair, the brainchild of collector Dean Valentine that spreads works across the halls and rooms of the iconic Hollywood Roosevelt hotel. The show allows a unique mixture of intimate exhibitions and adventurous concepts that felt well-suited to the well-heeled patrons of the contemporary art market, both looking for a good piece of work and a unique experience while buying it.

Cameron Clayborne at Moran Moran, via Art Observed

(more…)

Alvaro Barrington at Blum & Poe, all images via Art Observed

After several weeks of fairs in San Francisco and Mexico City, marking the early notes in another year of busy contemporary art fairs around the globe, Frieze Los Angeles, one of the premier events of the early year, has once again opened in the sprawling California metropolis, this year setting up shop amid the gleaming sun and striking expanses of the Santa Monica Airport. Taking place for the first time at this location (previously known as a former site for the Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair), the fair expands to feature more than 120 galleries, including new specialists in 20th-century art, alongside restaurants and Frieze Projects spread across the multiple sites. (more…)

Portrait of the artist by Aleph Molinari for Art Observed.

Israeli-Colombian visual artist Orly Anan mixes elements of theater, dance, performance, and costume design into surrealist neo-kitsch compositions. She recently premiered her first short film Ein Sof during Mexico City’s art week Zona MACO, in partnership with MATERIA and Mubi. Anan describes the film as a ‘Kabbalistic circus’ that blends elements of carnival, kabuki, and sacred numerology into an explosion of colors and symbolism. Art Observed caught up with the artist to talk about her film, her practice, and the esoteric sources of her creative inspiration. (more…)

Michael Williams, Paired Puzzle 1 (Frog/Farm) (2020), via David Kordansky

On view this winter in LA, and open for extended hours during the run of Frieze Los Angeles this week, artists Huma Bhabha and Michael Williams are part of a dual artist show at David Kordansky, featuring new sculptures and works on paper by Bhabha, and new paintings and drawings by Williams. (more…)

Jose Davila at Galeria OMR, all images by Hannah Zhang for Art Observed

Zona Maco has once again opened for its doors for a week of sales and shows in the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City. The fair, which has built a reputation for both its international curation and ist reflection of the thriving artistic community in Mexico City, here returns to the expanses of the Centro Banamex for its 19th year. This year’s edition marked a continuation of a fair that has long prided itself on the scale and strength of its inclusions, with particular focus paid to the art and artists of Latin America in relation to the rest of the international art market. 

Yoan Capote at Galleria Continua

(more…)

Alicja Kwade, Silent Matter (Installation View), via OMR

Artist Alicja Kwade has opened a new show this week during the run of Zona Maco in Mexico City at Galeria OMR, continuing a body of work that uses philosophy and natural phenomena as a means to explore the human condition. Marking her first solo exhibition in Mexico, Silent Matter, Kwade employs the notion of thought experiments, a tool commonly used in science and philosophy as a means to explore concepts and phenomena that are difficult or almost impossible to explain. In the tradition of Schrödinger’s cat or Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Kwade creates physical manifestations of thought experiments meant to stimulate discussion as well as question the limits of our ability to understand and ultimately control reality. (more…)

Nairy Baghramian, modèle vivant (Installation View), via kurimanzutto

On view this month, and opening in tandem with the run of exhibitions and projects during Zona Maco, Mexico City’s kurimanzutto presents new work by artist Nairy Baghramian, exploring a range of histories and modes of studio practice converging on the notion and form of the human body. Titled modèle vivant, the title refers to the practice of drawing, painting, or sculpting the human figure from a live model; that is, from a person who strikes, assumes, holds a given pose in service to an artist’s act of composition. (more…)

Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Now I’m home, lips that know my name (Installation View), via Sadie Coles HQ

Marking their first solo exhibition in the UK, artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase opens a new show Now I’m home, lips that know my name, at Sadie Coles HQ, making for an explorative, domestic installation that embraces the Black Queer experience of love, sexuality, subjectivity and identity; and the profound depth of the capacity for intimacy and pleasure in both public and private spaces, that remain central to their practice. (more…)

Marlon Mullen, Untitled (2021), via JTT

JTT presents its fourth solo show with artist Marlon Mullen this month, continuing an ongoing collaboration with a new selection of colorful abstracted works that underscore the artist’s engaging, expressive hand. Collectively, the works on view span just over 25 years and include some of his earliest, never before shown paintings from the late 1990s as well as his newest works from the past several years.  (more…)