AO Art Observed™

Installation View

Galerie Perrotin is currently radiating with Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light sculptures. An Installation features eight sculptural works from the years 1963–89 and three schematic drawings. 1963 was a seminal year for Flavin, as he removed all other elements from his practice to work solely with commercially available fluorescent lights. With clarity and simplicity, his constructed arrangements explore the painterly possibilities of color and light while engaging with the architectural space.

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Installation view. All images courtesy of Os Gemeos.

Os Gemeos (Portugese for ‘the twins’) are Brazilian identical twin brothers Otávio and Gustavo Pandolfo. Fermata, their latest exhibition in Vila Velha, Brazil, is a graffiti-minded colorful world of both fantasy and reality. The show consists entirely of new works, most of which were developed on site at the Museu Vale, which is an old train station now converted into a museum. The show’s name ‘fermata’ has musical roots and is defined as the interlude between musical tempos in an opera, inspiring the new paintings, interactive works, sculpture, and video. “Fermata, in this case, symbolizes the intervals needed to create the right mood for every action that will follow,” said artist Gustavo Pandolfo.

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David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire (2011), one of a 52-part work. All images via The Guardian 

Britain’s Royal Academy of Art is currently showing some two hundred works by ‘Royal Academician’ David Hockney. The exhibition, A Bigger Picture, is centered on fifty-two new works inspired by the Yorkshire landscape of Northern England, where Hockney has been residing on and off for the past few years. Much of the work is new, including fifty-one new works ‘painted’ with an iPad application and enlarged.

David Hockney, Winter Timber (2009)

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Shirin Neshat, Divine Rebellion (2012). All images courtesy of Gladstone Gallery.

Shirin Neshat’s newest photographic series and video installation is currently on view at Gladstone Gallery. The exhibition’s title, Book of Kings, comes from the ancient book Shahnameh (Book of Kings), a tragedy written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi in the tenth century that tells the story of the mythical and historical past of Greater Iran. A collection of portraits of Iranian and Arab youth with calligraphic texts and illustrations covering their skin, Neshat’s artistic practice examines the conditions of power within the social, cultural, and political structures in the Middle East while also addressing universal themes of the human condition.

Installation view

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Grayson Perry, The Frivolous Now (2011). Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Copyright Grayson Perry. Photo: Stephen White

In the The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry curates a show combining treasures from the British Museum‘s permanent collection and a selection of his own works. The show focuses on honoring the craftsman, the many men and women who have anonymously created craft objects throughout the ages, displaying contemporary objects alongside creations from the past two million years, according to the press release.

Green glazed composition staff-terminal in the form of the god Bes sitting on a lotus flower with a monkey between his feet. Egypt, 664-332 BC. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum

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Robert Rauschenberg, Canto XIV [from XXXIV Drawings for Dante's Inferno (including KAR)] (1959–1960)

HIDE/SEEK, the controversial exhibition that was first featured at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, is now on view at The Brooklyn Museum. Exploring issues of gender, sexual identity, concealment, and transgression in modern America, it simultaneously presents both a eulogy for the irreversible past and a radiant hope for the present and future. The works subtly meditate on universal themes of love, companionship, interaction, conversation, transience, transformation, dissolution, loss, and death.

Installation view

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Donald Judd , Untitled (1965). All images via  Sprüth Magers.

Currently on view at Sprüth Magers London is Working Papers: Donald Judd Drawings 1963–93. The show consists of 33 drawings made when Judd was creating exclusively three-dimensional objects, offering an extended insight into the artist’s work during this period. Judd is considered a central figure of Minimalism, and although he strongly rejected the association, his explorations of volume, space, and the elimination of the artist’s ‘hand’ were pioneering efforts for Minimalists. Judd abandoned painting to work with three-dimensional objects in 1963, exercising a vocabulary of forms that he had established such as “stacks,” “boxes,” and “progressions,” which focused on the relationship between the object, the viewer, and the environment.

Installation view

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Eva Rothschild, Natural Beauty (2009). All images courtesy of Kunstverein Hannover

Hot Touch is on now at Kunstverein Hannover, an exhibition dedicated to the work of artist Eva Rothschild, her first ever in Germany. Creating work that is both new and referential, the artist recalls the mid-20th century concept and tradition of Minimalism, and the fragile, ephemeral work by Eva Hesse. Utilizing a variety of materials including leather, Plexiglas, and wood, Kunstvereine Hannover claims Rothschild as one of the most important artists today working to confront and challenge the “formal aspects of sculpture.”

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Rudolf Stingel, Untitled (2011)

Luxembourg & Dayan‘s Grisaille explores the use of a generally monochromatic color palette in works spanning multiple centuries. The exhibition is divided between the gallery’s new space in London and the 77th Street location in New York; the show began in London in October, overlapping with the New York show throughout November and December. Both shows feature a variety of artists including Albrecht Durer, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol. The New York gallery also shows new work by Richard Prince and John Currin.

Gerhard Richter, Grau (1974)

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Ellsworth Kelly, Orange Relief with Blue (2011). All Images via Matthew Marks.

American abstract painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly has unveiled a so-called ‘shop sign’ for the inaugural exhibition of the latest Matthew Marks Gallery in West Hollywood, California, while the gallery continues to maintain four spaces in New York City. The sign is a wide strip of painted black aluminum set across the top of the white stucco building (a converted garage, now 3,500 square feet). This is Kelly’s first major exhibition in Los Angeles after over a decade, and the showcase of Kelly’s paintings inside the gallery runs concurrently to his print retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which opened Sunday.

An outside view of the ‘shop sign’ (more…)

Francesco Vezzoli, The 24 Hour Museum, 2012, Palais d’Iéna. All images via The 24 Hour Museum.

On January 24th, duo Francesco Vezzoli and designer Miuccia Prada team up with AMO, the research division of Rem Koolhaas’s architectural firm OMA, to transform Paris’ Palais d’Iéna into The 24 Hour Museum. The palace, which ordinarily houses France’s economical, social, and environmental councils, will instead be populated with high-end fantasy fashion and explorations of celebrity and sex. Known as a prankster of sorts, Vezzoli’s work often involves a certain kitchiness while perhaps masking a deeper political significance. In this exhibition, Vezzoli pays homage to the female figure in particular, featuring renditions of neo-classical sculptures outfitted with heads of “contemporary divas.” The museum is divided into three sections—historic, contemporary, and forgotten—with three segments of the 24 hour period as well: first a private dinner at 8:30 Tuesday evening, followed by an exclusive dance party, then opening to the public at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, before closing at 8:30 p.m.

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All installation views courtesy of David Zwirner.

David Zwirner is currently presenting Date Painting(s) in New York and 136 Other Cities, a collection of work by On Kawara that spans the 46-year series of paintings. Blending the personal with the historical, the artist’s work uses variations of sans serif fonts and hand-mixed colors to record the date on which he painted the canvas. Kawara consistently exudes a fascination with chronological time, exploring the human perception of its passing, and the nature of our relationship to it. By notching the passage of time and cataloging the procession of his physical life and travels, Kawara creates a body of work that not only testifies to the grand scope of the human life, but also creates a complex interaction with the idea of history—both of the self and of mankind—and the history of the future.

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Anselm Kiefer, Shevirat Ha-Kelim (2011). Metal shelves with approx. 40 lead books and broken glass. All images courtesy of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

To inaugurate the Herta and Paul Amir building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, German artist Anselm Kiefer has created a site specific exhibition in the 9,000 square foot special exhibition gallery. Shevirat Ha-Kelim (the breaking of the vessels) is a continuation of the artist’s exploration of Jewish tradition and mysticism, which the artist has been working with since the 1970s. Both older and more recent works, mostly from the artist’s private collection, will be on exhibition, including an array of painting, sculpture, woodcuts, and installation.

Installation view

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Anselm Kiefer, Merkaba (2011)

Anselm Kiefer presents his largest show in London yet, covering over 11,000 square feet of the new White Cube Bermondsey gallery, Il Mistero delle Cattedrali. With ties to Fulcanelli’s publication of the same name (published in 1926), the show explores his longtime fascination with alchemy and its processes, Kiefer bringing to light the mystical notions behind the pseudo-scientific procedure. “In the past the alchemists sped up this process with magical means. That was called magic,” Kiefer states. “As an artist I don’t do anything differently. I only accelerate the transformation that is already present in things. That is magic, as I understand it.”

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Ai Weiwei, Forever Bicycles (2012). All photos via Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Ai Weiwei’s current exhibition and semi-retrospective at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Ai Weiwei, Absent, includes pieces dating back to 1983, including large-scale sculpture and a collection of 100 photographs divided into his two artistic phases—in the East Village, New York and in Beijing, China. “Whenever Ai had a spare moment he would fill it with pictures of the places he visited, people he met, the area he lived,” states the exhibition’s press release. This lends a feeling of immediacy and voyeurism to Ai’s photos, as the viewer is shown a glimpse of the artist’s life as he documents the lives of others.

Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan (1994)

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Roberto Matta, Untitled (1983). All images courtesy of The Pace Gallery.

The Pace Gallery’s Matta: a Centennial Celebration commemorates the life and work of the Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with his children (he is the father of artist Gordon Matta-Clark) and concentrates on work created towards the end of his career. Born in 1911, Matta was a seminal figure in the art world, and his legacy and work continue to resonate. Matta: a Centennial Celebration features 14 paintings, many of which have never been viewed outside of Europe.

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Jeff Wall, Boxing (2011)

Jeff Wall’s latest solo show at the Marian Goodman Gallery, New Photographs, consists of seven large scale photographs and four smaller ones. Most made within the past two years, the works are a continuation on the neo-realistic, documentary style parameters the artist has been working within in recent years, reflecting various pieces of a collective cultural fabric that Wall weaves throughout his ouvre.

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Francis Picabia, Printemps (1942-43)

Currently being shown at Michael Werner Gallery in New York is an exhibition of the French surrealist/Dadaist painter Francis Picabia. The exhibition has a particular focus on the artists’ later works, during which he explored methods of painting beyond the conventional and expected of the time. While Picabia’s work stands alongside the exploratory French artists and thinkers of the early 20th century, it is also branded in his unique sensibilities, constantly changing and seemingly never satisfied.

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Billy Childish, Sibelius Among Saplings (2011). All images courtesy Lehmann Maupin gallery.

Lehmann Maupin in New York is currently presenting work by Billy Childish, a cult artist who has been an integral part of the contemporary cultural landscape for the past 35 years. Curated by Matthew Higgs of White Columns, the exhibition is appropriately christened I am the Billy Childish, presenting a series of the artist’s recent paintings alongside a selection of his copious musical and literary projects.

Billy Childish sings at his opening at Lehmann Maupin

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Gert and Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2011). All images courtesy of Maureen Paley, London.

The work of Gert and Uwe Tobias is currently on view at Maureen Paley, London. The identical twin brothers collaboratively create large scale woodcuts, mixed-media works, and ceramic sculptures. The artists draw from a multitude of inspirational sources to create pieces that are visually stunning and technically innovative, appearing at the same time both playful and haunting. Decorative patterns, bold colors, and textile qualities are visual characteristics ever present in their abstracted cartoon-like figures, heavily influenced by the Eastern European folk art of their homeland, Transylvania.

Installation View

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Andy Warhol, Shadows (1978-79), installation view. All photos via Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Andy Warhol’s silkscreened series Shadows is on view now at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Shadows was created during the last decade of Warhol’s life and consists of 102 prints of shadows produced in his studio. The paintings are exhibited on an uninterrupted wall, providing a unique opportunity to view the series curving through the museum’s galleries. The Shadow series departs from Warhol’s usual pop style as he generated the shadows himself in his studio, creating abstract forms not normally seen in his work.

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Installation view. All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

The Tate Modern‘s exhibition ‘Panorama,’ featuring the work of living German artist Gerhard Richter, will be coming to an end after thee months. The exhibition pays homage to Richter’s variant inspirations, spanning 50 years of work and 14 rooms, providing an all-encompassing display of his oeuvre. Works include photo-realist paintings, landscapes, cloud, squeegee, and history paintings, with less conventionally displayed glass and mirror constructions from the 1980s, as well as his first Color Chart from 1966. One noted work, the 20-meter-long Stroke (on Red) (1980) was developed from a photograph of a brush stroke. This is its first exhibition outside of Germany.

‘Panorama’ gallery view, with curator Mark Godfrey

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Sanford Biggers, Chesire (2008)

The art of Sanford Biggers is a pastiche of cultural signifiers, stacking symbols and tropes from the African-American experience together for a wide contextual palette of juxtapositions. Such is the nature of Blossom, seeing its Brooklyn debut as part of Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective at the Brooklyn Museum. Referencing lynchings, Buddhist enlightenment, and the artist’s musical identity, all while making conscious aesthetic and situational ties to the early 20th century landscapes of the American West, the poetic piece functions as an example of Biggers’ densely multi-cultural work that speaks to both broad senses of American identity and the artist’s own personal experience.

Sanford Biggers, Blossom (2007)

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