Faith Ringgold will have her first New York retrospective at the New Museum in 2022.  (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art has announced that Johanna Burton will now serve as the sole and first female director of the museum, as Klaus Biesenbach heads to Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. “We congratulate Klaus on the honor of being appointed as the director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin,” reads a MOCA statement. “We wish him the best and thank him for his contributions to MOCA.” (more…)

Wendy Red Star at Sargent’s Daughters, via Art Observed

This past weekend, New Yorkers flocked to the Javits Center, not for COVID-19 vaccinations, but rather for the much-anticipated Armory Show, which made its return after last year’s cancelled edition, and which marked the first major art fair in the United States since the pandemic struck. In the wake of lockdown, following an extended period of postponed events and online viewing rooms, eager art-goers packed into the Javits Center, where the fair is now located. In the spacious, newly renovated convention center along the Hudson River, the fair presented more than 150 booths, with more than 40 international galleries. Serving as a fixture of modern and contemporary art, the fair kicked off the New York art world’s busiest week of the season—Armory Week. (more…)

Anthony Caro, The Bull (1970), via Karma

Currently on at its New York gallery space, Karma has partnered with Parker Gallery to present a contemporary bicoastal tribute to The De Luxe Show, the landmark 1971 exhibition at the DeLUXE theater in Houston, in honor of its 50th anniversary. Presented in both LA and New York, the show offers a unique exploration of the show and its impact nation wide.

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Ashley Lyon, Mother (Installation View), via Art Observed

For the second edition of Upstate Art Weekend in the Hudson Valley, Elijah Wheat Showroom presented “Tender Temper,” a solo exhibition featuring ceramic works by the artist Ashley Lyon that explore the complexities of motherhood. Foregrounding the human figure, Lyon enacts enlarged, fragmented representations of maternal bodies, placed into surreal positions that complement the elaboration of surreal, disjunctive narratives. While these corporeal sculptures are rooted in the ultra-personal and often tender domain of the maternal, the truncated and generalized forms simultaneously operate with a universal quality. Lyon, who sculpts entirely by hand rather than using life-casts, harnesses the materiality of clay to imbue the surfaces of the bodily forms with a tactile quality, her direct intervention evident.

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Martin Roth, From 2017-2021 Martin Roth transformed a ruin into a garden for a plant concert (2021), via Art Observed

Throughout the course of his artistic practice, the late Martin Roth channeled nature as an active creative agent, using plants and flowers as instrumental collaborators in his practice. In 2017, Roth envisioned the transformation of an abandoned nineteenth-century historical structure into an immersive public garden, a “plant concert hall.”  Though the artist passed away before the enactment of his project, the Newburgh, New York-based Strongroom—a non-profit arts organization—executed his plans this summer. Strongroom presented the site-specific installation during the second installation of Upstate Art Weekend 2021, the three-day self-directed event celebrating the arts in the Hudson Valley.

Martin Roth, Installation View (2021), via Art Observed

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Martine Syms, Loot Sweets (Installation View), via Bridget Donahue

Martine Syms has built a reputation for a practice of elevating the material of everyday life. Using repurposed contexts and personal materials, the artist’s videos and physical work use text and other items to create dense narratives the flitter around the edges of the work on view. For her show at Bridget Donahue, on view through the middle of September, the artist presents an intriguing selection of new pieces that continue this exploration.  (more…)

Hugo Montoya, How ya like me now? (2019), via Art Observed

For the second installation of Upstate Art Weekend, the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) presented a collaborative exhibition at Foreland, a new contemporary arts campus in the Hudson River Valley. Co-organized by curator Jesse Greenberg of JAG Projects, NADA x Foreland showcased works from over 100 artists presented by 81 galleries, nonprofits and artist-run spaces selected through an open call. While celebrating the rich cultural legacy of the Hudson River Valley, Upstate Art Weekend aimed to cultivate community and collaboration in the wake of lockdown, as the art world begins to reopen. While exhibitors ranged from Dubai to Guatemala City to Bucharest, NADA x Foreland focused on artists from New York State, with particular attention to the Upstate region. The works were not displayed in booths, but rather arranged together within the newly restored Civil-War-era spaces of the Foreland campus on the bank of Catskill Creek. (more…)

Damien Hirst, Cherry Blossoms (Installation View), via Fondation Cartier

The flood of recent work on view by Damien Hirst suggests an artist in the midst of a bout of inspiration, pumping out a broad range of works that underscore his roving interests and consistency in vision across paintings, sculpture and photography. Yet his most recent series, Cherry Blossoms, on view at Fondation Cartier this summer, sees something of a step into a more contemplative mode, a point of reflection around which so many frenetically-charged recent works seem to orbit.  The exhibition presents 30 paintings chosen by the artist among the 107 canvases of the series, all large-format. (more…)

After a sit-down between the mayor of Amsterdam and the heirs of a Jewish owner of a Kandinsky work hanging in the the Stedelijk, the city has announced it will return the work to the family. “This is a historic injustice that is being put right,” says the family’s lawyer, Simon van der Sluijs. (more…)

Beijing’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Art will open a new location in the Sichuan province of Chengdu, the Art Newspaper reports.  “Chengdu is one of the most exciting and rapidly growing cities in China and we have been closely following its development and accomplishments in the arts in recent years,” says UCCA director and chief executive Philip Tinari.  (more…)

Johanna Burton has been named the new executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “MOCA’s artist-centered mission dovetails with my own commitment to creating platforms that foster artistic innovation and emphasize deep connections to audiences,” she says in a statement. “By pursuing these goals and supporting the efforts of MOCA’s team, I’m looking forward to extending the museum’s legacy while strengthening bonds both within the institution and with the public.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports on the increasingly strict restrictions on travel into Switzerland for Art Basel this year, and the increasing pressure to postpone or cancel the event.  (more…)

Gallerists Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy, Amalia Dayan and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn will join forces to create LGDR, a project working as a consortium to organize shows and represent artists. “We’ve been looking at ourselves in the mirror and trying to understand who we are and what is the best way to address our clients,” says Gorvy. “What is the business model that is appropriate? We don’t have to do everything, but we can do anything.” (more…)

The Banksy piece that shredded itself shortly after sale in 2018 will go back under the hammer at Sotheby’s, The Guardian reports, offered with a  £4-6m estimate.  (more…)

Matthew Wong, Untitled (2015), via Cheim & Read

Since his sudden death in 2019, the work of painter Matthew Wong has only grown in recognition and reputation, building on an impressively diverse and evocative approach to art-making that underscores the artist’s self-taught method and brilliant eye. This self-taught exploration of the artist’s work is at the core of a new show at Cheim & Read in Chelsea, where the artist’s Ink Drawings, some of his first ventures into painting, are currently on view. Running through September 11th, the show offers a look at Wong’s early output, and the germinal state of his vision as an artist.  (more…)

Gallerist David Kordansky and artist Mindy Shapero give W Magazine a tour of their Los Feliz home, showcasing their collection of art and furniture. “I think Dave would be happy if all the walls were white,” Shapero says. “He wants the art to sing, right? I want the art to sing too, but along with everything else.” (more…)

Cady Noland, The Clip-On Method (Installation View), via Art Observed

On view this summer in New York, artist Cady Noland has opened a show of new works at Galerie Buchholz in conjunction with a two volume publication of the artist’s work and writing, both of which are unified under the title The Clip-On Method. The show, offering a rare chance to see Noland’s work in person, continues her incisive and often confrontation exploration of violence and power in the American psyche, and its effects. (more…)

The Mayor of Amsterdam is in talks with the descendants of the former owner of a Kandinsky painting, who are seeking to reclaim the work from the Stedelijk. (more…)

Olga Balema, Computer (2021), via Camden Art Center

On now at Camden Art Center in London, Computer marks Olga Balema’s first solo exhibition in the UK, centered around a single flat sculpture, created in her studio and the surrounding streets in New York, and consisting of a large digital print of a domestic carpet repeated in a grid-like arrangement, manipulated first through the ‘banner buzz’ digital printing interface and later with different movements and incisions. The work is minimal in the most explicit sense, a series of flat panels attempting to present space as an abstraction with the most limited means possible.  (more…)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Workshop for Peace/Cry Pan Cry (2018), via Clearing

Marking a particularly expansive approach, Clearing Gallery has invited a massive list of artists to fill the gallery’s expansive Bushwick exhibition space. Bringing together an expansive range of the gallery’s artist in a conversation around modern practices, aesthetics and concepts. Moving across a series of sculptural and painterly iterations that create a colorful and expressive whole, the show makes for a refreshing and exploratory take on the summer group show. (more…)

The Galaxy Song (Installation View), via David Kordansky

On view this month at David Kordansky, the collaborative fashion project Online Cermaics and artist Matthew Brannon have joined together to present The Galaxy Song, a show that treats the motifs, cosmic mindfulness, and countercultural narratives associated with the Grateful Dead as springboards for open experimentation with material and concept. While the 1960s-era, psychedelic origins of the Dead—as well as the band’s propensity for inspiring its fans to reinterpret its densely interwoven iconographies—provide the show’s major conceptual through lines, the show equally explores the possibilities of screen-prints and fashion as vectors for complex aesthetic concepts.

Matthew Brannon, San Francisco Owes/Owns/Sold Me (2021), via David Kordansky

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Artist Julien Nguyen has an interview this month in the New York Times, discussing his work and how video games like Starcraft informed his practice. “You’re building your empire and conquering different parts of the world or space,” he says. “I wanted to become a concept artist who designs all the characters and spaceships and buildings.” (more…)

Robert Nava (Installation View), via Art Observed

It’s been something of a blitz of work since Robert Nava joined Pace Gallery last year, with the artist now marking his second show in as many years with gallery out at its East Hampton outpost. The artist, presenting new work created this year, continues a body of work the explores his outlandish assemblages of bodies in space, creating bizarre visual mandalas designed to both immerse and confront the viewer.  (more…)