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…)

Chuck Close, Self-Portrait (No Glasses) (2016), via Art Observed

Artist Chuck Close, a pioneer of the postmodern and contemporary portraitist, has passed away at the age of 81. A defining voice in the landscape of New York’s post-war art scene, the artist leaves behind a legacy of work that mixed together an insightful use of photorealist technique and subtle commentary on its construction to create an influential body of work. (more…)

Darren Bader, Mundi 56 (2021),via Sadie Coles

This summer at Sadie Coles HQ in London, the humorous and incisive work of artist Darren Bader comes back to the UK for his fourth solo show with the gallery. Through a range of media – sculpture, Augmented Reality (AR), mural, photography and posters – the artist continues to distill and defamiliarize the concept of the ‘art object’. (more…)

Artist Lee Young-chul is the first name tapped to represent South Korea at next year’s Venice Biennale.“It is not known whether more artists will join the Korean Pavilion. It is up to the artistic director,” an official said. “But it is rare for a single artist to represent the pavilion.”
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Artist Barbara Kruger has an interview on Art Newspaper this week, discussing her work, projects, and the current zeitgeist.  “Thank God I’m an artist and not an internet or TikTok or movie star,” she says. “Any time I go to a gala, all those people are fighting to get on the red carpet, but the photographers don’t give a flying fuck about artists.” (more…)

Louise Bourgeois (Installation View), via Galerie Karsten Greve

Louise Bourgeois could be the artist who most drew on her personal experience and trauma to fuel her work, using her work and emotions as equal sounding boards towards each other, and creating a complex, dense body of work. Using art as a therapy product, she gave shape to her emotions and developed a corpus of themes and motifs through her sculptures, drawings, multiples and paintings. At this show of works at Galerie Karsten Greve in St. Moritz, this work gets a nuanced and attentive look.  (more…)

As U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, and the country prepares for the rise of the Taliban, museums and collections are bracing for threats to their collections.  “We didn’t expect this to happen so quickly,” said Noor Agha Noori, head of Afghanistan’s Institute of Archaeology in Kabul.  (more…)

Eliza Douglas, Orgy of the Sick (Installation View), via Overduin

Painter Eliza Douglas has opened a show of new work in Los Angeles this month, a selection of paintings spread throughout Overduin and Co. that explore the convergences of pop graphics and commercial materiality, rendering a series of swirling, kaleidoscopic commentaries on cartoons and their subcultures.  (more…)

Wade Guyton, Untitled (2020-2021), via Matthew Marks

It’s a natural impulse to try and make sense of the past year by any possible means, and the current string of shows on view across the art world featuring reflective works, photo archives, and other modes of documentation as expression seems to speak to that phenomenon. Case in point: artist Wade Guyton’s current exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery in Los Angeles, a selection of pieces that feature the artist’s signature approach towards the construction of the canvas, while drawing in particular on images archived over the past year of Covid-19 quarantine and recovery. (more…)

Sotheby’s will sell 11 Picasso works owned by MGM Resorts, estimated at a combined value of around $100m.“We are committed to creating an even more inclusive collection that maintains the breadth of our existing portfolio while giving a greater voice to artists from underrepresented communities,” says Ari Kastrati, the chief hospitality officer of MGM Resorts. (more…)

Stefan Kalmár will leave his position as director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, a post he’s held since 2016. “Directorships should never be for life—fixed tenures should be the norm not the exception,” he said. (more…)

Julien Nguyen, hic manebimus optime (2021), via Matthew Marks

Currently on at Matthew Marks’ Chelsea gallery location, artist Julien Nguyen has selected a series of recent paintings to mark the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. Spanning a selection of works that showcase the artist’s attentive and expressive output, the show features thirteen oil paintings made over the past three years. (more…)

Lucy Raven (Installation View), via Dia

Marking the reopening of the Dia Art Foundation’s Chelsea headquarters following an expansive renovation project, artist Lucy Raven has installed a set of new works that emphasize points of renewal, construction, and the organization’s place in the history of contemporary art through a deft and intuitive process. (more…)