Paul Mogensen, no title (2022), via Karma

On this month at Karma New York is Paintings: 1965-2022, a survey exhibition of work by painter Paul Mogensen. Known for his mathematical, progressional works that defy categorization and treat the canvas as a site for both deconstruction and restructuring of painting as a format, the artist’s work here illustrates a career of innovation and exploration.  (more…)

Portrait of the artist in his studio in Metepec, Mexico via Hilario Galguera Gallery

Opening on April 20 at Hilario Galguera Gallery is Mexican artist Gabriel O’Shea’s solo exhibition Preludio. Through his experiments with classical and contemporary mediums, from monochromatic paintings and wax sculptures to AI software, O’Shea explores the complex, and often surreal, relationship between technology and religion in a postmodern digital age.

Art Observed sat down with O’Shea over Zoom to talk about his artistic background, his creative processes, and the major themes surrounding the exhibition. (more…)

Andreas Schulze, Untitled (Chelsea Flowers) (2023), via Sprüth Magers

Artist Andreas Schulze returns to Sprüth Magers this month for his fourth solo exhibition at the London Gallery. Bringing with him a body of works that present confusing, unexpected forms as a mode of examining visual configuration and possibility, the artist once again returns to explorations of context and form as a site for the negotiation of both sensation and nonsense. (more…)

Marguerite Humeau, meys (Installation View), via White Cube

Marguerite Humeau’s exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey is structured as a journey, incorporating sound, moving image and sculpture and enlisting the collaboration of artificial intelligence as well as hives of skilled craftspeople in order to explore ideas of interdependence and collective intelligence. Leading the viewer from the present and local to a distant, speculative future, Humeau entwines plural narratives around these themes – from a human society in collapse, to a simulation of the secret life inside an insect community, and a projected future gathering of a newly-formed collective in the process of synchronising. (more…)

The NEA announced its latest string of grant recipients this week, with $35.6 million earmarked for a range of projects that “demonstrate the vitality of the humanities across our nation” according to Shelly C. Lowe, the endowment’s chairwoman, and “support humanities programs and opportunities for underserved students and communities.” (more…)

Bernice Rose, an art historian and MoMA curator who was a vocal champion of drawing, and helped its establish its current role in arts study, has died at the age of 87. “She recognized early that for a generation of artists who emerged in the 1960s, the art of drawing knew no boundaries,” says Christophe Cherix, the museum’s chief curator of drawings and prints. (more…)

Renzo Martens and Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) will represent the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale 2024.  (more…)

The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (ICA) has appointed Denise Ryner as its Andie B. Laporte Curator. “With her experience working at the intersections of art and academia, Denise brings an exciting perspective and expertise that will enhance the reach, relevance, and impact of ICA’s exhibitions,” says Zoë Ryan, the ICA’s Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director, and Hallie Ringle, ICA’s Brett Sundheim Chief Curator. “On behalf of the ICA Board and staff, I am thrilled to be welcoming her to join our team as we advance our mission as an experimental hub for contemporary art from around the world.” 

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Lee Scratch Perry, Bird War (2019), via Cabinet

Over the course of his life, musician Lee “Scratch” Perry was a seminal and exploratory producer, a seminal voice in the development and export of Jamaican dub reggae to the UK, US and beyond. Forging an experimental and esoteric arc in his work that mined pop culture, surrealism, and spiritual tenets of rastafarianism, Perry was also an avid painter and fine artist, creating dense, swirling series of allusions on paper, canvas, and other repurposed materials. Throughout, the artist’s work mirrored the playful and cartoonish nature of the characters and worlds he built on record. The artist’s work is the subject of a show at Cabinet in London this month, celebrating the late artist with a sprawling selection of works.

Lee Scratch Perry, Ark Work (Installation View), via Cabinet

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Students and faculty joined a walkout in support of striking RISD workers this week in Providence, Art News reports. The workers’ union is currently in the midst of contract renegotiations. (more…)

The UK has imposed sanctions on Nazem Ahmad, a collector accused of using works from his holdings to finance Hezbollah. “The firm action we have taken today will clamp down on those who are funding international terrorism, strengthening the UK’s economic and national security,” says Treasury minister in the House of Lords, Joanna Penn. (more…)

Hannah Levy, Untitled (2023), via Casey Kaplan

On view this month at Casey Kaplan’s Manhattan exhibition space presents a body of new wall and freestanding works by artist Hannah Levy, continuing the artist’s challenging and exploratory work in concepts around the human form, and concepts of its transcendence. Here, incorporating glass into the artist’s practice, Levy takes on new material processes through both traditional and experimental methods to arrive at new interpolations of her already tightly-honed practice. (more…)

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Artist Miguel Ángel Payano Jr., who lived in China for over a decade before returning to NY, gets a profile in NYT this week.“I’m a Sinophile,” he says. “I became an artist in China.” (more…)

Cecily Brown gets the profile treatment in The Guardian this week as the artist opens her ambitious Met show. “Like a magpie at work, there’s no hierarchy of sources,” Brown said. “It’s just the feeling of someone who looks at everything, takes what they will when it’s needed, churning it around, and spewing it back out as something else.” (more…)

Richard Prince, Untitled (2019-2020), via Sadie Coles HQ

On this month in London, artist Richard Prince marks his seventh solo show at Sadie Coles HQ, bringing forth a new iteration and expansion of his iconic Joke Paintings. The artist, who has long mined the linguistic flows, political temperatures and structural modes of American pop culture, here finds new ground to explore in these modes for the show, titled Everyday.
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Robert Bechtle, 60 T-Bird (1964), via Gladstone

This month, Gladstone presents the first posthumous exhibition of works by Robert Bechtle, spanning nearly six decades of his practice. Highlighting important subjects he returned to throughout his lifetime, this expansive selection of paintings, watercolors, and drawings demonstrates the technical and conceptual ingenuity of his process that evolved over time and transformed approaches to realistic figurative painting in the United States. On the occasion of this exhibition. The show also marks the gallery’s first in the representation of the artist’s estate.  (more…)

Urs Fischer, Schmalifornia (2022), via Gagosian

This month at its Beverly Hills location, Gagosian presents Ice Cream Truck Democracy, an exhibition of paintings by Urs Fischer. In this new series of works, which occupies a range of sizes and formats, Fischer combines silkscreened, hand-painted, and hand-stenciled imagery, applying a collage-like aesthetic to his personal observations of Los Angeles.

Urs Fischer, Citizen’s Arrest. (2023), via Gagosian

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Zeng Fanzhi, Untitled (2022), via Hauser & Wirth

This month in Los Angeles, Hauser and Wirth makes history with the first solo exhibition in the city for Zeng Fanzhi, the renowned Chinese painter whose expansive and intricate body of work has made him a singular both in both his home country and internationally.   A pioneer of contemporary Chinese art, Zeng is celebrated globally for his constantly evolving style and subject matter, and the works on view herald his latest artistic breakthroughs that contemplate the intersection of Western art and style with traditional Chinese subject matter and philosophy.

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Franz West, Echolalia (Installation View), via Art Observed

On view this month at David Zwirner’s 533 West 19th Street space in New York, the gallery presents a commanding installation by artist Franz West. Created only a few years before the artist’s death, Echolalia consists of seven colorful, larger-than-life sculptures that seem to stand slightly off-balance, interspersed with three cushioned divans. Not exhibited publicly in more than ten years, the work represents the apotheosis of West’s commitment to sculpture as social space, integrating the viewer within an immersive, total environment. Conceptually, the installation manifests the intersection of many of West’s ongoing interests—most notably, the playfulness of sculpture, the participation of the viewer, and the importance of language.

Franz West, Echolalia (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Martin Puryear, Looking Askance (2023), via Matthew Marks

Marking the latest exhibition at both Los Angeles exhibition spaces, Matthew Marks has launched an expansive of works by Martin Puryear that also makes for the artist’s first solo show in the city in over 30 years. Compiling a range of works that revisit Puryear’s material adventurousness and tight examination of structural and historical progressions, including seven sculptures made over the past five years in a variety of media including wood, bronze, and stone.

Martin Puryear, Happy Jack (2020), via Matthew Marks

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Hermann Nitsch, Selected Paintings, Actions, Relics, and Musical Scores, 1962–2020 (Installation View), via Art Observed

Marking a major exploration and presentation of the artist’s work, Pace Gallery is currently showcasing a selection of paintings, scores and relics from artist Hermann Nitsch, an impressive collaboration with the artist’s Foundation that also celebrates the first English translation of his autobiography.  (more…)

Minerva Cuevas, In Gods We Trust (Installation View), via kurimanzutto

For more than three decades, artist Minerva Cuevas’s practice has been rooted in research-based projects concerned with economic and environmental issues and their socio-political impact. Focused often around Mexico and its particular political, social and cultural frameworks, the artist mines history and images to create new awarenesses and notions of contemporary life. On this month at kurimanzutto in New York, Cuevas continues that practice.  (more…)

Trevor Shimizu, Tulips (2023), via 47 Canal

Cycles, on view this month at 47 Canal, marks artist Trevor Shimizu’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery, and a continuation of his enigmatic and studied engagement with disparate painterly languages. Presenting nine new paintings, varying in scale and unrelenting in spirit, the artist continues to push further through the genre model of landscape painting, and past his painterly personas. (more…)