Xavier Veilhan at Perrotin, via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

Spread out along the spacious aisles and picturesque dome of the Grand Palais in Paris, the Foire internationale d’art contemporain, also known as FIAC, has returned once again for another year of sales in the French capital.  With Wednesday evening slowly dragging into the late hours, the fair’s VIP opening is now concluded, once again garnering strong praise and enthusiastic response from its attendees.  This year, the list of galleries brings together exhibitors from 25 countries, marking its 45th edition with a fitting reflection of its storied history, one echoed by the prestigious locale of the Grand Palais.  With an exacting selection of modern art, contemporary art, and design galleries, among the most emblematic of the international scene, the fair’s opening hours once again underscored its vitality in the modern fair circuit. 

Alicja Kwade at 303, via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed (more…)

Ugo Rondinone, drifting clouds (Installation View), via Sam Covern for Art Observed.

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery, artist Ugo Rondinone has opened a show work that spans a broad range of his creative output over several years.  Mixing together his practice in installation, sculpture, drawing and performance, the show sees Rondinone reanimating commonplace objects—such as tree branches or window frames—in his signature approach towards the Neo-Romantic. (more…)

Ivy Haldeman, Chartreuse Suit (2018), all images courtesy Downs and Ross

Ivy Haldeman’s body of new paintings, on view currently at Downs and Ross, have a distinctly playful quality, poetic and energetic while referencing surrealist twists on the everyday.  The current show, on now through October 21st, presents itself as a playful update on prior work, filling the canvas with the same colorful, enthusiastic energy.  (more…)

Daniel Buren, Photo-souvenir Tondo n°10, situated work, September 2015 (2015), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Bortolami Gallery in New York, the renowned French conceptualist Daniel Buren has brought his Tondi to bear on the gallery, offering striking continuation and renewal of his interest in place, space and perception that he has continually refined and occasionally redefined over the course of 50 years of practice.  The Tondi were initially exhibited at Le Centquatre-Paris in France in 2015, and subsequently at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogota, Colombia, in 2017. In their new, third configuration at Bortolami, they are situated within the specific architecture of the gallery, allowing the well-lit, spacious TriBeCa room to participate expressively in their presentation and form.  They are patterned arrangements of colored glass, filtering light into patterns of expressive color that underscore the work’s position and relationship to the gallery.   (more…)

Lygia Pape, Tecelar (1955), All images via Hauser & Wirth

On view through October 20^th, Hauser & Wirth in New York is presenting a comprehensive solo exhibition of the work of Lygia Pape, the gallery’s first United States solo exhibition of the artist since announcing its worldwide representation of Projeto Lygia Pape in 2016.  Pape, a founding member of Brazil’s Neo-Concrete movement, created work that foregrounded the sensorial experience of the viewer and spanned a range of media from sculpture to drawing, engraving to filmmaking, and even large-scale installation. Her expansive body of work, and the elaborate series of themes and concepts demonstrated throughout make for a thrilling exhibition, as the gallery seeks to explore Pape’s work in all of its breadth and depth. (more…)

Liza Lou, Pyrocumulus (2018), All images via Lehmann Maupin.

Now through October 27^th, Lehmann Maupin will host Liza Lou: Classification and Nomenclature of Clouds as its inaugural exhibition of the gallery’s new West 24^th Street location. The show continues at the gallery’s West 22^nd Street location, in which a room is dedicated to works from Lou’s Terra series. This is the artist’s first exhibition in New York City in over a decade, and includes works of painting, sculpture, drawing, and video. (more…)

Zhang Xiaogang at Pace, via Art Observed

Pace Gallery in New York is currently exhibiting a selection of new works by the renowned Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang, a body of works that sees him continuing to explore and interpret his unique painterly language.  Mixing together domestic scenes and surrealist iconographies, then populating them with a mixture of shared cultural symbols and figures from his own childhood memories. Xiaogang’s work is a remarkable window into complex psychological states and cultural moorings.  (more…)

Josep Maynou, Rugs (2018) Bombon _Projects

Located at the University of Westminster, the Sunday Art Fair is a decidedly mellow counterpoint to the expansive aisles and big-ticket sales of the proceedings at Regent’s Park. Capped at just 30 international galleries exhibiting solo projects or curated group presentations, the exhibition welcomes galleries dedicated to emerging artists, new concepts and new contexts for showing work.  (more…)

Calvin Marcus, Blue Devil (2018) at David Kordansky, all images by Diletta Fenicia and Quincy Childs for Art Observed

Opening its doors this week for its 16th edition, Frieze London 2018 has once again turned the art world’s collective eye towards the British capital for the next week, as sales and installations across its spacious halls make for a fitting center to one of the city’s busiest art events. With 160 galleries from around the globe showing at the Regent’s Park exhibition space, the rest of the world seems to have come along for the ride.

Daniel Arsham, Patch 5 (2018) at Perrotin

Antony Gormley, FRONT (2016) and Alvaro Barrington, A Straight Face (2018) at Thaddaeus Ropac

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Jenny Saville, Propped (1992), via Sotheby’s

With the conclusion of the week in London, a trio of auctions have painted an unclear picture of the Post-War and Contemporary Market in Britain, as a series of sales at the major houses saw particularly mixed results over the past two evenings.  With a number of high-profile works going unsold, and a somewhat unsteady level of interest among paintings as a running theme, the sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips saw several strong outings as well as a few notable disappointments, summarized below.

Jeff Koons, Cracked Egg (Blue) (1994-2006), via Christie’s (more…)

Frieze London, via Art Observed

Frieze London returns to Regent’s Park this week, bringing with it its reputation for presenting the best of international contemporary art by emerging and established artists, and its signature program of dynamic commissions, talks and films, all unified under the fair’s bespoke tent design at the heart of the British capital.  Opening Wednesday, the fair will offer a unique look at the state of the British art market, and that of the EU more broadly, while providing a platform for artists in Europe and abroad to explore and express new concepts and ideas in art practice. (more…)

Jeff Koons, Cracked Egg (Blue) (1994-2006), via Christie’s

With the opening of the doors for this year’s edition of Frieze London, the opening notes of the fall auction season can’t be far behind.  This week, the major auction houses will get their chance to make a mark on the fall calendar, launching a series of Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sales that will see a number of marquee works trade hands, and offer a first perspective on just how the auction houses are responding to a particularly turbulent global political picture.  As London braces for an increasingly cloudy Brexit outlook, the market conditions in the capital could definitely be better, but tricky economics have been bucked by eager buyers in the past, and the series of works on hand this year could in fact do well to staunch the bleeding caused by a border between the UK and EU that seems to be getting harder by the minute.   (more…)

Danny Lyon, Wanderer (still) (2017), via Gavin Brown’s

In 1970, photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon left his home in New York City, and moved out to the small village of Llanito, New Mexico, in the Rio Grande Valley, north of Albuquerque. Shortly after arriving, he began making photographs and films of his neighbors, their children, and the local labor force, all undocumented workers from Mexico. Years later, Lyon is still working in the regions of New Mexico and Arizona, exploring the tightly-knit communities of migrant laborers and their families from a directly engaged perspective.   (more…)

Antoine Catala, Puzzle Piece 1 (2017), via Marlborough Contemporary

Currently on at Marlborough Contemporary’s newest location in London, artist Antoine Catala’s new work  brings together both new and existing works to form a kinetic installation, exploring emojis and text messages and the effects of new communication technologies on society.  Catala, whose work is invested in the intriguing cultural effects and aesthetic possibilities of the new language and modes of meaning that have emerged from widespread digital communication technologies, here orchestrates an ever-evolving, uniquely arranged body of works that change and move in the same way that language itself seems to online.

Antoine Catala, I Am Here For You (Sock Orange) (2018), via Marlborough Contemporary

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B. Wurtz, Octave (2018), via Metro Pictures

Over the past few decades, B. Wurtz’s work has mined a striking juxtaposition of materials and symbols, mixing together domestic objects, quotidian references and various spatial interruptions designed to work at the fabric of the object itself.  This month, the artist has returned to Metro Pictures for a show of new works, continuing this mode of practice on an engaging scale. (more…)

Installation view. All images via Gagosian Gallery.

In Urs Fischer’s latest exhibition at Gagosian’s Davies street gallery in London, the artist has created a life-sized wax model of Russian collector Dasha Zhukova. This is the next installment in a series made by the artist in which art-world figures are converted into giant candles and then burned slowly, until they are reduced to wax drippings. Previously making works of artists Julian Schnabel and Rudolf Stingel, and dealer Bruno Bischofsberger. Though Zhukova requested she be the next art figure turned wax candle, Fischer hesitated because, up until this point, he has only portrayed men. Ultimately, however, on Monday, September 10^th, the wick at the top of the wax figure of Dasha Zhukova’s head was lit, and will continue to burn until the sculpture is reduced to a puddle of melted wax, coinciding with the show’s closing on November 3^rd. (more…)

Urs Fischer, PLAY with Choreography by Madeline Hollander (Installation View), via Art Observed

Over the past several years, few artists have moved so effortlessly across media and concepts like Urs Fischer.  From kaleidoscopic, cartoonish abstractions to surreal sculptural assemblages on to patient, gradual evolutions of form and space on canvas, his work perhaps best characterized by its willingness to never stay in one place for too long.  This relentless invention finds a new outlet in PLAY, a new sculptural work at Gagosian Gallery in New York, created in collaboration with Madeline Hollander. (more…)

NY Art Book Fair, via At Observed

As the fall equinox comes and goes, the New York Art Book Fair has once again come to New York City, opening its doors at MoMA PS1 for the thirteenth annual edition of what has become one of the city’s most unique and energetic exhibitions of young artists, publishers, writers and thinkers, each representing a small part of the national and international art publishing community.  Free and open to the public, the event draws more than 35,000 individuals including book lovers, collectors, artists, and art world professionals each year.  (more…)

Ellen Berkenblit, Untitled (2018), via Anton Kern

The Clock Unlocked is the first exhibition to spanning over four decades in the life and work of New York painter Ellen Berkenblit, on now at Anton Kern.  Running through a range of expressive and often enigmatic arrangements, the exhibition presents a roving and exploratory walk through Berkenblit’s practice, tracing evolutions and ongoing interests through any number of touchstones and points of entry.  Arranged instinctually and without chronology, The Clock Unlocked is just that, a diary of paintings and drawings reveals the artist’s idiosyncratic ‘alphabet’— the core of her visual language presented in the same idiosyncratic attitude towards time and space. (more…)

Cy Twombly, Untitled (1967), via Levy Gorvy

If you follow Brett Gorvy on Instagram, it’s immediately apparent that the Lévy Gorvy partner is a master of narrative, spinning long, anecdotal tomes around the images and artworks that he posts in his feed.  Gorvy’s vision and passion for art, and for the stories that surround each of the works that passes through his lens, is almost unparalleled anywhere in the art world, and his move in the past few years towards a gallery position should come as no surprise.  Yet Gorvy has plenty more tricks up his sleeve, and his most recent venture, a curated exhibition at his gallery, showcases just how deep his care and skill towards his profession go. (more…)

Anthony Pearson, Untitled (Embedment) (2018), via Marianne Boesky

Marking the first show of the fall season at Marianne Boesky’s Chelsea exhibition space, artist Anthony Pearson returns to his long-running experimentations with hydrocal for a new selection of  works.  The artist’s work as a lingering, enigmatic engagement with this material functions as an explicit practice in deep intellectual and physical engagement with a few materials, exploring the behaviors, reactions, and open possibilities of his intentionally limited material vocabulary. 

Anthony Pearson, Untitled (Embedment) (2018), via Marianne Boesky

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Giacometti (Installation view), via Art Observed

White, for Alberto Giacometti, is presented as something of an etheric form, the color of death or absence playing on is interrelation with temporal action.  Space is generated only from the presence of space, and not from its reciprocal orientation. His practice is disposed towards the ideal void, where reality, untouched, is always waiting to be discovered. Giacometti’s opposition to easily read concepts of reality lies in his belief that merely representing figures alone, leaving behind the density and materiality of their  surroundings and ignoring the distance between himself and the object of his perception, offered an incomplete picture of the truth. Giacometti’s eye was profoundly sensitive to different kinds of empty, negative space. He wanted to give form to space, opening his figure from within to its presence or surroundings. (more…)

Charline von Heyl, New Work (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists possess the sort of free-ranging, exploratory style and vocabulary that seems to mark the output of artist Charline von Heyl.  The German-born painter’s work is relentlessly committed to the canvas as a space for both formal reinvention and ongoing investigation.  Moving through a new selection of works this fall at Petzel Gallery, von Heyl returns to this mode, presenting a series of new compositions that marks her continued interest in texture and space as formative modes of the painter’s internal language.   (more…)

Marguerite Humeau, Birth Canal (Installation View), via Adelaide Pacton for Art Observed

Marking a new chapter in a body of work that has long mined the strange juxtapositions of history, culture, form and space, artist Marguerite Humeau has touched down at the New Museum this month, opening a show of works that will remain on view throughout the fall season.  The show, titled Birth Canal, presents a new body of digitally rendered sculptures realized in cast bronze and carved stone, each proposing its own unique vision of how to think through the understanding of the body and it relation to modernity.   (more…)