Global contemporary art events and news observed from New York City. Suggestion? Email us.
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AO ON SITE: 60th Venice Biennale “Foreigners Everywhere”

April 30th, 2024

Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin at Venice Biennale 2024

Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin at Venice Biennale 2024

The 60th International Art Exhibition, known as the Venice Biennale, is set to run from April 20 to November 24, 2024. This year’s theme, “Stranieri Ovunque” or “Foreigners Everywhere,” is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, marking a significant milestone as the first South American curator of the Biennale Arte. The event is hosted at Venice’s historic Giardini and Arsenale venues, which have been central to the Biennale since its earliest editions. The theme explores the concepts of intersectionality, displacement, and the reevaluation of geographical margins in the art world. 
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London- Yoko Ono at Tate Modern

March 28th, 2024

Yoko Ono at Tate Modern4

Yoko Ono at Tate Modern

“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” exhibition at Tate Modern, is on until September 1st and is an expansive journey through Yoko Ono’s artistic legacy, blending music, installations, photography, and interactive performance art. This landmark showcase, the UK’s most extensive collection of Ono’s work, spans her groundbreaking contributions from the early 1950s to today, highlighting her role as a pioneer in avant-garde art circles worldwide.

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Skarstedt London: Jeff Koons

March 12th, 2024

Koons at Skarstedt

Koons at Skarstedt

From 1st March to 25th May 2024, Skarstedt’s London Gallery presents a solo exhibition featuring the work of American artist Jeff Koons. The show includes five mural-sized paintings crafted between 2001 and 2013 drawn from Koons’ series: Easyfun-Ethereal, Antiquity, and Popeye.
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Tanya Bonakdar Gallery LA: Tomas Saraceno

March 7th, 2024

Tanya Bonakdar, Tomas Saraceno7

Tomas Saraceno at Tanya Bonakdar

At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Los Angeles, “Live(s) on Air” is on from February 24 to May 4, 2024, featuring new works by Tomás Saraceno. This exhibit explores the theme of eco-social interdependence with a collection that includes sculpture, works on paper, and film. It aims to engage viewers in thinking about the impact of humans on the environment and paths toward coexistence on Earth.
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AO ON-SITE – LOS ANGELES: FRIEZE LOS ANGELES 2024 AT THE SANTA MONICA AIRPORT

March 4th, 2024

Frieze LA

Frieze LA 2024 at Santa Monica Airport

AO was on the ground at the fifth edition of Frieze Los Angeles, held from February 29th to March 3rd, 2024, at Santa Monica Airport, which brought together over 95 galleries exhibiting contemporary art from various regions, showcasing the city’s role in the global art landscape. 
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Perrotin LA: Izumi Kato

February 29th, 2024

Perrotin: IzumI KatoIzumi Kato at Perrotin

AO is on-site at Perrotin, which inaugurated its new Los Angeles gallery with an exhibition featuring Japanese artist Izumi Kato, running from February 28 to March 23, 2024. Kato’s work, known for incorporating elements of both ancient traditions and modern themes, aligns with Los Angeles’s landscape, which includes both natural and urban environments. The artist’s figures, created in his Tokyo studio, are displayed in a setting that reflects the coexistence of contrasting elements, a theme prevalent in Kato’s art.


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MEXICO CITY: ZONA MACO 2024

February 20th, 2024

Zona Maco 2024

Anahuacalli Museum Mexico City

AO was on-site at ZONAMACO Arte Contemporáneo, the largest art fair in Latin America, which celebrated its 20th anniversary from February 7-11th, 2024. Initially launched in 2002 by Zélika García, the fair soon relocated from Monterrey to Centro Citibanamex in Mexico City where it holds four events annually. Since its inception, ZONAMACO has expanded to feature 208 exhibitors from 25 countries, displaying a diverse range of artworks, from modern and contemporary, to design, to an estate section.


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AO ON-SITE – MIAMI BEACH: UNTITLED ART FAIR, DECEMBER 6TH-10TH, 2023

December 12th, 2023

Untitled Art Miami 2023

Photo from Untitled website

Untitled Art Fair revisited its Miami Beach location, again on the beach just off Ocean Drive.  The fair opened on Wednesday the 6th of December and concluded on Sunday the 10th. The fair featured curated presentations, live events, artist performances, and more. This edition hosted 160 exhibitors from 38 countries, showcasing works by nearly 600 artists. The programming encompassed artist projects, performances, and panel discussions as part of the Untitled Art Podcast, with an emphasis on digital innovation and inclusivity.

Annie Duncan, Johansson Projects, Untitled Miami 2023

Annie Duncan, Johansson Projects, Untitled Miami 2023 
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NADA Miami 2023

December 11th, 2023

NADA Miami 2023

AO on site at NADA Miami 2023, here with Harkawik

NADA Miami 2023, the 21st edition of the art fair presented by the New Art Dealers Alliance, showcased a diverse array of galleries from over 50 cities globally, including more than 85 NADA members and 34 first-time exhibitors. The fair was held at Ice Palace Studios and featured a variety of art forms, from traditional to mixed media, reflecting on contemporary societal themes, identity, and the human condition. 
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Hernan Bas’s ‘The Conceptualists’ at The Bass Miami

December 8th, 2023

Hernan Bas's 'The Conceptualists' at The Bas

Hernan Bas’s “The Conceptualists” series at the Bass Museum in Miami Beach presents a unique exploration into themes of queerness, desire, the occult, and the absurd. The series, inspired by the unusual hobbies and activities people took up during the pandemic, features fictitious conceptual artists performing eccentric behaviors. This approach offers a perspective on the boundaries and perceptions of conceptual art, questioning the very definition of artistic expression.

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REFERENCE LIBRARY

London – Kathleen Ryan: “Red Rose” at Josh Lilley Through August 13th, 2022

August 9th, 2022

Kathleen Ryan, Bad Peach (Bite) (2022), via Josh Lilley
Kathleen Ryan, Bad Peach (Bite) (2022), via Josh Lilley

On view this month at Josh Lilley’s London exhibition space, artist Kathleen Ryan presents a new body of works, presenting a series of intriguing topographies and structures that mix together engaging mechanical and organic symbolisms to create peculiar, surreal objects. Walking a line between cityscapes, cells and circuit boards, Ryan’s work mines an engaging and resonant set of commentaries on modern life, suspending her images and objects in a space between technology and bodies.

Kathleen Ryan, Bad Melon (Double Rainbow) (2022), via Josh Lilley
Kathleen Ryan, Bad Melon (Double Rainbow) (2022), via Josh Lilley

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New York – “The Patriot” at O’Flaherty’s Through August 10th, 2022

August 8th, 2022

The Patriot (Installation View), via O'Flaherty's
The Patriot (Installation View), via O’Flaherty’s

O’Flaherty’s, the gallery project of painter Jamian Juliano-Villani, has, in its short time, has built a reputation for challenging and engaging shows, operating a program that has made the small gallery a central voice in the representation of young artists and historically resonant projects overlooked by larger galleries. It should be no surprise then, that the pioneering space would take an equally iconoclastic and engaged approach to the summer groups show, lampooning the format with The Patriot, an open call exhibition that has packed the gallery to the gills with art for the past month.

The Patriot (Installation View), via O'Flaherty's
The Patriot (Installation View), via O’Flaherty’s

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Hong Kong – Raoul de Keyser: “Replay Again” at David Zwirner Through August 6th, 2022

August 4th, 2022

Raoul de Keyser, Come on, play it again nr. 2 (2001), via David Zwirner
Raoul de Keyser, Come on, play it again nr. 2 (2001), via David Zwirner

On view through the end of this week at David Zwirner’s Hong Kong location, artist Raoul de Keyser presents a selection of works the continues and elaborates on a previous show at the gallery in 2021. Among the notable works that will be on view are representative paintings from the Belgian artist’s seminal Come on, play it again; Hal, and Hayward series, made during the height of his career, from the middle of the 1980s to the 2000s. Read More »

New York – “Commonwealth and Council” at Petzel Gallery Through August 5th, 2022

August 3rd, 2022

Cayetano Ferrer, Surrogate Pylon Display Unit (replica) (2015-22), via Petzel
Cayetano Ferrer, Surrogate Pylon Display Unit (replica) (2015-22), via Petzel

Marking its entry in a summer of group shows, Petzel Gallery’s uptown space hosts Commonwealth and Council, a show dedicated to the Los Angeles gallery of the same name, celebrating over ten years of work supporting young artists and the growth the gallery has seen in recent years. Founded in 2010, Commonwealth and Council has committed itself to a dynamic program building counter-narratives that reflect individual and collective realities. On view here, artists Cayetano Ferrer, Gala Porras-Kim, Nikita Gale, rafa esparza, and Suki Seokyeong Kang, showcase interests and focuses on the underrepresented, acknowledging that meaning occurs at a host of myriad idiosyncratic registers—and propose alternative modalities of knowledge, speech, and value systems. Read More »

New York – “The odds are good, the goods are odd” at Lisson Through August 5th, 2022

August 2nd, 2022

Hugh Hayden
Hugh Hayden, all images via Art Observed

Lisson Gallery wades into summer group show month with The odds are good, the goods are odd this year, a group exhibition that highlights a new generation of New York-based sculptors. Bringing together artworks across a range of mediums, the presentation showcases the divergent ethoses behind sculpture-making today. The featured artists favor the handmade, creating a spectrum of artworks that range from the polished and conceptual, to the raw and visceral. Read More »

New York – Barbara Kruger at David Zwirner Through August 5th, 2022

August 1st, 2022

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battlefield) (1989 2020), via David Zwirner
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battlefield) (1989/2020), via David Zwirner

Barbara Kruger makes her first outing with David Zwirner Gallery this summer, marking her inaugural show with the exhibitor three years after announcing she was joining the mega-gallery. Spanning the gallery’s three locations on West 19th Street in New York, the show is a monumental review of her work, and quite a timely one. Kruger powerfully and directly engages with viewers through a distinctive visual language, utilizing images, text, and technology as tools of communication to reveal and question established power structures and social constructs, challenging power structures through their direct address. Read More »

New York – Andreas Gursky at Gagosian Through July 29th, 2022

July 29th, 2022

Andreas Gurksy, Bauhaus (2020), via Art Observed
Andreas Gurksy, Bauhaus (2020), via Art Observed

On view this summer at Gagosian New York, photographer Andreas Gursky compiles a selection of both new and recent images, continuing his documentation and exploration of the landscape of modernity. Gursky’s large-scale photographs evoke the global flow of information, the chaos of contemporary life competing with the classical desire for order. He portrays the visual extremes of the present moment with an objective eye, capturing built and natural environments on a grand scale in richly detailed images of autobahns and cruise ships, mountains and waterfalls. While comparable in their scope to early nineteenth-century landscape paintings, Gursky’s works retain the precision of photography. Many have been digitally manipulated, and often reveal a sensitivity to the damaging effects of human systems on the natural world. Read More »

New York – “Catechism” at Bridget Donahue Through July 29th, 2022

July 28th, 2022

Catechism (Installation View), via Bridget Donahue
Catechism (Installation View), via Bridget Donahue

Throughout the layout of the current group exhibition at Bridget Donahue, one can’t help but trace the works as a series of pointing arrows. Bright colors and strange, lumpen arrangements seem to trade barbs with each other, while other works create a series of conversations on typography and text, design and craft. In each case, the show seems to tug at a series of half-ideas, as if allowing the show to breathe anew in each moment of encounter.

Evelyn Reyes Four Carrots, Pink (2004-2009), via Bridget Donahue
Evelyn Reyes, Four Carrots, Pink (2004-2009), via Bridget Donahue

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New York – Rob Pruitt: “New Faces” at 303 Gallery Through July 29th, 2022

July 27th, 2022

Robb Pruitt, Avery (2022), via 303 Gallery
Robb Pruitt, Avery (2022), via 303 Gallery

On view this month at 303 Gallery, a body of new work by Rob Pruitt marks a continuation of the artist’s mining of the tension between comic renditions, heightened emotional states, and deep, rich engagements with the history of pop art, all centered around his latest series of Face paintings. Read More »

New York – Sarah Ortmeyer: “SPORTS CLUB NEW YORK” at Galerie Eva Presenhuber Through July 29th, 2022

July 26th, 2022

Sarah Ortmeyer, DAVID (2022), via Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Sarah Ortmeyer, DAVID (2022), via Galerie Eva Presenhuber

Combining together a series of works and a range of different approaches and series from her practice, artist Sarah Ortmeyer presents a selection of pieces at Galerie Eva Presenhuber this month, united under the title SPORTS CLUB NEW YORK. 

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