“Born in the Bronx”, Installation View. All photos Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

Now through August 1, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is presenting a trio of diverse works by Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, a video piece by the gallerist himself, and an exhibit of Afrika Bambaataa’s record collection surveying of the roots of hip-hop in the Bronx.  The exhibits speak to the process of emptying shelves and opening closets, placing the material details that one collects over a lifetime on view. In equal measure, the works illustrate a history, at once intimately personal and indicative of the larger movement of time and material legacy.

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Hiroshi Sugimoto, Manatee (1994), All images courtesy Pace Gallery

On view from May 9th until June 28th at Pace New York is an exhibition of seventeen large-format photographs by Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto from his most recent body of work. Entitled Still Life, the display gives a prime example of Sugimoto’s mastery of formally composed and exacting photography and printing processes.  Sugimoto has worked in a variety of approaches to still-life and architectural photography over the past years including old American movie palaces, drive-ins, and other structured works. He also formed an architectural practice himself in Tokyo, after receiving many requests to design structures such as restaurants and art museums.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)

Sugimoto compares the medium of photography as a record-making process to the fossilization process in nature – a moment suspended in time. His Polar Bear (1976) was the first photograph from his Diorama series, and many of the earlier silver gelatin prints also depict animals.  The works are surreal, black and white images of dioramas he photographed in natural history museums, playing on the distorted perspective of “nature” that humans believe to be true. Although the photographs appear to be realistic nature landscapes, they are actually artifically constructed, staged recreations of natural environments on display in museums. Many of the works are representations of animals, but no humans appear in any of the images – in a way, depicting a divide between humans and the natural environment.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)

The result of Sugimoto’s pieces is at times quite jarring, particularly in works where the separation between recreated environment and museum space suddenly comes into focus.  In several scenes, a notable line can be detected where a museum diorama gives way to painted display, and animals suspended in mid-action are placed in close proximity to a painted counterpart.  The result is a sudden realization of the meticulous placement of each object in the image, not by Sugimoto, but rather the institution which is striving to frame the diorama as a moment of authentic animal behavior.  The diorama, in turn, becomes as much an aesthetic project as it is an archival one, turning the intersection of scientific research and creative impulses into a definitive focal point.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)

The exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: Still Life is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue,Hiroshi Sugimoto: Dioramas, and the display will remain on view at Pace New York through June 28, 2014.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Polar Bear (1976)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)

—E. Baker

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Pace]

The Met has made 400,000 public domain images available for free online, part of Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC), a new initiative to increase access to the images for non-commercial uses.  “Through this new, open-access policy, we join a growing number of museums that provide free access to images of art in the public domain,” says Director Thomas P. Campbell.  “I am delighted that digital technology can open the doors to this trove of images from our encyclopedic collection.”   (more…)

Erwin Wurm, Kiss (Abstract Sculptures) (2013), via Art Observed

Taking up the main room of Lehmann Maupin’s considerable Chelsea gallery, Austrian artist Erwin Wurm is presenting a series of recent sculptural works, continuing the artist’s irreverent and bizarre abstractions of both contemporary materials and the human form.  Short but sweet, Wurm’s show takes on his past approaches to figurative sculpture, and recasts it in an increasingly abstract, yet surprisingly cohesive series of sculptures, using the full body of his work to create new pieces that combine his aesthetic endeavors into more nuanced wholes.

Erwin Wurm, Synthesa (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

The New York Times reports on the growing practice for museums to live-stream and archive lectures online, allowing interested parties to view them around the world.  The article also explores MoMA’s recently initiated online tours and courses, and a recent collaboration by the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the TED lectures brand. (more…)

Jon Rafman, I am alone but not lonely, (2013), via Zach Feuer

The artist Jon Rafman continually explores processes of archiving and history-making, storytelling and expression online, trawling the deeper recesses of gaming and message board communities to explore how these groups express senses of their own identities, their own mythologies, and their own senses of being.  It’s this sense of recording and presentation that marks Rafman’s current show at Zach Feuer, which sees the artist examining the shared sense of history and presentation for various communities through written dialogues, amateur film, and image.

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“Art Within One Mile,” a new project by artist Bundith Phunsombatlert, has made its debut on New York City Streets.  Aiming to increase New Yorker’s awareness of art around the city, the series of taxicab yellow signs directs pedestrian’s attention to nearby sculptures and murals.  “It’s a form of generosity, a gesture toward an environment, like New York, that’s rich in a way that sometimes we take for granted,” says Prerana Reddy of the Queens Museum. “It’s a way of recuperating our hidden heritage, our hidden richness.” (more…)

Alexis Adler, a former girlfriend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, has released news of a massive collection of the late artist’s drawings, photographs, and paintings, some scrawled on the walls and appliances of the East Village apartment that the two shared in the late 1970’s.  Given the artist’s current popularity, the collection is of particular note for its thorough documentation of much of Basquiat’s early development as an artist.  Adler is currently planning a book documenting the collection, as well as an auction of the work.  “The thing that’s most interesting is the material she has to support the actual artwork,” said former Gracie Mansion director Sur Rodney Sur. “A lot of the signage he used in his work over and over again, this was when he was developing it. The idea that it’s all together in one place makes it even more important.” (more…)