Mona Hatoum is profiled in The New York Times this week, as the artist prepares for her solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou this month, and reviews the multi-faceted international upbringing that informs much of her work. “The basis of it is a feeling of wanting to be free of all those restrictions, whether it’s social or political, that are always put on people,” she says, “so I can be whatever I want to be.” (more…)
Former MIT Lecturer and filmmaker Joseph Gibbons is the subject of a Washington Post profile this week, as the performer and artist awaits sentencing for a bank robbery he committed on New Year’s Eve last year. “You never can tell if the character he is playing is actually him or a work of fiction,” says Vincent Grenier, a filmmaker and professor at Binghamton University. “For him, it’s been a fertile arena to play in the boundary between reality and fantasy.” (more…)
Artist Bernar Venet’s Venet Foundation and Museum in Le Muy, France, is the subject of a New York Times profile this week, documenting the artist’s impressive collection of major American artists, including Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt, which the artist often secured through barters or purchases on “friend rates.” “Our works had no commercial value,” Mr. Venet says of the works he often traded his own pieces for. “We produced more than we sold.” (more…)
Richard Serra was awarded last night with The Insignia of Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, the highest honor in France, recognizing the artist’s long history of work in the nation, and his contributions to the development of contemporary art both in France and abroad. (more…)
Yang Fudong, The Light That I Feel 1 (2015) via Marian Goodman Gallery
Artist Yang Fudong is exhibiting his latest series of photographs at Marian Goodman’s Paris location. Titled The Coloured Sky: New Women II, the exhibition incorporates two bodies of work as well as a high-definition colored video installation that continues his use of dream-like worlds and constructions of fantasy through the female body. (more…)
Artist and dealer Dorothee Fischer, who headed the Konrad Fischer gallery in Düsseldorf, and advocated for artists like Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, and Blinky Palermo, has passed away at the age of 78. Fischer’s tireless, focused work in conceptual and minimal art built a dedicated group of artists around her, and she in turn built an impressive collection of 250 works, alongside her gallery archives, both of which were purchased by the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen for over $1 million. (more…)
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Rêvolutions (2015), French Pavilion, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Running concurrently with the Central Pavilion’s curated exhibition, the respective National Pavilions on view at the Giardini and Arsenale are one of Venice’s defining aspects. Featuring important solo exhibitions for both emerging and career artists, carefully-curated group shows and special projects, each pavilion’s focus allows the international perspective of the Biennale to truly take shape. (more…)
Leo Fitzpatrick, the former star of Larry Clark’s film Kids, and longtime director of the Nate Lowman project space Home Alone 2, will join Marlborough Chelsea as a gallery director. “I’m very proud of what I was able to accomplish with Home Alone over those three years, but generally it was me taking art on the subway, trying to put on these shows,” Fitzpatrick says. “I’m really excited about having help, and people to bounce ideas off of. We can really do big things. If I was able to do so much with so little, imagine what I can do here.” (more…)
Tania Brugera is one of the 2015 Herb Alpert Award recipients this year, but is unable to attend the awards ceremony, due to the revocation of her passport by the Cuban government. “The Alpert Award could not come at a better moment,” the artist wrote in a statement to the organization. “The Cuban government does not like my artworks because I’m proposing that our relationship with politics is one where the script is not written for us, but is something we create with responsibility and honesty out of the desire to engage in our political destiny.” (more…)
Alex Katz is profiled in the Wall Street Journal this week, looking back on his lengthy career, and the level of success he has achieved in recent years. “I just love putting it to people who didn’t like me,” Katz says. “There are people from 20, 30, 40 years ago that I love meeting on the street and saying hello. I don’t have to say anything, I just have to say hello, and my presence reminds them of their mistakes.” (more…)
The Financial Times profiles Iranian artist Shirin Neshat as she prepares to open a career retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. and Baku, Azerbaijan. “As an Iranian in exile, she has always been very articulate about the idea of a condition of diaspora and, with that, the complexity of feeling connected to a culture, but living outside it,” says Director Melissa Chiu. “It’s a very personal approach to history, through Shirin’s own eyes.” (more…)
Artist Cao Fei is interviewed in the New York Times today, underlining her work in recent years, and her move to Beijing from Guangzhou in 2006. “In the beginning I felt like I couldn’t connect to the city,” she says. “A lot of artists from southern China have that feeling when they come here. Take, for example, my husband, who is a Singaporean artist. For him to come here, the whole history and context is different. It’s not that easy.” (more…)
Yayoi Kusama has earned the hyperbolic title of the “world’s most popular artist” following the release of Art Newspaper’s annual survey. “Kusama is the only one of our artists who sells on every continent. “She’s very rare in that she has this kind of credibility within the art world establishment, but she also has a very broad popular appeal,” says Glenn Scott Wright, co-director of Victoria Miro. (more…)
Lynda Benglis sits down with John Baldessari in this month’s issue of Interview magazine for an exchange in which the two artists compare working styles, mutual inspirations and their shared interest in hybrid forms of art making. “I think I started doing the [paint] pouring because I couldn’t pour wax on the floor and make it work, and I wasn’t interested in straight canvases,” Benglis said. “I had made these sort of popsicle-stick paintings that were limited in format. But I was mocking the whole issue of figure ground.” (more…)
Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild (1983), via Sotheby’s
The Contemporary Evening sale at Sotheby’s has concluded, following a sale of works that was fairly by the book in comparison with past auctions, with the exception of a massive new auction record for artist Gerhard Richter just one day after his 83rd birthday. Despite a lack of exceptionally competitive bidding, the 77-lot sale still brought in impressive returns, finishing at a tally of £123,515,250. (more…)
The New York Times profiles artist Daniel Arsham, and his legion of high-profile fans and collectors, among them Usher and Jay-Z. “I couldn’t tell you how it happened,” Mr. Arsham says of his popularity. “I work with a lot of people who aren’t famous, too. And in some cases, it’s been the celebrities who gravitate towards me.” (more…)
The New York Times profiles the work and life of Ray Johnson, an artist who left a subtle but lasting impact on the discourses of pop, conceptual and abstract art over the course of the last half century, before taking his own life in 1995. “He was a guerrilla fighter against materialism and fame, and in a sense he’s still fighting today,” said Frances F. L. Beatty, president of Richard L. Feigen & Co., which represents Mr. Johnson’s estate. (more…)
The Guardian reports that Marina Abramovic is currently working on a major installation in Sydney for July of 2015. The artist was courted by arts philanthropist John Kaldor, who previously brought Abramovic’s work to the country in his 2013 exhibition 13 Rooms. (more…)
The Telegraph takes a special look inside the home of late painter Lucian Freud’s home in Kensington, where the artist spent the last twenty years of life. “He was a good cook, very fond of game, but he never ate carbs,” says former assistant David Dawson. He knew he needed to be light on his feet.” (more…)
Hans Haacke, the conceptually elusive artist who has for years defied many of the commercial practices of the contemporary art world, is opening a new show at Paula Cooper this month, allowing viewers a look at the artist’s challenging work and personal politics, including a maquette design for the artist’s upcoming Fourth Plinth Commission next year in London. “I’ve always been interested in systems and how they work, and at a certain point you understand that political and social systems are part of that, too, that they can’t be escaped,” he says. (more…)
The New York Times takes a look inside the Stockholm apartment of artist Carsten Höller, where he breeds and keeps a collection of rare birds. “They look quite beautiful when they are older,” Höller says. “But in the beginning, they look like aliens.” (more…)
Artist Miranda July has designed a special edition handbag, created in collaboration with designer Laurel Consuelo Broughton of Welcome Companions, including remarkably specific titles for each compartment (“Almond in Case of Low Blood Sugar”) as well as a series of cards bearing questions and phrases like “I can’t understand you because my cell phone has a bad connection.” (more…)
David Hockney, Woldgate Woods, November 26th (2010), via Art Observed
David Hockney returns to the Pace Gallery this month, showing a selection of new works that once again focus on the artist’s love affair with his Woldgate home, and the continued expansion of his decades of work as a painter into new media forms. Titled The Arrival of Spring, the work is another entry in the artist’s documentation and depiction of the landscapes of rural Britain. (more…)
Dan Graham, Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout (2014), All Images Via Kelly Lee for Art Observed
The annual rooftop commission at The Metropolitan Museum of Art always manages to draw a crowd, whether it be Imran Quereshi’s bloody installation last year, or Tomás Saraceno’s vastly popular Cloud City. For this year’s Rooftop Commission at , the Met has sided with a more heritage artist, Dan Graham, working in conjunction with Swiss landscape architect Günther Vogt to create the work Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout (2014). Graham, 71, known for his conceptual bent and exploration of multiple mediums, including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performance art, has long focused on how architecture directly impacts its occupants and shapes their experiences of looking, a strikingly perfect fit for the Met’s scenic view and unique location.
