A selection of works by Fanny Allie, via Art Observed
Bushwick Open Studios has come and gone in the North Brooklyn arts hub, with another year of exhibitions and projects spread across the sprawling industrial landscapes of the borough closing to strong attendance.
Adrian Piper, Everything #21 (2010-2013)
The awards for the 56th Venice Biennale have been announced, with the Armenian National Pavilion taking home the Golden Lion for best exhibition, Adrian Piper winning the Golden Lion for best artist in the main exhibition, and El Anatsui winning the Lifetime Achievement award. A full list of awards is included below: (more…)
The Association for the International Diffusion of French Art has announced the nominees for the 2015 edition of the Marcel Duchamp Prize: Davide Balula, Neil Beloufa, Melik Ohanian, and Zineb Sedira. The prize honors one French artist or artist living in France working in the plastic or visual arts. (more…)
Following a notable expansion project that boosted its gallery size from 800 square feet to 1,800, James Fuentes Gallery is opening a 400 square foot “project space” inside its space titled Allen & Eldridge. “Because we’re starting a new chapter with the gallery, with the new space,” Fuentes says, “it just seemed like a really great juncture to try and incorporate some new voices into the program and have the ability to present these intimate exhibitions by great and interesting young artists.” The space opens tonight with a show of work from Edward Shenk and Victor Vaughn’s ongoing series of King of the Hill inspired pieces. (more…)
Mass MOCA has announced a series of important collaborations with James Turrell, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Laurie Anderson and Jenny Holzer, among others, each of which will be included in the museum’s newly constructed exhibition spaces, which will be completed in 2017. “We’re teaming up with people who have great bodies of artworks that we are hosting,” says Director Joseph C. Thompson. (more…)
The New Museum has announced the list of artists for its 2015 Triennial, Surround Audience, which will be curated by Lauren Cornell and artist Ryan Trecartin. The exhibition will include work by DIS, Casey Jane Ellison (who will be filming her web series Touching the Art at the museum), and Ed Atkins, among others. According to the press release, Surround Audience “explores how artists are currently depicting subjectivity, unpacking complex systems of power, and claiming sites of artistic agency.” (more…)
The colorful, shifting glasswork of Andrew Erdos
The annual festivities surrounding Bushwick Open Studios seem to get bigger each year, and 2014 was no exception, as the yearly summer art open wrapped its eighth year of open artist studios, new gallery shows, and a freshly inaugurated art fair in the heart of one of Brooklyn’s hotbeds for creative talent.
Seren Morey at 56 Bogart (more…)
The New York Times takes a look inside the bi-annual Brant Foundation Art Study Center opening last week, held in honor of the space’s new Dan Colen show, and noting its place as a haven away from the bustle of Frieze week. “Frieze week is a nightmare,” says Nate Lowman. “To have the same limp handshake 400 times? I don’t go to anything except this.” (more…)
The Table Before Dinner, via Art Observed
The Domino Factory was aglow Tuesday evening, as Creative Time took over the space for its annual spring gala, this year held in honor of artist Kara Walker, who is preparing to open her site-specific work A Subtlety at the space later this week. True to form, the gala prominently spotlighted Ms. Walker’s monumental white sculpture, which nearly took up its own place of honor at the end of the dining tables set up in the space. Light streaming in from the long runs of windows on either side of the room gave the statue a pale, golden glow, and served to give a beautiful aura surrounding the guests. (more…)
Cécile Eluard, daughter of surrealist poet Paul Eluard, is interviewed in the Guardian this week, recounting her experiences growing up surrounded by some of the most famous artists of the day, including Max Ernst, Dali, and Pablo Picasso, who would take her to boxing matches. “He never got old,” Eluard says of Picasso. “I never felt the 40-odd years between us. We would go and have a swim in Vallauris, I would come and visit him whenever I liked in his studio in rue des Grands Augustins in Paris. He would show me his little sculptures made of bric-Ã -brac. He was so alive, so earthy, so absolutely not abstract!” (more…)
The Institute for Contemporary Art in London is preparing to release “Art Rules,” an online platform similar to Twitter, which will allow users to engage in short-form dialogues over contemporary art, using the site’s 100-character limit to voice their opinions on artists, theories and the contemporary art world. The site, which launches August 21st, has already published a number of “rules,” by artists, writers and curators which users will be welcome to respond to, including Jeremy Deller’s encouragement to “throw away the rulebook.” (more…)
French porcelain manufacturer Bernadaud has announced a series of collectible, limited-edition plates, featuring collaborations with a number of contemporary artists, including Jeff Koons, Sophie Calle, Prune Nourry, and JR. The series of plates, titled L’Art de La Table, are currently available in the company’s Chelsea boutique. (more…)
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dustheads (1982), via Christie’s
This week, Sotheby’s and Christie’s released their sales reports for the first half of 2013, with both sides announcing record sales figures. Christie’s has achieved a global sales total of £2.4 billion, including buyers’ premiums, a 9% increase on last year’s figure. The total includes the private sales of £465.2 million, an increasingly popular segment of the sales market, which saw a 13% growth from last year. The report also marks the third year in a row that the auction house has set new records for the period in both company and art market history.
The Wall Street Journal reports on Oslo’s burgeoning art scene, which is taking major strides to become a global capital for contemporary art. Combining a relatively small and close knit community with major efforts to increase the Norwegian city’s cultural offering, the city is already attracting major attention. “It’s because Oslo’s small. In New York, if you want certain kinds of materials, there are so many rules, and it’s so difficult to get things done sometimes,” says painter Ida Ekblad. (more…)
Americans for the Arts, an arts advocacy nonprofit, announced on Monday that the Arts Require Timely Service (ARTS) Act in the Obama-endorsed immigration bill is anticipated to pass in the Senate. The brief argues that the current visa scheme has cultural and economic disadvantages for the American public, in particular artists. The new legislation would reduce the total processing required by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for O and P visa petitions filed for nonprofit arts-related matters. (more…)
With the Syrian civil war raging around them, a group of artists have smuggled their works out of the country for a survey exhibition in London, risking life and limb to get their works abroad for a show at P21 Gallery in Euston, opening this week. “I travelled to Lebanon and Jordan twice to take work smuggled over the border,” said Fadi Haddad of support group Mosaic Syria. “The artists are worried that they could be traced if the work is stopped at a checkpoint. Some haven’t signed their work. The security police wouldn’t understand their message but they’d still see it as a danger. One artist went to Lebanon to remake her work just to avoid trouble from the authorities.” (more…)
Arts critic Jerry Saltz comments on the diminishing role of the gallery show in the contemporary arts environment, noting the effects of increased focus on international fairs, auctions and biennials, and questioning the effects of this shift on the arts community of New York City. “Fewer ideas are being exchanged, fewer aesthetic arguments initiated. I can’t turn to the woman next to me and ask what she thinks, because there’s nobody there.” He says. (more…)
Curators Alex Gartenfeld and Norman Rosenthal are preparing to unveil an exhibition in Rome next month, looking at the city of New York through the framework of the capital of the ancient Roman Empire. Titled Empire State, the show brings 25 New York artists to Rome for a show exploring the creative essence within the two iconic metropolises. “Instead of just celebrating a city, I hope it’s an exhibition that questions what it is to be an art center today, and what sort of cultural cachet a city wields by having these art institutions. I think a lot of cities, Rome included, are thinking about what it means to be a contemporary art center. That’s where empire becomes this very relevant theme.” Says Mr. Gartenfeld. (more…)
This year’s Venice Beiennale will see a new generation of Young British Artists spotlighted at the exhibition’s “Encyclopedic Palace,” including Ed Atkins, James Richards and Helen Marten. “The common factor, perhaps, is that all these young artists grew up with the internet. It’s inside them. Because of that, they have a particular attitude to the way images and objects are made, dispersed and distributed.” Says Polly Staple, director of the Chisenhale Gallery, which has hosted all three of the afforementioned artists. (more…)
The Luck You Collective, a group of young, born and bred New York artists aged 19 to 21, is currently making on impact on the downtown arts scene. “To me they represent the heart and soul of the young New York creative scene,” says photographer David Mushegain. “They are the ones who grew up here and are continuing the conversation that started so long ago. They are seemingly the last stand in a downtown scene that is surely vanishing, and I love them for that.” (more…)
The Venice Biennale has released its final list of artists for this summer’s art exhibition, titled The Encyclopedic Palace. The list includes a number of both prominent and young artists, including Ed Atkins, Uri Aran, and Miroslaw Balka. “With the Encyclopedic Palace, Massimiliano Gioni (this year’s Biennale’s curator), much more than presenting us with a list of contemporary artists, wishes to reflect on their creative urges and seems to push the question even further: what is the artists’ world?” says president Paolo Baratta. (more…)
