Will Ryman’s Roses being installed on Miami Beach. Image via The Art Newspaper.

Art Observed is on site for this year’s 10th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach which officially runs December 1–4, with previews and parties throughout the entire week beginning on Tuesday, November 29th. More than 260 galleries from around the world will be representing over 2,000 artists, not including the several satellite shows taking place simultaneously across Miami, including NADA, SCOPE, Pulse, and the original Art Miami—twelve years Basel’s senior. Attracting 46,000 visitors in 2010, the fair is expanding every year, with various collaborations and special additions celebrating its 10th. The Swiss-based Basel art fair installment in Miami has evolved into something that may have lost some of its innocence from its earlier days but in the end has become the definitive closing party for the art market’s year. There have been many previews and summaries of the fair, the following is our view of the week to come.

Hennessy Youngman, still from ART THOUGHTZ: Relational Aesthetics. Via Youtube.
Youngman will be speaking at NADA Deauville Beach Resort on Thursday at 5 pm.

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Banks Violette video interviewed on his process and the origins of and conceptual drivers behind his work [AO Newslink]

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Musicians play in front of a work by Alex Katz at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, where the painter’s show Face The Music runs through November 19th, 2011. All Photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

Thursday evening, October 20th, Parisian galleries across the city participated in what is called Nocturne des Galeries (Galleries Night Out). Hosted by FIAC, the event is an opportunity to survey the French art scene, as well as to “step up the commitment and increase the visibility of galleries focused on 20th century furniture conceived by architects and and contemporary design work.” The galleries are divided into five different sections: Louvre/Saint Germain, Champ Élysées, Eastern Paris, Louise Weiss, and Marias, which boasts the largest number of galleries. Art Observed was on site for openings at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Galerie Chantal Crousel and Emmanuel Perrotin.

Xavier Veilhan, opening of Orchestra at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin through November 12.

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Albert Oehlen, Blue Diamond Eyes (1994) all images via Honor Fraser

“It’s Great to be in New Jersey” is currently at Los Angeles gallery Honor Fraser, and will be on view through August 27^th. Curated by the Norwegian artist Gardar Eide Einarsson, known for multimedia works that celebrate freedom from authority, the exhibition presents works by a diversity of artists including Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Banks Violette, David Ratcliff, Linder, Raymond Pettibon, Wolfgang Tillmans, Oscar Tuazon, and Bea Schlingelhoff. “It’s Great to be in New Jersey” celebrates the influence of British Punk and the ways in which each of these artists interpreted and experienced the movement.

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Installation View All pictures via Gladstone Gallery unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery, 530 West 21th street, is a new installation by Banks Violette, a renowned New York Minimalist and conceptual artist. Appropriately untitled, the installation encompasses Violette’s signature use of replaceable materials, monochromatic palette and the openness to myriads of interpretations.  The centerpiece of the installation is a large chandelier made of multiple fluorescent tubes . Wires fall in a cascade alongside the chandelier while the apparatus of steel tubes and sandbags supporting the wall remain in plain sight. By exposing these technical banalities, the artist probably seeks to reveal the theatrical and artificial essence of his oeuvre, in which he heavily draws on the legacy of Conceptual sculptors Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. The installation is organized in collaboration with Team Gallery and is on view until April, 17.
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Kathy Grayson, center, at the opening of ‘New York Minute’ via Depart Foundation

New York City has been the center of the contemporary art world for over half a century, and while contemporary art production and dissemination has been influenced by globalization, with new centers of of activity gaining recognition around the world in cities such as Berlin, Moscow, or Shanghai, there’s still something about New York that attracts new and established artists alike. ‘New York Minute’ is an exhibition produced by the young Italian philanthropist Pierpaolo Barzan’s DEPART Foundation to bring the energy and sense of community found in New York’s downtown art scene to Rome, hosted by Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO).

‘New York Minute’ brings together sixty artists who live and work in New York, or are involved in its extended network, and showcases new tendencies in art that have developed out of that community. Curated by Kathy Grayson, director of New York’s Deitch Projects, the exhibition groups those new tendencies under three headings: the brash and gritty street punk aesthetic of artists such as Dash Snow, Terence Koh, Aurel Schmidt, the rainbow inflected wild figuration of Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Paper Rad, or Jules de Balincourt, and the new abstractions of artists including Tauba Auerbach, Xylor Jane, and Dan Colen.

The opening night brought thousands of young Romans looking to vibe on the energy brought to the city by the New York contingent. Kathy Grayson answered ArtObserved’s questions about what makes the New York scene so special, how ‘New York Minute’ is spreading its infectious communal energy, and what the plans are for the future.

DEPART FOUNDATION BOWS WITH “NEW YORK MINUTE” [Artnet]
New York Minute [Art in America]
Minute Made [Artforum]
Sixty New York-Based Artists Featured in Exhibition at Museo D’Arte Contemporanea Roma [ArtDaily]
The Heart of the New York Art World Beats in Italy at the “New York Minute” Show [Paper Magazine]
It’s a New York Art ‘Renaissance,’ Argues Upcoming Show [NYMagazine]
Wine-Maker Uncorks New York in Rome [Bloomberg]
New York Minute with Dash Snow, Aurel Schmidt, Barry McGee and Others [The Fader]
“New York Minute” exhibition [SLAMXHYPE]

The logo of ‘New York Minute’ by Chris Johanson via Depart Foundation

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Opening Banks Violette’s “Not Yet Titled” at Team Gallery. Photo by Art Observed.

From May 7th until June 20th, Team Gallery presents new work by artist Banks Violette. Last night, a crowd -among which fellow artists Dash Snow and Matthew Barney– gathered at Team Gallery and Grand Street to take a first look at the work. The exhibition consists of drawings of graphite on paper and one sculpture.   The iconography in the works is wide-ranging, but all revolve around transformation, death, faith and redemption.  In one piece, Violette has taken the portrait of Bela Lugosi  – the renowned Count Dracula in the 1931 film Dracula who later fell into obscurity – and depicted him as a Christ figure, thus blending evil and the benign.  Violette’s drawing is hard edged, yet he succeeds in rendering his works with an air of ghostly vagueness. The works derive their power from a sense of the unclear and unreal.

Opening Banks Violette’s “Not Yet Titled” at Team Gallery. Photo by Art Observed.

Violette Banks: Not Yet Titled
Team Gallery
83 Grand Street, New York
May 7th, 2009 – June 20th, 2009

RELATED LINKS
Exhibition Page [Team Gallery]
The ghost of goth art [GQ]
Master of the Dark Arts (2005 article) [New York Times]
Death Becomes Him [Art Review]
Banks Violette: Kryptologo Cryptologist [Spike Art Quarterly]
Kill to get the money [i-D]
Banks Violette by Neville Wakefield, Banks Violette and Stephen O’Malley [Amazon]
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not yet titled (smashed screen with refrigeration) (2008), Banks Violette via ArtRabbit

Banks Violette’s second solo show at Maureen Paley offers black-metal fervor in a minimalist shell. While Violette’s previous installments have focused more upon audible aesthetics like his collaboration with the drone-metal musician Sun O)))), this will be Violette’s first exhibit featuring video. An appropriated and manipulated clip of the signature TriStar Pictures horse is projected upon an invisible screen of water vapor to appear as if the image is hovering (which can be seen here). Upstairs includes influences from his previous works that take on the formal language of billboards and projection screens but mangled, broken, and extruded. Violette was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and the Black Album in 2005 and since then has garnered international exhibitions. His work primarily deals with ritualistic presentations of death-metal in American culture derived from his tattoo-artist and crystal-meth induced upbringings in Hawaii. His nihilistic approach also deals with real-life narratives like teen suicides in New Jersey or church burnings in Norway.

Maureen Paley Official Site
Banks Violette at Maureen Paley [ArtRabbit]
Artist of the week no 10: Banks Violette [GuardianUK]
Steve Pulimood on Banks Violette at Maureen Paley [Saatchi Gallery]
Video Footage of Banks Violette TriStar horse animation [Youtube]

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