New shoes from artist Takashi Murakami and Vans hit stores this weekend, a collaboration that sees the artist’s signature flowers and skulls adorning the skateboard shoe company’s iconic slip-ons. The collaboration also features a number of limited-edition skateboard decks and t-shirts. (more…)
The Art Production Fund has launched another collaboration with luxury retailer Barney’s in an effort to raise funds for additional public arts projects. Launching May 1st, the collaboration will feature a series of products with designs and illustrations by Alex Katz. “Working with Alex is a dream come true,” says PF co-founder Doreen Remen. “His work has long been influenced by pop culture imagery, and he’s passionate about getting his work out there to be enjoyed by everyone. Alex is the quintessential New Yorker and Barneys is such an iconic New York retailer, so the pairing was irresistible.” (more…)
The New York City Ballet has noted a marked uptick in young attendees in recent years, an indication that their efforts and commissions, like Dustin Yellin’s current project with the institution, are seeing successful returns. “We had a hypothesis that there might be a crossover interest between the visual arts and dance, particularly the kind of repertoire that we have — which have an abstract and contemporary feeling,” Katherine E. Brown, the company’s executive director said. (more…)
Allora & Calzadilla, Raptor’s Rapture (2012) all images courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art
On view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is an exhibition of recent work by Puerto Rico-based artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Entitled Intervals, the projects on display allude to the notion of the interval: “the time between events, the measure between two points in space, or the range between musical notes.”
The New York City Ballet has announced its newest artist collaboration, this year partnering with Dustin Yellin to create a large-scale installation featuring a set of “3,000-pound glass sculptures.” “I was moved thinking about these young, 25-year-old dancers [who are] full of life,” Yellin says, “and that they’re on their toes for all these hours.” (more…)
Converse has offfered the first images from its upcoming series of Andy Warhol-inspired Chuck Taylors, featuring iconic imagery from the artist’s career. The collection, which features a number of recognizable Warhol screenprints, will be released in January. (more…)
Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe, Floating Chain (High-Res Toni) (Installation View)
In their newest exhibition at Marlborough Chelsea, artist duo Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe are inviting the viewers into another realm of phantasmagoria, in which rooms full of ambiguous tales are revealed in their most bizarre and contradictory forms. Floating Chain (High-Res Toni) is the duo’s third collaboration with Marlborough after 2012’s Stray Light Gray, which absorbed gallery visitors into adjacent chambers of gory experiments and untold incidents connected through curiously large holes on the walls. (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…)
Perrier-Jouët is releasing a new edition of its 2005 Cuvée Belle Epoque Rosé, packaged in a limited-edition bottle designed by celebrated Brazilian visual artist Vik Muniz. “Much as Perrier-Jouët has long embraced Art Nouveau’s love of nature and enchantment, I took the idea of captivation in a natural setting as the inspiration for this motif,” Muniz says. (more…)
Marina Abramovic publicly reached out to director Lars Von Trier this week, telling the director that she wishes to work with him on an upcoming project. “You really bring the actors on the edge of complete nervous breakdowns,” she says. “Because I am a performance artist, I understand very well what you are doing.” (more…)
John Baldessari has created a series of “selfie collaborations” for the limited edition art and fashion publication Visionaire, featuring images taken by famous celebrities and embellished by the artist using some of his trademark images and iconography. “I’ll probably be most remembered for putting dots over people’s faces,” Baldessari comments. “So it’s funny to do an issue devoted to selfies of famous people.” (more…)
Bloomberg takes a look this week at the trend towards artists painting luxury automobiles, profiling specially commissioned projects by Frank Stella, Jeff Koons, and others, and investigating the economic versus aesthetic values that the work brings up. “It’s not a given that because it’s a Calder or a Warhol car it’ll automatically get a huge premium — that has not been proven by the market,” says luxury auto insurance head McKeel Hagerty. “An art car raises more questions about the real value of the car than it answers.” (more…)
Parisian Taxidermy specialist Peyrolle has announced a collaboration with Damien Hirst. Titled Signification (Hope, Immortality and Death in Paris, Now and Then), the “Cabinet of Curiosities” includes stuffed birds and insects, alongside a selection of cleaning products. “From the Surrealists to now, artists have come to Deyrolle not only to be inspired, but also to have a relationship with le vivant — the living — and the collapse of the living,” says Deyrolle’s owner Prince Louis Albert de Broglie. (more…)
The New York Times interviews Marcel Dzama this week, in the wake of the artist’s opening at David Zwirner, alongside his collaborators Kim Gordon and Tim Kingsbury (of Arcade Fire). The trio worked together on Dzama’s newest film Une danse des bouffons (A jester’s dance), a fantastic film incorporating numerous Dadaist and Surrealist references into a work inspired by the affair between Marcel Duchamp and sculptor Maria Martins. “It’s amazing how many things you can do when you’re just pretending,” says Gordon. (more…)
This month’s cover of Garage Magazine has been unveiled, with a pair of Jeff Koons artworks gracing the cover, and a virtual artwork that allows viewers to view it from all angles using a mobile device. The piece, Lady Bug, is Koons first venture into virtual art, and must be unlocked by scanning various parts of the magazine with a smartphone application. “Garage has always aspired to push the physical limits of a magazine,” says owner Dhasha Zhukova. “We are inspired by the infinite possibilities of the digital realm and look forward to exploring new media in this issue and beyond. We are excited to have collaborated with Jeff Koons on his first virtual sculpture.” (more…)
The New Museum has collaborated with Chapman Skateboards to create 150 skateboards inspired by the museum’s architecture. The limited edition skateboard mimics the angular profile and silver facade of the SANAA-designed building. Chapman Skateboards describes the skateboard as “a nod to the ingenuity of skate culture” and “a tribute to the narrow, skated backstreets of the neighborhood the New Museum calls home”. (more…)
Part of the fanfare surrounding Jeff Koons’s retrospective at the Whitney, H&M will turn its 5th Avenue shop into a miniature Jeff Koons exhibition, featuring a special purse branded with the artist’s signature Balloon Dog. “The partnership with H&M was really exciting for me,” Koons says, “and the chance to showcase one of my most popular works to a new generation of people was inspiring.” (more…)
Gardar Eide Einarsson and Oscar Tuazon, Liberator I (2014), via Team Gallery
Chez Perv, a group exhibition of work by Oscar Tuazon, Matias Faldbakken and Gardar Eide Einarsson is currently on view through June 1 at the Team Gallery in New York. Concrete slabs and immoveable duffle bags mark this show’s exploration of the hard edges and enormous weight of the physical world, deriving its title from a New York Post cover story on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal. Politically potent, heavily minimalist, and privileging the alienating, this group show brings the stillness of the physical world to the fore.
Artist Xu Zhen is profiled on Nowness this week, following the artist’s commission at the Armory Show last month. Giving a rare tour of his studio, Xu offers a perspective on his working style and his company, MadeIn, which produces the artist’s work as part of a broader creative project. “I’m not confined to working in any specific medium,” Xu says. “I think concept is more important.” (more…)
The Financial Times writes on trends towards collectives, collaboration and cooperation in the contemporary art world, examining the practice of the Triangle Network, White Columns and How to Work Together, a recent project which challenges various fine artists to work in collaboration to respond in ways as to how artists may operate collectively. “We have been very open that this has been a challenging process,” says Polly Staple of Chisenhale Gallery, who helped earn funding for the new project. “It took us six months just to come up with a Memorandum of Understanding.” (more…)
Fashion line and retailer Opening Ceremony has announced that it will present a collection of ready to wear clothing inspired by Magritte next week at London’s fashion week, including a capsule footwear collection in collaboration with Manolo Blahnik, Birkenstocks, and Vans. “We really wanted to think about this triptych of footwear, and think about different types of people,” said creative director Humberto Leon. “Everyone in the office wants it.” (more…)
Street artist JR has unveiled his recent collaboration with the New York City Ballet, an expansive vinyl photograph of 80 dancers installed on the floor of the Koch Theatre’s marble promenade. The image, twisted to look like an enormous eye, is best viewed from higher up, in the cheaper seats of the theatre, and acts as something of an equalizing project for the space. “Now you’re inviting everyone to come up there,” the artist said. “And I like that, that it breaks boundaries — that anyone should be on any floor, it doesn’t matter.” (more…)
Artists Barbara Kruger and Sterling Ruby are collaborating with Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Projects to present a pair of performances at a 1,600 seat historic theater built in 1921 at the newly opened Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. The artists each provided visual concepts for one performance, with Kruger collaborating with Millepied on his piece Reflections, and Ruby working on Murder Ballads by Justin Peck. The works will be performed on February 20th, 21st and 22nd at the Theatre at Ace Hotel Los Angeles. (more…)
The long-anticipated collaboration between Damien Hirst and British design house Alexander McQueen has finally been revealed, featuring a number of variations on the designer’s iconic skull scarves. The collection consists of 30 scarf designs, utilizing designs and concepts from Hirst’s celebrated Entomology series. (more…)
