John Baldessari, Pictures & Scripts: A glass of water sweetheart (2015), all images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery

On view at both Marian Goodman Gallery, London and Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris are two simultaneous exhibitions by John Baldessari: Pictures & Scripts and Early Work. The London gallery’s Pictures & Scripts show focuses on a series of new works, while the Paris gallery will show a selection of the artist’s important early catalog.

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Ed Ruscha is featured on NOWNESS today, part of the publication’s Getting There series, in which artists take an interviewer on a drive through a certain area.  For this edition, Ruscha drove interviewer Matthew Donaldson through his home city of Los Angeles, charting the shifting landscapes and sounds of the California city.  “More than the changes of Los Angeles, I notice when things don’t change,” he says. (more…)

Giulio Paolini, Young Man Looking at Lorenzo Lotto (1967)

Arte Povera, meaning ‘poor art’ in Italian, contained a profound criticism towards commodification and consumeristic production. Among its key figures stands Giulio Paolini, who was invited to Arte Povera’s first exhibition by art historian Germano Celant.  But Paolini also occupies a separate position in terms of focusing on a noticeably historical examination of the artistic state in turn. Related to his critical approach towards production dynamics in art, Paolini on the other hand has been investigating the duality between the seer and the seen, questioning the exchange not only between the artwork and the viewer but also between the subject matter and the artist. (more…)

The Shaped Canvas Revisited (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan

On view at Luexembourg & Dayan in New York City is an exhibition focusing on painted works with a non-rectangular canvas. In 1964, The Shaped Canvas was an exhibition held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, curated by Lawrence Alloway, revealing the desire to overthrow existing aesthetic hierarchies. The current exhibition revisits this 1964 exhibition, featuring more than two dozen works connecting the postwar history of the genre to present day use of the shaped canvas.

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Sol Lewitt, Horizontal Progression #6 (1991), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

Sol Lewitt, considered by many as the founding father of conceptual modernism, is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the last half of the 20^th century. The cube, as a “grammatical device” from which Lewitt’s work often develops speaks to his ambition to reduce art to its essentials, and approach the relationship between artistic creation and the mechanization of thought.  Lewitt is also known for his large-scale two and three-dimensional works, particularly his wall drawings executed in 1968. In these wall drawings, predetermined line-making procedures and formulas typically associated with commercial production were enlisted in the installation of this work across galleries. (more…)

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Robert Ryman at PaceWildenstein Gallery at 32 E 57 Street in New York.  Installation View.  All images via PaceWildenstein Gallery unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at PaceWildenstein Gallery is “Robert Ryman: Large-small, thick-thin, light reflecting, light absorbing” – the exhibition of thirty new paintings of the renowned minimalist American artists. Executed in Ryman’s signature monochromatic palette the paintings on display measure ten to thirty square inches and represent a wide gamut of experimentation in materials, including wood, MDF board, aluminum, and stretched cotton. The works appear strong and indestructible, although painted on the paper-thin material Tyvek. In addition to traditional graphite and ink, Ryman employs such painterly materials as acrylic varnish, enamel and epoxy. To hang the paintings to the walls, the artist will use regular staples, which are a traditional integral part of his aesthetics.

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Robert Ryman at Pace Wildenstein. Installation View

More images, text and related links after the jump…
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“Mobile Matrix” in situ at the Mexico City Library where the work was installed in 2006. Via NY Times

On Tuesday evening of December 15th, in the smaller of the two Titus theaters at the Museum of Modern Art, Ann Temkin enthusiastically beckoned Gabriel Orozco to take the stage. The premise of the followed conversation was, of course, the recently opened retrospective of Orozco’s lifetime body of work. At 47, the Mexican artist seemed grave and stoic in his words, although that may have been the fatigue of several weeks of preparation for the launch of the exhibition taking a toll.

Behind the Scenes: Gabriel Orozco. The artist talks about his long evolving relationship with the Museum of Modern Art and the experience of participating in a retrospective exhibition. Via MoMA

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