Monika Sosnowska, Tower (2014), via Art Observed

Following the gallery’s exhibition of Sterling Ruby’s slurred, industrial run-off and massive assemblages earlier this summer, Hauser and Wirth New York returns for the first show of its fall season with a similarly inclined, yet considerably more restrained take on architectural and industrial forms.  This time, the work is Monika Sosnowska’s, and the subject is that of high architectural modernism, reinterpreting the forms and elements of “International Style” as developed and professed by landmark German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Monika Sosnowska, Tower (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed

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Sherrie Levine, Bird Mask (2014) via Osman Can Yerebakan

Paula Cooper Gallery is currently presenting new works by one of the most iconic artists of The Pictures Generation, Sherrie Levine. The artist has been reinterpreting the set notions of ownership and authenticity in creative work for more than 30 years, while simultaenously commenting on the canonization process of art history.  Inspired by the pioneer Constructivist Aleksander Rodchenko’s three panel monochrome from 1921, Levine’s new exhibition, Red Yellow Blue, refers to the reduction of a painting to its most minimalistic forms and fundamental colors.  One of the most notable artists of a generation engaged with appropriation and representation of consumeristic and media-centric production, Levine’s works in the exhibition investigate the essence of art-making, and its creative limitations with reference to certain precedents. Regarding art history as a circular form instead of a linear one, Levine goes back to the roots of art production to redefine set concepts on issues such as death and mysticism throughout the works on view. (more…)

Kazimir Malevich, Mystic Suprematism (red cross on black circle) (1920-1922), via New York Times

Kazimir Malevich’s impact on the early-Twentieth century Russian avant-garde is difficult to ignore.  Pushing forward the “new art,” he pioneered early minimalist practices and pushed the rupture of modernist art almost simultaneously with the Cubist deconstructions happening further west.  But it was Malevich that ultimately took these same processes to new abstractions, and perhaps what could be considered their limit, rendering pure geometric forms in contrasting, minimal explorations of color and space, ultimately developing the language that would come to define much of Twentieth century fine art.

Kazimir Malevich And The Russian Avant-Garde (Installation View), Via Stedelijk Museum Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij (more…)

Gert and Uwe Tobias at FRAC-Auvergne (Installation View), via FRAC-Auvergne

The work of Romanian brothers Gert and Uwe Tobias operates in a peculiar space between diverse artistic traditions.  Combining watercolor, woodcut prints, sculptures, typewriter drawings and ceramics, the Tobias brothers have created a body of work that combines Art Nouveau with Romanian folk heritage, Paul Klee with Russian Constructivism, and archaic technologies with contemporary art theory.  Using the broad world of contemporary art as their sounding board, the Tobias brothers seek to reevaluate and re-contextualize their native heritage.  (more…)