Cyprien Gaillard, Where Nature Runs Riot (2015). All Images courtesy Sprueth Magers Berlin.

Now through July 18, Sprüth Magers Gallery in Berlin hosts Where Nature Runs Riot, an exhibition of new work by Cyprien Gaillard, combining film, sculpture, and sound to inform and interrupt each other in the three main pieces that comprise the show.  Thematically, Gaillard focuses on the dialogue formed between natural and man-made structures erected at the limits of history and civilization, testing the capacity of sculptural form to illustrate both the esoteric and psychedelic.  References to major figures and tropes from art and musical history reveal the artist’s interest in synthesizing seemingly disparate elements towards a type of aesthetic logic to history and dialogue, an often palimpsestic structure of overlapping layers and interpretations. In this exhibition, Gaillard demonstrates and forges relationships between stillness and movement, natural and man-made form, sound and vision.

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Ryder Ripps, Heater (2014), via Art Observed

If there’s one thing that can be said about Ryder Ripps, it’s that the artist loves context.  Over the past few years, the artist has produced a number of timely and often razor-sharp critiques on the notions of authorship and production in the digital sphere, including his “WhoDat.Biz” troll of Kanye West, and his recent, controversial Ace Hotel performance piece, in which the artist hired a group of “sensual masseuses” to draw pictures for him to protest what he saw as an inequitable payment situation. (more…)

Mark Leckey, GreenScreenVegetables (2011), all images courtesy Untitled, New York

Currently on view at Untitled, located at 30 Orchard Street in New York, is a group exhibition of work by both emerging and well-known artists surrounding themes of decontextualization and absence. The show will be on view through August 2nd, 2014.

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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…)

Josephine Meckseper (Installation View), All images courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery

On view at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York is an exhibition of large-scale vitrines, mirrored wall panels and photographs, all by Josephine Meckseper, and alluding to the rise of the Bauhaus and Deutscher Werkbund in Weimar Germany, and their subsequent destruction by the Nazi regime.

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Empire State (Installation View), via Palazzo Delle Esposizioni

“Empire State,” a classic nickname denoting New York’s central position in the art world, takes a new spin in Rome this summer, thanks to the curatorial talents of Alex Gartenfeld and Norman Rosenthal. (more…)