Dan Flavin, Untitled (To Helen Winkler) (1972), via Art Observed

During the early years of Dan Flavin’s career, the artist was known to experiment in particular with fluorescent lights as much for aesthetic potential as for the economics of their procurement.  Easy to access in any hardware store (and often just as easy to return after a show), Flavin embraced the cheap materials of home improvement projects and industrial construction as an essential part of his practice.  Yet what Flavin achieved with his pieces is equally significant, creating stately, somber interrogations of space and perception with these simple materials, often using simple patterns and accumulations of material that tied him to other masters of the burgeoning school of minimalist practice developing around him in New York. (more…)

Andy Warhol, 20 Pink Maos (1979), via Phillips

Complementing the offering of new works across town at Regent’s Park, Phillips London has opened a week of auctions around Frieze Week, closing out its 30-lot sale this evening with a consistent sale, seeing 6 of the evening’s 30 lots go unsold to reach a final tally of £17,867,750. (more…)

Tom Sachs, Crawler (2003), all photos via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

The group exhibition Space Age, which closed yesterday at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris-Pantin, took up all four of the gallery’s spacious halls to examine historical and commissioned works by twenty contemporary artists, drawing on the astrological, the exploratory, and the untapped potential of outer space.  The artworks on view explored one of humanity’s most archaic collective dreams: the conquest of the skies and the immersion in the cosmos.

James Rosenquist, An Intrinsic Existence (2015), via Art Observed (more…)

Dan Flavin, untitled (to Sonja) (1969), via Art Observed

An idea that began with a single light was the generative force for New York minimalist Dan Flavin‘s ongoing interests in light and space. Starting in 1963 with the creation of diagonal of May 25th, 1963, a fluorescent lamp installed diagonally on a wall, Flavin quickly adopted light as his central aesthetic focus, and his journey through the environmental capacities of  light can now be seen in Corners, Barriers and Corridors at David Zwirner.

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Pioneering light artist Keith Sonnier is interviewed in a recent edition of the New York Times Magazine, discussing his show of early works at Pace gallery, and his years working in Los Angeles.  “Flavin called us Dada homosexuals,” Sonnier says. “We were all in the same shows, the only real difference is that they used hard materials and ours were soft.” (more…)

The most recent issue of Billboard Magazine features a cover story on French rock band Phoenix, showing the band standing in front of a work by Dan Flavin from the artist’s recent show with Donald Judd at David Zwirner in New York.  The picture was taken during the first exhibition at Zwirner’s new 19th Street location, as the band searched for inspiration for their upcoming tour.  “These pieces have a very short lifetime,” frontman Thomas Mars said, “which makes them even more precious.” (more…)

The New York Times Magazine has published a profile on German gallery mogul David Zwirner, documenting his growing chain of galleries worldwide, and the dealer’s modest origins.  The profile comes after Zwirner recently opened his new space in Chelsea with a show of work by Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, and responds to scrutiny over the aggressive monetizaton of the art world.  “I don’t mind everyone knocking the money, complaining about how much money there is — that goes with the territory,” Zwirner says. “But what they don’t understand is that work like this has to have space like this to be shown the right way and you have to have money to be able to provide it.” (more…)

Dan Flavin (Installation View) via David Zwirner

The inaugural show at David Zwirner’s spacious new location on W. 20th Street in Manhattan is a pairing of two of minimalism’s major figures and long-time friends, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin.  Given the size of the new location, with its towering ceilings and ample floor space, the show is sparese in both form and quantity, containing 8 illuminated frameworks by Flavin and 5 welded steel boxes by Judd.

Donald Judd, untitled (1991), via David Zwirner

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Mere weeks after the announcement that Christopher D’Amelio would be joining David Zwirner Gallery, the gallery has  announced that it will be opening a new, five-story location in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.  The gallery will be christened with a dual show by Dan Flavin and Donald Judd on February 15th, and plans to host major exhibitions that rival the those of much larger art institutions.  “The first show is a marriage between the space and the work,” Zwirner said last week. (more…)

Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Carpinteros, Kosmaj Toy (2012).

All images by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved, on location at Art Basel Miami Beach Fair.

Art Basel returned once again in Miami Beach this past week for the 11th annual Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. Featuring over 300 galleries representing 36 countries around the world, the show has exhibited marked growth from last year’s event, with well over 2,000 artists flocking to exhibit at what has become the internationally-renowned closing party for the world art market each year.  It is of course always an irony that tens of thousands will fly down for the events and parties, with many of them never visiting the vast aggregation of what it said to be roughly $1.5 billion worth of art in one (large) room, a collection that few museums in the world could compete with.   Below is a selection of some of the works we thought to be notable from the fair.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, Mark Rothko No. 1 (1957) and Alexander Calder, installation view

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Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 photo by ArtObserved

Despite the large number of exhibitors from New York who are in recovery from Hurricane Sandy, almost  every Chelsea gallery scheduled to exhibit will be at this year’s 11th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach week. Events begin as early as today, Monday, December 3rd and run through Sunday, December 9th. Exhibitors and artists are preparing for a flurry of activity, with a multitude of fairs, some old, some new; public installations, exhibitions, collaborations and of course, parties centering around the Delano, The W, Soho Beach House, The Deauville, The Raleigh, The Standard and others. Check out the detailed schedule of events below.

Visionaire Magazine party at Delano Hotel 2011 photo by ArtObserved

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Carte Blanche (Installation View), courtesy Galerie Seguin and Paula Cooper Gallery

Each year, Galerie Patrick Seguin in Paris opens its doors to international galleries of note from the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world.  With no limits or constraints placed upon the guest curators, “Carte Blanche” allows a broad international audience exposure not only to great works from around the world, but also a taste of the various curatorial approaches and personal idioms of each invited gallery.

Bruce Conner – CROSSROADS (1976), courtesy Galerie Seguin and Paula Cooper Gallery

This year, the invitation was extended to Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City, who chose a selection of artists from their early years as the first art gallery in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan.  First opened in 1968, the gallery has continued to grow with its hometown, now recognized as one of the premier art spaces in the city.

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Joseph Kosuth, Neon, 1965

All images courtesy MACRO Rome.

MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, has filled its expansive Enel Hall with close to 70 illuminated works for its show Neon: the Luminous Matter of Art.  An exhibition dedicated solely to the use of neon, the show brings together 50 artists who have worked with the medium in contemporary practice. The sculptures, installations and textual works lay the art-historical framework for conceptual practice based on semiotics while also (more literally) paying homage to the medium’s origins as material for signage.

Delving into the past 50 years, on view are works by Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Tracy Emin, and Jason Rhoades, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Maurizio Cattelan, Spencer Finch, Dan Flavin, Claire Fontaine, Piero Golia, Douglas Gordon, Alfredo Jaar, Gyula Kosice, Mario Merz, François Morellet, Bruce Nauman and Keith Sonnier, among many others.

Bruce Nauman, Raw/War, 1970, MACRO Rome.

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Toby Ziegler‘s The Cripples, image via Art Observed

Back in 2003 in Frieze’s first year, no major international art fair had ever been hosted in London before. Frieze Art Fair, organized by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, has helped take London from being a city without a focused art scene to its current state at the center of the European art market. Now in its tenth year, Frieze Art Fair in London’s Regent’s Park has seen around 60,000 visitors, with 264 dealers from 35 countries hoping to sell work (valuing an estimated  £230m) created by more than 2,400 artists within 175 of the world’s leading galleries.

An Aaron Young motorcycle burn out work at Massimo de Carlo in Milan, photo via Art Observed

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Image: Frieze London Courtesy Frieze

Exhibitors are gearing up for the tenth edition of Frieze London, which takes place in London’s Regent’s Park from October 11–14th. The fair kicks off with a vernissage on the evening of Wednesday, October 10th, once again housed in a temporary structure designed by architects Carmody Groarke.

Although mostly composed of UK and US galleries (almost exclusively from London and New York) account for 45% of the main fair, fair organizers are broadening the scope this year, with new sections and exhibitors from 35 countries, making it the most international event to date organized by Frieze.

Image: Mona Hatoum, KAPANCIK, 2012 Courtesy White Cube Gallery

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Dan Flavin, in honor of Harold Joachim in pink, yellow, blue and green fluorescent light 8′ high and wide (1977)

The Morgan Library & Museum is currently exhibiting Dan Flavin: Drawing, a retrospective of the Dan Flavin’s works on paper, from pencil to charcoal to watercolor. Primarily comprised of pieces made by the artist himself and a group from his personal collection, this body of work demonstrates Flavin’s abilities as a draftsman, as well as an installation artist. More than one hundred of Flavin’s own pieces are on view, starting with his abstract expressionist watercolors from the 1950s and ending with pictures of sailboats made with conté crayon in the late 80s and early 90s. Also included in this collection are a series of plans that the artist made in preparation of his renowned fluorescent light installations.

Dan Flavin, untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3 (1977)

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Installation View

Galerie Perrotin is currently radiating with Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light sculptures. An Installation features eight sculptural works from the years 1963–89 and three schematic drawings. 1963 was a seminal year for Flavin, as he removed all other elements from his practice to work solely with commercially available fluorescent lights. With clarity and simplicity, his constructed arrangements explore the painterly possibilities of color and light while engaging with the architectural space.

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Bruce Nauman, Parallax Shell (1971-2000).

Currently on view at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery is The Parallax View, an exhibition curated by Manuel E. Gonzalez exploring the nature of conflict in the works by acclaimed artists Teresita Fernández, Dan Flavin, Gego, Mary Heilmann, Eva Hesse, Robert Irwin, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson. Centered around the notion of “parallax,” which is defined as “the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer,” the exhibition examines how each artist confronts notions of space, light, and observation in their work. Works by such stylistically disparate artists spanning the course of post-war 20th century confront each other through various shapes and forms resulting in an expression of conflict and disharmony.

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But, What Ends When The Symbols Shatter (2009); Caligula (2010). All images courtesy Bonniers Konsthall unless otherwise noted.

Gardar Eide Einarsson is one of the fastest rising Scandinavian contemporary artists, and his exhibition Power Has a Fragrance currently on view at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm is a testament to his momentum. Addressing themes of violence, authority, power, paranoia, and alienation, Einarsson draws heavily on graffiti and street culture, transforming appropriated imagery into sophisticated installations that land like spaceships in a minimalist’s paradise.

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Dan Flavin, untitled (to Barry, Mike, Chuck and Leonard), 1972-1975. All images by Art Observed.

The current exhibition of early works by Dan Flavin at Paula Cooper Gallery offers a concise exploration into the artist’s experiments with the effect of colored light on architectural space. A 1960s minimalist, Flavin’s works realize the infinite possibilities inherent in the simple gesture of a florescent light in a gallery, which, despite a limited vocabulary, create varied optical and experiential situations. Flavin’s works confound the way that art is viewed by testing the limitations of opticality while stressing color as a medium in its own right. Instead of the viewer looking at a two dimensional object with painted colors, Flavin brings the color to the viewer, aggressively inserting his color combinations into the viewer’s eyes. That is, instead of the art reflecting color, it is emitting the color as light. If the purpose of art is to look, to see, to contemplate a visual object, then Flavin’s art frustrates this standard notion by making it difficult to look directly at the art object itself. This difficulty of viewing the art object directly causes the viewer to notice the effect of light and color on objects, thereby implicating the architectural space within the work. The works thereby occupy every part of the room, using the unusable spaces of a gallery–the corners and the floors, spaces incapable of displaying artworks.

Dan Flavin, untitled (to Barry, Mike, Chuck and Leonard), 1972-1975.

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Quilt by Alexandre da Cunha, and Six Billboards by Angus Fairhust, Art Basel.  Image via Art Daily, AP Photo/Keystone/Georgios Kefalas.

Yesterday marked the end of the most highly-attended Art Basel to date. The 41st annual contemporary art fair boasted 306 galleries from 36 countries, and AO was on site to peruse the work of some 2,5000 artists.  62,500 dealers, collectors, curators, high-profile shoppers, artists, and art appreciators navigated installations, browsed gallery booths, mingled, and enjoyed the city of Basel.  Artists, established and newcomers both, showcased works ranging from Polaroids to performance pieces, paintings to videos, sculptures to large-scale installations.  A social and teeming affair with an obvious commercial edge, Basel’s sales were optimistic.  Picasso, Warhol, Prince, Hirst, de Kooning, Pollock, and other similarly established artists reigned supreme as the focus of this year’s event.  Franck Giraud, a New York dealer, spoke to the New York Times about the lack of prominently featured up-and-comers: “Is it because that’s what the market wants, or is it because dealers didn’t want to take risks? I think it was a bit of both.” Nonetheless, certain galleries used Basel as a platform to introduce new artists and show off their latest signings.

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Untitled, Maurizio Cattelan (2001) Estimate: $3–4 million Price Realized: $7.9 million

Last night, Sotheby’s confirmed the art market’s return to form as 50 of the 53 lots on offer sold at its Contemporary art sale.  Tallying $189,969,000 in sales, well over the house’s $162 million pre-sale estimate, 39 works fetched more than one million dollars, with two selling for more than $30 million, and seven making more than $5 million. Further to this, the sale achieved the two top lots achieved so far at New York’s Contemporary sales week, surpassing Christie’s sale of Jasper Johns Flag for $29 million on Tuesday night  – Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait more than doubled its high estimate to sell for $32,562,500, and an Untitled Mark Rothko painting from 1961 soared over the high estimate to sell for $31,442,500.

Self Portrait, Andy Warhol (1986). Estimate: $10-15 million. Price Realized: $32,562,500

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The Nominal Three (to William of Ockham) (1963) by Dan Flavin, via David Zwirner

Now on view at David Zwirner in New York is the city’s biggest Dan Flavin show in over a decade.  Last month the gallery announced that it would have exclusive rights over the Estate of the New York minimalist who died in 1996.  Series and Progressions opens at David Zwirner’s West 19th Street complex in Chelsea on November 5th. Curated by Tiffany Bell, the exhibit reveals Flavin’s use of progressives and serial structures which the artist incorporated throughout his career.

Press Release [David Zwirner]
David Zwirner to Hold First Dan Flavin Exhibition: Series and Progressions [Artdaily]
Recalling Flavin [NY Times]
David Zwirner Planning New York’s Biggest Dan Flavin Show in Over a Decade [The L Magazine]
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Installation view of Castellani/Flavin/Judd/Uecker via Haunch of Venison

Currently on view at Haunch of Venison in London is an exhibition that explores the connections between four seminal artists; Enrico Castellani, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Günther Uecker. The exhibition includes works from 1964 to today from these four artists who were born within six years of each other and shared aesthetic objects while working on different sides of the Atlantic.

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Installation view of Castellani/Flavin/Judd/Uecker via Haunch of Venison

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