Marlene Dumas, James Baldwin (2014), all images via Art Observed

Delving into the life and work of the monumental American writer James Baldwin, Hilton Als has taken another turn as a curator at David Zwirner Gallery, mounting an exhibition that both explores and critiques the artist’s career, and his complicated relationship to the political landscape and social conflicts of the United States. The show, following up on Als’s exploration of the work of Alice Neel, is a nuanced review of Baldwin’s connections between Paris and New York and its diverse art scenes, in conjunction with his own aesthetic longings beyond that of his writing. (more…)

Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Sem título (1993). All images via David Zwirner.

Now through February 9, David Zwirner is presenting work by the Brazilian-born painter Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, making the the first time Lorenzato’s work is being shown in the United Kingdom, and the first solo show by the artist outside of Brazil. One of the foremost painters of his generation, Lorenzato developed a body of work that centers on subjects he encountered in his hometown of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where the Brazilian Concrete Art movement emerged in the 1950s. These include land- and townscapes, favelas, and individuals he met in his daily travels. (more…)

Josef Albers, Study for Homage to the Square (1964), via David Zwirner

Delving into the varied psychological and ephemeral aspects of Josef Albers’s practice, and his strong affinity for music, David Zwirner’s current exhibition at its 20th Street location, Sonic Albers, is a flowing, fluid affair.  Taking a far-reaching look at often overlooked prominence of music in both the artist’s sites of personal inspiration, and on the material aspects of his practice, Sonic Albers features a selection of paintings, glassworks, drawings, and ephemera from throughout Albers’s career, including a number of the album covers he designed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. (more…)

James Welling, Chemical (2018), via David Zwirner

Over the course of the last decade, photographer James Welling has branched out into a series of more experimental modes of image production, often welcoming degrees of abstraction and indeterminacy into the creation of his photographic images.  Using unorthodox photographic procedures in conjunction with varied processes that see his works moving between abstraction and representation, his recent series of work are emblematic of the breadth of his ongoing experimentation with the conventions and materials of photography. (more…)

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Morning) (2018), via Art Observed

It’s been a good few years for Kerry James Marshall.  The Chicago-based painter opened his landmark show at The Met Breuer, a critically-lauded exhibition that toured the U.S. and earned the artist an impressive response from both viewers and critics.  Now, the artist turns his attention towards a body of new paintings, the first new series produced since the Mastry exhibition, for a new show at David Zwirner’s exhibition location in London.  (more…)

Harold Ancart, Untitled (2018), via David Zwirner

Over the past few years, Belgian-born, New York-based painter Harold Ancart has remained one of the more unique voices in modern painting.  The artist’s deceptively simple, ragged style of painting and his intuitive interpretations of natural phenomena and iconographies have seen his work move through a broad range of styles and iterations, including massive depictions of flames, icebergs and lush forests, always offset by a sense of spatially-sound minimalism.  Captivating in their spare, exploratory style, the artist’s works are a fascinating look at the language of modern practice, and how historical touchstones can double back on themselves to create new structures and vocabularies.  (more…)

Carol Bove, The Romance of Black Money (2018), via David Zwirner

Currently on view at David Zwirner’s 24 Grafton Street location in London, artist Carol Bove has erected a series of her recent sculptures, exploring the artist’s continued practice combining tightly orchestrated references to the canon on modern sculpture with her own enigmatic interpretations and spatial innovations.  The show, which closes at the end of the week, marks a another chapter in Bove’s impressive vision, as her brightly colored, monolithic works continue to shift and evolve in vision and scope. (more…)

Marlene Dumas, Awkward (2018), via Art Observed

Painter Marlene Dumas’ show, Myths and Mortals, a return to David Zwirner‘s New York gallery space, comprises 22 paintings and 33 works on paper divided into three parts, showcasing the artist’s sense of narrative and interconnected meaning. The first series of works includes large scale and smaller scale oil on canvas paintings that explore the dynamics of love. The second part includes ink washes on paper depicting Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis story, as translated by the Dutch Hafid Bouazza, and is constructed in a highly narrative style with the story moving chronologically with explicit references. The third returns to canvas and oil paintings and begins to explore the themes of Venus and Adonis although with the more general factors of romance, lust and true love. (more…)

Stan Douglas, Loot (2017), via Art Observed

Continuing his practice of blending the hyperreal and the inherent materialities of photographic production, artist Stan Douglas has returned to David Zwirner this month for a show of new works from two divergent modes of practice.  The show, titled DCTs and Scenes from the Blackout, mixes together Douglas’s ongoing practice of detailed, involved portraiture, staged scenes that incorporate both specific time frames/locations into a freewheeling riff on the construction of reality, and a body of work that uses computer algorithms to deconstruct the image.  Throughout, Douglas’s interest in the construction of the image, and the narratives (or lack thereof) that emerge from the surface is at center stage.

Stan Douglas, Stranded (2017), via Art Observed

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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…)

Isa Genzken, Untitled (2018), via Art Observed

With a career spanning over four decades, German artist Isa Genzken has constantly worked along the shifting fault-lines of art and design, architecture and media, technology and the individual.  With a body of work that constantly seems to absorb and incorporate the physical materials in her close proximity, assembling them through a range of techniques and practices that flirt with any medium that may cross her mind, from sculpture, painting and collage, to drawing, film, and photography.  Deeply attuned to both the legacies of the twentieth-century avant-garde and the materials and forms of twenty-first-century global society, Genzken’s work interrogates the impact of our increasingly commodified and interconnected culture on our everyday lives.

Isa Genzken, Sky Energy (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

Sanford Biggers presented by monique meloche, via Art Observed

Situated just beyond the tourist traps of Navy Pier, the EXPO Chicago art fair attracted visitors out over the lapis waters of Lake Michigan for the sixth iteration offering another year of global arts attention on the Windy City. British artist Roger Hiorn‘s deliciously fun, foam spawning A retrospective view of the pathway is prominently placed in the front yard of the space, serving as a prominent lure for the show, and indicative of this same international flavor. As well as partnering with the Palais de Tokyo and Institut Francais for an exhibition of emerging French and Chicago artists at the DuSable Museum of African American History, the press release heralded this year as the “most global edition to date.”

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Lisa Yuskavage, Déjà Vu (2017) via Art Observed

On view at David Zwirner Gallery‘s London exhibition space, now through July 28th, is a new series of new paintings by Lisa Yuskavage.  Often associated with the re-emergence of figuration in contemporary painting, Yuskavage’s work is noted for its psychedelic, colorfully vibrant style, and its often sexually-charged subject matter. Her paintings embody a unique genre of portraiture—a blending of imagined and contemporary subjects set against classical tropes and icons of human sexuality. In this series, Yuskavage draws upon the world of American hippies, where slinky, bodacious women lounge about and cavort with semi-nude men. It is worth noting that while the hyper-sexualized women remain the dominant characters, the inclusion of men in her work is a fairly new departure for Yuskavage. (more…)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Installation View), via Art Observed

Reflecting on the landmark career and tragically short life of artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Zwirner has opened its first exhibition dedicated to his work.  Zwirner has partnered with Andrea Rosen to jointly represent the artist’s estate worldwide, a move that promises increasingly broad exposure and support for his vision and canon. (more…)

Al Taylor, Breakman (1978), via Art Observed

Artist Al Taylor’s body of works is recognized in particular for its swirling accumulations of material, assemblages of plexiglass, hula hoops, broomsticks, drips of paint and other contents built into self-contained systems.  Yet the artist’s work in this mode emerged from a prior decade dedicated almost exclusively to painting, where many of Taylor’s formal interests and approaches to space first began to develop.  Explored through a range of early canvases dated from 1971 to 1980, David Zwirner’s current exhibition at 537 West 20th Street in New York offers an intriguing entry into the artist’s early canon. (more…)

Alice Neel, Anselmo (1962), via Art Observed

Drawing on painter Alice Neel’s longtime residence in the northern reaches of Manhattan, David Zwirner is currently presenting a body of paintings by Alice Neel, curated by author and critic Hilton Als, and exploring Neel’s longtime practice in portraiture.  Encouraging an exploration of visual art history and politics, social commentary and painterly craft, the exhibition is a striking exploration of the artist’s work in all of its nuance and power.   (more…)

Aline Kominsky-Crumb and R. Crumb, Drawn Together (Installation View)

Drawn Together, a decade-spanning look at the collaborative work of the cartoonist husband and wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb and R. Crumb, offers a well-timed opportunity for lovers of the graphic arts at David Zwirner, coinciding with the opening of the New Museum’s Raymond Petitibon retrospective A Pen of All Work.  Although they were individually prominent artists in the graphic arts scene during the course of their careers, Aline and Robert delivered a unique visual and intellectual body of work that both drew on their marriage in the early ‘70s. Later gathered in a series titled Aline and Bob’s Dirty Laundry Comics, which debuted in 1974, the couple’s ongoing collaboration is a statement on marriage, partnership, and dependency, as well as on sexuality and gender roles of the society they lived and worked within. (more…)

Josef Albers, Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders (Exhibition View), via Art Observed

On view at the David Zwirner Gallery, Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders delves into Josef Albers’s life-long exploration of color, form and space, focusing in particular on his works in white, grey and black, and featuring a range of his most acclaimed square paintings, as well as other abstract works from the course of his career.  A highly influential artist in the abstract movements of the early 20th Century, his works, shown in an open conversation, demonstrate the process of creating through rhythm and gradation. (more…)

Carol Bove, Daphne and Apollo (2016), via Art Observed

Marking her first exhibition with David Zwirner in New York since joining the gallery, Carol Bove has brought a body of new works to the gallery’s 19th Street location, marking a continuation and expansion of her unique sculptural language refined through a series of references and touchstones pulled from the language of modern sculpture.   (more…)

William Eggleston, Untitled from The Democratic Forest, (c. 1983-1986), via Art Observed

There are few photographers who have left a mark on their medium in the way that William Eggleston has over the course of his career.  Pioneering an approach to the photograph as meticulous as it is seemingly effortless, Eggleston’s work has charted a path and progression through both his own chosen craft and the American landscape.  Capturing subdued, yet sublime moments of life across the country, from momentary pauses in urban bustle to the somber stillness of the American rural South.  Now, the Tennessee-born artist is revisiting his landmark project The Democratic Forest at David Zwirner in New York, a look back at the artist’s career that simultaneously marks his first exhibition since joining the gallery for global representation.

William Eggleston, Untitled from The Democratic Forest, (c. 1983-1986), via Art Observed

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The lawsuit against David Zwirner over delays in the delivery of a Jeff Koons work has been allowed to proceed, after a judge dismissed several counts of fraud related to the case.  “This is a victory for art purchasers and a landmark decision in that it is the first one to rule on an important law that is designed to keep New York’s art market clean and safe for buyers of sculptures and other editioned work,” says John Cahill, plaintiff Fabrizio Moretti’s lawyer.  (more…)

Neo Rauch, Der Störfall (2016), via David Zwirner

Marking his first solo exhibition in the UK, painter Neo Rauch has brought a series of new compositions to David Zwirner, marking a new entry in the artist’s unique explorations of figuration, Central European art history, and the shifting surrealist language that mixes epochs and styles over the range of his practice.  Rendered in his signature  palette of subdued oils on canvas, the works continue Rauch’s exploration of the past as an open framework for interpretation and juxtaposition.

Neo Rauch, Rondo (Installation View), via David Zwirner

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The Art Newspaper has more information on the lawsuit between dealer Fabrizio Moretti and David Zwirner, noting that the dispute is over a recent Jeff Koons Gazing Ball work, which was repeatedly sent to different buyers, harming its value in the process.  “It’s a shocking level of indifference to customers that is frankly surprising for a dealer who has a buyer who paid $2m,” Moretti’s laywer John Cahill says. (more…)

Francis Alÿs, Paradox of Praxis 5: Sometimes we dream as we live & sometimes we live as we dream Ciudad Juárez, México (2013), via David Zwirner

This month, Francis Alÿs returns to London for his first exhibition in the city in over 15 years, opening his third exhibition of work with David Zwirner Gallery.  Focusing on the intense political history and narco-violence that has plagued the North Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez for over a decade, the artist’s particular investigative style leaves the experience of this corruption and murder-torn border town distinctly inconclusive, a point that only contributes to the already tragic nature of its story.

Francis Alÿs, Untitled (2013), via David Zwirner

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