Pat Steir, domini (1990), via Art Observed

Stepping into Dominique Lévy gallery space, one is immediately greeted by the towering columns of paint that make up artist Pat Steir’s waterfall paintings.  Opening her first exhibition in London in twenty-eight years, the artist’s exhibition features fourteen works made over the corresponding decades, from 1990-2011.  Tracing consistent evolutions in her style and hand in conjunction with stylistic divergences and experiments, the survey engages in an ongoing dialogue over her interests in both control and abstraction. (more…)

Joel Shapiro, Untitled (1980), All images via Dominique Lévy.

Now through January 7th, Dominique Lévy is hosting the major first survey of early wood reliefs by American sculptor Joel Shapiro, an exhibition that seeks to demonstrate the trajectory and development of Shapiro’s career, while foregrounding his work with pieces from the late 1970’s and ultimately culminating in a recent body of room-sized sculptural assemblages.  The wood reliefs, presented alongside a new site-specific installation, trace a practice constantly in pursuit of uses of color and mass to shape perceptions of space while exploring individual material interactions.  This marks the first time the series of wood reliefs will be comprehensively surveyed.  (more…)

Karin Schneider, Situational Diagram (Installation view), via Dominique Lévy

Brazilian-born, New York-based artist Karin Schneider is currently the subject of a solo exhibition, titled Situational Diagram, at Dominique Lévy this month, delving into artistic and philosophical potentials for  “grasping” an artwork, both materialistically and ideologically.  Schneider, who co-managed the experimental Lower East Side artist-run initiative Orchard Gallery between 2005 and 2008, embarks on a series of black canvases, which offer the artist a degree of freedom to leave narratives open-ended, and to allow relationships and commerce to leave their mark on the painting’s surface.  Each work is subject to a specific agreement with its potential collector, where Schneider’s monochrome-heavy works utilize art history—particularly Minimalism—as a vessel to scrutinize social and consumerist dynamics in art through color and form. (more…)

The New York Times spends a day in the offices of Dominique Lévy, as the dealer prepares for her gallery’s booth at Art Basel next week.  “It’s really your one moment where you can show who you are,” Lévy says. “It’s acutely important for existing relationships, new relationships, the way the art world perceives you.” (more…)

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic (1970), via Art Observed

Few series of work are as immediately recognizable as Robert Motherwell’s Elegies, his bold collection of compositions, inflected with broad strokes of black meant as a public lament to the bitter civil war that upended the Spanish Republic in the years leading up to World War II, and which saw the installation of fascist leader Francisco Franco.  The works, which Motherwell would continue until his death in 1991, are a striking visual critique, great swaths of black obliterating his spare compositions in white, blue and other subdued grounds, as if the war itself has overshadowed the artist’s own painterly hand blotting out his compositions with the tense, recurring figures of bars and blots of paint. (more…)

Gerhard Richter, 180 Farben (180 Colours) (1971) Photo: David Brandt, all photos © Gerhard Richter

The relentlessly inventive Gerhard Richter is the subject of a meticulously crafted exhibition at Dominique Lévy in London this month, shedding light on a less recognized body of work from the early years of his decades long career.  Dating back as far as 1966, Richter’s works in the Color Charts series promise a unique and disparate offering, juxtaposed with his eminent and contemporaneous Photo Paintings, which brought the German artist massive global recognition.   This selection, compiled from a number of different collections globally, reunites a handful of earlier examples from the Color Charts  series for first time since they debuted at Munich’s Galerie Friedrich & Dahlem in 1966. (more…)

As Gerhard Richter opens a historical exhibition of his “Color Chart” works from the 1960’s at Dominique Lévy in London, Art Info notes the significance of the works on the artist’s career, and his initial inspiration while passing through a Düsseldorf hardware store, where he saw a selection of paint sample cards.  “I preferred the unartistic, tasteful and secular illustration of the different tones to the paintings of Albers, Bill, Calderara, Lohse, etc.,” Richter says. (more…)

Zero Group founder Enrico Castellani will launch a rare exhibition of his works at Dominique Lévy in London, the first solo showing of the artist’s work in the city.  “He thinks things over very deliberately. There has to be a reason,” says Emilio Steinberger, one of the gallery’s senior partners. (more…)

Gego, Dibujo sin papel 88|28 (1988), via Art Observed

German-born Venezuelan artist Gego (born Gertrude Goldschmidt) is the subject of the opening fall show at Dominique Lévy this month, charting the late artist’s investigation of geometric form and space as it translates through the formal signifiers of modernity. (more…)

Galerie Perrotin and Dominique Levy announced separately that each will open their respective galleries at 909 Madison Avenue in 2013.  Galerie Perrotin has a 10-year lease on 4,300 sq feet of the former Bank of New York building on Madison and 73rd Street. Dominique Levy, co-founder of L&M Arts, will open her own gallery focusing on postwar and contemporary art. Levy said in a press release that her gallery space will occupy the second, third and fourth floors. Other galleries that have recently expanded include Gagosian in a suburb of Paris; Pace, Zwirner and Michael Werner in London and Lehmann Maupin in Hong Kong. (more…)

L&M Arts announces splitting of partners – Dominique Lévy to open new gallery in an undisclosed Upper East Side location. They will continue to operate L&M Arts in Los Angeles; the New York location will change its name to Mnuchin Gallery. Lévy plans to show postwar and contemporary art, handling primary- and secondary-market sales.

(more…)