Dean Levin, Surface Support (Road Goes on Forever) (2015)

Marianne Boesky Gallery recently presented A Long, Narrow Mark, the gallery’s first collaboration with artist Dean Levin, at its Clinton street location.  Levin has enjoyed a growing recognition in recent years, proven by an impressive range of group exhibitions he has been included in the U.S. and Europe, as well as his debut solo at Upper East Side space of Robert Blumenthal last year. (more…)

Tabor Robak, Drinking Bird (Season) (2015)

Currently on view at Team Gallery is a new body of works by Brooklyn-based artist Tabor Robak, the digitally-focused artist whose LCD video pieces mine the aesthetics and possibilities for interface design in the 21st century. Computer-generated graphics and lifestyle technologies doubtlessly strike as the main threads in Robak’s work, yet his spontaneous employment of ubiquitous cultural icons, and mundane components into his otherwise convoluted compositions expands the array of his statement. The artist’s use of oblique narratives, hinted at through lines of text and simple graphic juxtapositions, fall in line with the phantasmagorical, responding to the utilitarian aspect of high-tech elements, while suggesting a certain submission by the user, a transposition of their role into that of a passive viewer or consumer. (more…)

Rosy Keyser, Terrestrial Mime (2015), all images via Maccarone Gallery

The idea of a frame places a spatial limit on its painterly contents, a statement of intent that rules its exteriors as just that, outside space.  For her first show with Maccarone Gallery, Rosy Keyser takes that logic  to a deconstructive conclusion, presenting a body of works under the title The Hell Bitch that continues the discourse of painterly reduction.  While breaking away from the traditional frame, Keyser’s works allow for viewers to consider definitions of empathy, profanity and form through her patchwork assemblages, fixed to the classic signifier of the canvas stretcher.   (more…)

David Wojnarowicz, Cal (Factory Face), 1984

The group show is an undeniable part of the New York art world’s summer repertoire, dabbling in different styles and scenes while blending together the works of artists ranging from the young to the historical, emerging to the iconic. Among the early entries into the spring group show calendar is Debris currently on view at James Fuentes Gallery in the Lower East Side. This show is packed with familiar, utilitarian, and recognizable objects, many of which can be easily found in the vibrantly fluid New York urban landscape. (more…)

Downtown non-profit Art in General has decided not to renew its lease for the Soho/Tribeca space it has occupied for the last 34 years.  “We’ve occupied the space for quite some time,” board president Robert Ferguson says. “Our lease is now coming to an end in December of this year, and we’ve decided to embark on the process of finding a new space.” (more…)

Tomi Ungerer, All in One (Installation View)

The Drawing Center is currently honoring pioneer illustrator Tomi Ungerer, with an ambitious look at his expansive career of diverse themes and motifs.  Born in Alsace shortly before World War II tore through Europe, Ungerer moved to New York in 1956, where he published his first series of works.  Although his divergent artistic interests led him to compile a comprehensive oeuvre from advertisement campaigns for publications including the New York Times to graphically striking illustrations criticizing the politics of his time, Ungerer came to prominence in the U.S. as a children’s books author. His objection to this type of categorization eventually led him to move to Nova Scotia with his wife, later followed by another relocation to Ireland, where he currently resides. (more…)

Untitled Gallery and Zach Feuer will merge to form two similarly titled spaces sharing resources and artists in the L.E.S. this May, Art News reports.  The two spaces, Feuer/Mesler and Mesler/Feuer, continue previous collaborations, including 2013’s Jew York show, which was on view at both dealers’ respective spaces.  “It’s an interesting time for galleries on the Lower East Side,” says Untitled’s Joel Mesler says. “It’s become an establishment in and of itself.”  (more…)

Andy Warhol, Shadows (Installation View), Photo by Brian Forrest. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork.

In the late 1970’s, Andy Warhol embarked on a new printing project, replicating a single photographic image of the artist’s studio bathed in shadow, a single “cap” of light hovering just to the left of center.  Reproducing the image over one hundred times in a series of color pairings, shades and contrasts, the work created a haunting, surreal environment, currently on view at MOCA in LA for a landmark exhibition of the piece on the West Coast. (more…)

Bernadette Corporation, no kinda ho3 (2014), via Art Observed

Painter Rita Ackermann takes the curatorial helm at Hauser and Wirth’s uptown gallery this month, presenting an exhibition of works that offers a fascinating, and notably specific study of recent art history.  The exhibition, titled Freezer Burn, focuses on a specific group of artists cresting in the early years of the 21st century, as well as affiliated artists from the past decade exploring the pervasive aesthetics of pop culture and political interference. (more…)

Cory Arcangel, Asshole 2 / Lakes (2014), via Team

Given Cory Arcangel’s past exhibition tendencies, the work on view at the artist’s newest Team Gallery solo exhibition downtown is something of a concise affair.  Gone are the artist’s abstracted consumer objects, video game hacks and gradient paintings, substituted for a series of simple flat-panel televisions, each bearing a pixelated digital image, and offset by a deep red carpeting that runs along the gallery’s floor.  On-screen, the smiling faces of Hilary Clinton (or rather, Hilary Clinton’s book jacket), Jay-Z and P. Diddy, among others, stare out of the viewer, as a delicately waving digital effect below them gives the impression of a liquid reflection. (more…)

Rene Ricard, The Archaic Smile (1978)

An artist embracing multiple formats, genres and techniques, Rene Ricard was born into a troubled family in Boston in 1946. Before he was eighteen years old, Ricard had already moved to New York, and immersed himself in its vibrant Downtown scene, appearing in many of Andy Warhol’s films, and becoming a regular in the artist’s “Factory.”  Referred to as ‘the George Sanders of the Lower East Side, the Rex Reed of the art world’ by Warhol, Ricard emerged as a highly influential art critic in the early 80’s, playing major a role in launching the careers of artists such as Julian Schnabel, Francesco Vezzoli, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose graffiti works were compared to the wall paintings in Pompeii by Ricard in his famous Artforum essay The Radiant Child. (more…)

Marking an ambitious exchange between three New York galleries this summer, the exhibition Multiplicity is currently spread across the city’s varied arts communities for a three part show exploring the intersections of meanings, behaviors and interpretations of urban life around the globe.  Taking up space at NURTUREart in Bushwick, the LES’s Invisible Exports and Mixed Greens in Chelsea, the exhibition culls work from artists in Tirana, Belfast, New Dehli, Tel Aviv, New York, and Hong Kong.   (more…)

Thomas Slaughter, Boy Scout Jack Knife (2014), all images courtesy of The Drawing Center

On view at The Drawing Center in New York is a comprehensive group show including work by over 65 artists, curated by Lisa Sigal and organized by Heather Hart, Steffani Jemison, and Jina Valentine. Entitled The Intuitionists, the show explores themes and aesthetics of the database, and how collections of information “in flux” are organized.

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Paige Powell, a former girlfriend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, has released a series of polaroids of the young artist near the apex of his creative output, and sat down with Wall Street Journal this week to discuss the artist’s life and work. “He was so young and he was almost at the height of—you know, before he died—acknowledgement in the art world of his talent, his genius,” she says. “He had people coming at him all the time.” (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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Carl Andre at The Paula Cooper Gallery, via Art Observed

On view at The Paula Cooper Gallery in New York is an exhibition of major sculptures by Carl Andre from a period ranging over thirty years. The exhibition coincides with the artist’s retrospective at Dia:Beacon, which is the first survey of Carl Andre’s entire body of work by a museum in North America since 1980.

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Tim Barber, Relations (Installation View), via Art Observed

In his most recent body of work, Tim Barber captures everyday moments and splits them open to reveal the complex interactions within. On display at Capricious 88, Relations invites the viewer to relate to the universality of the seemingly unrelated, yet similarly impactful, images.

Tim Barber, Relations courtesy Capricious (more…)

Heman Chong, Mrs. Dalloway (2014), via Art Observed

On view at P! in New York is two-person exhibition featuring works by Elaine Lustig Cohen and Heman Chong, in which the artists curate and commission works from each other.  The exhibition emphasizes the concept of holding multiple roles within creative work.  Both Lustig Cohen (b. 1927) and Chong (b. 1977) have worked in a variety of different positions and roles in the art world, including artist, designer, curator, dealer, and writer, and hold a mutual respect for each other’s work. For the exhibition, this respect played out in the gallery as Chong selected works from Lustig Cohen’s body of paintings, while Cohen commissioned Chong to create nine new pieces within his ongoing series of imagined designs for book jackets.

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Hanna Liden, Let it Go (2014), all images courtesy of the artist and Maccarone, New York

Currently on display at Maccarone in New York is a group of new photographic works by Swedish artist Hanna Liden. Entitled I hope these ruin a perfectly bad day, the series of still life photos repurpose her urban leitmotifs as makeshift vases for brightly colored flowers. The exhibition will continue through June 21, 2014.

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Jayson Musson, Sculptural Allegory for a Specific Cultural Sphere (2014), via Osman Yerebakan

Jayson Musson first came into prominence with his online personality Hennessy Youngman, a character commenting on different topics related to art from a wry perspective, while satirizing the clichés of the art world and the hip-hop culture at the same time.  Played by Musson himself for his Youtube series Art Thoughtz, Hennessy Youngman can be seen comparing the dance style of Yvon Rainer to the moves in A-Ha’s Take On Me video or flirting with Carolee Schneemann. Similar to Musson’s articles for his short-lived column Black Like Me on Philadelphia Weekly, his online persona/alter ego Hennessy Youngman is an outpost of the artist’s investigation of racial stereotypes and the making of sub-cultures in today’s society. (more…)

Keith Haring, Moses and the Burning Bush (1985), via Art Observed

On view at Gladstone Gallery is an exhibition of large-scale works by Keith Haring, including canvases and tarps painted in the artist’s immediately recognizable style, which has since become part of a widely reproduced visual language of the late 20th century. The display will remain on view through June 14, 2014.

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Marianne Boesky Gallery has announced that it will open a new exhibition space in downtown New York, titled Boesky East.  Located at 20 Clinton Street, the space will open its doors May 4th with an installation by Pier Paolo Calzolari.  “I’m looking forward to expanding our reach into such an exciting neighborhood for art,” Boesky told Art Observed.  “Clinton street will be a wonderful complement to our Chelsea and Uptown locations.”

Laure Prouvost, From the Sky at Danspace Project, via Ian Douglas

Just last Friday, Danspace Project opened its doors at the historic St. Marks Church in the Bowery for a special performance by French-born artist Laure Prouvost.  Titled From the Sky, the performance saw Prouvost exploring an invented history and interaction of her fictitious, conceptual artist grandfather, all through her signature blend of hyper-charged performance, video and imagery.

Laure Prouvost, From the Sky at Danspace Project, via Ian Douglas (more…)

Julian Schnabel, Flag Paintings, via Art Observed

Currently on view at Karma on Great Jones Street in New York is an exhibition of new work by American artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, featuring spray and ink painted flags Schnabel found and has used as a canvas, changing the meaning of the symbols and questioning nationalistic, religious, and cultural definitions.

Julian Schnabel, Flag Paintings (Installation View), via Art Observed

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