Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, Still from untitled work in progress  (2014), via Regen Projects

Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch have enjoyed one of the more distinctive artistic collaborations in recent history, creating bizarre viewing platforms, caves, stadium seating and other eerily familiar arrangements in the service of immersive film-viewing environments, some of which is currently on view at the duo’s first exhibition at Regen Projects in Los Angeles.  Combining a set of Trecartin and Fitch’s bizarrely evocative sculptures with films and installations, the show welcomes a deep investigation into the pair’s practice, both as solo artists and in collaboration. (more…)

Richard Nonas (Installation View), via Art Observed

Richard Nonas’s newest series of sculptures, currently on view at Fergus McCaffrey’s 26th Street Chelsea location, are an interesting take on the minimalist object. Folded, twisted metal and wood forms stand in stark opposition, with sharp angles drawing lines of interaction and interrelation from work to work, subsequently toying with notions of space between a cohesive environment and a series of isolated, complexly rendered objects. (more…)

Pierre Huyghe at Artist’s Institute, via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

This summer, the Eldridge Street home of The Artist’s Institute played home to an exhibition by French artist Pierre Huyghe, focusing primarily on the artist’s works with living creatures.  Spiders, flies and rats were released in the gallery’s basement space earlier this summer, and their movements, adaptations and occasional escapes (some of the creatures were noted to have left the confines of the exhibition prematurely) to their new locale composed the core of the show.

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Part of artist Doug Aitken’s The Source series of art conversations, the artist speaks with Liz Glynn, talking about the artist’s approach to her immersive environments.  “I think about functioning as somewhere between an architect and a scientist,” she says. “So I create the space and set up an experiment, but then I get out of the way and sort of see what happens.” (more…)

Taiyo Kimura, Performance Study With Plastic Bag (1997), via MoMAPS1

In the hustle and bustle of the art fairs and auctions of the two weeks prior, the opening of MoMA’s EXPO 1: New York went almost unnoticed, despite its three-venue makeup that includes modules at the museum’s midtown location, the PS1 annex in Queens, and at the newly built VW dome in the Far Rockaway, all which explore new conceptions of ecology and politics in the post-millenial landscape.

Steve McQueen, Static (2009), via MoMAPS1 (more…)

Haroon Mirza, Pavilion for Optimisation (2013), via Lisson Gallery

In one of the pale, white rooms of Lisson Gallery’s current show of works by Haroon Mirza, a light continually goes on and off, accompanied by a bizarre whooshing noise.  The sound is that of an ant, walking across a small copper plate buried inside of an ant farm, and mixed together with the sounds of a shower head draining into a plastic bin.  At turns confusing, surreal and immersive, the viewer cannot help but linger in this minimal environment, seeking to understand the subtle links between action and reaction. (more…)

Figment NYC, Governors Island

The ferry from lower Manhattan to Governors Island was filled with excited children and adults wearing feathers, sequins and other outlandish pieces of clothing this weekend, setting the tone for the playground of colors, sounds, and movement that marked Figment NYC. Running June 8^th-June 9^th, the festival grounds on Governors Island was transformed into a fantastical wonderland worthy of Seuss and Dali, a colorful and immaginative exhibition of arts, costumes, performances, and other sights, including a petting zoo and free clothing tent, which provided a helpful hand to those who arrived in less motley apparel.

Pop Dogs, Figment NYC, Governors Island

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Roni Horn, Untitled (“Consider Incompleteness as a Verb”), (2010-2012), via Hauser and Wirth Zurich

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth Zürich is a solo show by American visual artist and writer Roni Horn, encompassing the artist’s signature glass sculptures alongside a photographic series created between 2010 and 2012.

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Artist and architect Maya Lin is profiled in the New York Times, and discusses her new show at Pace Gallery, her recent work, and her thoughts on the environmental catastrophe’s caused by Hurricane Sandy last year, when much of Downtown New York was flooded. “A flood doesn’t exist except in our memory banks,” she said. “It’s a temporal event. It’s not the river and it’s not the land. It’s neither here nor there.” (more…)

EXPO 1, an exhibition of works addressing the ecological and political challenges of contemporary society co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach, is set to open at MoMA PS1 this May, presented in conjunction with Triple Canopy.  The large-scale, multiple-module collaborative project will open May 12th with Dark Optimism, a curated show featuring works by 35 artists, including Joseph Beuys, Adrián Villar Rojas, Meg Webster, Agnes Denes, and Anna Betbeze that seeks to explore the dissonance between modernist politics and 21st century society. (more…)

Air de Pied-à-terre (Installation View), via Lisa Cooley

Walking into  Air de Pied-à-terre, the newest show on display at artist Lisa Cooley’s gallery, one is reminded of an otherworldly hotel lobby. With the help of fellow artist and curator Alan Reid, Cooley has created an “Air de-Pied-à-Terre” (an alternative living space, located away from one’s home). The gallery has numerous articles that evoke a nostalgic atmosphere within the show – mobiles that dance around the room, paintings that mimic children’s creations, and homely looking text juxtaposed against more classical looking portraiture. The entirety of the show is punctuated by stereotypically domestic constituents such as chairs and potted plants that engulf the viewer and invite them to make themselves at home. (more…)