Zoe Barcza, Fidelio (2016), via Art Observed

Team Gallery has opened 2017 with a commanding group exhibition, The Love Object, a show curated by Tom Brewer that draws on the writings of Roland Barthes to frame a body of works exploring love and the act of love through a more objective lens, delving into relations of bodies, texts and language as a mode of investigating not only the state of emotional attraction, but equally the frameworks we use to understand these forms. (more…)

Jimmy DeSana, Shoes (1979), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Unexpected at first, Salon 94’s pairing of historic works by Jimmy DeSana and Hanna Liden’s new body of work pushes a refreshing outlook for how photography can operate in terms of manipulating both reality and perception of the body. Culling works from distinctly separate eras and cultures, both DeSana and Liden made their paths to New York to pursue artistic careers. The first from mid-west and the latter from Sweden, they had never had a physical encounter.  Yet aesthetic and thematic parallels in their works are uncanny, tracing similar investigations into the displacement and manipulation of bodily elements in space, creating bizarre, occasionally otherworldly arrangements. (more…)

Hanna Liden with Everthing (2015), via Art Observed

At both Ruth Wittenberg Plaza and Hudson River Park, clusters of massive bagels have touched down, part of artist Hanna Liden’s new commission for the Art Production Fund.  Amplifying her previous interests in the possibilities for discarded material and consumer objects as raw sculptural material, Liden turns the ringed breakfast staple into a sudden intrusion on the New York landscape. (more…)

Terry Richardson and Pharrell Williams at OHWOW It Ain’t Fair 2012 photo by Aviva for Art Observed

On December 7th, 2012, at 743 Washington Avenue (on the Miami Beach side and not across the bay in the design district) OHWOW inaugurated the fifth and last edition of It Ain’t Fair (IAF), a venue for avant-garde art across all media. It began in 2008 in Miami, concurrent with the main fair, as another way to view work by emerging artists such as Tauba Auerbach, Ashley Bickerton, Cyprien Gaillard, Clayton Patterson and others.

Atmosphere at OHWOW It Aint Fair Miami 2012, all photos by E. Schwartzberg for ArtObserved unless otherwise noted

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New York-based artist Hanna Liden’s show Ghost Town is on now at Maccarone Gallery in the West Village. The show features mixed media sculptures, installations, and photographs; most of which represent Liden’s recent work steeped in a visual language specific to downtown Manhattan. However, three photographs of a female Greco-Roman style sculpture belong to a previous body of work that Liden has been waiting to showcase. These photos, with the close-up of the engraved graffiti on the body of the sculpture, are imbued with the same urban specific aesthetics that comprise the rest of the show.

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All photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.

Karen Kilimnick is showing at the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Connecticut. The opening event occurred this Sunday with a preview by founder Peter Brant and a list of other art world notables such as Jeffrey Deitch, Gavin Brown, Julian Schnabel and May Anderson, John McEnroe, Dan Colen, Nate Lowman, Hanna Liden, Elias Hanson, Rikrit Tiravanija, and Elizabeth Peyton amongst other collectors and members of the press. Backing up to the expansive Greenwich Polo Grounds, the event mostly took place outdoors, under and around a tented table area where visitors snacked on steak frites and lamb roasted within view.

Cell phone video of the festivities

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Installation view. All images via Carlson Gallery.

Nate Lowman and Hanna Liden collaborate once again at Carlson Gallery in London. Lowman demonstrates his process-as-art aesthetic, exhibiting a number of paintings originally used as drop-cloths on his studio floor, alongside Liden’s peculiar umbrella sculptures, creating an otherworldly installation pockmarked by subtle intrusions of the everyday.

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All images courtesy Maccarone Gallery.

Currently on view at Maccarone New York is Hanna Liden‘s “Out of My Mind, Back in 5 Minutes.” The installation includes three photographs and several sculptures made from plastic shopping bags, t-shirts, and garbage bags. These items are stacked and filled with poured plaster or covered with latex, rendering them heavy and useless.

Loaded with references to memento mori and tribal customs, this process-based work transforms markers of the ephemerality and mundaneness of city life. It offers what the exhibition’s press release calls “a meditation on urbanity […] The result is a gallery space turned reliquary, containing the ghosts of an urban tribe now obsolete.”

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Hanna Liden, Untitled (Deli Bag Self Portrait), 2010. All images via Salon 94

New York based artists and long-time friends Hanna Liden and Nate Lowman are teaming up for the first time at Salon 94, through January 12.  The pieces made separately, a dialogue is created by the artist-chosen pairings of their work. Both artists leaning toward the morose, Lowman variously depicts gravestones and bodies, while Liden photographs melting candles or masked friends with flames. Lowman’s ongoing investigations of the smiley face–with its hidden layers of meaning and irony–also make an appearance; Liden plays off of it as well, perhaps suffocating beneath the happy (though upside down) iconic plastic bags.

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