Mike Kelley, Kandors 1999-2011 (Installation View), via Art Observed

Considering artist Mike Kelley’s enduring relationship and engagement wiht the landscape of Los Angeles, the return of the artist’s famed Kandors series to Hauser & Wirth in the city’s Arts District feels like something of a victory lap for the artist’s works.  The Kandors, which have made their rounds over the past several years, showing in New York, Europe, and elsewhere, represent one of Kelley’s final bodies of work before his untimely passing, and perhaps his most elaborate engagement with the language of pop culture, and the varied convergences of mythology and psychology that so often make up the language of the best American cultural iconographies.

Mike Kelley, Kandors 1999-2011 (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Geta Bratescu, The Leaps of Aesop (Installation View), via Art Observed.

This spring, the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale opened its exhibition for this year’s iteration of the institution’s ongoing exhibition. The show, a string of drawings and paintings creeping up the walls of the gallery, and running across each of the rooms formed dense networks of gestures and panels that made each of their respective movements and concepts all the more powerful.  The show was a review of the career of Geta Bratescu, the 91-year old artist whose career has investigated the range of 20th Century practice as her own relationship to it grew and evolved over the course of her life. In the months running up to the opening of the exhibition, Bratescu joined on with Hauser & Wirth, and now brings a range of her works to bear on the gallery’s Chelsea exhibition space.   (more…)

Monika Sosnowska, Façade (2016), via Art Observed

Taking over one of the multiple large-scale exhibition spaces at Hauser & Wirth’s cavernous complex in downtown Los Angeles, artist Monika Sosnowska offers an interestingly nuanced exploration of modernist architectural convention for her first solo show in the Californian metropolis. Spreading her twisted steel sculptures and varied spatial interventions throughout the gallery, Sosnowska’s body of work marks a negotiation between the historical landscapes and political structures of her home country of Poland, writ large against the gallery’s ample halls. (more…)

Frieze London, via Art Observed

The doors are open and the 2016 edition of Frieze London is now underway, bringing a wide range of works and artists to bear on the fairgrounds at Regent’s Park in the northern part of the city.  With its VIP Preview concluding today, the fair made its first big push of sales alongside the kick-off for a number of its projects and performance works, which conclude this Sunday.

Samara Golden at Canada Gallery, via Art Observed

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Rashid Johnson, Untitled Anxious Audience (detail) (2016), via Art Observed

Taking over the full expanse of Hauser and Wirth’s 18th Street location, Rashid Johnson has brought a series of new paintings, sculpture and assemblage to New York for his first gallery show in the city in several years.  The show, which dwells on concepts of escape, anxiety and history, is a concise examination of Johnson’s practice through a range of theoretical approaches and material interests.     (more…)

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, Untitled (2015) © the Artist Courtesy Hauser & Wirth

A Modest Proposal, Hauser & Wirth’s summer exhibition curated by staff members Madeline Warren and Yuta Nakajima, adopts its eloquent title from Jonathan Swift’s namesake essay from 1729.  Recognized for being one of the foremost satirists in English language, Swift vigorously mocked Ireland’s political climate at the time through his sharp wit in various forms of writing—perhaps most famously in the show’s namesake essay, where the writer suggests the poor profit off of their children by selling them as food to the wealthy. (more…)

Philip Guston, Untitled (1958), via Art Observed

In one of the season’s more historically resonant offerings, Hauser and Wirth has opened its 18^th Street Gallery to a rare exhibition of Philip Guston’s 1950’s abstractions, collected as a presentation of his impressive output as a member of the New York School. Exploring the artist’s varied investigations of the canvas and mark in tandem, the show presents Guston’s work as a fascinating historical progression towards his more honed, expressive figuration of the late 1960’s and onward.

Philip Guston, Painter, 1957-1967 (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Fausto Melotti, Scultura n. 11 (Sculpture No. 11) (1934), all photos via Quincy Childs for Art Observed

A central figure in the history of twentieth-century art, Fausto Melotti’s body of work is revered throughout Europe, with critical successes, major exhibitions, and awards all conferred on his ambitious and stylistically diverse oeuvre.  Yet the artist’s catalog has long eluded American viewers, a point that Hauser and Wirth is seeking to change as it takes over representation of his work worldwide.  First presented at the gallery’s ADAA Art Show booth, Melotti’s work is on view at the gallery’s 69th Street exhibition space, exploring a practice that spanned sculpture, painting, ceramic, low reliefs, and works on paper, evoking the artist’s craftsmanship and inclinations towards “weightlessness,” and exploring his desire for geometric balances beyond mere figuration.

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Mark Wallinger, Ego (2016), via Art Observed

Taking over Hauser and Wirth London for his first solo exhibition with the gallery, Mark Wallinger has brought a nuanced collection of both new and recent works, showcasing the artist’s unique interests in the associative and perceptual variations of one’s encounter with the surrounding world, mixing together explicit psychoanalytic technique with less concrete forms that trace the body’s relation to the urban environment, or the preservation of time through similar modes of engagement.   (more…)

Larry Bell, Lil’ Orphan Annie (1960), all photos via Art Observed

Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting work by American sculpture and installation artist, Larry Bell at its Upper East Side location in New York, compiling a series of historically resonant works in conjunction with some of the artist’s recent environmental installs.  The exhibition, titled From the ’60s, sees the acclaimed artist presenting a body of work representative of his career working among the neo-avant-garde that followed in the wake of New York abstraction, and which continued to push the limits of perceptual and conceptual definitions of art.    (more…)

Berlinde De Bruyckere, No Life Lost II (2015), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

No Life Lost is the title of Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere’s current solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, half a decade after her last New York presentation at the gallery. Widely recognized in Europe for her emotionally challenging oeuvre, De Bruyckere employs spirited, commanding textures in resin, wax, textile and animal skin, placed alongside rugged industrial materials, delivering a haunting body of work that follows its audience outside the gallery space. (more…)

Tetsumi Kudo, Untitled (1971), via Hauser and Wirth

A key figure in the development of Tokyo’s Post-War, “Anti-Art” Movement, the work of Tetsumi Kudo explodes with a distinct sense of withered vibrancy: human body parts, plants and hulking, distending forms contend for space on what appear to be plots of earth, colored in sickening tones and rarely, if ever, clustering together beyond a few lilting stems.  The artist’s work, the subject of an exhibition at Hauser and Wirth Zurich (in collaboration with Andrea Rosen, which represents his estate), is a darkly realized challenge to the aftermath of nuclear war in Japan, and the artist’s disillusionment with the modernist notions of progress and “blind humanism.” (more…)

Fabio Mauri, Oscuramento (Darkening) (1975), all photos via Art Observed

Fabio Mauri’s work is defined by trauma.  The Italian artist spent his early years growing up alongside the rise of the Italian Fascist Party.  His childhood was defined by the images of war and violence, not merely through the scope of WWII, but in the violent political structures of the era that sent his family and countrymen to war.  In his maturity, the late artist frequently returned to the sites and encounters with the images and iconography of that era in the Italian Nation, staging sculptural environments that placed domestic signifiers and human actors into contact with the objects of war: uniforms, helmets, weapons and scenes of twisted metal or military planning.

Fabio Mauri, Picnic o Il buon soldato (Picnic or The Good Soldier) (Installation View) (1998)

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Mark Bradford, Deimos (2015)

Over the past several years, Mark Bradford has had something of a meteoric rise in the art world, garnering impressive recognition, critically and commercially for his exhilarating painterly style and vivid shifts in form and technique . Committed to creating uncompromisingly grandiose and ambitious works of art, Bradford has been the subject of rightfully increasing acclaim, most recently proven by his solo exhibition Scorched Earth at the Hammer Museum in his hometown Los Angeles, and his recent commission for a massive installation to accompany his upcoming retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. (more…)

The estate of David Smith is moving to Hauser and Wirth, the New York Times reports.  “There is an important potential to bring him back into a context of relevance in terms of a contemporary discussion,” says Marc Payot, Hauser & Wirth’s partner and vice president.  “We will engage with a younger generation.” (more…)

Martin Creed, Work No. 2209, Woman with a dog at a table (2015), Photo: Todd White © Martin Creed Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth London

Martin Creed is the subject of a solo exhibition of recent work at Hauser & Wirth Zurich this month, once again delving into his signature, multimedia-based interdisciplinary practice.  Among the most controversial contemporary British artists, Creed came into global recognition with his 2001 Turner Prize winning installation Work No. 227: The lights going on and off, presenting, as its self-descriptive title suggests, a vacant room in which the lights go on and off in five second breaks.  Like much of the artist’s work, the minimal gesture drew staunch criticism due to Creed’s endorsement of such a simple act in endless repetition. (more…)

Dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth have topped ArtReview’s annual power rankings as the most powerful figures in the art world, primarily for “what they have done to change the model of selling and promoting art.”  “The Wirths’ increased influence stems in part from what they have done to change the model of selling and promoting art,” the website reads.  “As big art dealers are becoming ever better at selling art for high prices, and as collectors want to see themselves as more than just anonymous purchasers, the husband-and-wife-team understand that selling art objects isn’t the whole story – the well-off want to be sold a lifestyle.” (more…)

Mike Kelley, Kandor 10B (2011), via Art Observed

Mike Kelley’s Kandor series ranks among the artist’s more enigmatic projects: a series of sculptures, videos and installation work that works the origin mythologies of the Superman comics into the fabric of the artist’s own life and work.  The works are equally desolate and comical, peculiar and commanding in their execution, often rendered in glowing hues of purple, red and yellow, or countered by immense chunks of sculpted detritus, recreating the titular hero’s Fortress of Solitude. (more…)

Lee Lonzano, Slide (1965), all photos via Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting Drawings and Paintings, a historical survey of artist Lee Lozano at the gallery’s Chelsea space on 18th Street, featuring a selection of critically significant works from 1964 and 1965.  Lozano’s pieces, expressive in their energy and form, showcase depth in exploring issues relating to both gender and the body in general, with drawings and paintings suggesting intersections and geometric interplays using color, line, gradient, and variations of perspective. (more…)

The New York Times reports that Hauser and Wirth is building a new, multi-story exhibition space on 22nd Street between 10th and 11th Ave, which the gallery will move to following the expiration of its 18th Street lease in 2017.  The building, designed by Annabelle Selldorf, will open in 2018. (more…)

Pierre Huyghe, IN. BORDER. DEEP. (2014), video still © Pierre Huyghe Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London and Anna Lena Films

Boldly distorting otherwise rigid phenomena, Pierre Huyghe has ambitiously orchestrated and staged alternative recreations of the daily and the mundane. For his current show at Hauser & Wirth’s London location, the Paris-born artist is covering the gallery space with his unfamiliar narratives, which emerge from more familiar territory. IN. BORDER. DEEP. invites the viewers into a hub of various experiments and observations, merging various mediums with science and art history itself.

Pierre Huyghe, IN. BORDER. DEEP. (Installation View) Hauser & Wirth London, 2014, © Pierre Huyghe Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London Photo: Hugo Glendinning (more…)

Josh Kolbo, Untitled (2013), all photos via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

There was a vibrant buzz around Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea as one of the gallery’s smaller exhibition space filled in for the opening of the group show Fixed Variable, featuring the work of Lucas Blalock, Ethan Greenbaum, John Houck, Matt Keegan, Josh Kolbo, Kate Steciw, Chris Wiley and Letha Wilson, and examining the relationship between the nature of the photograph, the nature of the object, and the intersection between the two.

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Artist Matthew Day Jackson is profiled in the New York Times Magazine this week, profiling the artist’s impressive series of projects, his longtime love of drag racing, and the experience of living in contemporary America.  “I just recognize that we live in an extraordinarily violent place. And that the boundaries between the haves and the have-nots and those who are and those who are not are usually defined by violence.”  (more…)

Subodh Gupta, What does the vessel contain, that the river does not (2012) (Installation View), via Hauser & Wirth

Following its success at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, New Delhi-based artist Subodh Gupta’s sculpture What does the vessel contain, that the river does not is on view for the first time outside of India at Hauser & Wirth, Savile Row, London through July 27^th.

Subodh Gupta, What does the vessel contain, that the river does not (2012) (Installation View), via Hauser & Wirth (more…)