Carsten Höller, Isometric Slides (2015), all images via Hayward Gallery

Outside London’s Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre, a massive pair of slides have sprouted out from the building’s walls, spiraling away and towards each other in a mirrored, descent towards the ground.  The playful, immense structure marks the presence of Carsten Höller, the Belgian artist who is currently presenting a career retrospective within the gallery walls. (more…)

Alfred Jensen, Twelve Events in a Dual Universe (1978) ©ARS, NY and DACS, London 2013, Photo: Linda Nylind, Courtesy Hayward Gallery

Currently on view at the Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre in London is a new exhibition of work entitled Alternative Guide to the Universe, a compilation of works by artists who taught themselves their crafts, focusing on work that offers a new perspective on our socially accepted conventions of artistic practice and cultural perception.

Lee Godie. Lee and Cameo on a chair… (early to mid 1970s), © the artist, Courtesy Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection

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Visitors traverse Jeppe Hein‘s “Invisible Labyrinth” (2005) via The Independent

A new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London is eliciting a good degree of attention among members of the public and press alike.  Titled “Invisible: Art of the Unseen 1957-2012”, this joint showing contains otherwise empty rooms, save for a number of blank canvases and empty pedestals.  The exhibit’s purpose however is less to display and showcase than it is to survey past and current ideas related to the unknown and push the boundaries of art as we know or perceive it.

Tom Friedman‘s “Untitled (A Curse)” via the Independent

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David Shrigley, I’m Dead (2010). All images courtesy of the Hayward Gallery.

Brain Activity, David Shrigley‘s first survey show in London, brings together choice examples of his photography, sculpture, and drawings to highlight the artist’s humor and wit. While he was classically trained at the Glasgow School of Art, Shrigley’s characteristic style today is stripped down, sketchy and, to use his own word, “misshapen.” The exhibition is organized into four basic themes: death, misery, characters, and misshapen things.”The big themes are the ones that interest me, and the ones that have the potential to be the most comic,” Shrigley says of his work. “Making artwork is kind of one of the most fun things that one can do. It’s fun, I like it.”

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Ed Ruscha, Baby Jet, 1998. Photo by Paul Ruscha, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Currently on view at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, through September 5, is Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting. This exhibition, which is a collaboration with Hayward Gallery in London, shows more than 70 paintings. It spans the period from 1958, five years prior to his debut in 1963 at the legendary Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, to the present day. Curated by Lars Nittve and Ann-Sofi Noring, the installation groups Ruscha’s works in chronological order so as to allow the viewer to see the development of the artist’s various motifs and styles over time.

The exhibition’s overarching theme, of course, is words and their constantly shifting relationships with context and message. As the curators explain, “In all his paintings there are tensions and frictions at play: between foreground and background, between text and image, and between how words look and what they mean.”

Installation shot, Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years Of Painting. Photo by Ã…sa Lundén, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

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Ernesto Neto, posing on a landing in the interior of “The Edges of the World,” 2010, courtesy of the Independent.

Internationally renowned Brazilian artist, Ernesto Neto, launched Festival Brazil with his exhibition “The Edges of the World” at the Hayward Gallery in the Southbank Centre. The show, which Neto has been planning for over a year, is said to be the artist’s most ambitious exhibition to date. “The Edges of the World” consists of a series of interconnected site-specific installations in the Hayward’s two main galleries and on its three sculpture terraces. The Independent called Neto’s exhibition a “dazzling playground for adults.” A visit to the show is indeed an interactive experience as viewers are encouraged to engage with their surroundings and each other.

Ernesto Neto, the interior of “The Edges of the World,” 2010, courtesy of Fad.

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This morning ArtObserved attended the official press preview of New York’s latest public art show – Antony Gormley‘s ‘Event Horizon.’ Through August 15, 31 life-size figures cast from the artist’s own body will inhabit the pathways and sidewalks of Madison Square Park, as well as the rooftops of the many architectural treasures that populate New York’s Flatiron district, including the Empire State building. Event Horizon marks Gormley’s public art debut in the US – a milestone for an artist who has created some of the most important public art pieces of our time that include Angel of the North and Another Place in the UK. Antony Gormley originally created Event Horizon for London’s Hayward Gallery in 2007 – the sculptures were installed on bridges, rooftops and streets along the South Bank of London’s Thames River. Event Horizon will run together with Gormley’s Breathing Room II – on show at Sean Kelly Gallery through May 1, 2010. Full coverage of both events will follow shortly.

Antony Gormley introduces his installation this morning in Madison Square Park alongside New York’s Mayor, Michael Bloomberg

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Installation view of Ed Ruscha’s artist book: On the Road by Jack Kerouak

For the Los Angeles based artist Ed Ruscha, the road carries a symbolic connection to his artistic beginnings as well as the culture in which he thrives. His intimate reflection on the aesthetic and emotion of traveling or just the nature of moving from one point to another is the subject of a book tribute to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and an exhibition at Gagosian gallery in London. Ruscha’s work is also presented in a large retrospective of the artist’s ouevre at the Hayward Gallery in Mayfair.  Both shows reflect a trajectory and development of one of the most groundbreaking American artist of the 20th century. Tha Gagosian Gallery show runs through November 28th and the Hayward retrospective ends on January 10th, 2010.

An artist’s book of the classic novel by Jack Kerouac “On the Road,” 2009. Ed Ruscha via Gagosian Gallery
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Los Angeles County Museum on Fire,(1965 – 1968) Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution © Ed Ruscha 2009 Photography: Lee Stalsworth. All images in this article are by Ed Ruscha.

The Hayward Gallery, in London’s Southbank Centre, is currently hosting the UK’s first major retrospective of the leading Californian artist Edward Ruscha. The exhibition is comprised entirely of paintings – by highlighting this medium in a multidisciplinary oeuvre testifies to Ruscha’s influence on it.  After all, in 1956 Ruscha enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, intending to train as a commercial artist, but this course was diverted somewhat after taking complementary fine art classes: this truth is made greatly evident in this exhibition in which the works hover at an interesting crossroads where graphic design meets Conceptualism in painting.

Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962) via The Guardian

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“Extremities (smooth, smooth),” Pipilotti Rist’s contribution to “Walking in My Mind,” the Hayward Gallery. via The Guardian.

Currently showing at the Hayward Gallery are the minds of ten artists — or, at least, how the artists feel they can represent the melding of product and creative process.  Ten installation artists from around the world are featured in the show.  Some are relative newcomers who are showing new pieces at the Hayward, like Swedish Bo Christian Larsson and Japanese Chiharu Shiota, who exhibit for the first time in London, and Dutch artist Mark Manders, who shows for the first time in a major British exhibition. Others are more well-established, including Yayoi Kusama and Turner prize-winner Keith Tyson, as well as the late controversial American artist Jason Rhoades.  Also exhibiting are Charles Avery (UK), Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland), and Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland).

Related links:
Hayward Gallery: Walking in My Mind
Art Review: Walking in My Mind Hayward Gallery, London SE1 [The Observer]
Thoughts go astray at the Hayward Gallery’s Walking in My Mind show [The Guardian]
Dark delights from the lonely mind of Japanese genius Yoshitomo Nara [The Independent]

Yoshitomo Nara in “Walking in My Mind.” Via The Guardian.

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Self-Portrait via The Hayward Gallery, London

Nearly twenty years after The Hayward Gallery in London put on Andy Warhol: A Retrospective (1989), Hayward is now hosting Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms, another retrospective of Warhol’s work. Other Voices, Other Rooms, which has been on tour since last October at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and then at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, uses Warhol’s film and video work as a starting point to explore the artist’s core subjects, “voyeurism, celebrity, the mundane, blurring distinctions between high and low culture.”

Highlights from Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms [Art Daily]
Andy Warhol at The Hayward Gallery [TimesUK]
Review of Other Voices, Other Rooms [Independent]
Overexposed and over here [Guardian UK]
Giant who changed the world [Financial TImes]
Works in Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms [The London Paper]
The Hayward Gallery, London

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