Nina Beier, Female Nude (2015), all images via Art Observed

Metro Pictures’s airy gallery is currently open to artist Nina Beier’s plotted sculptures that map the conceptual revisions of objects and their representation. Interposing sculptural still lives with flattened three-dimensional picture hangings, the artist presents crisply-laundered down comforters and jackets, flattened as a backdrop for wigs and fashionable ties, while nearby, burrowed coconut forms perched on lush soil.  In another room, gigantic stemware houses familiar objects, introduced by the gallery as an effort in problematizing representation and depiction.

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The New York Times takes a look at the work of Chuck Close this week, as the artist prepares to open a major retrospective at the Parrish Art Museum, examining his use of exacting photographic techniques and his approach to painting.  “I approach all subjects the same,” Close says. “Of course I can’t collaborate with a flower the same way I can with a human, but there is an inherent sensuality in a flower that relates to the nudes, and the close-up details of the flowers are equally revelatory.” (more…)

Taryn Simon, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), all images courtesy Jeu de Paume

On view at Jeu de Paume in Paris is a body of conceptual artwork by artist Taryn Simon, combining photography, text, and graphic design to address issues related to the production and circulation of knowledge, as well as the politics of representation.  The works on view, all produced after 2000, include The Innocents, a piece documenting cases of wrongful convictions in the United States, and underlining photography’s role and function as a both a credible witness and an oppositional agent that blurs truth and fiction.

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Ryder Ripps, Heater (2014), via Art Observed

If there’s one thing that can be said about Ryder Ripps, it’s that the artist loves context.  Over the past few years, the artist has produced a number of timely and often razor-sharp critiques on the notions of authorship and production in the digital sphere, including his “WhoDat.Biz” troll of Kanye West, and his recent, controversial Ace Hotel performance piece, in which the artist hired a group of “sensual masseuses” to draw pictures for him to protest what he saw as an inequitable payment situation. (more…)

Artist Luc Tuymans has been convicted of copyright infringement in Belgium for his 2011 work A Belgian Politician, featuring a cropped image of politician Jean-Marie Dedecker.  Tuymans plans to appeal the case.  “Like many contemporary artists, the work of Luc Tuymans is based on existing images,” says Tuymans’s lawyer, Michaël De Vroey.  “How can an artist challenge the world with his works if he cannot use images of this world?” (more…)

Christopher Williams, For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 19) (Installation View), via Art Observed

Christopher Williams, the Los Angeles-based artist who just recently closed his major MoMA retrospective earlier this month, is back in New York with a new solo exhibition with David Zwirner.

The artist’s current exhibition of new work at the gallery’s 19th Street space makes up for its minimal catalog in conceptual clout, examining the construction of narrative and spatial interactions through a coyly designed exhibition plan that shifts in theme and semiotic interaction based on the viewer’s position.

Christopher Williams, For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 19) (Installation View), via David Zwirner

The exhibition is composed of a series of variations on Williams’s ongoing fascination with the value of the image, and its role as a circulator of information and ideology in contemporary capitalism.  During the construction of the show, or rather, the deconstruction of the prior show, Marcel Dzama’s Une Danse de Bouffons, Williams elected to remove several dividing walls, and, rather than remount them seamlessly, left them standing solitary, bearing the scars of their removal.  As a result, the exhibition is divided by a series of walls that seem to have slightly broken free in the exhibition space, a peculiar visual phenomenon that also serves as one of the core conceits for the artist’s work.

Christopher Williams, Untitled (Study in Gray) 1967 Citroen DS Serial number: DS851360a Color code: AC 226 Color name: gris satiné Color year: 1964 Studio Rhein Verlag, Düsseldorf November 3, 2013, 2014 Inkjet print on cotton rag paper 20 x 25 inches (50.8 x 63.5 cm ) WILCH0415 (2014) via Art Observed

Regarding the photography itself, the artist follows a set of previously explored techniques with new angles.  In one series, he photographs camera lenses cut cleanly in half, underscoring the complexity of a mechanism often left unseen, but wholly complicit in delivering the image itself to the viewer.  In another, Williams photographs damaged car headlights, but shot after replacing all damaged parts and re-painting the car carefully so that only a peculiar, subtle bent can be detected, an inflection that remains buried underneath the aura of newness.

Christopher Williams, For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 19) (Installation View), via David Zwirner

The third combines an image of a chicken, inspired by the fringe market for poultry appreciation magazines and the linguistic tropes these magazines have established for themselves, with a carefully manipulated magazine advertisement for dish soap with all evidence of food removed, leaving a clean, confusing pan in a pristine environment.

Christopher Williams, Cutaway model Leica Leitz Wetzlar Tele-Elmar 135/4.0 Focal length: 135 mm Aperture range: 4 – 22 Number of elements/groups: 4/4 Focusing range: 1.5 m – infinity Angle of range: 18 degrees Filter thread: 39 mm Weight: 405 g Dimensions: 53.4 × 122.69 mm Manufacturer part number: 11850 Lens design by Dr. Walter Mandler Manufactured by Ernst Leitz GmbH, Wetzlar, Germany Studio Rhein Verlag, Düsseldorf March 14, 2013, 2014 Inkjet print on cotton rag paper 7 1/4 x 21 7/8 inches (43.8 x 55.6 cm) WILCH0427 (2014), via Art Observed

Placing these three sets of pieces along calculated sight lines, Williams’s manipulated walls effectively break the space of the room into various thematics based on the viewer’s position.  Depending on position, the viewer may contend with the camera alongside an image of the chicken, or perhaps the broken headlight in all of its cosmetic interference alongside a shining pan.  In each intersection, the idea of publication and the editorial decision, the act of depiction and its formatting within certain standards, takes a prominent role.

Christopher Williams, Demountable wall panel with panel storage cart from the exhibition The Production Line of Happiness, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, January 24 – May 18, 2014 Wall panel materials: Oak, plywood, metal, cardboard, fabric, rubber, vinyl, and adhesive Wall panel dimensions: 102 x 72 x 4 1/2 inches Storage cart materials: Steel, carpet, rubber, plywood, and paint Storage cart dimensions: 78 x 86 x 18 inches Gallery display system designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM), Chicago, 1982 Pedestal materials: MDF, plywood, Douglas fir blocking, screws, lag screws, neoprene rubber spacers and shims, and metal Pedestal dimensions: 134 1/2 x 66 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches Pedestal designed by Mack Cole-Edelsack, Department of Exhibition Design and Production, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in accordance with loan specifications from the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Photography Exhibited in The Production Line of Happiness, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, July 27 – November 2, 2014 July 20, 2014, 2014 Selenium toned gelatin silver print 22 x 18 1/4 inches (55.9 x 46.4 cm) WILCH0459 (2014) via David Zwirner

Williams is also exhibiting a series of inversions on the notion of the exhibition catalog, in which images and text are merely replaced with color-coded pages, as well as Printed in Germany, a remarkably comical book that is completely blank saved for the aforementioned words printed on the back cover (apparently a requirement for the books to be shipped out of the country).  Bearing only a single mark of international exchange, the book renders all content visually obsolete, underscoring only its place of origin.

Christopher Williams, For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 19) (Installation View), via David Zwirner

Williams’s exhibition is small, but packs a hefty punch, allowing the construction of the image within a fixed context to underscore and emphasize the methods and modes of image production today.  The show is on view through December 20th.

— D. Creahan

Read more:
Christopher Williams at David Zwirner [David Zwirner]

Vik Muniz, Beach (Postcards From Nowhere) (2014) Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema & Jenkins Co., New York

Sikkema Jenkins Co. is currently presenting Album, an exhibition of recent works by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz. Known for his bold and attention-grabbing works which he creates by incorporating an array of materials such as garbage, chocolate and diamonds, Muniz uses familiar images from art history as well as the collective memory of contemporary culture to create powerful large-scale assemblages that pay direct tribute to the history of painting and sculpture in equal measure.    In this exhibition, the artist focuses on memory, both collective and personal, using photography itself as a production tool. Separated into two series, Postcards from Nowhere and the eponymous Album, the work allows Muniz to investigate how memory is an endless notion that is in constant flux.

Vik Muniz, Wedding (Album) (2013), Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema & Jenkins Co., New York (more…)

Martin Kippenberger, Untitled (from the series Raft of the Medusa) (1996), Art Observed

One of the last series of work from Martin Kippenberger, The Raft of the Medusa is nothing if not impressive.  Taking the dramatic tableau of Theodore Géricault’s 19th century work as his inspiration, the artist threw himself body and soul into this series of paintings, drawings, photographs, and even a single tapestry, turning his own body into the fuel for a powerful engagement with the destruction and pathos of the original work.  It’s this inspiration that sits at the center of Skarstedt Gallery’s current show of the series of works, compiling Kippenberger’s sketches and photographs alongside his series of visceral, energetic canvases, which served as the apex of his work in the series.  

Martin Kippenberger, Untitled (from the series Raft of the Medusa) (1996), via Art Observed (more…)

Leigh Ledare, An Invitation: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 (2012) Courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash

On view through April 26th at Mitchell-Innes & Nash is Leigh Ledare’s new exhibition, articulating socially issues commonly held as taboo or obscene through a wide spectrum of mediums including archival materials, text, film and photography. Famous for his photography series, Pretend You’re Actually Alive, in which he photographed his mother through an arguably sexualized gaze, Ledare aims to examine the set perception on the photographer as a subject and the model as an object. (more…)

Raymond Pettibon, “To Wit,” (Installation View), via David Zwirner

Exploring the spectrum of American “high” and “low” culture, David Zwirner Gallery is currently exhibiting a display of works from Raymond Pettibon entitled To Wit, which will continue through today, October 26th.

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John Houck, Peg and John, (2013), via On Stellar Rays

John Houck’s latest show at On Stellar Rays, A History of Graph Paper is a subdued, disquieting display of one artist’s innovative approach to the medium of photography. Houck’s images of neon rectangular prisms, swatches of colorful paper, and household objects take on the feeling of collage, as if each element were cut out from some other context and pasted into his composition. His keen attention to color, combining saturated oranges and reds with gauzy seafoams, and his strong focus on line and juxtaposition make the photographs in “A History of Graph Paper” stand out from the increasingly crowded field of contemporary photography. (more…)

The Princeton University Art Museum has announced plans to install 12 billboards around the University, city and state, featuring the art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  The selected work, Untitled (1991), features an empty, but once occupied bed, evoking powerful emotions of intimacy and loss.  “Apart from its sheer beauty, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work invites us to consider issues of love and searing loss, and to become more aware of the meaning of private emotion and public space,” says Museum director James Steward. “In an age in which the scourge of AIDS remains with us globally, Felix’s immersive vision remains essential, and is a potent reminder of how this disease ravaged the art world twenty years ago.”  (more…)

Argentine artist and activist Leon Ferrari has passed away at the age of 92.  Ferrari, whose works often invoked Roman Catholic imagery in conjunction with images of imperialism and military power, frequently drew the scorn and ire of religious leaders, including current Catholic leader Pope Francis.  While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis, then known by his birthname Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had condemned Ferrari for his blasphemous images of the Holy Mother in an electric blender.  “Leon Ferrari hasn’t left, he’ll stay with us,” said Estela de Carlotto, president of human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in an interview. “He’s left so much with us that happily he’ll never be forgotten.” (more…)

Troy Brauntuch, State Trooper (2013), via Petzel Gallery

Chelsea’s Petzel Gallery is currently presenting a pair of new exhibitions examining the process of art creation and photography, as explored in the works of artist’s Troy Brauntuch and John Stezaker.  Taking notably distinct, attentive approaches to the photographed image, these two artists present new entries into well-established bodies of work, while adding new wrinkles and conceits to their practice. (more…)

Thomas Ruff, phg.03, (2012), via David Zwirner

David Zwirner’s 19th Street Gallery spaces in Chelsea are currently exhibiting a selection of recent works by German photographer Thomas Ruff, showcasing the artist’s ongoing inquiries into digital interjections into the photo making process, and his studies on natural phenomena filtered through the lens of digital photography.

Thomas Ruff, photograms (Installation View), via David Zwirner (more…)

Alberto Burri, Black Cellotex (1986-87), via ArtCritical

For much of his artistic career, Italian painter Alberto Burri worked broadly with Cellotex, a compressed particle board that was used primarily in construction projects after the conclusion of World War II.  Sharing the sensibilities of his Arte Povera compatriots, Burri embraced the material’s easy accessibility and ubiquitous presence in the reconstruction of the country.  Using Cellotex, Burri would create painting after painting that worked beyond the limits of the flat plane of the canvas, bringing the heavily layered paint of his works out into the room.

Alberto Burri, Black Cellotex (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan

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Richard Prince, Untitled, (2012), via Sadie Coles

This winter, Sadie Coles presents a shifting, multifarious collection of works courtesy of Richard Prince, exploring notions of the human form, consumption, and value through the depiction and obfuscation of explicit content.

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