Jessica Diamond, No Money Down (1986/2016), via Art Observed

Taking the currently fraught political climate in the U.S. as a starting point for a deeper reflection on national and local history, James Fuentes’s summer group show offers a fitting cultural parallel in the early years of the 1980’s in New York City.  Charting the era’s conservative economic and foreign policies, the exhibition, curated by Andrew J. Greene & James Michael Shaeffer, brings together works by Nayland Blake, Jessica Diamond, Peter Halley and Robert Morris executed between 1982 and 1984.  Recording and critiquing a range of social and economic crises during the era, the show is a subtly resonant look at the deeper histories of cultural critique in the city, and the role artists have played in this process.

Peter Halley, Yellow Cell with Conduit (1982), via Art Observed

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Lizzi Bougatsos, The King’s Virgin (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

What does it mean to work? To what extent is play quantifiable as labor and vice versa? Such are the questions posed by Work Habits, the latest solo exhibition from artist Lizzi Bougatsos on view at James Fuentes.  Stepping into a space lit up in traffic light red on opening night, one quickly garners a Nietzschean sense of faith unfound, unraveling foundations and unsustained beliefs.  The room, minimally adorned with a dynamic installation of assemblages, depict these found and repurposed objects as inherently lazy. (more…)

Damien Hirst via TheDailyMail

Science, Damien Hirst’s corporation, tops the ArtReview power 100, Gagosian follows, and MoMA’s Kathy Halbreich is first woman to make the top 10 [ArtInfo]
Designer Yohji Yamamoto uses museum curators in New York, Paris, London and Antwerp as models in latest campaign [TheMoment]
PaperMag’s latest issue interviews artworld figures such as Terence Koh, Cecily Brown, Tauba Auerbach, Shepard Fairey and James Fuentes [PaperMag]
Sotheby’s secures $250 million loan from Bank of America while cutting auction guarantees [Bloomberg}
A Liechtenstein billionare is on his second attempt to build 23,000 sf Las Vegas Museum of Contemporary Art [ArtForum]
What happens to the corporate artwork of failed companies? [WallStreetJournal]
Jake Chapman interviewed on, for example, his ideal home: with six or seven of his enemies hanging from trees in front of it [GuardianUK]
Fashion designer Stella McCartney and Artist Ed Ruscha together on Iconoclasts [SundanceChannel]

Gagosian Gallery via the New York Times

On artists trading up galleries [NY Times]
Will the Whitney branch out overseas? [NY Mag]
The “masterpiece effect:” 40% of old master works at Christie’s NY fail to sell [Financial Times]
Multimillion dollar art fabricators to the likes of Jeff Koons [NY Times]
Gallerist, former Deitch Projects director James Fuentes’s gallery/home [Time Out NY]
What happens to ‘buy-ins:’ the standard 20-30% of lots that don’t sell at auction [WSJ]