Jannis Kounellis at Luxembourg and Dayan, via Art Observed

A contingency is a future event or circumstance that is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty, one that may rely on distinct conditions or concessions made in the present. This conditional framework serves as the namesake of the most recent exhibition of work on view at Luxembourg and Dayan this month, one that poses its exploration of the Italian post-war as contingent on a viewer’s willingness to freely-associate between various modes of practice in contemporary art. (more…)

Salvatore Scarpitta, Untitled (1958), via Art Observed

The life and work of Salvatore Scarpitta is defined by the artist’s meandering relationships with his dual homelands.  Originally born in the United States, the artist would gain his education in Italy before fleeing the country’s fascist uprising during World War II, later returning after serving in the U.S. Navy’s “monuments men” project, which labored to capture and return looted art and artifacts to their rightful owners.  Remaining in Italy for several years after the war, he would pioneer his own brand of abstraction and conceptually-charged minimalism before returning to the States in 1958.   (more…)

The Financial Times has published a profile on gallerist Daniella Luxembourg of Luxembourg and Dayan, highlighting her early life in Israel, and her new approaches to exhibition outside of her two successful gallery spaces in New York and London.  Luxembourg’s pop-up gallery, titled Oko, has been gaining attention lately, with a recent show of work by Julian Schnabel, and an upcoming show of work by Dan Colen this week.  “It’s a different intellectual dialogue, another way of engaging people,” Luxembourg said. “When I was working in the auction business, so much money was spent on dinners, marketing, publicity and entertaining … this is another way of working.” (more…)

Installation view: Bjarne Melgaard “A New Novel” at Luxembourg & Dayan, New York. All images by Jennifer Lindblad for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

The door of Luxembourg & Dayan’s historic townhouse on Upper East Side—the second most narrow in New York City— opens to a visual assault: sequined dolls wearing Proenza Schouler-designed evening gowns and Pink Panther figurines perch atop neon-colored piles of books just narrow enough to snake through, violent sexual vignettes are played out by clay figures, and 1970s-style wallpaper and overlapping area rugs serves as a rough-and-tumble backdrop. All comprise Bjarne Melgaard’s twisted vision for “A New Novel.”

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Jeff Koons, Violet Ice (Kama Sutra), 1991. Photo by Patrick Meagher.

The most recent museum-grade show at Luxembourg & Dayan gathers 9 pieces of Jeff Koons‘ seminal sex-infused series “Made in Heaven” in a multi-story love and sexuality tour-de-force of human(istic) nature. Eight life-sized silkscreen and early-inkjet paintings, based on photographs, and a cast-glass sculptural tableau were conceived and produced in a life-meets-art process spanning approximately ten years from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties.

It is worth mentioning that it has now been nearly twenty years since these hardcore and soft-core-looking works were first presented by the late, great Ileana Sonnabend, and yet they still manage to really irritate, shock or bother some people for one reason or another. The re-presentation of this formerly scandalous, yet newly exciting and loaded work comes at an interesting time, with regard to the unabashed state of popular reality-media today, as well as the neo-sex-drugs-and-rock n’ rollish art of late in lower Manhattan.

La Ciccolina, Taschen Poster Book, 1992.

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