Nairy Baghramian, Scruff of the Neck (LR 30/31/32), All images via Marian Goodman Gallery

Now on view, Marian Goodman Gallery in London is presenting Scruff of the Neck, a series of site-responsive sculptures by artist Nairy Baghramian.   This is Baghramian’s first major solo show in London since The Walker’s Day Off at the Serpentine Gallery in 2010, and continues the Berlin-based Iranian artist’s practice in creating formally inventive sculptures that operate in both physiological and mechanical dimensions, articulating and reflecting the artist’s interest in exploring the space of the body in a non-habitual way. (more…)

Toby Ziegler‘s The Cripples, image via Art Observed

Back in 2003 in Frieze’s first year, no major international art fair had ever been hosted in London before. Frieze Art Fair, organized by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, has helped take London from being a city without a focused art scene to its current state at the center of the European art market. Now in its tenth year, Frieze Art Fair in London’s Regent’s Park has seen around 60,000 visitors, with 264 dealers from 35 countries hoping to sell work (valuing an estimated  £230m) created by more than 2,400 artists within 175 of the world’s leading galleries.

An Aaron Young motorcycle burn out work at Massimo de Carlo in Milan, photo via Art Observed

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Marian Goodman Gallery, “Ellsworth Kelly,” installation view. All photography courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery unless otherwise noted.

Ellsworth Kelly‘s installation of four 2-panel paintings executed this year is on view at Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris until July 13, 2012. The show, as the gallery’s press release relates, is his first in Paris in 20 years, when his formative paintings made in his youthful residence in the city were exhibited at the Galeries Nationales du Jeu de Paume. This new work comprises four paintings, each consisting of a curved geometrical relief on a white panel, progressing on the ordered spectrum from red, yellow, blue, to green. Laconically hung a single panel to each of the four walls in the gallery, the paintings seem a further distillation of Kelly’s painterly system, a continuation of the experiments he first executed in Paris in his early years.

Marian Goodman Gallery, “Ellsworth Kelly,” installation view

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Opening night at Marian Goodman Gallery. All photos by L. Streeter, Art Observed.

An exhibition of works and projects by renowned Spanish sculptor Cristina Iglesias is currently on view at Marian Goodman Gallery on 57th street in the New York Gallery Building. Iglesias usually works with industrial materials like concrete and glass, combining them with natural elements such as bamboo or foliage. Each room at the exhibition features a different ongoing project, ranging from indoor and outdoor works and public projects that Iglesias has been involved in over the last 5 years.

Cristina Iglesias, Pozos I-V (wells).

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North Gallery installation view. All photos via Marian Goodman Gallery

Conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner has placed text and curves upon walls and floors in his exhibition Gyroscopically Speaking, showing now at the Marian Goodman Gallery. The gyroscope as an object is problematic and unpresentable as a whole; one thing while it is still, a fascinating phenomenon of physics once spinning. Filling the North and South Galleries and the North Gallery Viewing Room, Weiner explores relationships between language and materials, humans and objects; the artist questions simultaneous realities of society and economics, forcing the viewer to engage an entirely new mentality.

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Taken from the Wind and Bolted to the Ground, (2009)

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Art dealer Jay Jopling at the White Cube booth

Art Observed was on-site December 1st for the VIP Preview of Art Basel Miami Beach 2010, which opened to the public this morning at 10 a.m. Like most international fairs of its scale and scope, the work presented broadly underscores the trends witnessed across commercial markets and throughout museum and gallery exhibitions over the past several months. It also affords individual institutions an important opportunity to distinguish themselves from their peers, and provide fresh and immediate insight into the nuances and complexities of contemporary taste.

Richard Jackson, Upside Down Duck at the Kordansky Gallery Booth

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Marcel Broodthaers, Les Portes, 1969. Vacuum-formed plastic, hand painted, 192 x 178 cm. All images courtesy of Michael Werner Gallery.

Currently on view at Michael Werner Gallery is Marcel Broodthaers “Major Works.” The exhibition marks the second this fall of Belgian conceptual artist Broodthaers, who began his career as a poet before turning to visual art at age 40. Stemming from his roots in poetry, Broodthaers’ visual practice involved playful, provocative juxtapositions of word and image, poetry and object, language and art. His work is varied, dabbling in appropriations, film, image and text combinations, and mixed media installations he called decors.

The artist found inspiration in the Surrealists and American Pop artists, citing influence from Oldenburg, Segal, Mallarmé, and Magritte. Unfortunately, the artist’s career was tragically cut short when, a mere twelve years later, he succumbed to liver disease on his 52nd birthday. However, he leaves behind an astounding number of works, many of which have had a profound impact on future artists, including Richard Prince, Rachel Harrison, Philippe Parreno and Tino Sehgal.

Marcel Broodthaers, Dites Partout Que Je L’Ai Dit (Say Everywhere That I Have Said It), 1974. Parrot under bell jar, audiotape, 2 framed works. Variable dimensions.

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Rineke Dijkstra, Still from The Krazy House, Liverpool, UK, 2008-2009, 4 channel video HD installation, color, sound, 32 minutes, loop. All images courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery.

Currently on view at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York is a solo exhibition of recent works by Dutch artist, Rineke Dijkstra. Three video installations and a number of photographs are on display. Dijikstra frequently takes adolescents and teenagers as her subject, and these works are no exception. Her emphasis on youth never feels exploitative or overly voyeuristic, rather it invites the viewer to recall the feelings associated with nascent adulthood – a mindset focused on escapism, self-consciousness, and a burgeoning sense of identity.

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Still from The Krazy House, Liverpool, UK, 2008-2009.

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Quilt by Alexandre da Cunha, and Six Billboards by Angus Fairhust, Art Basel.  Image via Art Daily, AP Photo/Keystone/Georgios Kefalas.

Yesterday marked the end of the most highly-attended Art Basel to date. The 41st annual contemporary art fair boasted 306 galleries from 36 countries, and AO was on site to peruse the work of some 2,5000 artists.  62,500 dealers, collectors, curators, high-profile shoppers, artists, and art appreciators navigated installations, browsed gallery booths, mingled, and enjoyed the city of Basel.  Artists, established and newcomers both, showcased works ranging from Polaroids to performance pieces, paintings to videos, sculptures to large-scale installations.  A social and teeming affair with an obvious commercial edge, Basel’s sales were optimistic.  Picasso, Warhol, Prince, Hirst, de Kooning, Pollock, and other similarly established artists reigned supreme as the focus of this year’s event.  Franck Giraud, a New York dealer, spoke to the New York Times about the lack of prominently featured up-and-comers: “Is it because that’s what the market wants, or is it because dealers didn’t want to take risks? I think it was a bit of both.” Nonetheless, certain galleries used Basel as a platform to introduce new artists and show off their latest signings.

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Tokamak Asdex Upgrade Interior 2 Max Planck IPP, Garching (2009) by Thomas Struth, via Marian Goodman

Currently on view at Marion Goodman Gallery are new works by German photographer Thomas Struth. The new body of works explores the rarely investigated subjects of mechanical engines, industrial and scientific research institutes, and pharmaceutical plants. The works were taken throughout Asia, the Americas, and Europe and reveal an almost beauty in architectural machinery.

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A still from Steve McQueen’s “Giardini” (2009), on view at Marian Goodman Gallery through March 6.

Through March 6, New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery is showing two films by Steve McQueen.  This is the American debut of “Giardini,” the 30-minute, two-projection film which premiered at the 2009 Venice Biennale and is set on its grounds. “Static” (2009) is showing for the first time, made specifically for the exhibition and centered around the Statue of Liberty. Perspective and national monument are satirized and subverted, recreated in this new exhibition.

A still from Steve McQueen’s “Static” (2009), on view at Marian Goodman Gallery, along with “Giardini,” through March 6.

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“Mobile Matrix” in situ at the Mexico City Library where the work was installed in 2006. Via NY Times

On Tuesday evening of December 15th, in the smaller of the two Titus theaters at the Museum of Modern Art, Ann Temkin enthusiastically beckoned Gabriel Orozco to take the stage. The premise of the followed conversation was, of course, the recently opened retrospective of Orozco’s lifetime body of work. At 47, the Mexican artist seemed grave and stoic in his words, although that may have been the fatigue of several weeks of preparation for the launch of the exhibition taking a toll.

Behind the Scenes: Gabriel Orozco. The artist talks about his long evolving relationship with the Museum of Modern Art and the experience of participating in a retrospective exhibition. Via MoMA

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Abstract Painting (894-1) (2005) by Gerhard Richter, via Marian Goodman Gallery

Currently on view at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York is “Abstract Paintings” by Gerhard Richter. The most recent presentation of the artist’s work in New York since his solo exhibition at Marian Goodman in 2005, the exhibition features major works by the artist from 2005 to the present including a new cycle of paintings entitled “Sindbad” (2008) and also individual paintings with medium to large format abstractions. In addition, Richter has displayed a new group of large scale near-monochrome paintings with underlying chromatic structures layered in veils of translucent white paint.

Abstract Painting (894-2) (2005) by Gerhard Richter, via Marian Goodman Gallery

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