Ai Weiwei, Forge, He Xie detail, courtesy Mary Boone Gallery

Ai Weiwei‘s Forge is single show across both of Mary Boone Gallery’s Fifth Avenue and Chelsea locations, with installation, video and sculpture that provides a comprehensive look into recent work, and which runs concurrently with his exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum. Ai is an artist, human rights activist, and Chinese dissident who produces thoughtfully provocative, political work. Forge falls firmly in that tradition.

Ai was born in Beijing in 1957 and attended the Beijing Film academy before moving to New York in 1981. He graduated from Parsons School of Design in 1983 and returned to China in 1993, where he currently lives. Though his website and blog have been brutally censored, Ai remains active on Twitter, and video transmissions from him are frequently released, including a recent take on ‘Gangnam Style’ in which he dances, waving around handcuffs.

Exhibition view, Ai Weiwei, Forge, courtesy Mary Boone Gallery

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All photos on site for Art Observed by Rachel Willis.

New York-based painter Will Cotton’s most recent body of work is currently on display at the Mary Boone Gallery on Fifth Avenue. The show consists of multiple large-scale paintings and one sculpture, all of which feature the imagery of Cotton’s signature candy-filled landscapes. Cotton comments on Western consumerism by creating an aesthetic world inhabited by two hallmarks of American overindulgence: attractive women and trans fat goodies. Featured in this exhibition is Crown, the first of a series of paintings that depict pop singer Katy Perry surrounded by a world of ornately decorated cakes.

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Time is a Frame (2010) by David Salle, via Mary Boone Gallery

Terence Koh, nothingtoodooterencekoh (2011) All photos by Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

Chinese-Canadian artist and Lower East side fixture Terence Koh opened his first solo show nothingtoodooterencekoh in New York (February 12th through March 19th 2011) at Mary Boone Gallery with a serene performance in which he circumnavigated a perfectly conical pile of crystalline salt rocks. Moving excruciatingly slowly and delicately, Koh made several rounds as onlookers such as Vito Schnabel observed in almost complete silence.

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Francesco Clemente, Irons and Rainbows, 2010. © Francesco Clemente via Mary Boone Gallery

Francesco Clemente’s A Private Geography has entered it’s final week at the Fifth Avenue location of the Mary Boone Gallery.  The show consists of the artist’s most recent works on paper and is presented as a sampling of Clemente’s haunting meditations.

More story after the jump…

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Installation view: The Globe Shrinks (2010) four-screen digital video installation, via Mary Boone Gallery

Currently on view at Mary Boone Gallery, through May 1st, is “The Globe Shrinks,” a playful and seductive new video installation by Conceptual artist Barbara Kruger.  The artist is best known for her confrontational slogans paired with images, but her recent video work finds a new home in the gallery, where a 12-minute, 44-second looped video plays on four channels surrounding the room.

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Installation view: The Globe Shrinks [for those who own it], via Mary Boone Gallery

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Iris (We share our chemistry with the stars) MQ 2801 (2009) by Marc Quinn, via Mary Boone Gallery

Currently on view at Mary Boone Gallery is Iris, featuring new paintings by Marc Quinn. Each work depicts large renditions of the iris of the human eye spotted and permeated with bright colors.  Such new works refer back to Quinn’s recurring themes of the body and identity, flesh and the spirit. The works examine the significance of the eye, which since Biblical times have been likened to representations of the soul.  The works also recall earlier works by Quinn such as Self (1991), in which the artist’s head was cast in his own blood, where he similarly examines the act of bringing the inside out.

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Bayon Sunbow 67 (2009) by Marc Quinn, via Mary Boone Gallery

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Ron, Will Cotton via Artnet

-Eric Fischl, Chie Fueki, Hilary Harkness, Will Cotton, Francesco Clemente, Peter Halley and Barbara Kruger  are all a part of the long list of artists who have created, dedicated and portrayed Ron Warren in their works; Mary Boone’s assistant he has always played an understated yet influential role leading to a Mary Boone Gallery exhibition in his honor [The New York Times]

-The 2009 edition of the Power 100 by ArtReview is released with Hans Ulrich Obrist taking the first place and the list showcasing some changes in the influences and forces of the art world; the top ten include dealers and artists as Larry Gagosian, Francois Pinault, Eli Broad and Bruce Nauman [ArtReview]
-In related, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, the director of Serpentine Gallery, just voted to be the art world’s most powerful figure by the Power 100, gives an idea of how busy his week gets [The Independent]

-A $310 million collection of Mark Rothko paintings to be shown next spring in artist’s first Moscow solo exhibition at Dasha Zkukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture [Bloomberg]

To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week… (more…)

Terence Koh’s ‘Untitled (Urinal)’ on the opening night of ‘KKK,’ photo by ArtObserved

On Saturday, April 4, ‘Koons-Kelley-Koh,’ or ‘KKK,’ curated by LA-Berlin dealer Javier Peres opened at Mary Boone Gallery. The theme of the exhibition is rather loose. In the press release Peres wrote, ‘My purpose in assembling this exhibition was not to emphasize a curatorial message as such, but rather – quite simply – to put three of my favorite American artists side by side. No tricks, no gimmicks, no bullshit, just sculptures representative of each artist’s practice. I hope you enjoy looking.’ The show includes two sculptures by each artist. It does not feature any of Jeff Koons’s recent signature large-scale sculptures, with all but one of the works on the relatively small side. There is, however, a 24-foot-long piece by Terence Koh, a smashed-up urinal glued back together.

Koons-Kelley-Koh [Mary Boone Gallery]
About Last Night… [PaperMag]
Talking With Terence Koh [ArtCat]
Crate of the week (if not the year…) [Fine Art Shipping]
Terrence Koh, Jeff Koons, And Mike Kelley Host An Exibition At The Mary Boone Gallery [Guest of a Guest]
Terence Koh’s Mary Boone Opening [Style.com]

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A work by Andrei Molodkin via artsblog.it

Andrei Molodkin, to represent Russia in the Venice Biennial, creates sculptures using human corpses rendered into crude oil [The Independent]
At the beginning of Asian week in New York, a case for the relative value of traditional Japanese art [Forbes]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art cuts more jobs [New York Times]

Neues Museum in Berlin via London Festival of Architecture

The Neues Museum in Berlin opens dramatic space designed by London architect David Chipperfield [New York Times]
Richard Prince denies reports that he is to donate his rare book and publications collection to the Morgan Library in New York [ArtInfo]

Rembrandt, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee one of the works stolen in the Gardner heist, via the Boston Globe

A new plea (with video) for leads leading to the return of  the $500 million worth of art stolen in Boston’s 1990 Gardner Museum  heist, which was the largest in history [Boston Globe via ArtsJournal]
Mary Boone is suing a collector and trustee of the Columbus Museum of Art to complete the sale of a Will Cotton work [Artnet News]

Anthony d’Offay via the GuardianUK

Anthony d’Offay interviewed, whose Artists Rooms tour begins in Edinburgh and was made possible from the selling of his vast collection for £26.5 million, an estimated 5th of its value [TheScotsman]
The balance of power between London vs Paris as art capitals altered perhaps by the recession [TimesUK]

Installation view of Rothko’s ‘Seagram Murals’ via MSNBC

Tate Liverpool exhibits Rothko’s Seagram Murals after a 20-year absence [Artdaily]
Rochelle Steiner, under whose tenure Olafur Eliasson’s “New York City Waterfalls” was sponsored, leaves the Public Art Fund [NY Times] and in related, Sotheby’s CEO takes big paycuts in the wake of the market downturn [Bloomberg]

Alex James, bassist of Blur via The Mirror

Blur’s Alex James to judge Charles Saatchi’s art-star reality TV show [The Mirror]
Jonathan Jones on how consumerism spawned Warhol and Pop art and thus the shallowness of contemporary art [Guardian]
Vanity Fair’s imagined conversations overheard at a MoMA party [VanityFair]
A new show at Paris’s Musee d’Art Moderne acknowledges how Italian Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico sold backdated copies of his own work [Bloomberg]

Patti Smith via The Art Newspaper

Patti Smith, whose Polaroids are showing at Robert Miller gallery, on her early career as an artist and why she feels Jeff Koons’s work is “just litter upon the earth” [The Art Newspaper]

Andy Warhol’s BMW Art Car via W Magazine

The BMW Art Car series by artists such as Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg to appear at New York’s Grand Central Terminal starting March 24 [W Magazine]
Chinese art dealer who sabotaged Christie’s sale of bronzes during the Yves Saint Laurent sale weeps at his shattered credibility [Bloomberg]

Steve McQueen modeling for T Magazine

A brief profile of Turner prize winning film artist Steve McQueen’s fashion aesthetic [The Moment]
The Las Vegas Sun does a post-mortem on the Las Vegas Art Museum, which closed last month [Las Vegas sun via ArtsJournal]

Trailer for ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ via Entertainment Weekly

Soon to open in New York, an art world outsider chronicles his relationship with an art world insider in the film ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ [Entertainment Weekly]
Susan Moore looks at the recent emergence of a homegrown art scene in the United Arab Emirates [Financial Times]

Collectors Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant.  Image courtesy Mary Barone via Artnet

Art in America and Interview Magazine owner Peter Brant opens his private collection to the public, by appointment only, at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center [NY Times]
How the former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland was unable to secure an immense 16,000 piece art collection obtained during a takeover of ABN Amro as that bank’s CEO deftly transferred ownership to a foundation before the merger [TimesUK]
Turner Prize winning sculptor Antony Gormley announces first public art installation for Scotland [TheScotsman]

Laura Hoptman, Massimiliano Gioni and Lauren Cornell, curators at the New Museum of Contemporary Art via NY Times

A preview of the New Museum’s inaugural triennial, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” [NY Times]
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s book “The Conversation Series” includes interviews with artist such as Wolfgang Tillmans and Gilbert and George [ArtInfo]

A peek at Pierogi Gallery’s new annex, the Boiler via NY Times

Williamsburg’s Pierogi Gallery opens new annex, The Boiler [NY Times]
Chelsea galleries, including Andrea Rosen, Barbara Gladstone, Mary Boone and Matthew Marks, to show work at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba [The Art Newspaper]

Anish Kapoor’s ‘Temenos’ via AnishKapoor

Construction begins on first of five of Anish Kapoor outdoor sculptures in the UK: the ‘world’s biggest art project’ [DesignWeek]

Portrait of Pope Benedict XIV by Pierre Subleyras via NY Mag

Old masters prove to be a bellwether in the market downturn [Financial Times] as such, The Metropolitan Museum acquires a Renaissance portrait of Pope Benedict XIV for nearly $1 million amidst financial woes [NY Mag] and this painting also is featured here in a separate video discussion on the resilience of old master paintings [Sotheby’s]

Will Cotton’s ‘Alpine Ruin’ via Mary Boone

On view now at Mary Boone Gallery’s Fifth Avenue location is an exhibition of new paintings by Will Cotton. Cotton is known for his photorealistic candyland dreamscapes, often featuring scantily-clad female figures lounging in cotton candy clouds or bathing in chocolate pools. Cotton’s current series is inspired by Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole’s acclaimed ‘The Course of Empire’ series.  The human eye-candy disappears from these decadent landscapes, but the exhibition includes a series of portrait studies in the style of Renaissance portraiture with young beautiful women wearing status symbols made of sugar.

Exhibition page [Mary Boone]
Artist’s page
Adam Stennett in conversation with Will Cotton [Whitehot Magazine]
Greg Lindquist in conversation with Will Cotton [artcritical]

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Opening night of Image Matters curated by Klaus Kertess at Mary Boone, photo by ArtObserved

Image Matter, an exhibition curated by Klaus Kertess, opened at Mary Boone Gallery’s Chelsea location on Saturday. The show brought together paintings by seven artists who have expanded the plane of the canvas and pushed the limits of painting to the third dimension.  Each artist is represented by a single piece, with most works in the mid-size range around six-feet-tall evenly spaced around the gallery with no wall text, privileging the paintings and their commonalities. The artists in the exhibition are Carroll Dunham, Ralph Humphrey, Elizabeth Murray, Alfonso Ossiorio, Peter Saul, Julian Schnabel, and Joe Zucker.

Image Matter
Curated by Klaus Kertess
February 21, 2009 to March 28, 2009
Mary Boone Gallery

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Alanna Heiss via ArtNet

Alanna Heiss has retired after 37 years of curating MoMA’s PS1; an article on her final show [NYTimes]
$250,000 worth of prints including those by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse stolen in Berlin [AssociatedPress]
A chronicle of the rise of auction prices before the fall, and a rumor that 2/3 of the bidders for Hirst’s monumental September auction may not actually pay for the works, and part 2 here [Bloomberg]
A video of  Eric Fischl at Mary Boone [Newarttv]

Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally via the ArtNewspaper

US lawsuit filed to confiscate Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally from the Leopold Museum in Vienna is suspended [ArtNewspaper]
Art dealers as paparazzi fodder?  White Cube owner Jay Jopling garners attention with singer Lily Allen in St. Barths [TheMirror]
also on the island, dealer Larry Gagosian and the band Kings of Leon fete collectors Roman Abramovich, Dasha Zhukova and Aby Rosen, designer Marc Jacobs, hip hop mogul Russell Simmons, musician Jon Bon Jovi and actor Daniel Craig among others [IndependentUK]
In other art world vacation news, Damien Hirst hires 4 guards formerly in the British Special Forces to protect him during his Mexico holidays [MercoPress]

The Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion via architecturelist

The Zaha Hadid-designed Chanel Mobile Art tour is stopped; London, Moscow, and Paris canceled [ArtInfo]
Emmanuel Perrotin on three current Parisian exhibitions [The Moment – NYTimes]
MoMA to launch two-year series of live performance works [NYMag]
Collector Ronald Lauder interviewed at his Klimt-rich Neue Galerie in New York [Financial Times]
Damien Hirst bans a documentary film of his Statuephilia work [TelegraphUK]
The Velvet Underground’s John Cale will represent Wales at Venice Biennale of Art next year [BBC]
The controversial act of State museums deaccessioning works [NYTimes]
The Getty endowment has declined 25% [LATimes]
Art Info’s Top 5 art world figures of 2008 [ArtInfo]

Often times, Art Basel Miami is pigeonholed as the tropical mai-tai of the art world, all decoration and pizzazz…..and not much substance. Thus, it was refreshing when, on a quiet Friday evening December 5th, on the rooftop of the newly opened Mondrian hotel, Assouline, Accompanied Literary Society, and Intermix hosted an intimate and intellectual dinner discussion with an enviably high-caliber panel. Curated by Neville Wakefield and moderated by Glenn O’Brien, the panel included legendary art maven Mary Boone, a pregnant and radiant Rachel Feinstein, acclaimed writer Sarah Thornton (who trooped through the discussion despite having a dismal case of laryngitis), collector Adam Lindemann, and young man-about-town, artist, and significant other of Mary Kate Olson, Nate Lowman.

Words By Faith-Ann Young
Photos Courtesy of Nick Hunt / Patrick McMullen

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Ten Breaths: Tumbling Woman and Ten Breaths: Falling Angel by Eric Fischl as part of his exhibition Ten Breaths via Eric Fischl.

On display now at the Chelsea location of Mary Boone Gallery is a series of recent sculptures by Eric Fischl. The collection of figurative works consist of three life size figural groups and two diametric single figures. The three life size bronze casts are based off of photographs the artist took of Brazilian dance troops and is is typical of Fischl’s work which aims to subtly express the frailness and internal conflict which characterizes humans. Pictured above is Ten Breaths: Tumbling Woman a variation of the artist’s 2001 work Tumbling Woman, a similar bronze sculpture made to commemorate the lives lost on 9/11. The sculpture was displayed at Rockfeller Center for one week in September 2002 before it was removed after public outcry. Many viewers found the piece to be in poor taste as it was a graphic reminder of people falling from the World Trade Center. The variation is on display now at Mary Boone below the figural sculpture Ten Breaths: Falling Angel, a glass cast of an angel mounted on the ceiling of the gallery.

Eric Fischl Press Release [Mary Boone Gallery]

more images and info after the jump… (more…)

After John Currin’s recent success, against the market, at the November auctions (as covered by AO here), an analysis of his work complete with slideshow [Slate via Artmarketmonitor]
NightTalk has an interview with gallerist Mary Boone [Clipsyndicate]
Some NYC galleries are expanding in a downturn [ArtInfo]

Murakami’s Kakai Kiki creates a signature sneaker [TheMoment]
Undeniably influential through his iconic images during the Obama campaign, street art legend Shepard Fairey named a GQ man of the year [Supertouch]
Damien Hirst soon to open his bed and breakfast in Devon, UK [FirstPost]
Tracey Emin states that despite the seeming art-recession, she is “pretty credit-crunch proof” [TelegraphUK]
With prices lower at auction, MoMA acquires [NYTimes]

Vito Schanbel, who curated the show along with Anna Wintour at the opening, via Park Ave Peerage.  Schanbel above is seen in shoes with no socks as the artist Terence Koh requested all guests take their shoes off upon entering the show.

Terence Koh’s most recent exhibition, “Flowers for Baudelaire,” is on display now and consists of 51 paintings of varying sizes created using titanium paint, corn syrup, and powdered sugar. At the show the artist used a fog machine to create added effect. The show was curated by Vito Schnabel, a close friend of Koh’s and the son of the artist Julian Schnabel. The exhbit and was held at the home of Oliver Sarkozy, the half-brother of France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy. The artist maintained that the works were edible at the opening, even licking a painting in example though few of the guests such as Anna Wintour, Cynthia Rowley and Salman Rushdie ventured to taste the works. Others in attendance for the opening and after party were artists Dash Snow and Agatha Snow, Museum of Modern Art curator Klaus Biesenbach, gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, music mogul Lyor Cohen and photographer Todd Eberle. The Upper East side space, formerly the studio of late photographer Richard Avedon, was painted entirely white -floors, walls, and ceiling- as part of the display.

The Paintings at Terence Koh’s New Show Are Possibly Edible [NY Magazine]
Koh Goes White: Hot Art [Bloomberg]
Now Licking | Terence Koh [The Moment]
Terence Koh Revealed [Hint Mag]
Uptown Baby [Vmagazine]
Palazzo Koh [Park Avenue Peerage]

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Banksy’s controversial One Nation Under CCTV via hutley.net

Banksy issues a statement on London City removal of his CCTV work [Time via TWBE] and a video of Banksy’s pet store/charcoal grill in NYC [Wooster Collective]
At the Whitney: Leonard Lauder, Cindy Sherman, Mary Boone, Donatella Versace, Christina Ricci, Sting and assorted socialites show up for the Gala and Studio Party [ArtInfo]
Art and Commerce: Julian Schnabel, sponsored by Mastercard, completes portrait of sweepstakes winner [Tradingmarkets]
A quiet but strong video of Jenny Holzer at the Guggenheim, New York [Vernissage.tv]
Takashi Murakami, a bit hurt perhaps from the his Phillips Frieze auction, comments on the art market: “Everyone is very nervous. Everything is negative” [NYMag]
And in the latest in Damien Hirst: the Guardian quotes his art market comments from four years ago: “they would sell your granny to Nigerian sex slave traders for 50 pence and a packet of woodbines” [GuardianUK] his cover art for British band The Hours [Brand Republic] and Sarah Thornton has a thorough summary of Hirst and some of his series: “he faces all the problems of an aging rock star” [TheArtNewspaper]

Liu Xiaodong via Mary Boone Gallery

Mary Boone Gallery hosts from March 6 until April 29, a new exhibition of the Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong. The exhibition features new paintings such as two monumental landscape paintings: “Qinghai-Tibet Railway” which is a five-panel panorama painted and “Sky Burial.” Liu Xiaodong is considered as one China’s “new generation” of figurative painting. The artist studied at the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

Liu Xiaodong’s exhibition [Mary Boone Gallery]
Liu Xiaodong studies [Herald Tribune]

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Ai Weiwei’s descending light via Mary Boone Gallery

From March 8, until April, 26 2008 the Mary Boone Gallery features the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York, entitled ” Illumination”.

Mary Boone Gallery [Mary Boone Gallery]
Ai Weiwei at Mary Boone [Artnet]

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British Airways’s new design sculpture at Heathrow Airport via ArtInfo

British Airways unveils Troika’s “Cloud,” 4,638 computerized flipping disks at Heathrow [ArtInfo]
Recent impressionist performance at London’s auctions [Financial Times]
Artnet’s Online art auction website is back [NY Times]
Review of Jane Holzer’s renowned art collection [T Magazine]
After 20 years, Nahmads selling Monet’s “The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil” [NY Times]
Mary Boone on potential “90’s Style” bust in Art Market [NY Mag]
The Economist’s analysis of the economics of the contemporary art market [Economist]

This month and next, British sculptor Marc Quinn brings his most recent exhibition, “Sphinx,” to New York’s Mary Boone Gallery. Known best for creating busts out of frozen blood and sculptures that depict the limbless, Quinn tackles a new form in Sphinx. Attempting to comment on mortality alongside divinity (each work in the exhibit is titled after a different Greek god or goddess), Sphinx features a collection of sculptures of supermodel Kate Moss, each twisted into a different Yogic position.The piece titled “Sphinx (Road to Enlightenment),” perhaps the exhibitions stand-out work, is unpainted bronze, unlike the majority of painted sculptures, and portrays Moss in a Buddha-like position, complete with robes and an exposed ribcage. Other sculptures feature Moss in a less overtly religious, yet equally posed form. (more…)