Ellsworth Kelly, Color Panels for a Large Wall II (1978), via Matthew Marks

In 1978, Ellsworth Kelly was commissioned to create a painting for the lobby of a new building in Cincinnati. His piece, Color Panels for a Large Wall, was the resulting work, a 30-by-125-foot painting that clocked in as his largest ever made. Yet the artist’s work in this vein would live well beyond this specific installation, reprised in several iterations of shows and installs in Amsterdam, New York, and Munich. In 2003, Kelly reconfigured the painting’s eighteen panels — from two rows of nine to three rows of six — when it was installed in its permanent home at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. (more…)

Ken Price, NeGrum (1994), via Matthew Marks

Currently on at Matthew Marks Gallery’s New York exhibition space, a body of small-scale works by American sculptor Ken Price dot the room, each drawing the visitor’s eye with a meticulously arranged series of loping curves, compellingly evocative forms and lumpy, surrealist modes of expression.  This range of pieces, underscoring Price’s intuitive knowledge of bronze and its potential sculptural capacities, makes for a colorful, striking break from the chilling cold and overcast days of December in the city.  (more…)

Leidy Churchman, Paradise 8 & 9 (2018), via Matthew Marks

Following past iterations in 1998 and 2008 iterations, Painting: Now and Forever, Part III occupies the gallery spaces of Matthew Marks Gallery and Greene Naftali spread across Chelsea. Spanning five spaces in total, the ambitious checklist includes an impressive roster of over forty artists. While loosely grouping the show around style and visual vocabulary in each space, the exhibition more broadly tackles the stylistic and thematic concerns contemporary painting—mostly figurative–over the past decade.

Nicole Eisenman, Luck Lines (2018), via Greene Naftali (more…)

Charles Ray, Reclining Woman (2018), via Matthew Marks

The work of artist Charles Ray draws particular strength from its deliberateness and commitment to concept.  The artist’s figurative sculptures are direct in their depiction, yet draw particular strength from the nuance of their subject matter, and the mastery of the artist’s hand.  Returning to New York for a show of new work at Matthew Marks this month, Ray has once again cemented this reputation, bringing a small but powerful selection of works to bear on the gallery space, and once again underscoring why he is a living legend in the world of contemporary sculpture.  (more…)

Robert Gober, Untitled (2000-2001), via Matthew Marks

Recalling the title of Robert Gober’s 2014 MoMA show, The Heart is Not a Metaphor, the artist’s current show at Matthew Marks presents an embedded perspective, a uniquely engaged perspective, into Gober’s own internal world. His father built his childhood family house, and, in a similar sense, Gober was also a house-builder, starting his life of art making creating miniature dollhouses.   (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Diptych: Green Blue (2015), via Art Observed

Since the passing of Ellsworth Kelly in December of 2015, the exhibition of the artists’s final works has made for a sort of bittersweet anticipation. The show could be seen as a grand farewell to an artist who changed the landscape of American painting several times over during the course of his career, each time delving deeper into his clean, almost rhythmic approach to the shaped canvas that filled its confines with rich bounties of color.  Presented this month at Matthew Marks, the artist’s last body of work does not disappoint, and the series of pieces, culled from past sketches and concepts or completely new ideas, feels like a fitting look at the furthest points of the artist’s exploration before he laid down his brush for the last time.  (more…)

Vija Celmins, Night Sky #20 (2000-2016), all photos via Matthew Marks Gallery

It’s been almost seven years since New York has seen a Vija Celmins show.  Often working in small scales, Celmins has been painting realistic impressions of nature and man-made objects since the 1960’s. Known to take years to finish a painting, Celmins’s relentless pursuit of her work sees the artist often trying to rework pieces even after they have been hung.  The New York show is worth the wait, however, with Celmins presenting a beautiful group of new paintings, drawings, objects, and prints with Matthew Marks Gallery, on view through April 22nd.

  
Vija Celmins (Installation View)

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Ron Nagle, Glorious Assemblage (2016), via Art Observed

Ron Nagle’s miniature sculptures function in part as narrative fragments, scenes and situations held in time and added a certain sense of life and energy by their imaginative, curving forms or remarkably evocative relations of space.  Some conjure the effect of domestic scenes, others a moment of geological rupture, while others present themselves as somewhere between the two, always emphasizing the artist’s patient craft and attention to detail that has made his connections with fellow West Coast artists like Ken Price all the more apparent.  Nagle returns to Los Angeles this spring for a show with Matthew Marks Gallery, bringing a new body of sculptures and drawings created over the course of 2016, once again illustrating these elements in play with his ever-growing body of work. (more…)

Ken Price, Tubby (2011), via Art Observed

Continuing a series of exhibitions devoted to the estate of Ken Price, Matthew Marks Gallery’s dual exhibition spaces in West Hollywood are currently showing a selection of works spanning the West Coast artist’s long and industrious career, ranging from black and white interiors to his signature sculptural inventions.  Echoing a similar curatorial focus from the last show of Price’s work in New York, the two-gallery exhibition pairs similar forms and images across media, ultimately tracing a line through the broad range of interests and series of reinventions that Price took over the course of his career.

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Jasper Johns, Untitled (2014), via Art Observed

Spanning the last thirty years of his career, Jasper Johns’s monotypes make up a fascinatingly diverse, unique body of works, one that forms something of a microcosm for the rest of the artist’s body of work.  Themes appearing throughout Johns’s career; jagged minimalism, number systems, and the incorporation of the art historical into various structures of subversion or reinterpretation, are presented again through a selection of etched prints across a wide variety of hues, subjects and approaches.  This body of work is the subject of the artist’s current exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, following his continued exploration of the monotype as an expressive and diversely capable medium from 1983 to the present day.

Jasper Johns, Untitled (2015), via Art Observed

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Brice Marden, Eastern Moss (2012-2015)

Brice Marden is the subject of a solo exhibition that spans three all three 22nd street locations for Matthew Marks Gallery, unveiling a new body of paintings and drawings that continue a number of the artist’s ongoing interests with the narrative potential for color.  The works on view here possess a demure yet captivating appeal, underlining the New York-based artist’s continued interest in the intersections of 20th Century abstraction, broader art histories, and the use of color-field composition in varying applications. (more…)

Rachel Harrison, Coffee Cart (2013), Courtesy of the Artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Currently on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in the Chelsea district of New York is an exhibition organized by American painter Terry Winters. Titled “Roving Signs,” the group of works made by a variety of artists reflects Winters’ interest in traditional American folktales and the cultural heritage of the United States, as well as the various semiotic interpretations and variations that the use of these symbolic images and stories holds in contemporary art.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Autotechnogeoglyphics: Vehicular Test Tracks in America (2006), Courtesy CLUI Archive, Los Angeles

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Dealer Matthew Marks is currently selling his West Village apartment, built in 1830 by painter Abraham Rattner.  The building boasts impressive renovations, all made since the building was purchased in 1997.  “At home, we like to move the furniture around, repaint and change the art frequently, but after 16 years, we’ve tried all the combinations and it’s time to move on.”  Marks said. (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Singular Forms (Installation View), courtesy of Mnuchin Gallery

From Sculpture on the Wall at the Barnes Foundation to the Museum of Modern Art’s Chatham Series, the work of artist Ellsworth Kelly is being celebrated across the East Coast this spring. Until June 1, the Mnuchin Gallery in New York will join in on the event, hosting Kelly’s ongoing Singular Forms series, which has spanned most of hist career, from 1966-2009.  A retrospective of Kelly’s emblematic abstract paintings, the show is curated by the artist himself, presenting his personal take on this broad body of work.

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Darren Almond, Fullmoon@Cape Reinga (2012), via Matthew Marks Gallery

Currently on view at Matthew Marks are a series of sixteen photographs, part of Darren Almond‘s fullmoon series, in which he allows the light of the full moon to illuminate landscapes from all seven continents.

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Luigi Ghirri, Bastia (1976), via Matthew Marks Gallery

In 1978, photographer Luigi Ghirri first published his manifesto on avant-garde photography, Kodachrome.  Locating the image as both a problem and solution in the increasingly complex interrelations of image, identity and object created through a technologically advancing world, the book sought to use the camera as it was, a machine for generating reproductions, to, in his words “be able finally to distinguish the precise identity of man, things, life, from the image of man, things, and life.” Recognizing the artist’s immense contributions to both photography and conceptual thought, Matthew Marks Gallery is currently hosting a show of 25 of Ghirri’s photographs in New York City, taken from the artist’s landmark book.

Luigi Ghirri, Urbino (1975), via Matthew Marks Gallery

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Charles Ray – Installation View, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

The works of Charles Ray consistently sit at the intersections of the commercial, the human and the industrial, exploring our increasingly intertwined relationships with the imagery and machinery through which we engage with the world every day. Matthew Marks Gallery is currently showing three new works by renowned American sculptor Charles Ray, continuing the artist’s ongoing explorations of the human body and its interactions with the contemporary industrial world.   (more…)

Grand Palais, courtesy FIAC

FIAC, or the 39th International Contemporary Art Fair, will open tomorrow (Thursday) in Paris, with a VIP preview today, with 184 galleries exhibiting at the Grand Palais, and this year utilizing the restored Salon d’Honneur as well, which lies at the center of the structure. As in past years, galleries will exhibit sculpture at the Tuilieries Garden nearby. Approximately 65,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Tuilieries Garden courtesy FIAC (more…)

Image: Expo Chicago via The Chicagoist

Expo Chicago opens with a VIP vernissage tomorrow evening to benefit the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Many blue-chip New York galleries are participating this inaugural year, including big names like Matthew Marks, The Pace Gallery, Luhring Augustine and David Zwirner, as well as other international galleries like Yvon Lambert. In the Exposure section, younger galleries like DODGE gallery and Kate Werble will be exhibiting.

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Fragment of Ru Ware pottery piece from Song Dynasty; Photos by Rachel Willis for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

Brice Marden: New Paintings is currently on display at two of the Matthew Marks Gallery locations in the Chelsea district of New York.  502 West 22^nd Street, the smaller of the two galleries, houses Ru Ware Project while the remainder of the New Paintings exhibition is being shown at the 526 address down the street. Both parts of the show were made as individual responses to two specific trips that Marden took overseas; one to China and the other to Greece. The aesthetic of the show epitomizes Marden’s interest in historical antiquities and how they relate to contemporary art, particularly abstraction.

Brice Marden, Polke Letter (2010-11)

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Darren Almond, Fullmoon Series (1998–2012). Images via Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire.

The arts program at Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, located 200km south of Paris, is dedicated to the artistic engagement of creativity and nature, showcasing contemporary artworks and installations in its galleries and grounds. From April 6 through November 7, British artist Darren Almond will showcase two series of photographs in the Galeries du Château and Galerie du Porc Epic. A Turner Prize finalist in 2005, Almond has participated in a host of international shows and biennials, such as the Tate London, the Venice Biennale 2003, and Charles Saatchi’s 1997 Sensation show; and is an artist of the post-YBA generation of Jay Jopling’s White Cube Gallery. Almond is represented by White Cube in London and Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.

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Charles Ray, installation view. All images courtesy of Matthew Marks

New works by Charles Ray are currently on view at Matthew Marks Los Angeles through June 23. Two stainless steel figures inhabit the gallery space; Sleeping Woman is perched on a bench with her head resting on a blanket while across the gallery Young Man stands nude, his body aligned with the sleeping woman. Ray asserts a calculated tension of space with nuanced attention to perception that has been the essence of his sculptural practice for decades.

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‪‬Artist David Weiss died this morning of cancer at age 66, half of the Fischli/Weiss duo and represented by Matthew Marks Gallery

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Nan Goldin, Swan-like embrace, Paris (2010). All images courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery.

Nan Goldin: Scopophilia at Matthew Marks Gallery is the artist’s first exhibition in New York since 2007. Scopophilia, referring to the love of looking, contemplates Goldin’s images gathered from throughout her career, presenting them alongside recent photos shot at the Musée de Louvre. Her unprecedented after-hours access to the Louvre’s collections gave rise to new pairings and new interpretations of older work, as well as a 25-minute slide show.

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