Mike Nelson, Tools that See (Installation view), All images via the artist and neugerriemschneider.

Mike Nelson’s Tools That See (Possessions of a Thief) 1986-2005, on view at neugerriemschneider is a material chronicle of the tools the artist has used over the past 30 years. Immediately recognizable as an homage to the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, Nelson’s pieces carry the same force of reality-bending humor as earlier iterations of found object art and the readymade.  The familiar items, ones a viewer may see strewn around a site of construction, are rendered as images withdrawn from their tactile elements, contained in glass frames and elevated on dense wooden pedestals. (more…)

Tuesday morning of the VIP Preview; All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse

Art Basel’s 43^rd edition commenced today with the first of two VIP Preview days.  The VIP Vernissage, however, drew a private audience yesterday evening, where the Art Unlimited and Art Standard programs were unveiled, revealing a collection of artwork impressive in both size and scope.  Today was also the preview and opening receptions for Basel’s companion fairs, like LISTE 17 and Design Miami/Basel.  Fair and section specific photosets for collective Basel happenings will be posted throughout the upcoming days.

Art Basel directors Annette Schönholzer and Marc Spiegler at the press conference

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I, Impostor. All images by Cristiano Corte, courtesy of the British Council, unless otherwise noted.

Mike Nelson, who has twice been short-listed for the Turner Prize, is the first installation artist to be invited by the British Council to create a new work in the UK’s Pavilion in the 2011 Venice Biennale. Nelson is known for site-specific large scale installations with enigmatic titles: The Deliverance and the Patience (2001), Triple Bluff Canyon (2004), To the Memory of HP Lovecraft (2008), and so on. Curated by Richard Riley, with Andrea Rose as Commissioner, this transformative pavilion is one of the most talked about at this year’s biennale.

British Pavilion. Photograph by John Riddy, courtesy of Matt’s Gallery London, Franco Noero Turin, and 303 Gallery New York.

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Quiver of Arrows, 2010 by Mike Nelson    All images via 303 Gallery unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at 303 Gallery at 547 W 21 Street, New York is the exhibition of new works by a contemporary British installation artist Mike Nelson. Quiver of Arrows, an installation constructed of  four travel trailers from 1939- 1969 that form Nelson’s   extended labyrinths,  is the artist’s first solo show in the United States.

Video of the Installation via Art Observed

More texts, images and links after the jump…
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Installation View  All photographs are via Gagosian Gallery unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia street, London is the exhibition titled “Crash, Homage to J.G. Ballard” , a group show dedicated, as the name suggests, to the oeuvre of J.D. Ballard, a prominent British novelist and short-story writer, a representative of the New Wave movement in science fiction.  The exhibition was put together to pay tribute to the enormous cultural influence of J.D. Ballard’s fiction on many visual artists. The impressive selection of works by  such prominent artists as Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton, AndyWarhol and Helmut Newton illustrates profound engagement of the writer with the works of visual artists of his generation and their mutual influence.

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Shallow, Malcolm McLaren via Rawartint

Creative Time has announced the U.S. premier of the video, Shallow, by Malcolm McLaren of the Sex Pistols. The video is a series of film clips taken from films of the 1960s, all of which contain the moments right before or after sex scenes. The film is going up on MTV’s huge outdoor HD screen the middle of Times Square between 44th and 45th Street. The film will be up through August and plays at the top of the hour, every hour. McLaren’s video is just one of Creative Time’s projects, others include David Byrne’s Playing the Building and Mike Nelson’s Psychic Vacuum.

At 44 1/2 Creative Time presents Malcolm McLaren [Creative Time]
Malcolm Mclaren’s ‘Shallow’ And Creative Time [Rawartint]
Porn-again Times Square [NYDaily]
Malcolm McLaren and MTV Bring “Artful Porn” To Times Square [Exclaim]
McLaren take porn to New York City [ContactMusic

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