The Met is currently working on plans for a 2017 exhibition focused on the work of Lucio Fontana, and initial reporting by the Art Newspaper indicates that the exhibition could be held at the Breuer building, formerly the home of the Whitney Museum. “An exhibition at the Met will necessarily be all-encompassing,” an anonymous source close to the museum says. (more…)
Dean Levin, Surface Support (Road Goes on Forever) (2015)
Marianne Boesky Gallery recently presented A Long, Narrow Mark, the gallery’s first collaboration with artist Dean Levin, at its Clinton street location. Levin has enjoyed a growing recognition in recent years, proven by an impressive range of group exhibitions he has been included in the U.S. and Europe, as well as his debut solo at Upper East Side space of Robert Blumenthal last year. (more…)
Jeppe Hein, All We Need Is Inside (Installation View), all photos via Art Observed
Currently on view at 303 Gallery, All We Need is Inside continues Jeppe Hein’s unique combination of reflective, sculptural and painterly works, investigating the powerful and playful combination of art and personal dialogue. The new show is a strong presentation of the artist’s approach to the act of interaction and the phenomenology of viewing art, and plays on notions of calming minimalism while incorporating immersive, challenging works throughout. (more…)
The Museum of Modern Art has announced plans for a major retrospective focused on the work of Donald Judd, set to open in 2017, organized by Chief Curator Ann Temkin. “Half a century after Judd established himself as a leading figure of his time, his legacy demands to be considered anew,” said Ms. Temkin. “The show will cover the entire arc of Judd’s career, including not only quintessential objects from the 1960s and 1970s, but also works made before he arrived at his iconic formal vocabulary, and selections from the remarkable developments of the 1980s.” (more…)
Artist and dealer Dorothee Fischer, who headed the Konrad Fischer gallery in Düsseldorf, and advocated for artists like Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, and Blinky Palermo, has passed away at the age of 78. Fischer’s tireless, focused work in conceptual and minimal art built a dedicated group of artists around her, and she in turn built an impressive collection of 250 works, alongside her gallery archives, both of which were purchased by the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen for over $1 million. (more…)
Writer Louis Menand is in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, reviewing the recent restoration of Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals using a specially designed lighting system, and the small crowd that gathers each day to watch as the murals’ lights are turned off. “You can still see the bones of the murals, the formal architecture—Rothko’s floating blocks, made to resemble portals in these pieces—but the glow is gone,” he writes. “As one observer put it, when the lights go off, comedy turns into tragedy.” (more…)
Blinky Palermo, Wooster Street (1975), all images via David Zwirner
In collaboration with the Palermo Archive, David Zwirner presents an exhibition of rarely displayed works by Blinky Palermo at its 537 West 20th Street gallery. The works on display in this exhibition were made by the artist from 1973 to 1976, and range from objects to paintings and large-scale drawings. Following two years after David Zwirner’s exhibition of Palermo’s works on paper from 1976–1977, this show further explores the artist’s short but influential career, which is largely associated with abstraction, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, but also extends beyond these realms. These pieces are being presented together for the first time since their installation in Heiner Friedrich, New York in 1974.
Blinky Palermo, Objekt mit Wasserwage (Object with Spirit Level, 1969–1973) (more…)
Martin Puryear, Big Phrygian (2010-2014)
One of the foremost American sculptors from the second half of the 20th century, Martin Puryear has established himself as one of the canonic names of Modernist sculpture, merging Minimalism with labor intensive craftsmanship throughout his forty-year long career. The artist is currently presenting a new exhibition at Matthew Marks in New York, featuring ten new works reflecting the artist’s interest in political history, while remaining loyal to his abstraction-driven practice and his approach towards materiality, not only as means of production but also as a specific method of artistic expression. (more…)
Richard Nonas (Installation View), via Art Observed
Richard Nonas’s newest series of sculptures, currently on view at Fergus McCaffrey’s 26th Street Chelsea location, are an interesting take on the minimalist object. Folded, twisted metal and wood forms stand in stark opposition, with sharp angles drawing lines of interaction and interrelation from work to work, subsequently toying with notions of space between a cohesive environment and a series of isolated, complexly rendered objects. (more…)
Tony Smith, Smog (1969-70), all images courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery
On view at Timothy Taylor Gallery is artist Tony Smith’s first solo exhibition in the UK. The American artist and architect was a driving force in post-war art, anticipating the rise of minimalism while working alongside Jackson Pollock, Barnet Newman, and Mark Rothko.
James Bishop, Slate (1972), All images courtesy David Zwirner Gallery
Now through October 25th, David Zwirner’s 537 West 20th Street location is showing a selection of both recent and historically significant work by James Bishop, an American artist who, through the characteristic opacity and ethereality of his work, has come to be known for the delicate language of abstraction his compositions reveal. Bishop, working since the early 1960s, has forged a strongly individualistic language of space and form in his work, utilizing careful layerings of paint into geometric patterns in large-scale, shown here alongside small-scale works on paper, which Bishop has produced since 1986.
There’s any number of ways to approach Roman Opalka, whose work sits at the center of Dominique Lévy’s first show of the fall season (and the self-professed “most important show the gallery may ever host” according to Lévy herself). One is through the visual content of his work, which is perhaps the most recognizable point of access. Taking minimalist conceptual action to one of its natural conclusions, Opalka abandoned a gesturally abstract career in 1965, pursuing a new project: the painting, number by number, of the artist’s endless count to infinity.
Roman Opalka, Détail – Photo 5055607 (1965/1), via Dominique Lévy (more…)
Carl Andre at The Paula Cooper Gallery, via Art Observed
On view at The Paula Cooper Gallery in New York is an exhibition of major sculptures by Carl Andre from a period ranging over thirty years. The exhibition coincides with the artist’s retrospective at Dia:Beacon, which is the first survey of Carl Andre’s entire body of work by a museum in North America since 1980.
Imi Knoebel, Bild 13.11.2013 (2013) all images courtesy Kewenig
On display at Kewenig in Berlin, Germany from March 8th through April 26th is a new series of paintings by German artist Imi Knoebel, comprised of solid-colored aluminum plates in various forms made with acrylic paint. The works have been interpreted both as paintings and flat wall sculptures, hovering weightlessly in their large-scale formats. Non-representational and highly reductive, the series challenges even the artist’s own minimalistic practice in their adherence principally to form and color. (more…)
Lee Ufan, Dialogue (2013), all photos via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed unless otherwise noted
The work of Lee Ufan takes pleasure in simplicity. Utilizing simple, geometrically-influenced forms, the artist walks a line between the classic theories and demands of post-war minimalism, and more nuanced, organic approach to the forms and materials of the everyday.
Lee Ufan, La peinture ensevelie…. (2013) (more…)
Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 216) (1970), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed
Currently on view at Mnuchin Gallery’s uptown location is a two-floor exhibition focusing exclusively on the stack sculptures of the late Donald Judd, one of the defining voices of New York minimalism in the 1970’s and beyond.
Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 154) (1968), via Mnuchin Gallery (more…)
John McCracken, Fair (2011), via David Zwirner
Currently on view in New York are two exquisite Minimalist shows of note, regarding both their historicity and their potential influence on emerging currents: Anne Truitt at Matthew Marks on 22nd street & John McCracken at David Zwirner’s 20th Street location. The prospect of seeing this work in proximity and in such volume is a rare event, and offers an intriguing opportunity for comparison and commentary, joining forces both minimalism’s heart and its periphery, namely the powerful metaphysical concerns within. (more…)
Donald Judd, Untitled (1965), via David Zwirner
The tight, straight lines of Donald Judd run directly through the entirety of his career, from his early painted works on through to the increasingly large sculptural works and stacks of the 1980’s and 90’s. Moving to purify notions of space, light, color and depth, Judd’s career wove a strikingly influential path through the landscape of post-war and contemporary art. It is this tradition that David Zwirner in London seeks to explore, pulling together a small but tightly organized collection of works by Judd for a show exploring the range and depth of the artist’s career, from his early sculptural explorations with iron and plexiglass, on through to his more refined “stacks,” and wall-mounted installations. (more…)
Richard Serra, Double Rift #9 (2013), ©Richard Serra Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery
On view at Gagosian Beverly Hills through June 1 is Richard Serra’s Double Rifts series. Known for his immense sculptures, Double Rifts showcases a selection of recent drawings that are clearly related to, yet remarkably independent from Serra’s sculptural practice, welcoming new insights into the artist’s creative worldview.
| Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd |
Donald Judd at LACMA (Installation View), courtesy of LACMA
On view alongside LACMA’s permanent modern and contemporary collection is a peripheral gallery highlighting a selection of works by artist Donald Judd. Focusing on several of various mediums, the brief show revisits Judd’s focus on simplified geometric forms and the space created around his simple objects.
The most recent issue of Billboard Magazine features a cover story on French rock band Phoenix, showing the band standing in front of a work by Dan Flavin from the artist’s recent show with Donald Judd at David Zwirner in New York. The picture was taken during the first exhibition at Zwirner’s new 19th Street location, as the band searched for inspiration for their upcoming tour. “These pieces have a very short lifetime,” frontman Thomas Mars said, “which makes them even more precious.” (more…)
Beginning in June, artist Donald Judd’s Spring Street home and studio, which he purchased in 1968 and renovated himself, will reopen as a museum, offering visitors a look inside at the artist’s personal collection of works and living space. The building stands as the only intact, single-use cast-iron building left in the neighborhood, and was renovated under the supervision of The Judd Foundation. “This has all been toward the goal of having people experience this place as if none of these things we had to do were ever done. And from the beginning it’s been a battle between preserving the art and preserving the building.” Said Judd’s daughter, Rainer. (more…)
Sol LeWitt, Cut Torn Folded Ripped (Installation View), via James Cohan
A pioneering force in post-war American art, Sol LeWitt’s geometric explorations of space, image and meaning was foundational in the development of both the conceptual and minimalist schools of artistic practice. Perhaps most famous for his “wall drawings,” the artist also explored a range of paper and sculptural techniques over the course of his career.
Sol LeWitt, A Square of Chicago without a Circle and Triangle (1979), via James Cohan
Dealer Christopher D’Amelio, formerly of Paula Cooper Gallery and his own space in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, has announced that he will be closing his gallery to join the expanding gallery network of David Zwirner. Mr. D’Amelio will be positioned at the gallery’s 20th Street space in New York City. “Chris brings a lot of experience and knowledge, especially when it comes to Minimalism.” Said Zwirner in an interview with the New York Times. (more…)
