Summer Group Show (Installation View), via Marian Goodman

The group exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery revives an excitement for the accomplishments of formal, conceptual and technical art practices during the mid to late 20th century, presenting a lively exhibition that groups together an overlapping group of six prolific artists: Sol LeWitt, Gerhard Richter, Fred Sandback, Anne Truitt, John McCracken and Lawrence Weiner, one is privy to the continuing reverberations of works that defined both minimalist and conceptual techniques in contemporary art practice, often passing from one school to the other while redefining notions of structure, method, dimensionality, and form.  Stoic in its midtown location, the exhibition presents an impressive collection of conceptual and minimalist classics, offering continuing pivots and critically advanced methodological expectations of non-referential visual forms.

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Lee Ufan, Dialogue-Silence (2013)

Lisson Gallery is currently presenting a new body of work by Lee Ufan, the influential artist who first gained recognition within the avant-garde art movement Mono-ha (School of Things) during the 1960’s. Considerably less known and understood in the West, Mono-ha emerged in Japan as a response to Eurocentric notions of representational and descriptive art making, focusing instead on the dialogue between nature and material.  Ufan, who started his career as a professor and art critic, stands out as an influential figure from the movement with his visually serene yet intellectually intriguing works, often harmonizing sculpture with works on canvas. (more…)

Lee Ufan, Relatum – The Arch of Versailles (2014), all images Courtesy the artist ; kamel mennour, Paris and Pace, New York © Tadzio

Lee Ufan‘s work takes its strength from its silence.  Utilizing simple materials placed into careful interactions with the space around them, the Korean artist has pioneered his particular brand of minimalism over the past half century.  Tight, angular lines converge with natural materials in carefully measured configurations, often utilizing the passage of shadow and light through the work to create a nuanced dialogue with its surroundings.

Lee Ufan, Relatum – The Shadow of the Stars (2014) (more…)

Pierre Soulages, Peinture 175 X 222 Cm, 23 Mai 2013, via Art Observed

Held in high regard in his home country of France, and throughout much of continental Europe, the work of Pierre Soulages has never really achieved the same stature in the United States, despite his formal ties to the particularly American strains abstract expressionism and minimalism that have populated his work over the past sixty years.  But it’s that same lack of recognition that Dominique Lévy and Emmanuel Perrotin are looking to change this spring, bringing a selection of the artist’s most recent work, and some of his most classic canvases to show at the pair’s uptown exhibition spaces.

Pierre Soulages, Peinture 202 X 159 Cm, 18 Octobre 1967, via Art Observed (more…)

Sol Lewitt, Horizontal Progression #6 (1991), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

Sol Lewitt, considered by many as the founding father of conceptual modernism, is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the last half of the 20^th century. The cube, as a “grammatical device” from which Lewitt’s work often develops speaks to his ambition to reduce art to its essentials, and approach the relationship between artistic creation and the mechanization of thought.  Lewitt is also known for his large-scale two and three-dimensional works, particularly his wall drawings executed in 1968. In these wall drawings, predetermined line-making procedures and formulas typically associated with commercial production were enlisted in the installation of this work across galleries. (more…)