Tomás Saraceno, Avior 9 (2013)

Currently on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is Hybrid solidarity… semi-social quintet… on cosmic webs…, Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno’s new body of work in his fifth collaboration with the gallery. Before studying fine arts in Buenos Aires and Frankfurt, the Berlin-based artist completed a degree in architecture, a field that has profoundly influenced his artistic technique, in which various practices related to biology, geometry and space studies gently merge with his sociological and cultural observations, all the while bearing an alternatively-focused aesthetic. (more…)

Christo has announced a new project aiming to create long immense, yellow fabric walkways spanning Lake Iseo in Lombardy, Italy.  The work will be the artist’s largest since his 2005 piece in New York’s Central Park, and the first since the death of his wife Jeanne-Claude. (more…)

Giuseppe Penone, Albero porta—cedro / Door Tree—Cedar (2012), © Giuseppe Penone. Courtesy Archivio Giuseppe Penone. Photography by Josh White/JWPictures.com

In his current show Ramificazioni del Pensiero / Branches of Thought, on view at Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills, Giuseppe Penone continues his exploration into the heart of the natural materials that compose his work. Focusing on the interplay between man and nature, Penone draws human elements out of the wood and marble he sculpts, obviating an undercurrent of commonality between the human figure and the stoic forms of tree and stone. (more…)

Olafur Eliasson, Riverbed (2014), via Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Long interested in the possibilities and intersections of natural space with the contexts of the gallery environment, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has brought the landscape of the Icelandic wilderness to the interiors of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, in the Northern Danish town of Humlbæk.

Olafur Eliasson, Riverbed (2014), via Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (more…)

Joan Mitchell, Cypresses (1975), all images courtesy Cheim & Reid

On view at Cheim & Read in New York is an exhibition composed of seven large-scale canvases by Chicago-born painter Joan Mitchell, presented in collaboration with the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Spanning a long stretch of her career, the works on view were inspired by the form and structure of trees, painted in an expressionistic way, and will remain on view through August 29, 2014.

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Richard Long, Four Ways (2014), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

Richard Long’s first solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery in over three decades brings together photographs, text, and natural elements as records of his walks in England, Switzerland, and Antarctica. Working in conjunction with the materials and forces that make up his surroundings, Long brings the fruits of his lone experiences in nature to the imaginations of a gallery audience. Long made his reputation in the 1970s with his sculptures born of days-long walks to remote locations, acting as bridges between natural design and human creation. His present exhibition reveals his persistence in investigating the themes that run through his lifelong body of work. (more…)

Giuseppe Penone, Scrigno (2007), all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian London is an exhibition of Giuseppe Penone’s large scale works from 2006-2008 as well as some more recent pieces. Entitled Circling, the exhibition includes 2 major works, Scrigno (Casket), 2007, and Sigillo (Seal), 2008, depicting the structure of trees, specifically: “the tree as a being that memorializes the feats of its existence” The display will remain on view through May 31, 2014.

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Carol Bove, Monel (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

There’s a certain intangible spiritualism to the work of Carol Bove, located somewhere between the phenomenological minimalism of Donald Judd, and a more abstract, natural focus on the intersections of urban and rural ecologies.  Divine symbolism intersects with locational meditations, found objects with architectural forms, and rigid industrial materials with looping, whimsical forms.  Fitting then, that the artist would present a pair of shows, both including seven new works, one at the Museum of Modern Art, and one at The Highline Railyards, where construction is currently underway to convert the last untrammeled part of the elevated railway into park space.  Both created specially for their respective spaces of exhibition, the pair of exhibitions currently on view feel like two parts of a potent whole.

Carol Bove, Equinox (Installation View), via Museum of Modern Art (more…)

Per Kirkeby, Untitled (2012), via Michael Werner

A tangible sense of degradation runs through the canvases of artist Per Kirkeby, currently on view at Michael Werner in London.  Walking a fine line between impressionist figuration and pure abstraction, his works seem balanced on a pin, teetering between a fully realized environment and complete structural breakdown, a process the artist acknowledges as “an ongoing process of sedimentation.”  The first exhibition of new work since his 2009 retrospective at Tate Modern, Kirkeby’s new exhibition sees him returning to the same interrogations and explorations of the natural environment, as well as his own interpretation of it.

Per Kirkeby, Recent Paintings (Installation View), via Michael Werner (more…)

Alex Katz, Sunset 2, (2008) via Museum Haus Konstruktiv

The Swiss museum Haus Konstruktiv is currently presenting Landscapes, a solo exhibition of work by American Painter, Alex Katz, focusing mainly on the artist’s landscapes and natural scenes, spanning from 1948 until today.  The exhibition marks the first comprehensive display of Katz’s work by a Swiss Institution, despite his international acclaim and presence in several important private Swiss collections. Of particular note are a number of included works that have previously never been displayed. (more…)