The Dia Art Foundation has acquired composer LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela’s famous Dream House installation for its permanent collection, and will recreate the work at its 545 West 22nd Street Chelsea location this summer and fall from June 17 through Oct. 24.    They’ve made this incredible contribution to music that I think is still very underappreciated nationally and even internationally,” says Dia head Jessica Morgan.  “He should be understood as a John Cage of our era.” (more…)

Anish Kapoor, Monochrome (Garnet) (2014), via Art Observed

On view at Regen Projects is an exhibition of recent sculptures by the Bombay-born, London-based artist Anish Kapoor. The series focuses on terrestrial forms made from resin and earth contrasted, with two of the artist’s signature, mirror-surfaced works.

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Jésus Rafael Soto, Ambivalencia en el espacio color no. 12 (1981) all photos via Galerie Perrotin

On view at Galerie Perrotin, both in Paris and in New York is a double exhibition dedicated to Venezuelen artist Jesús Rafael Soto, who lived from 1923-2005. Curated by Matthieu Poirer, the exhibition is comprised of around sixty works created between 1957 and 2003, drawn from the estate and from various institutions.  The title of the exhibition, Chronochrome, is meant to describe “the kinetic exploration of the monochrome,” a reference to the filmic production process that underscores the artist’s interest in multiple layers of carefully executed optics, creating a subtly shifting and alternating space within works for the viewer to discover. The eye’s movement back and forth, often between the two layers, the artist hoped, would produce a sense of visual vibration and a new perception of color.

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Doug Wheeler at David Zwirner, via Art Observed

The new installation by Doug Wheeler, currently on view at David Zwirner’s 20th Street gallery, cites itself as an exploration of the horizon, a delicately shifting light installation inside an enormous ellipsoidal room.  Painted a harsh white, the floor and ceiling reflect the subtly changing neons running just out of site underneath the floorboards of the work.  Comparable to the work of James Turrell, Wheeler’s pieces make much of the illusory capabilities of light acting on space.  His 2012 installation at Zwirner, a massively lit wall giving the impression of an infinite color scape in front of the viewer, bears resemblance to a number of Turrell’s infinite lightscapes, allowing the viewer to slowly gain an awareness of their own act of seeing, and the behavior of their eyes in space.    

Doug Wheeler, LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW (2013), Photo by Tim Nighswander, Imaging4Art © 2014 Doug Wheeler; courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London (more…)

Roni Horn, Untitled (“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the…)(detail) (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

The glass globules dotting the floor of Roni Horn’s current exhibition at Hauser and Wirth give off a remarkable sense of tension: frosted exteriors play off against the the crystal-clear center of the pieces, giving off an illusion of liquid depth, ready to overflow its container.  Rather than staring at a solid object, one struggles to remember that these are not, in fact, vessels in the traditional sense, but enormous glass molds, poured and cooled over the course of several years.  If they are vessels, the fluid material of it holds is that of light, flowing with the passage of the sun, and the gradual progression of time that it implies.

Roni Horn, Untitled (“A dream dreamt in a dreaming world is not really a dream…but a dream not dreamt is.”) (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed (more…)

Jeppe Hein, 360Ëš Illusion III (2007), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Currently on view at Saint Agnes in Berlin, Gallery Johann König presents YOU, a striking selection of new works by Danish-born, Berlin-based artist Jeppe Hein, continuing the artist’s unique exploration into the phenomena of the human visual system, and its role in defining a body in space.

Jeppe Hein, YOU (Installation View), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Concerning himself with the perceptual investigations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hein’s work is an investigation into the act of “embodied experience,” expressed not merely through a series of trompe l’oeil  trickeries, but rather in complex optical illusions that force the viewer into a visual and physical relationship with space itself.  Best expressed through his enormous mirrored projects, the body is as much a part of the work as the eye, using its physical presence and the perceptual inputs tied to the brain as a way to subvert an easily codified version of reality.

Jeppe Hein, 360Ëš Illusion III (2007), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

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Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has unveiled the newest addition to his publicly displayed art collection, Sky Mirror, the $10 million work by Anish Kapoor, which alters the viewer’s perception of height through an enormous slanted mirror.  The 23-ton work has traveled the world, but will finally settle into a permanent home at the Cowboy’s AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX.  “The pictures didn’t do it justice, it’s just beautiful,” Jones said.

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Robert Ryman, Untitled (2010), Photo: Bill Jacobson, Courtesy of the Pace Gallery

The work of American artist Robert Ryman (b. 1930, Nashville, Tennessee), is at once rigorous and experimental, playing with the possibilities of material, scale, brushstroke, and installation itself.  He is most commonly identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art, and frequently explores the classical distinctions between sculpture and painting, as well as concerns with themes of perception, context, and enforced limitations.  Since the 1950s, Ryman has focused on the conceptual nature of his work, exploring the varieties found in primarily white paint on square surfaces. Preferring to be known as a “realist” rather than a minimalist, his work presents compositions at face value, prompting an examination of the optical and material properties of the painting discipline. (more…)

Robert Irwin, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue³ III, all images courtesy Pace London

Currently, Pace London‘s 6 Burlington Gardens location is presenting the gallery’s first exhibition of works by American artist Robert Irwin. The new work springs from the artist’s pioneering practice during the West Coast’s monumental Light and Space movement.  Born in 1928, Irwin has been exploring the concepts of perception and space for over sixty years. Beginning as a painter, he was a foundational member of the Light and Space movement in the 1960s, helping to develop a concept of art as a response to specific life experiences in equal measure with the work’s surrounding environmental conditions.

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