Olafur Eliasson is interviewed in Fast Company this week, discussing his design projects and views on urban infrastructure, including the capacities for city planning and art to change how people interact and use limited urban space.  “Reflexivity is about connectivity, and connectivity is sometimes more about looking into yourself than looking at the ‘other.’ It can be hard work, and it can be uncomfortable, but sometimes public space has to make that demand of you,” he says.  “And sometimes art—and good art always—makes that demand of you. It makes you work. It makes you give. It makes you into a producer of space, of situations, of life, instead of being a consumer.” (more…)

The Snarkitecture Studio has unveiled a massive ball pit installed inside of Washington D.C.’s National Building Museum, part of a 10,000 square foot work titled The Beach.  The work will remain open to the public through September 7th. (more…)

The LA Times looks at the immense efforts taken at the Broad Museum to ready the exhibition space, including the negotiations in installing and managing immense artworks like a recently purchased Takashi Murakami piece.  “Contemporary art is so varied in form, material and scale that you often need to devise new approaches for moving and installing certain pieces,” says the Broad’s director of collections management, Vicki Gambill.  “That’s what makes the work infinitely interesting and complex. Preparators love solving problems.” (more…)

The Tom Bradley terminal at LAX has launched a series of new arts commissions this week, including works by Mark Bradford, Pae White and Ball-Nogues Studio.  “We imagined this space as a kind of reprieve or garden where people could rest their minds as they moved through the building,” says Benjamin Ball of Ball-Nogues. “The project is meant to be seen from a variety of angles.” (more…)

Serpentine Pavilion, via Serpentine Galleries

The Serpentine Pavilion, the annual summer architecture project hosted by Serpentine Galleries, has opened in London, a swirling series of multicolored chambers and hallways by Spanish architecture firm SelgasCano (the first commission from a Spanish firm) resting on the lawn outside of the museum galleries. (more…)

Collector Bert Kreuk has won his lawsuit with Danh Vo, forcing the artist the create a room-sized installation work, after the artist delivered a much smaller-sized work.  Kreuk will pay the artist $350,000 for the piece, but Vo must deliver the piece by a set date.  If not, will be fined $10,000 for each day after he fails to produce the work.     (more…)

The Art Newspaper profiles the work of Zlot Buell, the art consulting firm that has earned a reputation for discretely advising tech entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley wealth in the contemporary art market, and notes the commonly assumed myth that tech collectors are interested in digital art.  “They look at a screen all day long; they don’t need to look at another,” Ms Zlot says. (more…)

Leo Fitzpatrick, the former star of Larry Clark’s film Kids, and longtime director of the Nate Lowman project space Home Alone 2, will join Marlborough Chelsea as a gallery director.  “I’m very proud of what I was able to accomplish with Home Alone over those three years, but generally it was me taking art on the subway, trying to put on these shows,” Fitzpatrick says. “I’m really excited about having help, and people to bounce ideas off of. We can really do big things. If I was able to do so much with so little, imagine what I can do here.” (more…)

Allora & Calzadilla, The Bell, The Digger, and the Tropical Pharmacy (2013), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

Cross Section of a Revolution, on view at Lisson Gallery in London, brings together seven artists and pairs of artists whose work explores questions of trade, contested territory and trauma in a global context. These substantial themes are approached through a variety of mediums that speak to both individual and collective experiences in Central Asia, Pakistan, Kenya, Europe and the United States,opening lines of inquiry into aspects of cultural and political fragmentation, and reveals strategies for art and aesthetics in relation to cultural, geographic and religious division. This group exhibition does not shy away from inspiring or explicitly asking large questions about the nature of globalization and aesthetics. For instance: how is a modern understanding of culture, politics, and religion shaped or impacted by a continual flow of visual information?  (more…)

The Armory Show has announced the artists for its Special Projects section at the 2015 edition of the New York Fair, which opens in two weeks.  Projects include a limited edition series of potato chip packets by commissioned artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, unobtrusive fencing installations by Abbas Akhavan, and more.   (more…)

MoMA released a video trailer for the upcoming Björk retrospective and video installation next month, which will take the name Black Lake from one of the songs off the artist’s most recent album, Vulnicura.  The exhibition opens March 8th. (more…)

Artist Tom Sachs has announced the release of A Space Program, a narrative film made in conjunction with his 2012 Space Program: Mars project at the Park Avenue Armory.  The film will premiere next month at SXSW in Austin.   (more…)

Creative Time has announced a new project set to open this coming may, Drifting in Daylight, which will install a series of works through the winding pathways of Central Park in New York.  “The six-weekend show will tempt visitors to transcend their busy lives, losing themselves along a playful trail of sensory experiences,” the project website says. (more…)

Artist Nick Cave has announced plans for a parade utilizing the artist’s colorful and imaginative costumes through the underprivileged neighborhoods of Shreveport, Louisiana, thanks in part to a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. (more…)

Abraham Cruzvillegas, the Mexican artist who fashions sculptures and situational works out of reclaimed materials, has accepted an offer from the Tate Modern to take part in its Turbine Hall commission.  “His work reflects Tate’s deep interest in showing truly ground-breaking international art,”  says director Chris Dercon. (more…)

Diana Thater, Science, Fiction (2014), via Art Observed

Diana Thater’s new exhibition on view at David Zwirner’s 19th Street Exhibition is an exercise in restraint.  Consisting of a pair of video compositions and a monumental structure in a light-saturated installation piece, the artist moves towards an experience of space, both in an immediate and more figurative sense, that engages the magnitude of human experience on both macro and micro scales. (more…)

A recent article in Vanity Fair reports on the increased competition for visitors between The Met and MoMA, as the former museum begins a new emphasis on modernist and contemporary projects, and ambitious expansion projects at both institutions.  “The Met is upwardly mobile at the moment and it’s doing everything it can to be more modern and more varied in what it has to offer, without vulgarizing things,” says Picasso biographer John Richardson. “And MoMA, an institution that I revere, is in a period of going slightly down in everybody’s estimation.” (more…)

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston is embarking on an ambitious $450 million expansion project that will seek to place it as one of the city’s cultural hubs.  “It’s all about shaping space,” says , architect Steven Holl. “The collection of buildings there is already outstanding. It’s very delicate, not a site that calls for over-exuberance.” (more…)

The New York City Ballet has announced its newest artist collaboration, this year partnering with Dustin Yellin to create a large-scale installation featuring a set of “3,000-pound glass sculptures.”  “I was moved thinking about these young, 25-year-old dancers [who are] full of life,” Yellin says, “and that they’re on their toes for all these hours.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal embarks on a tour of the MTA’s public arts projects, profiling some of the New York Subway’s most iconic murals, installations and pieces, including Roy Lichtenstein’s classic Times Square piece, and Sol LeWitt’s mural at 59th and Columbus. (more…)

The Ace Hotel, in collaboration with the opening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s newest film Inherent Vice, is presenting a trio of exhibitions in Los Angeles, London and New York, including an immersive installation by Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe in NYC.  The exhibitions run from January 5th – 11th. (more…)

Bay Lights, the LED installation by Leo Villareal on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge is set to become a permanent installation, after nonprofit Illuminate the Arts announced that it had raised the $4 million needed to pay for new equipment and maintenance.  The work will be removed next year to treat bridge cables, but will likely be reinstalled by the time Super Bowl 50 takes place in the city in 2016. (more…)

A new project in Puerto Rico, executed by Allora and Calzadilla in conjunction with the Dia Foundation, is stirring debate for its use of a Dan Flavin sculpture in a manner some feel is inappropriate for the artist’s work.  Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos) places a 1965 Flavin light sculpture in a remote limestone cave on the Southwest coast of the island, which has already drawn some criticism.  “My role at Dia is to bring validity to both the present and the past,” says curator Yasmil Raymond. “There are people who will undoubtedly see this as a provocation from the perspective of post-colonialism. But I think others will see it as a homage to Flavin and to his evocation of this island.” (more…)

Pierre Huyghe, IN. BORDER. DEEP. (2014), video still © Pierre Huyghe Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London and Anna Lena Films

Boldly distorting otherwise rigid phenomena, Pierre Huyghe has ambitiously orchestrated and staged alternative recreations of the daily and the mundane. For his current show at Hauser & Wirth’s London location, the Paris-born artist is covering the gallery space with his unfamiliar narratives, which emerge from more familiar territory. IN. BORDER. DEEP. invites the viewers into a hub of various experiments and observations, merging various mediums with science and art history itself.

Pierre Huyghe, IN. BORDER. DEEP. (Installation View) Hauser & Wirth London, 2014, © Pierre Huyghe Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London Photo: Hugo Glendinning (more…)