Elmgreen & Dragset, Past Tomorrow (Installation View)

Currently on view at Galerie Perrotin is Past Tomorrow, Elmgreen & Dragset’s second installment of their ongoing tale focused on the life and loves of imagined architect Norman Swann.  The project that, in its core, is an unrealized play by the Berlin-based Scandinavian duo, had its inception at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013 exhibition, titled Tomorrow, turning the museum’s galleries into Mr. Swann’s residence.  The narrative resumes as their protagonist migrates to a studio apartment in New York’s Upper East Side neighborhood, after he consumes his entire family inheritance and vacates his London house in South Kensington. (more…)

Pawel Althamer, The Secret of the Phaistos Disc (Installation View), all images courtesy Deste Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse of Hydra

On view at the Deste Foundation’s exhibition space, the Slaughterhouse of Hydra, is an experimental blend of contemporary sculpture and performance, as designed by Polish artist Pawel Althamer. The interactive project explores the nature of family relationships, and their role in making up the broader structural arrangements and familial relations that often drive global social interactions.

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A new participatory work by Rikrit Tiravanija has been installed at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul.  The work, titled Demo Station No. 5, is an open stage installed inside the museum, allowing for performances, relaxation and iteration between guests, artists and members of the institution. “I want people to move around like they are in their daily life. Part of my interest is always to break down the distance between what we think of as art or high art and what we do in our daily life,” Tiravanija says. (more…)

Jorge Pardo at Petzel Gallery, via Art Observed

Through April 4^th, the work of artist Jorge Pardo will be on view at the Petzel Gallery, stretching the space into a bizarrely disorienting collection of objects and installations.  This is the Los Angeles-based artist’s eighth exhibition at this gallery, and continues Pardo’s investigation of architectural and non-specific spaces that interrogate the limits of the gallery-space, as well as the way the viewer is conditioned into looking at art.

Jorge Pardo, Spare Bedroom (2014), All images courtesy Friedrich Petzel Gallery (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, Gramsci Monument (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

“Everyone is an intellectual.”  These words by Italian anarchist/Marxist Antonio Gramsci adorn the walls of Gramsci Monument, the fourth and final entry into Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s monumental installation series to his favorite thinkers and writers, currently open in the Forest Houses housing project in the South Bronx.  Opening the platform to cultural dialogues, political research and community art efforts, Gramsci Monument continues Hirschhorn’s efforts at destabilizing the spatial encounters of a work of art, broadening its scope to a space where all participants are welcome to create their own meaning. (more…)

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013) All photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Otherwise Occupied is an exhibition of Palestinian artists organized by al Hoash, a Palestinian art organization based in Jerusalem, as part of the 55^th International Art Exhibition at Venice Biennale 2013. The show is one of 48 Collateral Events hosted around the city. The exhibition features the work of two prominent, internationally renowned artists: Bashir Makhoul and Aissa Deebi. Makhoul is the head of the Winchester School of Art, England, while Deebi is a founding member of ArteEast, a Brooklyn-based organization that supports Middle Eastern art and culture. Both have exhibited work at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Manhattan, and mainly work with photography. In the past, both have addressed the themes of diaspora, exile and, more broadly, Palestinian politics, unsurprising given that both artists were born inside the 1948 borders of Palestine, and have since immigrated to become citizens of other states. Currently, they are working in the globalized art world, exemplified by Massimiliano Gioni’s Central Pavilion, The Encyclopedic Palace. Nevertheless, the artists still consider themselves Palestinian, underlining the complex political identities of modernity Gioni expressed in his press conference.

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013)

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The Dia Art Foundation has released the details on artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, a library, performance theatre and monument to the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, established in the Forrest Houses Projects in the Bronx.  The piece will be the fourth and final work in a series of installations to Hirschhorn’s favorite thinkers, installed temporarily at locations around the world.  Says Philippe Vergne, Director, Dia Art Foundation. “Gramsci Monument reinforces Dia’s commitment to off-site commissions, which is at the center of our mission. I am confident that through this project Dia will become a different, stronger institution — one that is even more engaged with the reality of art today.”  Gramsci Monument will open July 1st. (more…)

James Angus, John Deere Model D (2013), via Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Pulling together three disparate artists in its three galleries on Greenwich Street in  New York’s West Village, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is currently presenting a group of works that illuminate and reinterpret the construction of physical and structural realities.  Combining sculptural, installation projects, assemblage and conceptual painting practices, the works on-view by James Angus, Rikrit Tiravanija and Jonathan Horowitz highlight their drastically different conceptual practices in exploring similar thematic territory.  

Rikrit Tiravanija, Untitled (2013), via Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

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Art Club 2000, Untitled (Conran’s I) (1993), Courtesy of The New Museum

Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, on view now at The New Museum, is a look 20 years into the not-so-distant-past, using 1993 (and the works produced and shown within that calendar year) as a critical reflection point into recent art history and practice.

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Richard Wentworth, Black Maria (Installation View), via King’s Cross London

The result of a major commission project, Richard Wentworth‘s “Black Maria,” a timber theatrical structure set within the atrium of the Granary Building in the Saint Martins College of Art and Design, King’s Cross, is an installation that acts as a central public space during the day and a screening and discussion room during the evening and night. The structure was opened for its 4-week run on February 13th, 2013, and is available for viewing during normal hours at Central St. Martins.

Richard Wentworth, Black Maria (Installation View),via King’s Cross London

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This Sunday, the Tate Modern will host an ambitious performance work, organized by artist Suzanne Lacy, in its new performance space, The Tanks.  Welcoming 400 women over 60 who were active in mass political actions of the past 40 years, Silver Action will provide the platform for open, unscripted discussions on aging and political activism.  Visitors will be able to listen into the many conversations concurrently running, and dialogues will also be transcribed online.  “I’m trying to shift the discourse away from one of isolation and increasing frailty: we should see older women as an amazing resource – not just talk about them taking resources.”  The artist says.   (more…)

Andy Kaufman “On Creating Reality”  (Installation View)

Revered for his vast wealth of original material and unique approach to performance, comedian and performance artist Andy Kaufman left an enduring legacy that challenged and transcended conventional assumptions of genre and presentation.  Frequently characterized as a comedian or “personality,” Kaufman’s work on television and in live performance frequently confounded and amazed his audience, and positioning him as a pioneer of new media performance and relational aesthetics.  His work in the 1970’s and 80’s before his death in 1984 included turns as an Elvis impersonator, “The Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World,” and even a foul-mouthed lounge singer named Tony Clifton. (more…)

Charles Ray – Installation View, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

The works of Charles Ray consistently sit at the intersections of the commercial, the human and the industrial, exploring our increasingly intertwined relationships with the imagery and machinery through which we engage with the world every day. Matthew Marks Gallery is currently showing three new works by renowned American sculptor Charles Ray, continuing the artist’s ongoing explorations of the human body and its interactions with the contemporary industrial world.   (more…)