Roni Horn, Water Double v.3 (2013-2015), via Ondine Charlesworth for Art Observed

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth’s recently opened exhibition space on 22nd Street, artist Roni Horn is presenting a quartet of new bodies of work, running through the artist’s broad and often adventurous approach to her chosen media.  Ranging from, drawing and painting through to sculpture, photography and conceptual work, Horn’s practice is on full view here, always centering back on questions of perception, representation, identity and memory.  Deconstructing both linguistic systems and visual cues, Horn’s new pieces continue her subtly exploratory and phenomenologically resonant practice. (more…)

August Sander, Untitled (Group for Sherrie Levine Composed by Gerd Sander in 2012), all photos by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Currently occupying the top floors at Hauser & Wirth’s temporary 22nd Street space, Serialities provides the viewer with an ample range of works adopting visual repetition in photography, sculpture, and drawing as a manifestation and elaboration of their conceptual and narrative crux.  Organized with French art dealer Oliver Renaud-Clément, the exhibition finds its source of inspiration in August Sander’s decades-spanning photography project People of the 20th Century, a massive collection of 600 photographs in which Sanders chronicled German daily life through images of individuals of his home country between the 1910’s and the beginning of the 1950’s.  While Sanders sub-categorized his collection based on occupation or social class, People Who Came to My Door, one of his more personal and intimate groupings, anchor this group exhibition.  Through Sanders’s mellow, balanced approach to his subjects, he captures poses of deliberation and vulnerability, exposing their inner selves for the artist’s lens and viewer’s eyes.  His interest in depicting various social and economic groups in Germany before and after World War II delivers an inquisitive social landscape overall. (more…)

Entrance to Hauser and Wirth’s second gallery in New York, where Martin Creed’s ‘Work No. 1461’ greets visitors

At 511 West 18th Street, in the 24,700 square feet that formerly housed the roller disco known as “The Roxy,” Hauser & Wirth have found their second home in New York. Maintaining their other location on the Upper East Side, the expansion to Chelsea is their fifth location worldwide, and celebrates an important landmark: the gallery’s twentieth anniversary. A hefty book of over 1,000 pages, edited by Hatje Cantz, accompanies the event: Hauser & Wirth 20 Years. The exhibition inaugurating the space could not be more fitting: a father-and-son collaboration which took place over that same twenty year period: Dieter and Björn Roth.

Artist Dieter Roth smokes a cigarette in Roth New York Bar.

(more…)

All photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

“In Praise of Doubt” is the second half of two exhibitions currently staged by the Francois Pinault Foundation. It housed in the Punta della Dogana just a stone’s throw from Palazzo Grassi, where part one, “The World Belongs to You” can be found. The two exhibitions share a curator, Caroline Bourgeois, and both run in parallel with the Venice Biennale 2011.

The exhibition presents both historical pieces and new works, several of which are site-specific projects. The theme, as hinted by its title, is uncertainty, the questioning of identity, and revisiting intimate space in relation to the space of the artwork. The artists included are art world regulars Adel Abdesemed, Marcel Broodthaers, Maurizio Cattelan, Subodh Gupta, David Hammons, Roni Horn, Thomas Houseago, Donald Judd, Edward Keinholz, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Julie Mehretu, Bruce Nauman, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Schutte, Sturtevant, Tatiana Trouve, and Chen Zhen. Out of these twenty, a surprising half have never been exhibited before in an exhibition by the Francois Pinault Foundation.

More text and images after the jump… (more…)

All photographs by Oskar Proctor for ArtObserved

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth New York is “Else,” the first exhibition in the United States devoted exclusively to the drawings of Roni Horn.  The show, composed of six new large-scale works up to eight by ten feet in size, will remain on view through June 19, 2010 at 32 East 69th Street.

The new works lend themselves to multiple viewing angles: from far away they appear as densely-packed thumbprints and dissipating hearts. A closer look reveals involved diagrams reminiscent of tesselations and multiplying cells. The heavily textured images are composed of cut paper, red painted lines, and the artist’s fractured pencil notes. Ever aware of the material, the stamp of the paper manufacturer feature prominently on the outer edges of several works. The intricacy and density of the compositions are contrasted with the artist’s simple, large scrawled signature, which floats, relaxed, detached from the rest in a sea of oaktag.

Björk at Friday night’s opening

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

Roni Horn’s You are the Weather (1994-95) All images via the Whitney Museum of American Art unless otherwise noted.

Currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art is Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, a thirty-year retrospective of approximately seventy of the artist’s works, including drawings, sculpture, installations, photographs and artist’s books comprising two floors of the institution. Jointly organized by the Tate Modern, it is the most comprehensive survey of the artist to date.

Roni Horn’s Ant Farm (1974/2007)

More text, images and related links after the jump….

(more…)

–>
Exhibition view, “The Female Gaze: Woman Look at Women,” at Cheim & Read. Pictured works include Victoria Civera’s Searcher (far left) and Vanessa Beecroft’s Blonde Figure Lying (floor).

Through September 19, 2009, Cheim & Read will show “The Female Gaze: Women Look At Women.”  Featured are works by women of women, with aim to reorient the typically-male framing of women in art.  Works range in medium from the paintings of Alice Neel and Lisa Yuskavage to the sculptures of Kara Walker, the text poems of Jenny Holzer and the photographs by Diane Arbus, the installations by Louise Bourgeois and even collage work by Ellen Gallagher.

Related links:
–>
Cheim & Read – Exhibition – The Female Gaze [Cheim and Read]
–>
Now Hanging: Girlie Show [The Moment Blog, New York Times]
–>
The Female Gaze, The Cheim and Read Gallery, New York [Financial Times]
–>
The Female Gaze: Women look at Women [Artforum]
–>
“The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women” at Cheim & Reid [Contemporary Art Daily]

–>
Cindy Sherman, Untitled, at Cheim & Read.

(more…)

–>
Manaus, Christophe Schlingensief. Inferno, this year’s theme of the 16th Annual Watermill Summer Benefit. Via Hamptons

The Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation’s sixteenth Annual Summer Benefit will take place on July 25th in the Hamptons.  Robert Wilson, its Artistic Director, envisages an event that will include various installations, theatrical performances and auctions all framed by this year’s theme- Inferno.  An auction in support of artistic programming at the Watermill Center conducted by Simon de Pury, Chairman of Phillips de Pury auction house, will certainly be one of the highlights of the evening.

Related Links:
–>
Inferno: The Sixteenth Annual Watermill Summer Benefit [Artdaily]
–>
Sixteenth Annual Watermill Summer Benefit [The Watermill Center]
–>
About Watermill [the Watermill Center]
–>
16th Annual Watermill Center Benefit [Artinfo]
–>
Summer Is a-Kooning In: We Preview Watermill Benefit Goodies! [NYObserver]
–>
Simon de Pury [Bigthink]
–>
Welcome to Watermill – a review of last year’s (2008) Watermill Benefit [BIZBASH]

–>
Julian, Elizabeth Peyton. At the Annual Watermill Benefit this year. Via Watermill Center

More pictures and text after the jump… (more…)

Last weekend, Yvon Lambert gallery opened a group exhibition Espèces d’Espaces (Species of Spaces) at its  New York location. It features contemporary and modern work by internationally noted artists Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wallace, Christian Vetter, Roman Opalka, Jonathan Monk, Brice Marden, Jill Magid, Zoe Leonard, Louise Lawler, Brice Marden, Zilvinas Kempinas, Yvon Lambert, Bethan Huws, Roni Horn, Jenny Holzer, Liam Gillick, Enrico Castellani, Carter, André Cadere, Stefan Brüggeman, Michael Brown, Brice Marden and Robert Barry.  The show is not only characterized by a great variety of artists, but also by an abundance of mediums.  Besides painting, various forms of sculpture and photography, the exhibtion includes LED, sound and neon. It runs from March 28 until May 16.

Yvon Lambert New York
Group Exhibition: Espèces d’Espaces
550 West 21st street
March 28 – May 16, 2009

RELATED LINKS

Exhibition Page and Press Release [Yvon Lambert]
Exhibition Announcement I [Re-Title]
Exhibition Announcement II [New York Art Beat]
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by George Perec and John Sturrock [Amazon]
Jenny Holzer Protect Protect at the Whitney [The Whitney Museum of American Art]
Louise Bourgeois at the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden [The Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]
Lawrence Weiner The Other Side of a Cul-de-Sac at The Power Plant Gallery [The Powerplant Gallery]
Roni Horn Roni Horn aka Roni Horn at Tate Modern [Tate Modern]

(more…)

You are the Weather (1994-6) by Roni Horn, picture via the Independent

Roni Horn’s work is on display at the Tate Modern, in her most comprehensive retrospective to date and her first solo museum show in London. The show, Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, incorporates works from the beginning of her career in the mid-1970s through the present.

Horn’s oeuvre touches on several recurring themes, namely identity, mutability and water, at least one of which is likely to appear in some form in her pieces. Additionally, the artist also explores relationships between identical objects being presented in different emotional and spatial contexts, thereby creating different experiences of the same subject. The diptych Dead Owl from 1997, and the sculpture Paired Gold Mats — For Ross and Felix from 1994 embody this idea, and are on display at the Tate.

The artist also has a special artistic relationship with Iceland, assembling To Place, a series of photography books on the island, its glaciers, hot springs, volcanoes, geysers and rivers that examine the constant geological flux of that country. The Weather is You, a series put together between 1994 and 1996, is also set in Iceland, consisting of photographs of a young woman emerging from various hot springs under different climactic conditions, which in turn subtly affect her facial expression and the composition of the photograph.

The rest of the exhibit is comprised of various photographic installations and sculptures that typically employ glass as a medium, but may also contain a diverse array of media ranging from gold to rubber. The west windows of the Tate will be uncovered so as to expose Horn’s sculptures to shifting natural light, which will interact with the glass, water and other media in unique ways, rendering each experience of the work as exceptional.

RONI HORN AKA RONI HORN
through May 25th, 2009
Tate Modern Museum,
Bankside Power Station,
25 Sumner Street London SE1

Exhibition Page: Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, Tate Modern
Tate Gallery to Show Roni Horn aka Roni Horn [ArtDaily]
Enigma variations: The curious world of Roni Horn [Independent UK]

(more…)