Revolution in the Making (Installation View), all photographs courtesy Thisbe Gensler, via Art Observed

This past month has seen the much-anticipated opening of Hauser Wirth & Schimmel’s new gallery space in Los Angeles’ Arts District. The scale of the former flourmill—totaling over 100,000 square feet of exhibition spaces, book store, Printed Matter Lab, courtyard and garden, forthcoming restaurant, as well as offices—rivals the real estate of many museums, as do its curatorial aspirations.  Swiss couple Iwan and Manuela Wirth have partnered with former MOCA curator Paul Schimmel, a definitive fixture of Los Angeles art history and pioneering figure in its contemporary art scene. In his opening remarks during the press opening, Schimmel described his vision of the gallery as a community-driven, public-oriented space that would proffer a seamless urban experience for the creative downtown demographic, not only focused on changing the traditional relationship of the gallery to its public, but also between art and life.  In partnering with Hauser & Wirth, lauded for its museum-caliber exhibitions and dedication to scholarship and publications, Schimmel announced this new institution’s role in serving and revitalizing the arts of Los Angeles. (more…)

Artist Ruth Asawa, known for her complexly crocheted wire sculptures and communal sculptures has passed away at the age of 87. A pioneering student at Black Mountain College in rural North Carolina, Asawa worked to transcend the fierce discrimination she faced as a Japanese-American in mid-20th century America, creating a body of work that mixed elegant architectures with a spirit of communal obligation, epitomized in her Union Square fountain sculpture in her home city of San Francisco.  “She was in a very real sense knitting the community together with the communal public fountain,” says Timothy Anglin Burgard, curator of American art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, “ mirroring the city back to itself and saying we are a community.” (more…)