Sue Williams, Black and White and Red All Over (1998), via Skarstedt Gallery

For artist Sue Williams, the body always takes primacy. The painter, who began her career during the 1990’s, has long tweaked and twisted the female form, pushing it and painting it into any number of surreal arrangements. Multiplying that practice over any number of permutations, her canvases eventually arrive at a breathless final product containing massive flurries of activities and bodies, simultaneously personal and sexual, and often underscoring distinct facets of the hyper-mediated experience of modern life. Taking a retrospective angle on Williams’s work this month, Skarstedt Gallery in New York is currently presenting a body of paintings from 1997 and 1998, formative years in Williams’s body of work, and striking introductions to a practice that has only continued to evolve and develop over the following 20 years. (more…)

Thomas Schütte, Bronzefrau I (2000), via Art Observed

Profiling an enigmatic and often irreverent approach to both the human body and sculpture as a medium, Skarstedt has brought a series of works by Thomas Schütte to its Chelsea location.  A continuation of his Frauen series, the show combines a thorough selection of etchings with a small series of sculptures, exploring his craft as both a skilled draughtsman and studied artist in both the exploration and critique of the practice of sculpture, joining together works from the past two decades to draw new historical comparisons and conceptual linkages in the artist’s practice.

Thomas Schütte, Stahlfrau Nr. 4, (1999), via Art Observed

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Martin Kippenberger, Ohne Titel (Aus der Serie ‘Fred the Frog’) (1990), via Art Observed

Skarstedt Gallery’s 79th Street town house takes a cunning turn on the rule of threes this month, as the space shows a minimal, yet nuanced exhibition focusing on German painting.  Culling together three works each from a trio of post-war innovators (Albert Oehlen, Georg Baselitz and Martin Kippenberger), the gallery allows a subtly arranged, yet distinctly felt series of interconnected themes and formal investigations over the course of the exhibition.   (more…)

Mike kelley, The Thirteen Seasons (Heavy on the Winter) #13: Art (1994), via Art Observed

This week, Skarstedt Gallery opened a show of Mike Kelley’s shaped paintings at its Chelsea exhibition space, the first time that the artist’s work in this series of egg-shaped, abstracted canvases has been compiled at one time.  Taking the artist’s interests in psychoanalytic techniques, trauma, and their intersections with the structures of mainstream American culture, the exhibition offers a close look at Kelley’s interests, juxtaposed through a series of pictorial relationships, or contrasted from work to work in a single room. (more…)

Carroll Dunham, Mound A (1991-1992), via Art Observed

Flexing his curatorial muscle at both Skarstedt Gallery locations in New York, David Salle has compiled an intriguing collection of recent paintings by a vastly diverse group of artists, and examines their shared interests in the grounds of abstract painting: formal concerns of size, scale and focus, in combination with the compositional elements of color, contrast and hue. (more…)

Willem de Kooning, Clamdigger (1972), via Art Observed

It’s an interesting trajectory to follow when an artist, late in their career, strikes out into new media, carrying over a fully articulated, steady aesthetic sensibility that has been honed over decades of work.  The results are often dynamically contrasted against the artist’s broader body of work, and often evinces a renewed creative energy and a fresh vigor for formal investigation or subversion.

Willem de Kooning, Seated Woman on a Bench (1972), via Art Observed (more…)

Robert Gober, Untitled (1997), all photos via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

Taking the fraught emotional landscape of early childhood as its central focus, Skarstedt Gallery’s London location is currently presenting a subdued but emotionally poignant group show, exploring the use and manipulation of the objects, scenarios and symbolism of youth as a productive force for a group of the gallery’s artist.  Exhibiting work from Robert Gober, the late Mike Kelley and Vija Celmins, the stripped-down exhibition carries an impressive punch. (more…)

From Figuration (Installation View), via Skarstedt Gallery

Currently on view at Skarstedt Gallery’s London location is a compelling exploration of figurative sculpture, titled From Figuration.  Welcoming a host of high-profile names, including George Condo, Thomas Schütte, Jonathan Meese, Rosemarie Trockel, Rebecca Warren, and Paul McCarthy, the exhibition seeks to capture a broad range of approaches and themes expressed by this particular niche in the field of sculpture. (more…)

Richard Prince, Anyone Can Find Me (1990), courtesy Skarstedt Gallery

Skarstedt Gallery’s uptown exhibition space in Manhattan recently exhibited a series of multi-media works by American painter and photographer Richard Prince.  Blending hand-drawn landscape and mass media imagery, his “White Paintings” create an complex interplay between image and language. (more…)

Jenny Holzer, Top Secret 21 (2012)

Section 2340 is pain that is difficult for the individual to endure and is of an intensity akin to the pain accompanying serious physical injury. See Section 2340A Memorandum at 6.

Manhattan’s Skarstedt Gallery currently plays host to American artist Jenny Holzer’s first series of paintings in over thirty years. Renouncing the medium in the 1970s in favor of electronic LED lighting, projections, bronze castings, silkscreen, and varied other media for her subversive textual declarations, Holzer returned to painting for this 2010–2012 series, titled Endgame. Made famous by language-based works that provoke arresting responses to serious social and political issues, here Holzer occupies the veneered Upper East Side with Color Field-like swathes of oil on linen that manage to maintain her political bent .

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‪‬Skarstedt Gallery to open space in Mayfair district of London this June, joining several other New York galleries expanding to London, including David Zwirner and Marlborough [AO Newslink]

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Installation Shot, Jenny Holzer “Retro” at Skarstedt Gallery. All images courtesy Skarstedt Gallery and Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Currently on view at Skarstedt Gallery, through December 18th, is Retro, an exhibition of truisms by Jenny Holzer. The exhibition, which is comprised of benches, plaques, painted signs, electronic LED signs and a sarcophagus, covers a decade of Holzer’s oeuvre from the late 1970’s to the late 1980’s. It aims to reintroduce the diverse use of media comprising Holzer’s historically iconographic works, as well as explore the use of text and language throughout the artist’s early career.

Installation shot, Jenny Holzer’s “Retro” at Skarstedt Gallery.

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Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.

AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show.  On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum.  If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.   A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters.  This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a  meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively.  Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector.  Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs.  Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000.  Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,” valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.

Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,” at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.

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Arena #7 (Bears), Mike Kelley, image via the Skarstedt Gallery

Mike Kelley‘s  current exhibition at the Skarstedt Gallery features seven works from his Arena sculpture series.  Using found objects, both handmade and machine fabricated, and stuffed animals, Kelley creates “arenas,” scenes crafted to evoke curiosity from his observers.  Kelley works on the floor, as a playing child might, with afghans and blankets of varying styles and motifs.  Kelley explores the commodification of toys and their relevant emotions, removing them from a typical, nostalgic setting to create arenas that highlight both consumeristic natures and artistic projections.

Arena #10 (Dogs), Mike Kelley, image via the Skarstedt Gallery

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