Tony Oursler, EUC (2015), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

The new body of work by acclaimed new media artist Tony Oursler is currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s Chrystie street location. Aligned with his signature style of analyzing high technology and its idiosyncratic tone in correlation to the human body, Oursler delves into the limits of human expression in his new exhibition.  Although he was born in New York City, Oursler emerged in late 1970s along with a group of West Coast artists such as Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw after graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied under John Baldessari. (more…)

Barbara Kruger Untitled (Business as usual) (1987), all images courtesy of Skarstedt Gallery

On view in London’s Skarstedt Gallery is an exhibition of early large-scale, black and white photographic works from artist Barbara Kruger, early entries in Kruger’s ongoing project to challenge the visual language and power structures of consumerist culture and print advertising, always under the understanding that her works will themselves enter the marketplace as commodities.

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Nancy Graves, Camouflage Series #4 (1971), all images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Currently on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash is a select body of work by artist Nancy Graves, focused around the late artist’s New York-based Foundation, and which promise an expansive look at the pioneer Conceptualist’s bright career before and after her passing in 1995, including a Whitney retrospective that marked her as the first female artist to have a solo retrospective under museum’s roof. (more…)

An exhibition of work by Peter Doig has been announced at the Palazzetto Tito in Venice, coinciding with the opening the Biennale later this year.  The exhibition will feature a number of Doig’s large scale works, as well as several intimate pieces.   (more…)

Yael Bartana, Inferno (2013)

Yael Bartana’s new body of work, containing two video pieces, two photographs and a neon installation, is currently on view at Petzel Gallery. The Tel Aviv and Amsterdam-based artist has become one of the strongest artistic voices from her home in Israel, a territory Bartana, in her own words, aims to ‘treat as a social laboratory’. Living abroad gives the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design graduate the opportunity to maintain a neutral outside perspective towards her country that has always remained embedded in political, religious and social turmoil. (more…)

Al Taylor, Full Gospel Neckless (Middelfart) (1997), via Art Observed

Al Taylor’s work sits at a unique intersection of material fascination and object politics.  Combining the familiar materials of modern construction and design, Taylor’s work often investigated the pairings and interrelations of objects formed not only by the human’s aesthetic agenda, but equally by the complementary formal designs of the materials themselves.  These intersections can be seen in quite stark execution currently at David Zwirner, where the gallery’s 20th Street location is currently presenting a body of work created 1989 and 1997. (more…)

Chris Ofili, via Art Observed

There’s a room on the third floor of Chris Ofili’s New Museum retrospective that offers a moment of crystallization for the rest of the exhibition.  In a dimly lit chamber set back from the rest of the show, the artist has hung a set of works from his Blue Rider series, painted in rich blue hues that reveal various aspects based on the viewer’s position.  Sitting in the room for an extended period, recognizable, horrifying images slowly take form, present themselves, and slip back into the shadows: black bodies hanging from trees, unidentified hooded horsemen, and even an image of a black youth beaten by a series of police.   (more…)

Juan Muñoz, Thirteen Laughing at Each Other (2001), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Marian Goodman Gallery is currently presenting a selection of Juan Muñoz’s expansive body of work, with a particular focus on the late artist’s works between 1984 and 2001. Curated by Russell Ferguson, the exhibition encapsulates the influential sculptor’s visceral, vibrant sculptural technique in which a peculiar buoyancy is transferred through narratively mute representations. (more…)

Douglas Gordon, tears become…streams become… (2014), via Art Observed

Douglas Gordon’s work often takes its strength from its simplicity.  Using minimal alterations and contextual wrinkles in the selections of his exhibition spaces, works and collaborations, Gordon seems to draw a certain pleasure from bringing out deeper recognitions of the space and structure of art as presentation, as experiential and institutional meditation. (more…)

Takashi Murakami, In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow (Installation View), via Ellen Burke for Art Observed

The recent work of Takashi Murakami is firmly embedded in the critical state of Japan in the 21st Century, a sense of the ecological peril that the country has attempted to deal with since the disasters of Fukushima several months ago.  Taking this cataclysmic event as the jumping-off point for much of his recent work, the artist has taken his signature style, replete with smirking characters, huge swaths of psychedelic color, and the delicate iconography of classical Japanese art, applying it to a new series of works on view through January at Gagosian Gallery’s Chelsea exhibition space. (more…)

Marina Abramović, Tree (1972), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

On view at Lisson Gallery in London is a exhibition entitled White Space from Yugoslavian artist Marina Abramović, featuring many works which have never been exhibited before, including two important sound pieces and unseen video documentation of seminal performances. The exhibition will remain on view through November 1st.

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E.V. Day, CatFight (2011-2014) via E.V. Day Studio

On view now at Mary Boone’s uptown gallery is the haunting sculpture series Semi-Feral by artist E.V. Day. The show centers around a large, site-specific sculptural piece comprised of multiple casts of saber-tooth tiger skeletons floating above the floor of the gallery space.  Day’s work, often concerning sexuality and femininity, takes its point of departure here from the slang term “cat fight.”  A phrase that typically robs a fight from any viciousness, Day returns the notion to its original, ferociously natural element.

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Jim Shaw, The Deluge (2014), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

With a humorous wit and sarcastic tone, Jim Shaw has been mining the deep archive of Americana for decades, uniting the supposedly separated elements of high and low culture into comic pieces that carry a deeply caustic undertone. The artist’s newest show at Metro Pictures, I Only Wanted You to Love Me, continues this trend, featuring acrylic on muslin works that pull from expansive investigations of visual representation through strong symbolism and appropriation. (more…)

Gerhard Richter is interviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week, as the artist opens a new show of works at Marian Goodman in London.  “Abstract pictures do indeed show something, they just show things that don’t exist,” he says. “But they still follow the same requirements as figurative works: they need a setup, structure. You need to be able to look at it and say, ‘It’s almost something.’ But it’s actually representing nothing. It pulls feelings out of you, even as it’s showing you a scene that technically isn’t there.” (more…)

Artist Mark Flood has opened his own gallery space in Chelsea on 22nd Street, directly adjacent to his dealer Zach Feuer, where none of the art is for sale, and where Flood is offering space for artists that he loves and supports.  “In New York, little things can have big repercussions,” he says. “I think it’s good to kind of help everybody out. I guess that’s what everyone in the art world is doing. It seems like kind of a sinister business, but it’s full of people who are obsessed with art. I’m another one of those. I don’t have to do anything but look at these great paintings.” (more…)

Cory Arcangel, Asshole 2 / Lakes (2014), via Team

Given Cory Arcangel’s past exhibition tendencies, the work on view at the artist’s newest Team Gallery solo exhibition downtown is something of a concise affair.  Gone are the artist’s abstracted consumer objects, video game hacks and gradient paintings, substituted for a series of simple flat-panel televisions, each bearing a pixelated digital image, and offset by a deep red carpeting that runs along the gallery’s floor.  On-screen, the smiling faces of Hilary Clinton (or rather, Hilary Clinton’s book jacket), Jay-Z and P. Diddy, among others, stare out of the viewer, as a delicately waving digital effect below them gives the impression of a liquid reflection. (more…)

Richard Deacon, Alphabet S (2014), via Thaddaeus Ropac

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is currently presenting Alphabet, Sculptures and Dessins, an exhibition of artist Richard Deacon’s new body of work, combining sculpture with a series of works on paper.  As an artist who defines himself as a fabricator rather than a sculptor, Deacon has always had an appetite for pushing the limits of production, constantly moving to new territories in material use throughout his career.  Here, Deacon seems interested in extending beyond the physical, sculptural object itself, experimenting with exterior forms and approaches. (more…)

Jenny Savile, Untitled (2014), all images courtesy Gagosian London

On display at Gagosian Gallery in London is a series of monumental oil paintings by Jenny Saville, focusing on the materiality of the human body. The works are large in scale and extremely detailed, and some of the works have taken up to 7 years to complete. The exhibition will be on view through July 26th at Gagosian London.

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Pieter Vermeersch, Untitled (2013), all images courtesy Team Gallery, Inc.

Currently on view at Team Gallery in Lower Manhattan is a solo show from Belgian artist Pieter Vermeersch, composed of large paintings on canvas and wall murals, for which he has employed techniques of grid painting and color mapping, reminiscent of Gerhard Richter and Robert Bechtle. The exhibition will continue through April 27, 2014.

Pieter Vermeersch (Installation View)

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Jordan Wolfson, (Female Figure) (2014), via Art Observed

How does memory function in the 21st century?  How does nostalgia?  These are questions bound up in the work of Jordan Wolfson, on view now at David Zwirner.  Spread along a series of assemblages, video, and the artist’s notoriously eerie animatronic robot, the show is a striking step for the artist, showing his unique approach to art-making in an ever-stronger expressive capacity.

Jordan Wolfson, Raspberry Poseur (2012), via David Zwirner (more…)

Outside the Park Ave Armory, via Art Observed

Tucked away at the Park Avenue Armory uptown, the ADAA’s annual Art Show offers a more subdued fair experience versus the immense proceedings of the Armory Show across town.  With less than half the number of participating galleries, and a more focused exhibition policy leaning towards solo artists and thematic presentations, the fair is a strong counterpart to the Armory, one that invites a lingering, open browsing experience below the Armory’s softly lit drill hall.

Pablo Picasso, Tête de Jeune Fille, via Art Observed (more…)

YaÅŸam ÅžaÅŸmazer, via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

The winter conditions in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul often border on excessive damp and gloom, but the coastal city’s burgeoning art scene maintains the city’s status as a location for adventurous art-lovers year-round, particularly given the strength of several shows currently on view across the city.  Mostly located around the Taksim area of the city, art spaces in Istanbul have been popping up at a remarkable pace, marking the city as a destination for the global art cognoscenti, while introducing young Turkish artists to the wider market. (more…)

Erika Vogt, Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll (2013), Courtesy New Museum, New York Photo: Benoit Pailley

The back room in the New Museum lobby is currently draped with hanging anchors, plaster molds,  and other myriad items, a bizarre assemblage of pieces and materials that forces visitors to duck their heads and tread cautiously as they move through the narrow room.  This installation, newly created for the museum by artist Erika Vogt, is Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll, a surreal video and sculptural piece that playfully toys with the raw materialism of the works on view.

Erika Vogt, Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll (2013), Courtesy New Museum, New York Photo: Benoit Pailley (more…)

The New York Times has published a spotlight on artist Robert Therrien, done in conjunction with his ongoing retrospective at the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY.  The artist has moved somewhat below the currents of the contemporary market, despite a broad body of work in sculpture and photography that has won him a considerable following and representation by Gagosian Gallery. He’s a very unusual person, and he’s a sweetie, too,” said Lynn Zelevansky of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. “It’s just so harmonious and so beautiful. It’s about experience, and this amazing capacity for invention.”

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