Bridget Riley, Quiver 3 (2014), via Spruth Magers

Comprising work made between 1960 and the present, Bridget Riley: Painting Now at Sprüth Magers LA surveys the development of the British artist’s career-long exploration of looking and seeing in relation to the capacities of painting and picture making. Her work, consisting of tightly-interlocked bands of color and explorations of the potential for relief and tension in the presentation of visual stimuli, is presented here in its development of optically-elusive, challenging pieces, ones that make the viewer acutely aware of the act of looking. (more…)

David Ostrowski, The Thin Red Line (Installation view), courtesy Sprüth Magers, Photography: Voytek Ketz, London & postproduction by Hans-Georg Gaul, Berlin

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Robert Irwin at Sprüth Magers (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists have left such a remarkable imprint on the art and art history of Southern California in the way that Robert Irwin has done over the past 50-plus years. Pioneering a mode of practice that slowly but deliberately broke ranks with the painterly abstraction and object-based practice of the era to develop a mode of art-making that embraced light, form and space as free-floating, conceptual tools.  As a native Californian, Irwin’s work drew heavily from his experience of its delicate nuances in light and tone, the massive expanses of the California desert, evolving into complex geometric arrangements of space using scrim and paint to create shiting densities of light. (more…)

Barbara Kruger, FOREVER (Installation View). All images via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

Now through December 22, Sprüth Magers Berlin is presenting FOREVER, a new site-specific work by Barbara Kruger. For this exhibition, the artist has created an immersive room-wrap and several new vinyl works, which together take over all four walls and the floor of the gallery’s main exhibition room. The language around which this exhibition centers reflects Kruger’s bold and distinctive voice, one which has come to define her work over the course of her 40-year career. (more…)

Film Still. Image courtesy Sprüth Magers.

Now through December 22, Sprüth Magers Berlin presents Jon Rafman’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Dream Journal ’16-’17 is an hour-long, freeform and loosely connected series of narratives examining the impact of technology on society and consciousness. Jon Rafman’s work examines the impact of technology and virtual reality on contemporary consciousness. He is recognized for his use of interdisciplinary and multi-medial forms, including various virtual platforms and online worlds, to critically explore the present moment. For this work, Rafman has designed an immersive viewing experience, complete with shag carpet and anthropomorphized sculptural seating.

Installation View. Image by Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

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Thomas Ruff, PRESS++32.54 (2016), via Art Observed

Process is product for Thomas Ruff.  The German photographer has explored a wide ranging body of work over the course of his thirty-plus years of his practice, frequently using the act of creating a photographic image as the generative locus for his work. Embarking on a new body of work in past years, the artist’s press++ series makes its debut this month at Sprüth Magers in Berlin, a fascinating investigation of the act of image production and consumption. (more…)

Robert Morris, Untitled (Williams Mirrors) (1976-77), all photos via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed

Now through January 14, Sprüth Magers in Berlin is hosting a historical exhibition of works by Robert Morris, exploring a series of six works developed over the course of the artist’s career, and often drawing on the use of mirrors and reflective surfaces to expand the viewer’s perception of space.  Pulling from some of the earliest works in Morris’s conceptual practice up to a work completed in 2014, Refractions traces Morris’s engagement with movement, space and the body, often in relation to the gallery space itself.

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Sterling Ruby, The Jungle (Installation View) All images via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

Now on view through October 29th, Sprüth Magers Berlin is currently hosting an exhibition of American artist Sterling Ruby’s recent sculptures and works on canvas.  THE JUNGLE consists of works from Ruby’s series of mobile sculptures, SCALES, conceived for the first time as a single installation.  As the title of the exhibition implies, the suspended and balanced objects that fill one entire room of the gallery evoke a sort of jungle, composed of free-hanging mobiles and other sculptural material Ruby has frequently utilized during his career. (more…)

Jenny Holzer/Lady Pink, Trust visions that don’t feature buckets of blood (1983-84), via Art Observed

Taking its own unique turn on the group exhibition, Sprüth Magers is currently showing a powerful two-floor exhibition devoted to the female artists on its roster, examining their shared interests in political and institutional critique, and explorations of the art object’s role in relation to the gallery.  Culling together a series of seminal works from Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Rosemarie Trockel, the exhibition is a well-executed work of its in, ultimately welcoming unforeseen material and political connections among this group of artists. (more…)

Sterling Ruby, Work Wear: Garment and Textile Archive 2008 – 2016 (Installation View), via Sprüth Magers

In 2008, Sterling Ruby designed his own work shirt and pants, a uniform of sorts, which he would wear over the course of each body of work that he created.  At the conclusion of each project, Ruby’s leftover materials are saved and incorporated into a new series of clothing pieces, ultimately reproducing the chemical treatments and techniques of each project as its own series of clothing pieces.  These works are currently on view for the first time at Sprüth Magers in London, part of his exhibition Work Wear.

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John Baldessari at Sprüth Magers, via Thisbe Gensler for Art Observed

Sprüth Magers, the German gallery with outposts in Cologne, Berlin and London, has opened its inaugural Los Angeles exhibition with a show of new works by John Baldessari.  Located across the street from LACMA on Wilshire’s Miracle Mile, the new gallery boasts two floors of paintings, its street-facing windows covered in Baldessari’s iconic scrawl, “I will not make any more boring art.”  The sixteen works in the show do not disappoint, showcasing the artist’s trademark conceptual wit in a series of works emblematizing his interest in visual and textual modes of communication, artistic authorship and the notion of absence.  Having worked across a vast range of media and styles he states descends from Duchamp, Baldessari continues to explore the agency of the viewer in finding and defining meaning in his pieces.

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Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers

For the most recent new exhibition in Berlin, Sprüth Magers has brought together work from thirteen artists under the title Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens.  Curated by Goodroom and Johannes Fricke Waldthausen, the exhibition features works by Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Andy Hope 1930, Oliver Laric, Jon Rafman, and Andro Wekua, among others.  Intended to navigate visitors through the intersecting narratives within the realm of surrealist animation, abstraction and the ideas of “New Materialism” as expressed through the greater logistics of the world wide web, the exhibition references the notion of the screen as a critical tool of the conscious and unconscious, as well as a surface for projections of communication and technological abstraction.   (more…)