Julie Mehretu, A Love Supreme (2018), via Art Observed

Long time friends Tacita Dean and Julie Mehretu have teamed up for a unique exhibition concept at Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris month, a show that winds through a broad range of varied techniques in abstraction. Dean and Mehretu are presenting two new works emblematic of their respective practices: Suite of Nine, a series of chalk drawings on slate depicting a solar eclipse and A Love Supreme, a large painting in ink and acrylic on canvas. On the occasion of the exhibition, the two artists decided to create in parallel 45 monotypes each. Composed of 90 works covering the walls of the gallery’s lower level, the installation Monotype Melody (ninety works for Marian Goodman) reflects a unique bond shared by the artists.

Julie Mehretu and Tacita Dean (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Tacita Dean, c/o Jolyon, 2012-2013 (detail), courtesy Frith Street Gallery

The current exhibition on view at Frith Street Gallery in London features Tacita Dean’s 2012-2013 projects, JG  (a 26.5 minute film shot on 35mm anamorphic film) and c/o Jolyon, a series of 100 original postcards of pre-war Kassel in Germany, overpainted with contemporary scenes from the same place.

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Tacita Dean, Fatigues (F) (2012), via Marian Goodman Gallery

Marian Goodman Gallery is currently hosting the first showing of Tacita Dean’s, Fatigues, a recent series of drawings initially exhibited in Kassel at this past summer’s documenta (13).

Tacita Dean, Fatigues (Installation view), via Marian Goodman Gallery

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Fridericianum in Kassel via dOCUMENTA

Every five years, the city of Kassel in Germany plays host to dOCUMENTA, a colossal, 100-day long exhibition of contemporary art from all over the world.  Participating artists are provided at least two years to complete their work and the results are thus consistently thorough and complex.  This year is dOCUMENTA’s thirteenth edition and is expected to attract more than 750,000 visitors, nearly twice that of last year’s Venice Biennale.

Yan Lei‘s  “Limited Art Project”, a room of works completed daily over the past year.  The room and the art hung on its walls will be sprayed over with car paint, retransforming every piece into a blank canvas.  This image is featured on BBC News’ Big Picture series.

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‪‬Documenta 13 artist list announced: beginning June 9, 2012, the 100 day, once-every-five-years event will feature over 150 artists from 55 countries

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‪‬New Museum announces spring exhibition schedule (May through August) featuring focused solo presentations by Phyllida Barlow, Tacita Dean, Nathalie Djurberg, Klara Lidé [AO Newslink]

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Doug Aitken, Now (2011) at 303 Gallery NY. All photos for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

AO is on site in London for this week’s Frieze Art Fair. With 173 galleries selling an estimated $350 million worth of art, a level of anxiety pervades as the week’s results will be indicative of the overall international contemporary art market. Works like Christian Jankowski’s droll The Finest Art on Water and Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine directly comment on the world economic state, while the overall demeanor remains upbeat, with art world moguls and A-list celebrities enjoying the festivities.

Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine (2011), Thomas Dane Gallery

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‪‬Tacita Dean unveils ‘Film,’ a 35 mm film on a 13 meter tall screen as the 2011 Unilever series commission at the Tate Modern [AO Newslink]

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René Magritte, La Carte d’après Nature, numèro spècial (January 1954). All images via Matthew Marks

Matthew Marks is currently exhibiting “La Carte D’Aprés Nature” curated by gallery-represented artist Thomas Demand. It features three rarely-seen paintings by René Magritte supplemented by sculptures, photographs, and films by established and emerging artists that explore themes similar to the late Surrealist’s. Demand has pulled pieces from all over the world, from varying disciplines and times, that speak of Magritte’s “carte d’aprés nature,” or “map of nature.” Demand tells the Observer, “I wanted there to be the feeling of something strange.”

René Magritte, Le grand style (The Great Style) (1951)

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Turbine Hall, Tate Modern. Via ArtInfo

Tacita Dean will take over Tate Modern‘s Turbine Hall on October 11, 2011. As the 12th artist in the Unilever-sponsored series, she will replace Ai Weiwei‘s floor of Sunflower Seeds. Though she is best known for her work with 16mm film, she uses other mediums as well, including found objects, photography, drawing, and sound. Tate Modern’s chief curator, Sheena Wagstaff, has expressed excitement over the commissioned work’s outcome; in regards to Dean, “Her interest in light, space and history, as well as her keen sense of the cinematic and the sublime, make her a perfect choice.”

Tacita Dean. Via Bloomberg

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Craneway Event Still (2010) by Tacita Dean, via Frith Street Gallery

Currently on view at London’s Frith Street Gallery is “Craneway Event” by Tacita Dean, a one hour and forty-eight minute film featuring legendary modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) and his dancers rehearsing for an event in a former Ford Assembly plant in Richmond, California. It became Cunningham’s last performance captured on film. He died just a few months later after premiering his last work “Nearly Ninety” on his 90th birthday.

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Installation View  All photographs are via Gagosian Gallery unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia street, London is the exhibition titled “Crash, Homage to J.G. Ballard” , a group show dedicated, as the name suggests, to the oeuvre of J.D. Ballard, a prominent British novelist and short-story writer, a representative of the New Wave movement in science fiction.  The exhibition was put together to pay tribute to the enormous cultural influence of J.D. Ballard’s fiction on many visual artists. The impressive selection of works by  such prominent artists as Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton, AndyWarhol and Helmut Newton illustrates profound engagement of the writer with the works of visual artists of his generation and their mutual influence.

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Tacita Dean’s Christmas tree, ‘Weihnachtsbaum‘ at Tate Britain via Zimbio

The Tate has been embracing the Christmas spirit this week with a series of headlining seasonal happenings.  The Tate Christmas Tree 2009, “Weihnachtsbaum” designed by Tacita Dean, shocked critics by actually appearing “Christmassy”[Bloomberg]  This weekend, Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall was taken over by Rob Pruitt‘s festive ‘Flea Market’ – originally held at Gavin Brown’s Passerby gallery in New York in the late 1990s, this event was programmed to coincide with the Tate Modern exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World, in which Pruitt also appears [POP Magazine]

Italian police have seized works of art belonging to Carlisto Tanzi – founder of the Italian firm Parmalat who collapsed in a massive fraud scandal in 2003. The 19 paintings and drawings, included works by Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh, and is estimated to be worth more than 100million euros [BBC News]

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Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon that will appear in New York’s Madison Square Park in March 2010 via ArtInfo

Antony Gormley has announced plans to install 31 nude sculptures cast from his own body in and around Madison Square Park in Manhattan’s Flatiron District beginning March 26 [NY Times]

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Untitled (Grey and Brown) (1991) by Fiona Rae, via Tate Britain

Currently on display at Tate Britain “Classified” presents a collection of the Tate’s newest additions featuring the work of British artists such as Damien Hirst, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Jeremy Deller and Tacita Dean. The exhibit will highlight new acquisitions which will be on display for the the first time such as Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Family Collection (2002) and two works from Damien Hirst’s recent gift to Tate: The Accquired Inability to Escape (1991) and Life Without You (1991).

Exhibition Page
Art at Tate Britain: it’s classified [The Guardian]
Damien Hirst v. the Chapmans at Tate Britain [The Guardian]
Culture Minute Video: Classified at Tate Britain [The Telegraph]
Classified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain [Fadwebsite]

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Tony Cragg’s Big Head (2009), courtesy of the Marian Goodman Gallery, photo by Art Observed.

The 40th installment of Art Basel runs this year from June 10 to the 14th.  The annual event, dubbed the “Olympics of the Art World” by the New York Times, includes this year over 2,500 artists, and works exhibited in almost 300 galleries around the world.  Works range in medium, from painting and drawing to sculpture, installation art, photography, and video.  Featured are both old masters of modern art and contemporary artists: among this year’s roster are the works of Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp and more, alongside that of today’s artists, including John Baldessari, Vanessa Beecroft, and Rebecca Horn.

Related links:
Art_Base [Official Website]
Art Basel Catalog
Art Basel 40 Celebrates the First Art Basel Weekend with Special Presentations [ArtDaily]
Art Basel Shows Works of Art by 2,500 Artists at World’s Premier International Art Fair [ArtDaily]
Editor’s Picks: Art Basel Preview [ArtInfo]
Il Tempo del Postino – “The World’s First Visual Arts Opera” [ArtKey]
The art market: The biggest fairs around the world [the Financial Times]
Trading Places [the Financial Times]
Meanwhile, in Basel, Contemporary Works You Can Buy [Wall Street Journal]
Brad Pitt Buys Big at Basel, with a Little Push from Eli Broad [Wall Street Journal]
Preview sales defy all expectations [The Art Newspaper]
For Art Lovers, Basel Doesn’t End at the Fair [New York Times]
Warhol Price Slashed as Art Basel Fights Slump With Bargains [Bloomberg]
Pitt Buys in Basel as Broad Browses, $2 Million Sculpture Sells [Bloomberg]
Liste: Quality Uneven but Spirits High [ArtInfo]
To Bling or Not to Bling? [ArtInfo]
Locals Rule: Alternative Art Spaces Gear Up for Art Basel [ArtInfo]
BASELMANIA 2009 [ArtNet]
Preview sales defy all expectations [ArtNewspaper]
Forty Years of Art Basel [The Art Newspaper]

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via Maccarone

Much like its title, Corey McCorkle’s current show initially strikes one as cryptic. Sparingly, he scatters a series of remnants across Maccarone’s cavernous West Village space: one room contains architectural photographs of an abandoned zoo, in the adjacent one, a looping video projects images of wild dogs roaming the overgrowth, and around the corner, down a narrow hallway, we come to a mirrored passageway that funnels to a point and creates endless, dizzying reflections. The overall effect is oblique but somehow uncanny, as abandonment haunts these commonplace sites, transforming them into pseudo-romantic ruins: the empty cages, the barren fields, the howling of dogs. And as the sense of desolation grows, so does the show’s subtle but insightful effect. (more…)