Karl Holmqvist, Here’s Good Looking @U Kid (Installation View), via Art Observed

The current exhibition at Gavin Brown’s West Village exhibition space is abrasive, to say the least.  Focused around the life and work of Karl Holmqvist, the three room exhibition is adorned with the artist’s goading vitriol towards New York real estate, gay culture, social media, the art world “star machine,” and what seems to be anything else that crosses his mind, combined with immense, industrial sculptures composed from the letters in words like “Fuck,” “Punk” and “Like.” (more…)

Andrew Kuo, Oops (2/9/15) (2015)

Marlborough Chelsea and its second location on Broome street recently hosted a two-man show featuring the work of Andrew Kuo and Scott Reeder.  Entitled It Gets Beta, this ambitious selection stems from a subdued affinity Kuo and Reeder share in their artistic practice, combining Kuo’s juxtapositions of sharp-edged abstract structures and humorously mundane charts with Reeder’s equally, if not less, witty lists of random topics, a comical one-two punch that plays on various constructions of the art historical as a fertile ground for playful subversion. (more…)

John Baldessari, Movie Scripts/Art: With a Fly Crawling on It (2014), via Art Observed

One of the most prominent names that defines the past 40 years of West Coast conceptualism, John Baldessari is currently presenting a new body of work at Marian Goodman Gallery. Titled Movie Scripts / Art 2014, the series resumes the pioneer’s investigation on the visual language of artworks and the possibility of a dialogue between images, words and cultural formats like film and literature. Baldessari, who has always been curious about the range text can explore in artistic expression, has not been hesitant about placing images next to sentences and written situations, often directly posing questions to the work or offering sarcastic alternatives to its surface level relationships. (more…)

Yoko Ono is profiled in the Wall Street Journal this week, as the artist reflects on her career, and offers advice for young artists following in her footsteps.  “Artists should adhere to what we are, instead of being sidetracked by other desires,” she says.  “We’re supposed to have that independence. But many artists today are, you know, going with this gallery, with that museum, and thinking too much about monetary success, which means they can’t be free. A life of not being challenged and only hearing what you want to hear is being dead.” (more…)

Thomas Slaughter, Boy Scout Jack Knife (2014), all images courtesy of The Drawing Center

On view at The Drawing Center in New York is a comprehensive group show including work by over 65 artists, curated by Lisa Sigal and organized by Heather Hart, Steffani Jemison, and Jina Valentine. Entitled The Intuitionists, the show explores themes and aesthetics of the database, and how collections of information “in flux” are organized.

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A German student has discovered the composition of Joseph Beuys’s iconic brown-hued paint Braunkreuz (brown cross), the Art Newspaper reports.  Beuys used a special rust-proofing agent in his paints, giving them their signature sheen, reports Ole Valler of the Hochschule Rhein-Waal.  “This shows his belief in the strong connection between art and everyday life. Materials have a special meaning in Beuys’s work,” says Barbara Strieder, of the Museum Schloss Moyland.  (more…)

Darren Almond, Fullmoon at Volcanic Archipelago (2013)

Photographer Darren Almond is currently exhibiting a selection of works from both his “Fullmoon” and “Present Form” series, alongside a group of small bronze sculptures at White Cube’s location in the Bermondsey neighborhood of London. The works will remain on view through April 13, 2014. Over a period of 13 years, Almond has worked on a photographic series entitled Fullmoon picturing scenes from every continent, all taken under the light of a full moon. Utilizing long exposure times and well-placed cameras, the images capture details within the darkness that the human eye is normally unable to see, all while adding an eerily surreal atmosphere to the environments on view, stuck somewhere between the bright light of day and dark night. These works represent a continuing effort by Almond to follow themes of geology, myth, and history alongside his fascinations with time and light themselves.

Darren Almond, To Leave a Light Impression (2013), all photos via White Cube

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Street artist Swoon is currently working on a new piece at the corner of Houston and Bowery in downtown New York,part of the Groundswell Community Mural Project.  Taking on the themes of destruction and renewal brought last year by Hurricane Sandy, the piece looks to feautre several swells of populist imagery, centered by a ghostly female figure.   (more…)

Cary Leibowitz, Hey! I’m Not Deppressed Anymore (2013), Courtesy INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York

“Hey! I’m not depressed anymore.” So reads one of the simplistic, shaped canvases currently on view at Cary Leibowitz’s new show at Invisible-Exports.  It’s familiar territory for the artist, whose signature conflations of text and paint frequently dwell on the comical neuroses inherent in modern living, scaled appropriately for the New York art world.  It was Leibowitz, of course, whose enormous wooden sign sat outside the Armory Show earlier this year, reading “I Need to Start Seeing a Therapist,” blowing his work up to monumental scale for the equally daunting size of the exhibition contained within Piers 92 and 94. (more…)

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #138 (1984), via Skarstedt Gallery

Skarstedt Gallery is currently presenting the retrospective 1980’s Revisited, revisiting the works, theories and artists that helped to define the dynamic decade in contemporary art.  Fetauring works by Carroll Dunham, Jenny Holzer, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, David Salle and Cindy Sherman, the show highlights the varied and often conflicting artistic styles of the time, particularly in the newly developing approaches of Appropriation, Neo-Expressionism, and Graffiti.  The 1980’s were a controversial decade for the art world, a period of active boundary breaking by artists looking to challenge contemporary society.

Jeff Koons, One Ball Total Equilibrium (1985), via Skarstedt Gallery

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Air de Pied-à-terre (Installation View), via Lisa Cooley

Walking into  Air de Pied-à-terre, the newest show on display at artist Lisa Cooley’s gallery, one is reminded of an otherworldly hotel lobby. With the help of fellow artist and curator Alan Reid, Cooley has created an “Air de-Pied-à-Terre” (an alternative living space, located away from one’s home). The gallery has numerous articles that evoke a nostalgic atmosphere within the show – mobiles that dance around the room, paintings that mimic children’s creations, and homely looking text juxtaposed against more classical looking portraiture. The entirety of the show is punctuated by stereotypically domestic constituents such as chairs and potted plants that engulf the viewer and invite them to make themselves at home. (more…)

LA Art Show (2013), Installation View

The LA Art show held its opening night premier party on Wednesday, January 23rd at the LA Convention Center. During the Patron Hours, James Franco was the guest of honor and was joined by an eclectic LA crowd, with an incredible mix ranging from the overtly contemporary to the traditionally elegant. Entering its 18th year, the fair has earned a reputation for its well planned juxtaposition of traditional and modern art, and this year’s edition was no different.  The milling crowd moved easily from the traditional to contemporary sections and back, taking their time to comb through the sheer scale of the festival and its one hundred prominent worldwide galleries.

LA Art Show (2013), Installation View

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