Richard Armstrong, director of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, via ArtDaily

Helsinki, Finland’s largest city and the Nordic nation’s cultural center, may be home to the sixth museum under the Guggenheim banner. On Tuesday Mayor Jussi Pajunen and the Director of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Richard Armstrong announced that a $2.5 million study will be conducted over the course of 2011 to determine the appropriateness of building a museum in the city. Adding to an already vibrant Helsinki art scene, growing steadily since the 1990s, a Guggenheim endorsement could vastly improve the city’s economic development and infrastructure; the Guggenheim Bilbao paid for itself ten fold in only five years.

Helsinki waterfront, via Viking River

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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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Kazimir Malevich, Untitled (1916) Image via Guggenheim Museum

‘The Geometry of Kandinsky and Malevich” is currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. The show, which includes only seven paintings, features the works of Russian artists Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944). The small scale of the exhibition permits an intensely focused look at two of the pioneers of abstract art. Although all the work is presented in one room, the representative paintings of each artist are hung in distinctly separate areas. This spatial orientation refers to the fact that, although Kandinsky and Malevich were contemporaries, and explored similar formal concepts, they did so independently of one another.

Vasily Kandinsky, In the Black Square (June 1923) Image via Guggenheim Museum

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Above: Karen Kilimnik, Me Corner of Haight & Ashbury, 1966, 1998.
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Below: Joseph Cornell, Untitled, c. 1953.
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Image courtesy of the Artists, 303 Gallery New York and Sprueth Magers Gallery Berlin London.

Currently on view at Sprueth Magers London is “Something Beautiful,” a collaborative show by American artists Joseph Cornell and Karen Kilimnik. Curated by Todd Levin, the exhibition features paintings, collages, and mixed-media installations that reflect the influence of the Romantic-era ballet on both artists.

Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) was an American artist known for pioneering the art of assemblage. Created from found objects, Cornell’s boxes often read like three-dimensional Surrealist paintings. He admired the work of Max Ernst and Rene Magritte, but claimed to have found their work to be too dark.  His work was also inspired heavily by his beliefs in Christian Science, which he adopted in his early twenties. He never received formal training as an artist, but was influenced by American Transcendentalist poetry and French Symbolist painters, such as Mallarme and Nerval. Another motif of his work, 19th century European ballet dancers, comes to life in this exhibition.

Similarly, Karen Kilimnik’s work redeploys discreet objects in a quest for the romantic sublime. Theater and stagecraft have figured strongly in her installations, and her use of particular materials suggests the influence of Cornell. Often making direct references to Degas and other Impressionist painters, Kilimnik’s subjects occupy a nineteenth-century world: one of mystery, drama, and romance.

Anthony Byrt, in his review for Art Forum, refers to Levin’s conceptual approach here as a “bold curatorial statement,” suggesting that the premise upon which the two artists are connected is a precarious one. However, “Ballet aside,” says Byrt, “tangible links do emerge, such as theatricality, quiet spectacle, and ideas of feminine beauty, which both artists explore.”

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Karen Kilimnik, Paris Opera Rats, 1993. Image credited as above.

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Woman on the Horse, 2006 by Fernando Botero.  All images via Marlborough Gallery unless otherwise noted.
[This work is one of the most imposing sculptures in show, with a total weight of 1,600 pounds.]

Currently on view at Marlborough Gallery, Chelsea, New York is an exhibition of the works by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero.  On display in the gallery are works representing classical subjects such as Leda and the Swan, 2007 and Rape of Europe, 2007. The exhibition is on view until May 29th.

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Luc Tuymans The Secretary of State , 2005 on display at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. All images via SFMOMA unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a very significant retrospective of the work of Luc Tuymans,  a renowned artist from Antwerp, Belgium.  This comprehensive retrospective is the first American show of such scale for the artist. The traveling exhibition opened in September 2009 at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, then on January 3, 2010 it traveled to SF MoMA. The show will then travel to Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The exhibition features seventy five paintings produced since 1975 to the present. The retrospective is co-curated by Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (and former SFMOMA Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture), and Helen Molesworth, Maisie K. and James R. Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum (and former chief curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts).

CCTV, 2009

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