The First Annual Art Awards via Guggenheim.org

Last night, October 29, marked the inauguration of a new annual art event: Rob Pruitt presented The First Annual Art Awards at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Yorkin association with the city’s oldest alternative art space, White Columns.

The awards were conceived by artist, Rob Pruitt, as a performance-based artwork; for the occasion he recruited the characters of Index Magazine’s wry satirical web series, Delusional Downtown Divas. The New York Times have reported that “…the Divas schemed to infiltrate the art establishment by any means possible. In one segment they pitched a tent in the Guggenheim, doing their laundry in the lobby fountain.”

Jeffrey Deitch and Kembra Pfahler at The First Annual Art Awards at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum via style.com

More images, text and related links after the jump….

(more…)

Holy War by David Lachapelle via ArtObserved

David Lachapelle’s “Auguries of Innocence” collection is everything but austere.  Overt images of violence, sexual practice, religious imagery, and glutenous materialism are synergized into monumental collages.
Notables in attendance included Andre Balazs, Gavin Brown, Hope Atherton, Amanda Lepore, and Tony Shafrazi. Lepore and Lachapelle have had a prolific history of collaboration, one of the most famous being Lachapelle’s New York exhibit “Artists and Prostitutes 1985-2005,” in which Lepore inhabited a voyeuristic themed life-sized set.
This is the fourth solo show Lachapelle has exhibited at Shafrazi Gallery, the first being his “All American” show in 2002. The exhibit will be open to the public until October 24.

David Lachapelle Official Website
“Less about the Lil Kim’s of the world and more about its lil problems” [Timeout NY]
Tony Shafrazi Official Website

(more…)

Rob Pruitt, Viagra Falls (2008) via Tony Shafrazi Gallery

“Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns?” runs from May 9 – July 12 at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York. Gavin Brown and Swiss artist Urs Fischer organized this show, which has been garnering a strong amount of publicity. Be sure to click on Art Observed’s exclusive covering of the opening. The exhibition celebrates juxtapositions throughout art and pays homage to Shafrazi’s legendary defacing of Picasso in the seventies by irreverent displays of art work out of context with traditional presentation. Different mediums, spaces, and uses of objects are shown. There are works from a wide range of artists, including,  Jeff Koons, Francis Bacon, Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman, to Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Tony Shafrazi Gallery
When Artworks Collide [NY Times]
Tony Shafrazi Defaces ‘Guernica’ Again [NY Magazine]
Picks: Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns?” [ArtForum]
Tony Shafrazi Defaces ‘Guernica’ Again [NYMag]
AO on site: Fischer & Brown at Tony Shafrazi Gallery [ArtObserved]

(more…)