AO Art Observed™

Anselm Kiefer, Merkaba (2011)

Anselm Kiefer presents his largest show in London yet, covering over 11,000 square feet of the new White Cube Bermondsey gallery, Il Mistero delle Cattedrali. With ties to Fulcanelli’s publication of the same name (published in 1926), the show explores his longtime fascination with alchemy and its processes, Kiefer bringing to light the mystical notions behind the pseudo-scientific procedure. “In the past the alchemists sped up this process with magical means. That was called magic,” Kiefer states. “As an artist I don’t do anything differently. I only accelerate the transformation that is already present in things. That is magic, as I understand it.”

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‪‬ Almost 50% of the New Delhi 4th annual India Art Fair (formerly India Art Summit) comes from Western Galleries, including White Cube, Hauser & Wirth, Paul Kasmin and Galleria Continua. [AO Newslink]

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Will Ryman’s Roses being installed on Miami Beach. Image via The Art Newspaper.

Art Observed is on site for this year’s 10th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach which officially runs December 1–4, with previews and parties throughout the entire week beginning on Tuesday, November 29th. More than 260 galleries from around the world will be representing over 2,000 artists, not including the several satellite shows taking place simultaneously across Miami, including NADA, SCOPE, Pulse, and the original Art Miami—twelve years Basel’s senior. Attracting 46,000 visitors in 2010, the fair is expanding every year, with various collaborations and special additions celebrating its 10th. The Swiss-based Basel art fair installment in Miami has evolved into something that may have lost some of its innocence from its earlier days but in the end has become the definitive closing party for the art market’s year. There have been many previews and summaries of the fair, the following is our view of the week to come.

Hennessy Youngman, still from ART THOUGHTZ: Relational Aesthetics. Via Youtube.
Youngman will be speaking at NADA Deauville Beach Resort on Thursday at 5 pm.

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Installation view of Tracey Emin, The Vanishing Lake (2011). All images by Stephen White courtesy of White Cube.

The Vanishing Lake, Tracey Emin’s White Cube-curated exhibition housed at 6 Fitzroy Square, is a meditation on personal metamorphosis. A new series of self portraits that were inspired by her novel of the same name provide the exhibition’s focal point while other works—including textual light installations and large-scale tapestries of her provocative paintings—help create an overwhelming sense of romantic melancholia.

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Crowds outside the Grand Palais on the public opening of FIAC, October 21, 2011. All photographs for Art Observed on site by Caroline Claisse.

After two days of previews, FIAC opened its doors to the Paris public on Friday, October 21st. Jill Silverman, Director of Paris/Salzburg-based gallery Thaddaeus Ropac, tells Art Observed that the fair presents “a very good cross section of European collectors.” FIAC is one of the most nationally-focused art fairs, boasting a solid 32% of French exhibitors, whereas last week’s Frieze in London had only 25% British galleries. American presence increased this year with several New York galleries making their debut at the fair: Matthew Marks, Eleven Rivington, Andrew Kreps, Michele Maccarone and Friedrich Petzel. After a 30+year absence, Pace Gallery made a comeback to the fair. Works by seasoned veteran Damien Hirst are exhibited at both White Cube and Gagosian. Anish Kapoor also has work spread across the fair, whose gargantuan installation Leviathan filled the entire interior of the Grand Palais earlier this year. Lisson is showing one of his signature colored concave mirrors in fire-engine red; Kamel Mennour has wine-red, Galeria Continua has green, and Kukje/Tina Kim has purple; all have different price tags. Sales have been strong thusfar; Pace Gallery’s Arne Glimcher told Artinfo, “We had sales right off the bat, it was really fascinating. I hadn’t anticipated this kind of rush, especially in this economy, where Europe is not in as good of shape as America. But I think we have the right artists.” He added, “FIAC is certainly an enormous cut above Frieze.”

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Two Less One (2011) at Galleria Continua

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FIAC 2011 at the Grand Palais in Paris. All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

FIAC 2011 (The Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain) opens this weekend in Paris for its 38th year. The international art fair, which boasts an impressive array of 168 galleries from 21 countries, will show the work of some 2,800+ artists. Running October 20–23rd, the exposition comes at the tail end of Frieze Art Fair, drawing artists, collectors, gallerists, and enthusiasts eastward from London. While the focus of Frieze leans toward contemporary, FIAC includes both contemporary and modern, including works from Picasso, Calder, and Matisse. The fair has been building momentum since 2006; Jennifer Flay, appointed general director in 2010, credits this boost to the fair’s move to the Grand Palais, one of the city’s most cherished architectural gems. The fair also expands this year to the Jardin des Tuileries, the Jardin des Plantes, the Museum of Natural History, and other venues around the city. Another innovation, a mobile application (in French) is available through Windows Phone which enables visitors to book tickets directly from their phone, as well as receive realtime news updates from the fair, find exhibitors and artists, and access videos and photos of the show.

Jay Jopling of White Cube, which is exhibiting Damien Hirst’s Where Will It End.

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London dealer Jay Jopling is profiled by the Guardian as Frieze week is set to begin [AO Newslink]

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White Cube to open third gallery this October 12, in a restored warehouse in Bermondsey area [AO Newslink]

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All images installation views of Jake or Dinos Chapman at White Cube, 2011. Courtesy Coco Bayley for Art Observed.

Jake and Dinos Chapman – The Chapman Brothers – reinstated themselves in the London art scene last week, across the two White Cube galleries.  Both the Mason’s Yard and Hoxton gallery spaces are used in this double act, double venue exhibition.  The show, Jake or Dinos Chapman, runs from the 15th of July to September 17th and is alarmingly extensive.  The brothers are infamous for their elaborate teasing, deliberate vulgarity, and mocking of aestheticism- this show is no different.  However, for the White Cube exhibition, Jake and Dinos Chapman, who have consistently worked together professionally and are known as a gruesome twosome double act, have this year separated and worked alone.  Using different studio spaces, they have been working independently on the content of this exhibition, only having revealed their pieces to one another a few weeks ago.

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Jay Jopling’s White Cube, purveyor of art by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Chapman Bros., to open first overseas branch in Hong Kong, shortly after Larry Gagosian [AO Newslink]

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Georg Baselitz, Haderung (2011), all images via Jochen Littkemann and courtesy of White Cube

German artist, Georg Baselitz is now showing at the White Cube Mason’s Yard in London. In “Between Eagles and Pioneers” Baselitz continues his famous upside-down images while using three main motifs – eagles, dogs and double portraits. These paintings were first shown as images that appeared in the historic edition of the German newspaper ‘Die Welt’ to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of German unification in 2010.

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Yutaka Sone Little Manhattan (2007-2009) at David Zwirner Gallery – All images by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

Art Observed remains on site in Basel, Switzerland for Art 42 Basel 2011.  The following is our second of the photosets of the main fair.  Stay tuned for more coverage of the main fair before the end of the week as well as profiles of the satellite exhibitions and events.

Artist Wim Delvoye before one of his sculptures at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin

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Mona Hatoum, Suspended (2011). All images via White Cube.

Installed on three floors of White Cube Mason’s Yard in London is an exhibition showcasing new work by Mona Hatoum titled Bunker, now on view through April 2nd. Hatoum recently made headlines by joining a group of artists in threatening to boycott the Guggenheim due to allegations that the museum is mistreating laborers constructing the Abu Dhabi branch. While Bunker does not specifically address the boycott, the themes of displacement and violence permeate this latest body of work.

Mona Hatoum, Bunker (2011)

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Mona Hatoum, Current Disturbance (2010) via www.aliraqi.org

Current Disturbance is a singular installation that fills a room at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the third in a series of four displays from the Daskalopoulos Collection in Greece. Using Marcel Duchamp’s infamous “Fountain” as a starting point, “Keeping It Real: An Exhibition in 4 Acts” seeks to explore the line between art and reality and the relationship between the artist and the tactile world.  British – Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum‘s light-filled creation was first shown in 1996 at the Capp Street Project, San Francisco and is now being shown through March as a part of Whitechapel Gallery’s initiative to open private collections for public viewing. The installation is comprised of stacked wire cages, a multiplicity of light bulbs and the amplified sound of the electric currents coursing through the enclosed system. The interminable low buzz emitting from the structure, combined with the arbitrary flickering of light bulbs conveys a certain sense of discomfort and oppression that provides an open-ended commentary much in keeping with Hatoum’s widely political body of work.

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Richard Phillips in front of Most Wanted, via Telegraph

Richard Phillips is blowing up pop art onto two-meter canvases full of celebrity in his new exhibition Most Wanted, on now at White Cube through March 5. In a saturated, Technicolor hyperrealist style, complete with Richard Bernstein-esque neon outlines, Phillips has painted in oil ten current pop-culture icons: Chace Crawford, Kristen Stewart, Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Momsen, Dakota Fanning, Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, and Robert Pattinson.

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Christian Marclay, The Clock (still), 2010. Via River00000

Debuting at White Cube this past October (and already covered by AO), Christian Marclay‘s The Clock has been warmly accepted in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery, with several 24-hour screenings throughout the exhibition, through February 19th. Splicing together a day’s worth of found film, the artist and six assistants spent two years on the project, drawing from classics like “Great Expectations” and “Mary Poppins,” to more recent films like “Tomb Raider.” Every single clip makes reference to the time—moving in realtime—with clocks synced to the actual time of New York (or wherever it’s showing). The highly acclaimed work is to be included in the British Art Show 7, a group exhibition ran only every five years, touring to the Hayward Gallery, Tramway-Glasgow, and Plymouth Art Centre later this year.

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Inside the Bermondsey Street warehouse, via NovaLoca

London art dealer Jay Jopling has just announced that the former Recall warehouse in Bermondsey Street will soon be converted to a gallery under his White Cube umbrella.  Jopling, through White Cube, represents such artists as Jake & Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Marc Quinn and his former wife Sam Taylor-Wood, among others.

Jay Jopling, via The Rich Life

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Art dealer Jay Jopling at the White Cube booth

Art Observed was on-site December 1st for the VIP Preview of Art Basel Miami Beach 2010, which opened to the public this morning at 10 a.m. Like most international fairs of its scale and scope, the work presented broadly underscores the trends witnessed across commercial markets and throughout museum and gallery exhibitions over the past several months. It also affords individual institutions an important opportunity to distinguish themselves from their peers, and provide fresh and immediate insight into the nuances and complexities of contemporary taste.

Richard Jackson, Upside Down Duck at the Kordansky Gallery Booth

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Quilt by Alexandre da Cunha, and Six Billboards by Angus Fairhust, Art Basel.  Image via Art Daily, AP Photo/Keystone/Georgios Kefalas.

Yesterday marked the end of the most highly-attended Art Basel to date. The 41st annual contemporary art fair boasted 306 galleries from 36 countries, and AO was on site to peruse the work of some 2,5000 artists.  62,500 dealers, collectors, curators, high-profile shoppers, artists, and art appreciators navigated installations, browsed gallery booths, mingled, and enjoyed the city of Basel.  Artists, established and newcomers both, showcased works ranging from Polaroids to performance pieces, paintings to videos, sculptures to large-scale installations.  A social and teeming affair with an obvious commercial edge, Basel’s sales were optimistic.  Picasso, Warhol, Prince, Hirst, de Kooning, Pollock, and other similarly established artists reigned supreme as the focus of this year’s event.  Franck Giraud, a New York dealer, spoke to the New York Times about the lack of prominently featured up-and-comers: “Is it because that’s what the market wants, or is it because dealers didn’t want to take risks? I think it was a bit of both.” Nonetheless, certain galleries used Basel as a platform to introduce new artists and show off their latest signings.

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Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.

AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show.  On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum.  If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.   A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters.  This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a  meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively.  Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector.  Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs.  Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000.  Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,” valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.

Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,” at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.

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Man in the Mirror (2010) by Marc Quinn, via The Guardian.

Currently on view at White Cube Hoxton Square is “Allanah, Buck, Catman, Chelsea, Michael, Pamela, and Thomas,” a new body of work by British artist Marc Quinn. The exhibit brings together new sculptures by the artist which depict individuals after having gone through extreme amounts of plastic surgery including hormone therapy, piercings, implants and transplants. The works emphasize Quinn’s continual interest in society’s obsession with the body and how it can be transformed.

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Breathing Room III (2010) by Antony Gormley, via White Cube

Currently on view at the White Cube, Mason’s Yard in London is an exhibition of new works by Antony Gormley. The artist has created a new-site specific installation and a new series of cast-iron block work sculptures. The works aim to depict how time engages with objects and how in turn objects influence human beings.

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Candice Breitz, Factum Kang, From the series ‘Factum,’ 2009

Don’t miss Candice Breitz’s third exhibition at the White Cube in Hoxton Square, London. The exhibition, entitled “Factum” after Robert Rauschenberg’s almost identical canvases, Factum I and II, is an investigation into four twins and one triplet. Breitz has created beautifully intimate video portraits of each twin, which when coupled together in a kind of diptych, reveal the subtleties and nuances that make one individual. It is an extension of her perpetual fascination with repetition, identity and portraiture. By examining a phenomenon we wrongly presume as naturally and biologically identical we are encouraged to accept how very different twins really are.

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End of an Era (2009) by Damien Hirst, via the Gagosian Gallery

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue are new sculptures and paintings by Damien Hirst.  The exhibition takes its title, “End of an Era,” from the central sculpture of the exhibition: a severed bull’s head with golden horns and a solid gold circular disc cast in formaldehyde and encased in a gold vitrine on a marble pedestal.  Hirst’s September 2008 monumental Sotheby’s London auction, where he famously circumvented his dealers, is widely recognized as marking the top of the recent art market rise. In this this auction the centerpiece was the “The Golden Calf” which sold for £10,345,250 with buyer’s premium and was cited as a reference to Hirst’s representation of cultural excess, worshipping false idols and likely Hirst’s own myth making.  The current exhibition title, and the decapitated head of basically the same artistic work, certainly has Hirst again presenting self-referential messages in light of his work’s current cultural and economic context.

Painful Memories/ Forgotten Tears (2008) by Damien Hirst, via Gagosian Gallery

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