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George Condo, Cocktail Drinker (1995) All images via Luhring Augustine

In commemoration of their 25th anniversary, Luhring Augustine is hosting an exhibition titled, “Twenty Five.” The show pulls together works from the gallery’s past and present by artists including Janine Antoni, Nobuyoshi Araki, Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller, Larry Clark, George Condo, Gregory Crewdson, William Daniels, Günter Förg, Zarina Hashmi, Johannes Kahrs, Jon Kessler, Martin Kippenberger, Ragnar Kjartansson, Luisa Lambri, Glenn Ligon, Paul McCarthy, Yasumasa Morimura, Daido Moriyama, Reinhard Mucha, David Musgrave, Cady Nolan, Alberta Oehlen, Ed Paschke, Jack Pierson, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Stephen Prina, Pipilotti Rist, Josh Smith, Joel Sternfeld, Tunga, Guido van der Werve, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Williams, Steve Wolfe, and Christopher Wool.

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Installation view, Luhring Augustine

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Artist Paul Ramírez Jonas at the Key to the City kiosk in Times Square – all images by Lucy Kissel for ArtObserved

Together with the public arts organization Creative Time, New York-based artist Paul Ramírez Jonas has reinvented the civic honor of bestowing a “Key to the City” for one of the summer’s most exciting public art programs. Through June 27, 25,000 custom-made keys will be exchanged between everyday citizens in a bestowal ceremony at the Key to the City kiosk located at the heart of Times Square – catapulting a citywide exploration of secret doors, community gardens, graveyards and hidden deposit boxes at over 20 sites throughout the five boroughs of New York City. Mayor Bloomberg – who normally awards the ceremonial key to distinguished heroes and esteemed visitors – received the first one yesterday. “Every day, millions of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world interact with one another in every neighborhood” Bloomberg said, noting how the project “celebrates those interactions by helping bring a tradition typically reserved for special occasions to our everyday lives. The keys….will provide New Yorkers with a new way to experience some of our cultural organizations, city landmarks and small businesses.” Participants are encouraged to share their photos of the project on the Key to the City Flickr Page – a special prize from DKNY and a Creative Time book will be awarded to every person who takes a photo of themselves at all of the sites. Information on public hours, a map of the various sites and how to get to the kiosk can be found on the Key to the City website.

More images and a round-up of related links after the jump….
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Installation views, Martin Creed & Jonathan Horowitz at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.
All images via Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

On view at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise are concurrent solo shows by artists Martin Creed and Jonathan Horowitz. Creed has fashioned a site-specific installation by remaking the gallery floor into a collage of more than 100 different slabs of marble. The exhibit also includes paintings, performance works, and the premier of a new film. The multi-room installation “Go Vegan” by Horowitz offers a unique perspective on vegetarianism and sustainability, and addresses the ever growing consumption of commoditized pop culture in contemporary society. This marks the inaugural exhibition of the newly expanded space at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, which now extends into the 10,000 square foot space formerly occupied by the butchery and meat purveyor Pat LaFrieda Meats.

more story, images and links after the jump…

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Rirkrit Tiravanija Untitled (Asile Flottant), 2010. Installation view. Via Galerie Chantal Crousel.

Rirkrit Tiravanija‘s fourth solo show at Galerie Chantal Crousel combines the artist’s interest in social architecture and the intersection between politics and everyday life into an installation entitled Asile Flottant (Floating Asylum). Tiravanija has re-created Le Corbusier‘s barge of the same name (1930), designed for the Salvation Army as a floating refuge for Parisian vagrants and prostitutes in the winter, and as a playground for children in the summertime. Le Corbusier conceived of the work as a model for a new social community for the underclass. Tiravanija’s re-creation of the barge was made by workers in Thailand and is on a half-scale proportion to the original, exploring the barge as a structure for living and socializing in a new context.

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Omer Fast Talk Show, 2010. With actress Lili Taylor. All images: A Performa Commission co-produced by Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund, Edith Russ House for Media Arts, Oldenburg and Goethe Institute. Photo by Olimpia Dior. Courtesy of the Artist and Arratia, Beer, Berlin.

Currently on view at Arratia Beer is a new video piece entitled Talk Show by Omer Fast. The work was originally recorded in front of a live audience as part of Performa in 2009, and continues Fast’s interest in the liminal space between fact and fiction as mediated by film. Set in a theatrical, talk show like setting, the film records Lisa Ramaci relating her personal story about the Iraq war to actress Rosie Perez, who was hearing the account for the first time. When Ramaci finishes her story, Perez re-tells the story to another performer. This process of re-telling is repeated for a total of six renditions, and, much like the childhood game of Telephone that the work is inspired by, results in many factual errors and even becomes comedic.

Omer Fast Talk Show, 2010. Courtesy of the Artist and Arratia, Beer, Berlin.

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Conrad Shawcross, The Nervous System (Inverted), 2010. Organized and presented by the Pace Gallery. Installed at The Sculpture Garden, 590 Madison Avenue. May 10 – July 10, 2010. Wood, metal, acrylic chord, and mechanical system. Installation dimensions variable. Image via ArtObserved.

Conrad Shawcross: The Nervous System (Inverted) is an evolutionary piece that combines art and invention, a sculpture that completes itself as the audience looks on.  At 590 Madison Avenue, New York, 162 multicolored bobbins suspend 50 feet in the air, feeding rope into motorized contraptions.   The inconspicuously gradual weaving and intertwining, set against the glassy atrium ceiling, occurs at multiple levels of the piece.  The ropes combine in groups of three until one entity remains: a thick, colorfully woven rope that hangs to the floor, where it passes through a pulley and coils finally in a heap.  The complex machinery will ultimately produce one sturdy, 1,7000-foot braided rope, which will be cut into pieces and sold at the exhibition’s close.

Conrad Shawcross, The Nervous System (Inverted), 2010.

More text and images after the jump…

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Leon Golub, ALARMED DOG ENCOUNTERING PINK!, 2004. Oil stick and ink on Bristol. 8 x 10 inches. All images: Art © Estate of Leon Golub/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photograph by Cathy Carver.

The current show at the Drawing Center in New York exhibits 43 drawings and works on paper by Leon Golub made between the years 1999 and his death in 2004. Golub is primarily known for his visceral large-scale paintings of war, torture, and the darker side of humanity. The drawings however, display a different side to Golub’s art making process, and reflect the range of his interests–satyrs, sex, animals, classical art, death, and graffiti all appear in these late drawings.

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