Gert & Uwe Tobias, Exhibition Poster, Woodcut, CFA Berlin, 2010. All images via Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin.

Currently on view at Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin is “Neue Arbeiten,” an exhibition of recent work by fraternal collaborative Gert & Uwe Tobias (b. 1973). The show features over fifty pieces by the Romanian-born twins, including ceramic sculpture, drawings, collages, and the colorful, large-scale woodcuts for which they are best known. Their interdisciplinary practice incorporates folkloric imagery, regional iconography, and popular culture, creating a self-referrential, multimedia visual narrative. Like all of their previous exhibitions, they designed a site-specific woodcut poster for the CFA show, which comments upon and participates in the body of work on view.

Gert and Uwe Tobias, Ohne Titel (Untitled), Woodcut, CFA Berlin, 2010.

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Lucian Freud, Eight Months Gone, 199700–>

Jerry Hall, the American model and ex-wife of legendary rocker Mick Jagger, will send 14 works from her collection to auction next month at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Sale in London. Hall’s lots are estimated to fetch at least £1.5 million, and include works by Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, Damian Hirst, Robert Graham, Ed Ruscha, Francesco Clemente, R.B. Kitaj, and Frank Auerbach.

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Damien Hirst, St. Bartholomew Exquisite Pain, 2006. Image via exhibition website.

On view at Gloucester Cathedral through October 30, 2010 is ‘Crucible,’ a large group exhibition of contemporary sculpture displaying more than 75 works of art. The show is installed in both the main building and throughout the grounds, and features work by some of Britain’s most important living artists, including Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley, David Nash, Marcus Harvey, and Lynn Chadwick. Of the participating artists, 13 are members of the Royal Academy of Arts, and 1 Royal Hibernian Academian. The exhibit opened to the public on September 1, and is organized jointly by Glouster Cathedral and Gallery Pangolin.

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I am Sad Leyla by Hussein Chalayan, via Lisson Gallery

My approach has always been interdisciplinary; the new work is an extension of this. There is a certain freedom to working in an art context that has allowed me to further explore the ideas that underpin my work.

-Hussein Chalayan

Currently on view at the Lisson Gallery in London is I am Sad Leyla (Ãœzgünüm Leyla) an exhibition presenting an installation and a film piece by Turkish fashion designer Hussein Chalayan. The designer filmed the Turkish Pop Star Sertab Erener performing the classical Turkish song “I am Sad Leyla” with the accompaniment of an Ottoman orchestra. Visitors will find a life-size sculpture of Erener dressed in Chalayan’s updated version of a traditional Turkish costume upon entering the gallery and they will hear the sound of her voice from the film of her singing playing in the next room.

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Aurel Schmidt, Crap Butterflies, 2010. All images via The Fireplace Project.

Concluding its three-week run at The Fireplace Project in East Hampton this Monday is Aurel Schmidt‘s ‘Summer Bummer:’ an exhibition featuring over a dozen new works on paper by the critically-acclaimed 27 year-old artist. It is the first solo show in almost two years for the 2010 Whitney Biennial selectee, who produced the series on view during a visit to her rural hometown in western Canada earlier this summer.

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Art Observed was on site for Barry McGee’s (aka “TWIST”) new work on the “Deitch Wall” on East Houston and Bowery. With longtime collaborator Josh Lazcano (aka “AMAZE”), Mcgee spray painted simple red tags of the names and crews of graffiti writers from both past and present generations. Watch the video above for AO’s short clip.

All Photos By Jeff Newman/TheArtCollectors

In its past, the wall has exhibited work by Os Gemeos, Keith Haring, and, most recently, Shepard Fairey.

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Ed Ruscha, Baby Jet, 1998. Photo by Paul Ruscha, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Currently on view at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, through September 5, is Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting. This exhibition, which is a collaboration with Hayward Gallery in London, shows more than 70 paintings. It spans the period from 1958, five years prior to his debut in 1963 at the legendary Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, to the present day. Curated by Lars Nittve and Ann-Sofi Noring, the installation groups Ruscha’s works in chronological order so as to allow the viewer to see the development of the artist’s various motifs and styles over time.

The exhibition’s overarching theme, of course, is words and their constantly shifting relationships with context and message. As the curators explain, “In all his paintings there are tensions and frictions at play: between foreground and background, between text and image, and between how words look and what they mean.”

Installation shot, Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years Of Painting. Photo by Ã…sa Lundén, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

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A work by Takashi Murakami at the Palace of Versailles, via Chateau de Versailles00>

The forthcoming exhibition of works by acclaimed Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami at the Palace of Versailles has sparked protests by French traditionalists and conservative groups.  Due to open on the 14th of September, the show will feature 22 works by the artist displayed throughout the Palace and the gardens including 11 pieces created specifically for the exhibition. As with the Jeff Koons’s exhibition, which showed at Versailles in 2008, a group of traditional supporters of the historic Versailles Palace protested against a commercial and at times sensationalist artist showing work in such a landmark of French history.

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Art Observed was on site for MELT: an experimental, site-specific dance installation performed at the Salt Pile in lower Manhattan through September 12, 2010. Choreographed by Noémie LaFrance, best known for staging similar conceptual pieces in unconventional urban spaces, MELT incorporates both the aesthetic and acoustic particulars of its location into a multi-media sensory experience. Watch the video above for AO’s exclusive MELT short clip.

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Dancers in MELT at The Salt Pile. All images by Art Observed.

The 30 minute performance features eight seated women, each harnessed to the wall beneath the Manhattan Bridge. The dancers are wrapped in a mixture of beeswax and lanolin, which gradually softens, drips, and liquefies, in order to create the illusion that they are melting.

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Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, Dreammachine, 1962. Installation View, The New Museum. All images via Artnet

Currently on view at the New Museum is “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine,” the first comprehensive American exhibition to feature the interdisciplinary British artist, writer, and collaborator. Often overlooked, both popularly and commercially, Gysin (1916-1986) has frequently been characterized as a foil of failure within the historical narrative of Beat-Era success stories. He is generally credited as the inventor of the “cut-up” method, a medium which culminated in his co-authorship of the experimental collage-manifesto The Third Mind with William S. Burroughs.

Brion Gysin and William S. Burroghs, The Third Mind, 1965.

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