No Title (We embrace them), Raymond Pettibon (2010). All images via Gladstone Gallery

On view at Gladstone Gallery Brussels is a collection of new works on paper by renowned Southern California artist Raymond Pettibon. This exhibition further delves into Pettibon’s fascination with American culture and iconography, with an assortment of drawings executed in his signature style. Combining imagery and text from a wide array of sources, Pettibon has increasingly explored new applications of color and collage, creating densely fragmented scenes that inspect the disjointed and sometimes sinister impulses at work in past and present constructions of Americana.

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Important Russian Art at Sotheby’s via Artdaily

On June 9, at 7 p.m. the inaugural sale of Important Russian Art at Sotheby’s, London kicked off a much anticipated series of Russian- themed sales taking place at Christie’s, Bonhams and MacDougall Auction House – a unique enterprise specializing in Russian art exclusively.  The sale at Sotheby’s brought in £10.4 million ($15 million) , nearly meeting its £11.3 million ($16.3 million) high estimate.

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Brown Skin, Stanislava Kovalcikova, 2010; Green Face Bar, Peter Doig and Chris Ofili, 2000; Past Tense, Embah, 2010; Port of Spain, Peter Doig and Chris Ofili, 2000. Installation view, ‘Self-Consciousness,’ via VeneKlasen Werner.

‘Self-Consciousness’ at VeneKlasen Werner, Berlin, features the portraits of 41 international artists.  Curators Hiltons Als and Peter Doig selected pieces that represent the diversity and evolution of modern portraiture: artists come from several generations, use varying media, and range from established to outsider.  ‘Self-Consciousness’ juxtaposes distinct artists and their work in such a way that questions the definable qualities of portraiture.  Despite myriad styles and genres, many of the artists share a common exploration of themes of sexuality, race, and gender.  Among the featured artists are Boscoe Holder, Giorgio de Chirico, Alice Neel, Glenn Ligon, and Chris Ofili.

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Oranienplatz 17, Berlin – Kreuzberg. All images by Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

Of the circuit of international biennials, Berlin’s event remains one of the most unpredictable and fresh contemporary art forums around. Opening to the general public on June 11th, the Kathrin Rhomberg-curated Berlin Biennal is titled: what is waiting out there.  The exhibition cites its crux in the ambiguity of reality, space, and time: out there. Spreading its reach across six venues–4 in Kreuzberg district, 2 in Mitte)–the Biennial unfolds into an artistic treasure hunt, both in terms of the pieces it presents, and in the unusual environments Rhomberg has selected for the exhibitions. Berlin’s eclectic atmosphere serves as a natural complement to the aesthetics and emotions of the show.

Sprawling across the 2nd floor Oranienplatz 17 gallery is a work by Marcus Geiger, titled Kommune. Image via Welt.de

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Sigmar Polke in his studio, 2007.  Albrecht Fuchs for The New York Times.

Sigmar Polke, the founder of the Capitalist Realism (Kapitalistischen Realismus) movement in Germany in 1963,  passed away yesterday in Cologne, Germany. Polke was 69, and passed away due to complications of cancer, as his dealer Erhard Klein confirmed. Polke was a painter, photographer, and printmaker who created multi-layered works combining elements from American Pop art, abstraction, parodies of consumer society, and a subversive use of materials. Polke’s experimentation with technology, and his hybridization of artistic influences was highly influential for generations of German artists.

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Half Gallery, opening reception. Image by ArtObserved.

AO was on site June 8th for the opening of “A Ways A Way,” the new exhibition at Half Gallery.  Curated by Meredith Darrow and Devendra Banhart, A Ways A Way offers synoptic views of work by artists Scott Campbell, William Eadon, Kevin Long, Megan Marrin, Keegan McHargue, Fabrizio Moretti, Angeline Rivas, Adam Tullie, and Banhart himself.  Coming from various corners of the artistic field, these men and women form a motley roster of familiar names: in addition to be being creators of fine art, Campbell is a renowned tattoo artist, Eadon is a deisgner, Long skateboards and plays guitar, Moretti is the drummer for The Strokes and Little Joy, Rivas and Tullie co-own Cavern Collection, Banhart is a singer-songwriter, Marrin works in mixed-media, and McHargue choreographs.  In attendance last night were Cynthia Rowley, Kathy Grayson, and a repletion of artists, gallerists, friends, and passerby.  Viewers spilled jocundly onto the surrounding sidewalk, chatting and enjoying a lovely night outside of the diminutive, buzzing gallery.

Anonymous Portrait, Fabrizio Moretti, 2010. Image by Oskar Proctor for ArtObserved.

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Lisa Yuskavage, Walking the Dog, 2009, oil on linen, 77 x 65 inches, 195.6 x 165.1cm, courtesy of Greengrassi Gallery.

Currently on view at Greengrassi Gallery in London is a solo exhibition of oil paintings by Lisa Yuskavage. This show is Yuskavage’s fourth, solo exhibition at Greengrassi. A new series of paintings are featured depicting realistic, yet often exaggerated, sexualized female figures set in whimsical interiors and landscapes. The fictional world created by the juxtaposition of highly erotic figures in such fantastical environments establishes an unsettling mood.

Lisa Yuskavage, Piggyback Ride, 2009, oil on linen, 60 x 50 inches, 152.4 x 127 x 5.1cm, courtesy of Greengrassi Gallery.

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Title to be Determined, Nate Lowman, 2010, bulletproof glass and bullets (detail view). Images by J. Swan for Art Observed.

On view at Andrea Rosen Gallery is the unusual pairing of artists Karla Black and Nate Lowman, two artists whose works address a general groundlessness, or rather, whose works evinces an almost petulant objection to groundlessness.  In partnership with Mary Mary and Maccarone, this exhibition, closing June 19th, displays recent works of painting and sculpture, executed in materials ranging from traditional alkyd paint on canvas to its self-conscious coupling with retired gas pumps, to guileful manipulations of paper that serve to threaten the material’s core integrity.

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Installation view, Yoshitomo Nara, 2010. All images via Tomio Koyama Gallery.

Yoshitomo Nara has unveiled his first series of ceramic sculptures at Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo.  Nara has been studying sculpture for the past year at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, where he created almost 20 pieces.  Nara’s new work maintains his characteristic stylization of children, a trademark painter A.R. Penk has described as “angelic.” Like Nara’s drawings, his sculptures seem both innocent and disconcerting: lines are thick and simple, colors are bold and basic, eyes are either closed or blank.  Nara’s subjects, however, often cry, bleed, possess fangs, and brandish knives.  Of this conflation of puerility and severity, Nara explains, “I kind of see the children among other, bigger, bad people all around them, who are holding bigger knives…”

Installation view, Yoshitomo Nara, 2010

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Installation view, Jorge Pardo, 2010. All images via Friedrich Petzel Gallery.

Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York City, presents a new installation by Jorge Pardo, a porous maze furnished with images from the internet.  Pardo’s structures form narrow passageways through which observers must walk, an action reminiscent of negotiating library stacks.  Observers navigate an amalgamation of memories and images, taking in landscapes, monuments, and faces out of context.  The curving nature of the piece and the carefully cataloged bank of information lend the gallery a cerebral nature.

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Portrait with a Golden Mask, Marina Abramovic (2010) All images via Sean Kelly Gallery.

Currently on view at Sean Kelly Gallery is “Marina Abramovic: Personal Archaeology.”  While the Abramovic retrospective at MoMA recently ended, this show continues until mid-June. Compared with MoMA, the relatively smaller space and the less crowded galleries at Sean Kelly Gallery gives the viewer a chance to engage with Abramovic’s work in a more intimate setting. Personal Archaelogy presents many of the iconic works of this seminal performance artist from the 1970s up until the present day.

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Installation view, “Stranger Than Fiction.” All photographs by Keith Lew.

Last Friday, June 4th, ArtObserved was on site for the opening of “Stranger than Fiction,” the MFA thesis show of photography students of the Yale University School of Art. Curated by  the co-founders of Helac & Wirth Art Advisory  Soraja Helac and Sabrina Wirthand, the show is hosted at artist-run gallery space 25CPW on the Upper West Side. The opening was packed with dealers, collectors, and art students alike. The MFA program is directed by Tod Papageorge and taught by artists Gregory Crewdson and Richard Benson. The nine graduates come from eclectic backgrounds and are working with diverse subjects and distinctive styles.

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Blackboard Tableau #1, Vija Celmins, 2007-2010. 3 found tablets, 7 made tablets, wood, paper, string, acrylic, alkyd oil, and pastel. Image via McKee Gallery.

Vija Celmins’ first gallery show in nine years features paintings, prints, and sculptures.  At the core of the exhibition are Celmins’ assemblages of neatly arranged objects that recall an outmoded and cerebral academic youth: globes, maps, tablets, and books, are bronze-cast or painted. Celmins presents 16 such objects, in addition to 4 paintings and 9 new prints.  Her exhibition at the McKee Gallery characteristically combines the personal and terrestrial with the cosmic.

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Shooting into the Corner, Anish Kapoor, 2009. Image via Scai the Bathhouse.

Anish Kapoor has installed five new sculptures at Scai the Bathhouse, Tokyo.  This is the third time Kapoor has exhibited his sculptures at the Japanese contemporary art gallery.  Although from Mumbai, India, Scai’s location prompted Kapoor to draw inspiration from Japanese craft, and to collaborate with an urushi lacquerware artist.

Untitled, Anish Kapoor, 2009. Image via Scai the Bathhouse.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Louise Bourgeois in her Brooklyn studio in 1992. Photo courtesy The New York Times.

Louise Bourgeois, one of the world’s most celebrated sculptors, passed away today at the age of 98. The news was announced by an Italian foundation preparing an exhibition of the artist’s work in Venice, and was confirmed by Wendy Williams, the managing director of the Louise Bourgeois Studio. The cause of death was heart attack, and occurred at the Beth Israel Medical Center. Bourgeois was a leader of feminist art, and is known most recently for her large-scale metal spider sculptures, as well as psychologically-charged roughly-textured depictions of sex organs.

Bourgeois’s 30-ft spider sculpture outside the Tate Modern in 2007. Photo courtesy the BBC.

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Untitled by Richard Diebenkorn, 1950. All images via Artnet unless otherwise noted.

Currently on view at Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York, is an exhibition titled “Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Works on Paper 1949-1955″. Organized in cooperation with the Estate of Richard Diebenkorn, this exhibition features thirty-six works on paper  of this well-known American artist, whose early work is associated with Abstract Expressionism.

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All images courtesy of Patrick McMullan

On Wednesday night, AOL inc. kicked-off their 25th Anniversary celebrations in New York with an intimate ceremony at the New Museum to launch Project on Creativity – a new initiative spearheaded by a series of portraits of the innovators and creatives photographed by American artist Chuck Close – a select few, including images Dalai Lama, segway inventor Dean Kamen, artist Kara Walker, director Gus Van Sant and the actress Claire Danes, were displayed in the Seventh-Floor Sky Room at the Museum which was packed with the members of the New York society world including Andy and Kate Spade, Lisa Anastos, Genevieve Jones, Jennifer Missoni, Will Cotton, Waris Ahlualia, Glenn O’Brien, Bill Powers and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. The ground floor of the museum was dedicated to a high-tech display of original artwork by four artists from around the world who are part of a larger group of 41 young artists who are to be featured on AOL’s homepage as well as AOLArtists.com – a new destination where users can learn more about how AOL is using creative expression across their sites and the artists who created involved. In addition to these initiatives, AOL representatives used the evening as an opportunity to announce plans for 25 for 25 – a scholarship program, which will grant 25 $25,000 scholarships to tomorrow’s journalists, artists, illustrators, chefs, producers, videographers, and editors. The evening continued for guests who headed a few blocks north to the Bowery hotel for the official after party which was headlined by an intimate performance John Legend.

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