James Turrell, Aloka’s Flower (2009), photo by Florian Holzherr, via Garage Center.

American artist James Turrell’s first exhibition in Russia is a retrospective at Moscow’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture. The exhibition consists of works that span Turrell’s long career, from early pieces to a site-specific piece, ‘Purusa.’  The exhibition is curated by the former director of the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Richard Andrews.

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Takashi Murakami and Christie’s to hold major auction in New York to benefit Japan relief efforts [AO Newslink]

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Gagosian Gallery announces ‘Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011,’ to be shown at all 11 galleries worldwide, simultaneously [AO Newslink]

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Charles Ledray, Bone Rocker (1995), with Robert Gober, Untitled (1984-88) (left) and Luc Tuymans, Plates (2011), right. All images Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.

David Zwirner‘s summer exhibition, The House Without the Door, makes a curatorial departure from Emily Dickinson’s poem of a similar name. The works center around themes of interiority and domesticity, alluding to both the poet’s reclusive personality and her writing’s exploration of issues stemming from such a lifestyle, which moved past memories and objects towards intense introspection and deep-seated feelings of anxiety and trauma.

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WORKac selected to design Roman Abramovich’s New Holland Island, an art destination in St. Petersburg, Russia [AO Newslink]

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Kalup Linzy at Lehmann Maupin, “the show’s unlikeliest darling, a black Southern-inflected, gender-bending, genre-defying video-and-performance artist” [AO Newslink]

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All images on site at NADA Hudson 2011. Courtesy of Ian Hassett for Art Observed.

Art Observed was on site for the first NADA Hudson, described by its organizers, the New Art Dealers Alliance as “not an art fair, but rather a site-specific project”. The surrounding area has been known as a site to which New York art expatriates flock, with their numbers especially heavy this weekend around the 8,000-square-foot Basilica Hudson, a former foundry and railway wheel factory built in 1884. Hudson itself is a former whaling town, with its access to the Hudson River providing a berth during wartime that was less exposed to raids than coastal towns such as Nantucket and Boston.  As a result, the town has a rich architecture base that is reflective of irregular boosts in industry over its history.  As it has become a destination for food, antiques and second homes, Hudson is an understandable venue for NADA, which has been known to pioneer in its chosen locations (the NADA Miami art fair located in the Deauville Beach Resort, is about 40 blocks north of the main epicenter of activity yet is consistently a must-visit part of the general offering during the week of Art Basel Miami Beach).

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Installation view of New Work, via Stuart Shave/Modern Art

Stuart Shave/Modern Art in London is currently showing an exhibition of new work by Barry Mcgee through August 13. McGee gained notoriety in the mid 1980’s for his work as a graffiti artist in San Francisco, California (produced under the tag “Twist”) and has captured a wide following in major contemporary galleries and museums over the last decade. In the series of untitled sculptural, wood panel and paper works on view at Stuart Shave/Modern Art, McGee attempts to negotiate the social message and aesthetics of street art with the commercial sterility of the gallery space. His geometric forms draw upon a Latin-American mural and decorative arts tradition while also paying tribute to a contemporary legacy of abstraction.

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All photos by L. Streeter for Art Observed.

At six o’clock on Saturday evening, throngs of guests could be seen gathering at the entrance of Robert Wilson’s art compound in Watermill, New York, awaiting entrance to “Voluptuous Panic.” Patrons of the arts gather here once a year to support the foundations ongoing effort to “provide a unique environment for young and emerging artists to explore new ideas and foster their career development” (via Watermillcenter.org).  Artists  from over 30 different countries living at the estate as a part of the Watermill International Summer Program Residency were asked to create installations and performances overlaying the six acre estate. Guests were invited to wander the grounds and woods exploring the various installations. This year, the attending crowd fit right in with the somewhat manic works themselves; the dress code, entitled “Fearless” allowed for a very flamboyant, almost surreal flock of guests.

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