Terence Koh x Opening Ceremony release a new collaboration in the form of a “furry sneaker” [AO Newslink]

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Pacific Standard Time’s latest video ad features Jason Schwartzman and a looming John Baldessari [AO Newslink]

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KAWS, Untitled (HTLD2) (2011). All images on site for Art Observed by Megan Hoetger.

Amid a crowded fall season in Los Angeles, Honor Fraser hosts “Hold the Line,” the newest show of works by New-York based media and urban culture phenomenon KAWS. Dubbed an “art entrepreneur,” Brian Donnelly, a.k.a. KAWS, has created an industry around his troupe of animated characters.

KAWS, Companion (2011).

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Performance view. All photos for Art Observed on site by Zachary Concepcion

Tuesday night, Haunch of Venison‘s new Chelsea gallery co-hosted a Kreëmart one-night-only performance with The American Patrons of Tate. Kreëmart is an artist collective that often collaborates with well known contemporary artists to produce performances and installations that use the medium of food, generally confectionery, to reposition one’s perspective and  interaction with such sweets.  Cake sculptures and banana ice cream (served by monkeys), along with two candy-obsessed women, kept visitors high on sugar whilst speculating the powdery white substance of Terence Koh‘s Untitled on the floor.  The evening teamed up seven artists with pastry chefs to indulge the senses in art, all works interactive and made specifically for the 2011 show.

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Terence Koh, Untitled.

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Artist Zhang Enli with A Bunch of Balls (2009-2011). All photos on site for Art Observed by Jen Lindblad, unless otherwise noted.

Currently showing at Hauser & Wirth in New York is a new body of work by celebrated Chinese artist Zhang Enli. Comprised of twenty new paintings and one sculptural group, the story he tells is one of cultural relocation—namely, the artist’s move twenty years ago from a small provincial town in northern China to Shanghai, where he now lives and works. Wherever we go we carry objects—ordinary objects that remain present and constant in our lives. All of the objects Zhang depicts are real, found in and around his studio: empty cans, a carpet, an umbrella, pipes, metal and rope netting. Familiar enough to be accessible but reduced enough to be seductive, Zhang considers the objects carefully, stripping them to their essence. His quiet, subtle paintings bear almost no resemblance to the bold, political work of his Chinese contemporaries. “I want to strip the object to the bone,” he says, “just leave what it actually is. If you leave a glass on a table, it leaves a watermark. That mark is what I want to express.”

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Cindy Sherman buys $4.65M 10.2-acre waterfront Hamptons estate in Springs, NY, in a greater area that has been home to the likes of Warhol, de Kooning, Lichtenstein and Jackson Pollock [AO Newslink]

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The MoMA adds itself to the list of museums that have acquired Christian Marclay’s crowd-drawing video piece, The Clock [AO Newslink]

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James Turrell, Carn White (1967). Photo on site for Art Observed by Megan Hoetger.

The James Turrell exhibition, Present Tense, is currently showing at Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Santa Monica. Presented in conjunction with the Pacific Standard Time (PST) programming, the exhibition includes some of Turrell’s most recognizable works, ranging from the 1960s to today. Although the official opening weekend of PST is the first weekend in October, many participating galleries across Los Angeles have already begun to open their doors to exhibitions, many which explore the development of an art capital in Los Angeles from 1945 to 1980. In addition to the solo exhibition at Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Turrell’s work will also be included in historical group shows, including Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and Best Kept Secret: UCI and the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California, 1964-1971 at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach.  As the list of exhibitions makes clear, Turrell’s work is some of the most important to come out of the Los Angeles scene since its early years in the 1960s. And indeed the sparse but powerful installations on view at the gallery deliver all that we would expect of such an influential body of work.

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Questions of originality raised regarding Bob Dylan’s The Asia Series, now showing at Gagosian [AO Newslink]

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Ida Ekblad, Installation View (2011). Via Greene Naftali

Currently on view at the Greene Naftali Gallery is a solo exhibition by Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad, presenting new works characterized by the combination of lyrical elements in painting, sculpture, and poetry.

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Rob Pruitt’s graffiti wall of zebras. All photos on site for Art Observed by Giffen Ott.

Art Observed was on site again this year for the RxArt + Chanel Beauté 11th Annual PARTY Benefit. Imbibing works by contemporary artists such as Nate Lowman (who’s Reverse Snowman Holding His Own Head was the highest going piece, at $24,000) and Dan Colen, Miranda July, and Yoko Ono, guests bid via silent auction, the proceeds going toward a good cause. According to their website, “RxArt is a non-profit organization dedicated to placing original fine art in patient, procedure and examination rooms of healthcare facilities. Our mission is to improve otherwise sterile environments through contemporary art, promote healing, and inspire hope in patients, families and staff.” Held at the Highline Stages in Chelsea, party-goers included artists KAWS, Terry Richardson, Aurel Schmidt, and José Parlá, among other celebrities and organizers such as Bill Powers and Jen Brill.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art unveils new website with priorities of ‘scholarship and accessibility’ [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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X-ray of Goya portrait reveals possible portrait by Goya of Joseph Bonaparte beneath Don Ramón Satué [AO Newslink]

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Installation view of Willem de Kooning: A Retrospective at MoMA. Image via New York Times.

Currently on view at MoMA is Willem de Kooning: A Retrospective. Impressive in its depth and breadth, it is the first retrospective since the artist’s death. De Kooning (1904 – 1997) is hailed as one of the most important and prolific artists of the previous century.

Installation view. Via Artinfo.

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All photos Art Observed by Guillaume Vandame

A festive atmosphere opening night at Mary Boone surrounded visitors while they studied Chicago artist Nick Cave‘s parade of bright and exotic soundsuits. Unique hybrid costumes made from a variety of materials, the works combine antique carpets, fabrics, beads, and everyday kitsch objects. Similar to naming the works Untitled, each piece is called a ‘soundsuit;’ various objects, all under the same title. The artist said of his style, “The world is my inventory,” drawing on roots in Trinidad and Haiti, and gathering resources that are no longer used in order to create something new.

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Detail of Soundsuit

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Running from corner to corner – in a specified order in relation to other corner groups. All photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.

Noémie Lafrance’s latest piece, The White Box Project, is full of running and screaming, grouping and awkward exclusivity, exploring audience participation and mob mentality; a “minimalist dance performance [that] challenges the implied separation between the art object and its viewing subject.” Each performance is followed by a discussion with the artist, thus further shaping the remaining performances in an “evolutive” process. Famous for her grand public dance performances, Lafrance has staged shows in places ranging from her home to galleries to McCarren Park Pool to the facades of Frank Gehry, as well as choreographing the award winning video for Feist’s “1, 2, 3, 4.”

Showing three September weekends in the courtyard of the Black & White Gallery in Brooklyn, performances run every Saturday at 4:30, 5:30, and 6:30 pm, with two additional encore performances added to this last Sunday, the 25th of September, at 6:30 and 7:30 pm.
Art Observed was fortunate enough to sit down with Noémie in her Williamsburg studio for the following interview.

Noémie Lafrance recording the group discussion after a performance.

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Raymond Pettibon, No Title (From life to…), 2011 (est. $200,000-300,000, realized $760,000), via Christies.com

Opening night, September 10, 2011. All images by Ana Marjanovic for Art Observed.

Through recycling, reproduction, and repetition, Brazilian-born and New York-based artist Vik Muniz explores contemporary consumerist culture’s interpretations of, and influences by, traditional art subject matter in his show on now at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York. Large scale, color photographs from the Pictures of Magazines 2 series are displayed alongside sculptures of the Relicario series.

Installation view

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All photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

In the newly renovated eighteenth-century London townhouse, which was its original home, Haunch of Venison opens a solo exhibition of Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie. According to Coline Mailliard of Artinfo, the gallery’s move from a museum-like venue near the Royal Academy to the refurbished space in Mayfair signals an attempt at a rebirth. Mailliard writes, “the move seems like a perfect opportunity for the gallery to reinvent itself — and also to prove to the art world, which has snubbed it since the sale to the auction house [Christie’s], that the artistic program is, more than ever, the top priority.”

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Lucian Freud retrospective at London’s National Portrait Gallery in February to include last and unfinished painting, Portrait of the Hound [AO Newslink]

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Do Ho Suh, The Fallen Star 1/5 (2008-2011). All images taken by A. Marjanovic for Art Observed, unless otherwise noted.

Exploring themes of multicultural identity, Do Ho Suh presents installations and drawings at the Chelsea location of Lehmann Maupin in New York. Titled Home Within Home, the exhibition reflects the artist’s personal experiences of moving from Korea—where he was born and raised—to the US. Layering and inserting Korean imagery over and within large-scale architectural installations, Suh conveys his feelings of being “dropped from the sky,” according to the press release.

Do Ho Suh, Home Within Home, 2009-2011.

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Scottish/Trinidadian painter Peter Doig collaborates on the Siegfried + Poster Project at the Metropolitan Opera House, inspired by Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle [AO Newslink]

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José Parlá, Character Gestures (2011). Via JoséParlá.com

Miami-born, New York-based artist José Parlá‘s current solo exhibition at OHWOW Gallery in Los Angeles blurs the line between street art and action painting. Entitled “Character Gestures,” the show at OHWOW synthesizes the ‘low’ of the urban graffiti sensibility with the ‘high’ of process-based painting as it emerged out of the material and conceptual legacies of Abstract Expressionism. Rather than reading as personal expression of an interior world, though, the paintings, drawings, and sculptures on view function as an archive of the the visual material that emerges from social-spatial politics of the street, their surfaces palimpsests.

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