Carlito Carvalhosa, Sum of Days (2010). Via MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) presents Carlito Carvalhosa: Sum of Days, a large-scale interactive installation that engages the visitor’s visual, tactile and auditory senses. Brazilian artist Carlito Carvalhosa (born 1961) has suspended a lengthy, white, semi-transparent fabric from the spiral-like support attached to the ceiling of MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, draping a nearly 20 meter tall stucture. The fabric loosely touches the ground forming an elliptical walkway, the audience invited to walk through the installation and touch the fabric walls. Ceiling-mounted microphones record each days’ background noises which are then played back the following day. This “accumulation” of sound through time is reflected through the title Sum of Days. The installation also includes the occasional live music performance.

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The Dia Foundation acquires 541 West 22nd Street in Chelsea as an annex for $11.5 million [AO Newslink]

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All photographs by Tom Vinetz, © Kienholz Collection of Kawamura Memorial Museum, Sakura, Japan, courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice, CA and The Pace Gallery, New York unless otherwise noted.

Imagine entering an expansive, lowly-lit room, shoes crunching on a sandy dirt floor. You follow the footprints into the ever-expanding room. The scene feels as though you’ve stumbled into a movie set: five cars are parked in a circle, dramatic lighting emanates from headlights, framing the central scene. Tinny blues rift from one of the automobile radios, immersing you more fully in the tableau. Among trees and other vegetation, you are drawn inside until you encounter a horrific life-size scene: five white figures attacking an African American man.

What you have seen is not a dream, it is Edward Kienholz’s work Five Car Stud. Created between 1969 and 1972, its current showing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) marks the first time the work has been shown since its inclusion in documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany in 1972.

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Subodh Gupta, Ali Baba (2011)

The major exhibition Paris-Delhi-Bombay, currently on view at Centre Pompidou through September 19th, displays work by nearly 50 artists mainly based or born in India. Many emerging and high-profile Indian artists have been showing recently in Paris—both the work at Indian Summer, organized at Ecole des Beaux Arts, and Anish Kapoor‘s monumental intervention at the Grand Palais, have included work by Indian artists both already established in Europe as well as those still up-and-coming.

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On the impact China has on art sales globally: “Chinese auction houses are now selling works at a pace formerly associated with those in London and New York” with “[Chinese collectors responsible for] some $8.3 billion in sales, which would make them the world leader.” [AO Newslink]

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Pipilotti Rist will hang 300 pairs of white underwear along the Southbank on the Thames during her solo show at the Hayward Gallery: “they will look like whipped cream. Or sheep’s heads, with the legs of the pants forming the eyes.” [AO Newslink]

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Installation view. All images courtesy of Cheim and Read unless otherwise noted.

For the first time in its fifteen years, Cheim and Read is showcasing all of its female artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, and Diane Arbus, for a celebratory exhibition. Less of a critical show on feminism, the exhibition is more of a simple gathering of varied artists. “The Women in Our Life: A Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition” reminds us of the voice and vision of some of these major players in contemporary art.

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Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker defaced in Buenos Aires at the Plaza de los dos Congresos by vandals who write: ‘Think what good it did you to think so much before it’s over’ [AO Newslink]

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Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen premiered his film “Shame” in Venice yesterday alongside Michael Fassbender who stars in the film with Carey Mulligan [AO Newslink]

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Omer Fast, 5000 Feet is the Best (2011). Digital film still, via The Model

On view at The Model in Sligo, Ireland through November 27th is “The Tunnel,” a large-scale installation and major solo exhibition of Israeli video artist Omer Fast. Three installations occupy The Model’s atrium and gallery space including a two part version of his newest film project, 5000 Feet is the Best, which was commissioned by The Model, Dublin Contemporary 2011, the Hermes Foundation, and the Kadist Foundation. 5000 Feet is the Best will be presented as a unique version specific to The Model, including both the original film and multi-media installation components. Fast is known for his films that weave together multiple narratives using documentary and dramatization methods to explore the complexity in presenting truth, leading the viewer to the realization that fact and fiction are undeniably intertwined.

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Matthew Barney interviewed at his studio in Long Island City on the eve of his first solo exhibition in New York in 5 years, opening on September 17th at Gladstone Gallery [AO Newslink]

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Josh Tonsfeldt, Untitled (2011), via Harris Lieberman

Bodies and their attendant messes, the connection between the artist and the viewer, and the complicated processes of making and looking at art are all covered in this wide-ranging exhibition which was organized by West Street Gallery but is hosted by Harris Lieberman in Chelsea. The press release tells us that the show was was inspired by William Wegman‘s videos from the 1970s, four of which play in a loop on a television in the installation. One of these, Milk/Floor (1970-78), shows the artist dribbling milk from his mouth and his iconic dog lapping it up, setting the tone for the show by poking fun at the often absurd relationship between the artist (dribbling the milk) and the public (lapping it up). The rest of the works further probe this moment of connection.

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Gallery in Berlin discovers four paintings by Otto Dix worth over $1 million [AO Newslink]

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Gustav Klimt’s previously unknown “Seeufer mit Birken” (lakeside with birch trees), discovered in private home in Netherlands [AO Newslink]

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Anish Kapoor to design a mobile, 700 person capacity, inflatable “pneumatic structure” concert hall for Northern Japan to bring music and performing arts to the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami [AO Newslink]

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Detail of Dog head from Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2011) All photos by Megan Hoetger for Art Observed.

The installation of the first major public sculpture work by well-known Chinese artist Ai Weiwei opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on August 20th, its West Coast stop on a global tour. Encircling the elevator up from the parking structure in the North Piazza of LACMA’s sprawling campus, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads functions as a marker of a heavily trafficked threshold. Its position outside the parking is particularly suited to the car-dominated geography of Los Angeles, but it also allows multiple points of approach for those visitors ambling between the Ahmanson and Broad buildings, or just arriving through the Chris Burden street lamps.

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Neo Rauch, Unter Feuer, 2010. Via Museum Frieder Burda

The Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany is hosting a large-scale retrospective of Leipzig-based artist Neo Rauch (born 1960). Showing about forty paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, the exhibition covers the past twenty years of Rauch’s career. Currently an honorary professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Rauch is the representative of the New Leipzig School of painting distinguished by the figurative visual language, narrative content, and technical perfection.

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Wealthy private families reportedly realizing current gains in their gold holdings and moving the proceeds into Art as an alternative asset class [AO Newslink]

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René Magritte, La Carte d’après Nature, numèro spècial (January 1954). All images via Matthew Marks

Matthew Marks is currently exhibiting “La Carte D’Aprés Nature” curated by gallery-represented artist Thomas Demand. It features three rarely-seen paintings by René Magritte supplemented by sculptures, photographs, and films by established and emerging artists that explore themes similar to the late Surrealist’s. Demand has pulled pieces from all over the world, from varying disciplines and times, that speak of Magritte’s “carte d’aprés nature,” or “map of nature.” Demand tells the Observer, “I wanted there to be the feeling of something strange.”

René Magritte, Le grand style (The Great Style) (1951)

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Installation view, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape (2011). All images via Tate Modern.

On view until September 11 at the Tate Modern in London, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape brings together work spanning six decades of the internationally renowned artist’s career. Organized with the help of the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, this major retrospective is a rare opportunity to see over 150 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper culled from collections around the world, as well as five of his large triptychs in their first ever coincident display. In addition to an exceptional viewing experience, the Tate has set out to provide a political context for Miró’s work and thereby shed light on the esteemed Surrealist’s oft-overlooked engagement with and dedication to the world around him.

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Joan Miró, Painting (1927).

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