All photos by Caroline Claisse unless otherwise noted.

Representing the United States in the Venice Biennale 2011 is artist duo Allora & Calzadilla. Based in Puerto Rico, the real-life couple Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla‘s work is deeply political, though they would have you think otherwise.

The exhibition, entitled “Gloria,” features six newly commissioned works. It is curated by Lisa Freiman, chair of the contemporary art department at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the institution the U.S. State Department entrusted with the selection. The organizing committee is the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Previous representatives of the U.S. are Bruce Nauman (2009) who won the Golden Lion for his country, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2007), Ed Ruscha (2005), and Fred Wilson (2003).

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All photos by Caroline Claisse.

Currently on view at the Punta della Dogana, housed in the magnificent Palazzo Grassi, is “The World Belongs to You.” Curated by Caroline Bourgeois, the exhibition brings together artists from different generations, geographical locations, and practices to explore history and current realities.

The Punta della Dogana became the official exhibition space of Francois Pinault‘s private collection in 2006, when he purchased the building from the city of Venice. It now houses works from internationally renowned contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Urs Fischer, Maurizio Cattelan, and Takashi Murakami.

Urs Fischer’s violet piano at Punta della Dogana.

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All photos by Caroline Claisse.

“Chance” is French artist Christian Boltanski‘s installation at the French Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2011. Born in Paris in 1944, Boltanski is known for his sprawling, existential projects. The exhibition is curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, former director of the Centre Pompidou.

The artist sat down with Art Observed to talk about life, death, optimism, and Venetian cuisine.

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Jaume Plensa, Echo (2011) – All photos by Art Observed

Jaume Plensa’s latest site-specific installation titled ‘Echo’ marks his long anticipated debut for New York City and is both the largest and costliest project to date for the Madison Square Park Conservancy.  At 44 feet tall, the  portrait of a nine-year old girl from Plensa’s hometown Barcelona entrances spectators with its monumental scale, distorted facial features, and the white polyester resin and marble dust veneer that creates the illusion of an otherworldly apparition or hologram sprouting from the Oval Lawn.

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The Biennale’s Central Pavilion in the Giardini. Image by Giulio Squillacciotti, courtesy La Biennale di Venezia.

Art Observed will be on site this week for the 54th Venice Biennale. Since its creation in 1895, the festival has filled the city every two years with artists, curators, critics, and curious onlookers. The exhibition is housed over 50,000 square meters of exhibition space in the historical pavilions in the Giardini, and 38,000 square meters in the Arsenale, as well as other numerous locations around the city. The preview runs June 1st through 3rd (a preview program is available for download) and the Biennale opens to the public on June 4th, running through November 27th, 2011.

Expect updates and photo sets throughout the week, as well as on our Twitter.

Director of the 54th Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, and Artistic Director Bice Curiger. Photo by Giorgio Zucchiatti, courtesy Fondazione la Biennale di Venezia.

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Dearraindrop, Mutant Pop (2010), via The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture

Organized by Kathy Grayson, director of The Hole and former director of Deitch Projects, in collaboration with exhibition designer Rafael de Cárdenas, “New York Minute” is in its current manifestation at The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow. The show features over fifty artists living and working in and around New York City, who are are entwined by professional and personal relationships and whose work overlaps similar themes and issues.

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All images are of “The Fabric Works,” an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois’s fabric drawings, sculpture, and installation at Cheim & Read.

New York gallery Cheim & Read is currently showing Louise Bourgeois’s self-defined “fabric drawings.” On display is 2002 – 2010, in form of appropriated clothing, that is, re-appropriated fabric. Closing on June 25, the exhibition is scissorwork, collage made from the very pieces that are necessary, to conceal to and to live. “The sewing,” Bourgeois wrote, “is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.”

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Kara Walker, The Great Negro Heroine (2011). Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Sikkema Jenkins is currently presenting Kara Walker’s series of drawings titled “Dust Jackets for the Niggerati—and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings submitted ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker.” through June 4th. These series–based on Walker’s impressions during her visit to the Mississippi Delta region–compose a rhizomatic schema of particular intersections of sociocultural aspects and economic constraints, present in the everyday life of many southern African Americans since the end of the Reconstruction period, in 1876.

Kara Walker, And Encourages the Youth (2011). Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

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Rosalind Nashashibi, This Quality (frame shot) (2010). All images Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.

SculptureCenter’s current exhibition, an exploration of temporality and the passing of time, reveals this theme both topically and literally to its audience. Time Again is a group exhibition involving nearly thirty artists of varying backgrounds that intersect in the way they explore how one views the past and present. Included in the showcase is a smaller exhibition, Novel, that organizes works dealing with experimental writing in a visual manner.

Installation view at SculptureCenter.

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Terence Koh, The Self Become the Wood (f) (2009). Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac Galerie
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“Adansonias” is the most recent solo show of Chinese-Canadian artist Terence Koh, running through June 18th at Thaddaeus Ropac Galerie‘s Austrian space.  The exhibition was titled after Koh’s imaginary opera–first performed at the Parisian Thaddaeus Ropac Galerie in 2009–and it gathers vestiges of the piece’s conception and execution, including two white grand pianos, and photographies.  Koh’s “Adansonias” has been referred to as a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, involving sound, theatrical, and visual art. The stillness and silence in the space contrast with the dynamism of the documented opera piece, as this show barely echoes the performance itself, but elucidates on the aesthetic and intellectual aspects of Koh’s creative process behind the work, while attributing a perennial solemnity to the artifacts on display.

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Terence Koh, Installation View (2011). Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac Galerie

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0 – 9, recto (2010) by Jasper Johns, via Matthew Marks Gallery

New works by Jasper Johns are currently on display at New York’s Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea. Open through July 1^st, “New Sculpture and Works on Paper” fills three galleries with Johns’ recent works from the past five years.

Jasper Johns works primarily in painting and printmaking and is often considered to be the bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Perhaps most famous work is Flag (1954-1955) a mixed-media painting of the United State’s flag. He is particularly known for using repetitive letters and numbers with the effect of reconsidering the meaning of everyday symbols in the context of a work of art.

All but one of the new sculptures use Johns’ grid of numerals 0 through 9. Each of the sculptures is first made in wax; the surface is then altered using a variety of textures, and added elements and impressions such as texts or his own hand. Johns then casts them in aluminum, bronze, or silver, covering the finished surface with a unique patina.

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“Where is Ai Weiwei” banner by Rirkrit Tiravanija at entrance of Neugerriemschneider, via NY Times

Despite his current incarceration in China, Ai Weiwei’s exhibition at Galerie Neugerriemschneider opened over Gallery Weekend Berlin, and can be seen until June 4, 2011. The exhibition consists of two large wood sculptures and several porcelain pieces.  Ai designed the work specifically for the gallery site, which was produced before his arrest, and according to one source, Ai was clear in his desire that the show would go on in the event of his arrest.

Installation view of Ai Weiwei’s Rock (2011) and Tree (2011), photo by Jens Ziehe, courtesy of Neugerriemschneider.

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The Whitney‘s 2011 American Art Award Gala, all images Winston Morris for Art Observed.

AO was on site this Thursday for the Whitney Museum‘s 2011 American Art Award Gala, an event held for the presentation of the 20th Annual American Art Award, which honored Marissa Mayer and Google for their support of the arts in New York, and as celebration of the groundbreaking of the Whitney Museum’s new space in the Meatpacking district. The official groundbreaking, which will take place on May 24, marks the Whitney’s move from the Marcel Breuer-designed building it has been located in since 1966 on Madison Avenue and 75th Street. The event took place in a tent by the entrance to the High Line and ended with a performance by Debbie Harry and members of Blondie. The Annual American Art Award has been commissioned by the Whitney each year since 1992, and is designed by an artist. This year’s award was created by Ellsworth Kelly, and will be given to Marissa Mayer, Google VP of product management. The Whitney’s Education department has partnered with Google to hold a nationwide contest for young artists, Doodle 4 Google, which this year is themed “What I’d Like to Do Someday.” 40 Regional Finalists will have their drawings displayed at the Whitney from May 19th through June 16th, 2011.

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Raymond Pettibon No Title (Have You Seen) (2011), via CFA Berlin.

American artist Raymond Pettibon and German artist Anselm Reyle opened Contemporary Fine Art’s exhibition in this year’s Gallery Weekend Berlin.  Pettibon’s show is titled “Looker-Upper”, and is composed of more than eighty new drawings, portraying themes from sports, sex, and popular culture.  Reyle’s show is titled “Little Cody”, and is made up of several painting/compositions, three foil-neon pieces, and collection of sofas.  Pettibon’s show takes up the ground floor of CFA, while Reyle’s show takes up the second.

Anselm Reyle Untitled (2011), via CFA Berlin.

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Francis Bacon, “Portrait of Henrietta Moraes” (1969). All pictures courtesy of Helly Nahmad Gallery.

New York’s Helly Nahmad Gallery is currently showing the first comparative assembly of works by the painters Chaim Soutine and Francis Bacon. Connections between Soutine, whom de Kooning famously called his “favorite artist,” and Bacon, the subject of two Tate Modern retrospectives in his lifetime and one in 2008, have never before been examined by an exhibition at a museum or gallery. SOUTINE/BACON closes on June 18.

Chaim Soutine, “Autoportrait” (1918).

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Installation view of Donald Judd’s “Progressions.” All images by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

Currently on view at Galerie Vedovi in Brussels is “Progressions,” a fresh look at the work of seminal American sculptor Donald Judd. The exhibition focuses on Judd’s use of mathematical algorithms to create geometrical progressions. These systems are non-representational tools that offers viewers a neutral way to view the works. With the object autonomous, the focus turns to the wall and its relation to the object.

Judd is also the subject of another concurrent exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery, which opened during New York Gallery Week. It is a restaging of Judd’s 1989 exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden, Germany.

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Aerial short of Randall’s Island, via The Art Newspaper

Frieze, the hallmark London contemporary art fair which has steadily built itself up since 2003, today announced its expansion to New York where it will host a fair in Randall’s Island Park.  Frieze Art Fair will open on May 2nd for VIPs, with the public gaining access between May 3rd and 6th.

The fair will coincide with the city’s 2012 contemporary art auctions and will be around the same size as its London counterpart, with roughly170 galleries from 33 countries participating.  Notably, the fair fall outside of the traditional art fair week in March, anchored by the Armory Show.  This may prompt some galleries to re-evaluate which fairs they will participate in. Similarly, the timing of Frieze’s New York fair may affect galleries who may have opted for Art Basel in June.

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Temporary Tattoo provided with exhibition statement As Long As It Lasts (2011), photo by A. Bogart for Art Observed

Arratia, Beer present “As Long As It Lasts…”, a group exhibition that is transitory in nature.  The gallery invited several artists and designers to design tattoos, which are inked on site by a professional tattoo artist, Sarah Bolen from AKA Berlin.  The tattoo artist was only on site for Gallery Weekend, April 29-May 1, so appointments need to be made for anyone wishing to be ‘signed by’ an artist.  Those who choose to have an artist’s design tattooed get a certificate of authenticity, thus certifying that a work of art is part of them.  Appointments can be made until the end of May.

Francesco Vezzoli Untitled (2011), via Arratia, Beer.

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Marie-Thérèse avec une guirlande (1937) by Pablo Picasso, via Gagosian Gallery

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery in New York is Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’amour fou, an exhibition which reveals the paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures inspired by Marie-Thérèse Walter, one of the most inspiring models of Picasso’s life. The exhibition is a love story of the artist and his muse told through art and is curated by the renowned Picasso biographer, John Richardson in collaboration with Marie-Thérèse’s granddaughter, art historian Diana Widmaier Picasso. It spans the years from 1927 to 1940 and includes several works which have never before been exhibited in the United States.

Following the success of Picasso: Mosqueteros in New York in 2009 and Picasso: The Mediterranean Years in London in 2010, the exhibit presents the next chapter in a continuous exploration of Picasso’s fundamental themes.

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Installation view of Rene Ricard’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese”. All images Ian Hassett for Art Observed.

AO was on-site for the opening of Rene Ricard‘s “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” presented by Vito Schnabel at the former Heidi Cho Gallery in Chelsea.  This is the artist’s first solo painting show in over twenty years, and features paintings overlaid with sharp, evocative poems written by Ricard. The show is entitled “Sonnets from the Portuguese” after a book by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and is meant to “show [his] affection for the city of Lisbon.” It features sixteen canvases painted in basic “poison” green with short poems, and larger works featuring images based on those culled from family photo albums of Ricard’s friends, similarly painted over with text.

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Kehinde Wiley, Alios Itzhak (2011), via Roberts & Tilton

Roberts & Tilton presents a new branch of Kehinde Wiley‘s The World Stage series entitled The World Stage: Israel. The artist traveled to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for inspiration for this particular set of works, which serve as a continuation of a dialogue on globalization that has included covered China, Africa, Logos-Dakar, Brazil and India. Wiley’s portraits of modern Israelis mix themes of classical portraiture with a sense of contemporary pomp.

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Image courtesy The Guardian.

After 43 days of detention, reports broke earlier today that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was allowed a visit from his wife Lu Qing on Sunday. A friend of Weiwei’s, rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, confirmed that the artist had not been tortured or ill-handled, and that he was receiving medication for his diabetes and high blood pressure.

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