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Gilbert and George, Buses (2009). Via The Independent

“They made themselves,” Gilbert and George reassure of the 564 postcard works that comprise the Urethra Series, only 155 of which are currently on view at White Cube, Mason’s Yard in London. Since their first exhibition of postcard works in 1972, Gilbert and George have continued methodically collecting postcards, phone box cards, fliers and other ephemeral, everyday modes of communication—two collections of which make up the Urethra Series. The Urethra Postcard Pictures represent 30 odd years of English visual culture, with images of Parliament and St. Paul’s Cathedral shown alongside S+M adverts and other such handouts that litter London’s phone boxes.

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Gilbert & George, with installation behind. Via SlamXHype

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The Fair’s logo, via VIPArtFair.com

Contemporary art buyers and admirers, many undoubtedly slippered in the comfort of their own homes, logged in for the opening of the VIP Art Fair on Saturday at 8:00AM (EST).  The online Fair was three years in the making, but until Saturday the website consisted of little more than a list of participating galleries and organizations, a brief overview, and a promotional video. Though the galleries had also been publicizing featured works to be offered and screenshots of their virtual booths, those not lucky enough to attend the fair’s opening party were still gripped with curiosity about the kind of experience the site would offer.

Zoomed in on Neo Rauch’s Haus de Lehrers, 2003 (est. over $1 million), via VIP Art Fair

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Carl Andre, Sum Roma (1997). Via Sadie Coles HQ

Now on view at Sadie Coles HQ in London is TRAVERTINE/BASALT, featuring the American sculptor and minimalist, Carl Andre. This show marks Andres’ fifth at the gallery, the current exhibition a sequence of sculptures made from Icelandic basalt and two works of travertine (a form of limestone). Made throughout his career, the artist’s work conveys qualities of linearity, repetition, and geometry. The three installments on display, the basalt Altbase series and the two travertine works, Grecrux and Sum Roma, reinforce Andre’s appreciation for the material physicality and aesthetic qualities of structural—and architectural—forms of sculpture.

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Jim Campbell, Scattered Light (2010). All photos on site by C. Claisse, of Art Observed.

New media artist Jim Campbell brings his signature light sculptures to Madison Square Park, illuminating the lawns with works that draw inspiration from life in New York City. The largest of his three works on view is Scattered Light, incorporating 1,600 light bulbs implanted with LEDs and suspended in a huge three-dimensional grid, spanning 50’ in length and 16’ in width and height. The M.I.T. graduate has twenty years’ experience as an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley and created custom circuitry which pixilated video of Grand Central Station pedestrians, projecting them onto his LED grid. The result is shadowy, life-size figures moving through three dimensional space, visible from far away, yet progressively more abstract as one moves closer to the work. Scattered Light is Campbell’s largest and arguably most ambitious work to date.

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Nigel Cooke, Stumpy’s Nights (2010). All images via Blum & Poe unless otherwise noted

British artist Nigel Cooke is currently showing at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles through February 12.  The installation spreads three galleries, displaying Cooke’s most recent sculptures and paintings, including his stunning triptych: Departure, upheld by the curators as the exhibition’s centerpiece.  The work continues to examine the artist’s interest in the surreal, perhaps this time with a touch of the sublime, some of the works recalling the hazy, perilous romance of Caspar David Friedrich.   

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Damien Hirst, For Heaven’s Sake (2008). Platinum, pink and white diamonds, 85 x 85 x 100 mm. © 2011 Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd, DACS 2011

For the inauguration of the Gagosian Gallery‘s new Hong Kong exhibition space, Damien Hirst presents Forgotten Promises, a show displaying new paintings and sculpture by the artist. With these new works Hirst continues his existential interrogations of existence, death, beauty, and decay, including Butterfly Fact Paintings, a series of diamond studded cabinets, and a life-size human baby skull covered in diamonds. “Diamonds are about perfection and clarity and wealth and sex and death and immortality. They are a symbol of everything that’s eternal, but then they have a dark side as well,” says Hirst in the press release.

Artist Takashi Murakami at the exhibition, via Arrested Motion

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Slave Auction (1982) by Jean-Michel Basquiat, via Musee d’Art Moderne

Currently on view at the Musee d’Art Modern in Paris is a retrospective of the work American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.  Featuring a hundred major pieces including paintings, drawings and objects from numerous collections and museums in the United States and Europe, the show marks the fiftieth anniversary of Basquiat’s death and is the first exhibition of such a scale of the artist’s work ever to be held in France. The exhibition offers the viewer a chronological view of the artist’s career and his influence on post-1980s art history.

Untitled (Fallen Angel) (1981) by Jean-Michel Basquiat, via Musee d’Art Moderne

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Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2010. All images via Sprüth Magers

Dressed in anything from a faux-nude suit to a modest red gown, Cindy Sherman stares out from the walls of Sprüth Magers in London. The costumes and odd personas follow in Sherman’s usual tactics, but the large size and unframed wallpaper-like appearance are a step away from her past series. Stretching from floor to ceiling, her photographs dominate the gallery space with surreal characters standing guard over symmetric idyllic backgrounds.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2010.

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Richard Armstrong, director of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, via ArtDaily

Helsinki, Finland’s largest city and the Nordic nation’s cultural center, may be home to the sixth museum under the Guggenheim banner. On Tuesday Mayor Jussi Pajunen and the Director of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Richard Armstrong announced that a $2.5 million study will be conducted over the course of 2011 to determine the appropriateness of building a museum in the city. Adding to an already vibrant Helsinki art scene, growing steadily since the 1990s, a Guggenheim endorsement could vastly improve the city’s economic development and infrastructure; the Guggenheim Bilbao paid for itself ten fold in only five years.

Helsinki waterfront, via Viking River

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Erwin Wurm, with his Big Suit (2010) – all photos by C. Claisse for Art Observed

Currently on view at Thaddeus Ropac Gallery in Paris are two shows: Drawings from 2000–2010 by Tom Sachs and Yes Biological by Erwin Wurm. Tom Sach’s fifth solo show at the gallery, this time he presents a symbolic group of works spanning the last decade of his oeuvre, referring to central themes in American culture and society. Elsewhere in the gallery, visitors can stumble upon Erwin Wurm’s massive sculptures. The Austrian artist’s works often rely upon viewer participation, occasionally even prompting spectators to add their own pose.

Tom Sachs with his McDonald’s Hamburger Prep (2009)

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Mike Kelley, Still from Extracurricular Projective Reconstruction #34 (The King and Us/The Queens and Me) (2010). Via Gagosian

Mike Kelley rages ahead at the Gagosian, expanding on projects from his infamous show at the gallery’s New York hub, titled Day is Done, in 2005. Exhibiting for the first time at the L.A. Gagosian, Kelley presents Kandor 10/Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction, #34 Kandor 12/Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #35, a combination of two earlier works, Kandors (1999) and Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction (EAPR) (2006). Recently known for exemplifying what art critic Jerry Saltz coined as “clusterfuck aesthetics,” Kelley continues his explorations of the grotesque pop cultural diaspora. The titling of this new show alone indicates Kelley’s continued interest in clusterfuck art: the scrambled code of his earlier works, barely intelligible key words that read like an internet pop up.

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Mike Kelley, Kandor 18 B (2010). Via Gagosian

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All Installation views via Andrea Rosen Gallery

Amnesia at the Andrea Rosen Gallery brings together three ambitious projects: Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (It’s Just a Matter of Time) from his Billboard series, 12 On Kawara canvases from the artist’s Today project, with each work representing a month of one year, and a video program over nine monitors curated by Rebecca Cleman and Josh Kline of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). The show attempts to bridge the gap between seemingly incongruous works through the very theme of discontinuity. Amnesia references the gaps in memory that extend to the fibers of culture, and, ultimately, the historical archive.

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Via Telegraph

In the center of London, Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth will display sculptures of a bronze boy on a rocking horse in 2012, and a bright blue rooster in 2013. Danish artist Michael Elmgreen and Norwegian artist Ingar Dragset created Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 to playfully contrast the ‘ordinary’ and a hope for peace against the other plinths’ weathered war heroes. Hahn/Cock, by German artist Katharina Fritsch is a colorful 14 foot tall addition to the square, representing regeneration and awakening, as well as male domination (with no specific nationality).

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No title, 1963, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 in.

New York in the 1960s and early 1970s held no shortage of female artists making a name for themselves: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, Joan Jonas, Yayoi Kusama, Jo Baer, and Agnes Martin, among others.  These names ring familiar in our ears, and almost all have had well-earned retrospectives throughout the following decades. But there is one name we do not often see—Lee Lozano.  The new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth sheds light on Lozano’s practice, a legacy shrouded in dramatic acts of rebuff.

The artist, photographed in 1963 by Hollis Frampton

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All photos via Duyanpili. All rights reserved.

Two years ago Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei was asked by Shanghai government officials to build a studio in a grape field outside the city. An entire artists’ complex, worth $1 million, it was meant to attract other important artists and culture to Shanghai. As Ai Weiwei was set to open the space this summer, officials claimed that it in fact did not follow land use regulations, ultimately demolishing the structure Tuesday. Ai is quite skeptical of such an excuse, suspecting that his political activism has much more to do with the situation.

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Banksy, Save or Delete Jungle Book, 2001 (est. £60,000-80,000, realized £78,000), via Bonhams

Tuesday night’s auction of Urban Art at Bonhams in London – the fourth auction of its kind the house has mounted – realized just over £455,000 for 51 of 67 lots sold. Attesting to interest in the artist following the release of his film Exit Through the Gift Shop, ten Banksy lots offered at the sale accounted for approximately half of the evening’s earnings. The top lot was Banksy’s Save or Delete Jungle Book, which sold for £78,000 against presale estimates of £60,000-80,000. The image was created for a poster campaign about deforestation but was never circulated due to copyright issues with Disney.

Shepard Fairey, Peace Goddess on Wood, 2008 (est. £8,000-12,000, realized £27,600), via Bonhams

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Installation image, all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at the Palais de Toyko is Fresh Hell, a group exhibition curated by British-born New York-based artist Adam McEwen.  Shedding a bit of dark humor on the city of Paris, McEwen brings together medieval sculpture and conceptual work from artists long forgotten as well as contemporary artists, pondering just what sort of position and creative endeavors an artist can make in today’s world. The works deal with morbidity, decay, and notions of ‘the end,’ making Death the principle theme.

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Barbara Kruger, Circus (2010). All photos © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2010, Norbert Miguletz

Barbara Kruger’s Circus installation covers the rotunda of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt through January 30. With her unmistakable aesthetic and poignant use of language, Kruger interferes with the traditional manner in which information is transmitted through the museum institution.  Her commitment to dismantling clichés and pervasive stereotypes through the use of monumental text makes her work both politically relevant and visually arresting.

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Daniel Templon and the artist Jonathan Meese at Daniel Templon Gallery all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

Art Observed was on site to meet German artist Jonathan Meese for his opening reception at the Daniel Templon Gallery in Paris. Renowned for his unconventional and at times rebellious behavior in the Berlin art scene, the St. Neutralité exhibition marks the first opening for the artist after a two-year hiatus from gallery shows. Now 40, Meese returns filling two venues of the gallery—the Rue Beaubourg exhibits the artist’s recent paintings, and the Impasse Beaubourg houses an installation of new and old sculptures. Citing Paris as the “City of Love,” Meese chose it as the debut home for his new “lighter,” more humorous works.

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Chuck Close, mustache close-up of Lucas (1987-88), via ShowMedia

Throughout January, artwork by Chuck Close and Kehinde Wiley will travel New York City atop 500 taxi cabs, thanks to art enthusiast and ShowMedia president John Amato. With an estimated value of $100,000, Amato said, “I can do this as my annual holiday gift not just to myself, but to everyone who enjoys seeing the art as it travels around New York City’s streets.” ‘Art Adds’ is the second annual collaboration between ShowMedia and the Art Production Fund, a campaign bringing art to the streets for all to enjoy. The inaugural year featured Alex Katz, Shirin Neshat, and Yoko Ono.

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Kehinde Wiley, The Virgin Martyr St. Cecilia (2008), via ShowMedia

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North Gallery installation view. All photos via Marian Goodman Gallery

Conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner has placed text and curves upon walls and floors in his exhibition Gyroscopically Speaking, showing now at the Marian Goodman Gallery. The gyroscope as an object is problematic and unpresentable as a whole; one thing while it is still, a fascinating phenomenon of physics once spinning. Filling the North and South Galleries and the North Gallery Viewing Room, Weiner explores relationships between language and materials, humans and objects; the artist questions simultaneous realities of society and economics, forcing the viewer to engage an entirely new mentality.

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Taken from the Wind and Bolted to the Ground, (2009)

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Subodh Gupta, Spill, 2007, and Still Steal Steel #1, 2007. All photos via Saatchi Gallery unless otherwise noted

For the first time in France, Tri Postal art space presents 60 works by 28 artists from the collection of London’s Saatchi Gallery, showcasing contemporary Chinese, South Asian, and Middle Eastern artists with works in all media.  Dealer Charles Saatchi has been a pioneer in the acquisition of contemporary Asian Art, aptly naming the exhibition after the ancient trade route between Europe and Asia. Tri Postal is located in Lille, a one hour train ride from Paris.

Zhang Huan, Ash Head No. 1, 2007

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‘The Broad’ rendering, all photos via Los Angeles Times

77 year-old LA based billionaire art collector Eli Broad has unveiled the design for his new museum in downtown Los Angeles. Officially named The Broad Foundation, it will be known as the Broad.  Designed by New Yorked-based architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, the museum’s three stories will house Broad’s collection of over 2000 contemporary works, including Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cindy Sherman. The sunny top floor will be known as the ‘gallery’, while the 1st and 2nd floors have been dubbed the ‘vault.’  Estimated at $130 million, completion is scheduled for 2013.

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Barbara Kruger, Past / Present / Future (2010). Via The Citrus Report

Closed since 2003, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has partially reopened with an innovative program of exhibitions, lectures, performances and workshops titled The Temporary Stedelijk. Taking Place is a group show highlighting the museum’s permanent collection, showcasing exciting recent acquisitions and also featuring new site specific work, such as Barbara Kruger‘s Past / Present / Future (2010). Ann Goldstein, recently named director of the Stedelijk and former senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, organized the program after complications prevented the Stedelijk from re-opening as planned in Fall 2010.

Roman Ondak, Measuring the Universe (2007), Via Uapmarker

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