Isa Genzken, Mona Isa III (Elefant), 2010. All images via Galerie Chantal Crousel

In her Mona Isa exhibit at the Chantal Crousel, Isa Genzken draws on iconic historical images and common modern objects to create a collection of works that bring a new relevance to both the monumental and the everyday. Taking from the concept of objective abstraction, even in her sculptures, Genzken’s work brings the surface meaning of an image or object into question.

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Hannah Hoch, Roma (1925). Via Focus.de

Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936, currently on at the Guggenheim, is more history lesson than study of art object.  A mix of known artists with the unknown, names like Hannah Hoch, Picasso and the  little remembered Amleto Cataldi (whose third Google result is someone’s Facebook profile) are shown contextualized within this period of political transformation.  Curated by Kenneth E. Silver—author of Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925, which is considered an authority on interwar modernism—Chaos and Classicism offers an illustration of how art can just as easily support, as it does challenge, institutional power. Traveling up the Guggenheim’s ramp, the exhibition lays bare the changing sentiment of the period—from a reliance on the order and beauty of Classicism after the horrors of the first world war to fascism’s adoption of those same classical themes for world take over.

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Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mappamondo (Globe), 1966-1968. Via NY Times

Prior to being encased in the metal cage above, Michelangelo Pistoletto‘s solid newspaper Globe was rolled through the streets of Philadelphia as a recreation of the artist’s first ‘walking sculpture.’ Using mirrors, public performance, and sculptures like the newspaper ball, the Italian artist includes his audience as a core function of his work.  Spanning his early years, from 1956-1974, From One to Many at the Philadelphia Museum of Art captures the evolution of Pistoletto’s participatory art with over 100 works, from the Mirroring Paintings, Minus Objects, and Rags, to various footage of Happening-esque enactments by his acting troup Lo Zoo, with a portion also devoted to his all inclusive art-community Citadellarte which he founded in 1998.

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Philippe Parreno, Invisibleboy, 2010. Via Serpentine Gallery

“I’m best known for my film about Zidane, which showed a super-visible body. After making that it seemed a good idea to make films about someone who doesn’t exist, at least not on paper.” In the Guardian, Philippe Parreno is referring to his most recent video, Invisibleboy currently on view at the Serpentine Gallery. The film depicts the imaginary reality of a young illegal alien in New York’s Chinatown, with the creatures that inhabit the boy’s mind scratched onto the film stock.  Along with three other short video pieces, Invisibleboy is part of Parreno’s highly choreographed exhibition at the Serpentine, which, despite their highly disparate content, are conjoined by Parreno’s use of the exhibition space as an experiential medium. From a Thai compound to Robert Kennedy’s funeral ride, Parreno’s work is highly specific and seemingly unrelated, yet his consideration of time and sequence with regard to the viewer’s experience are the central themes in his body of work. The concept of viewer perception also exists within the narrative of much of his work.

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Photo credit Joshua White courtesy of L&M Arts

L&M Arts in Venice Beach presents Willem de Kooning: Figure & Light, a collection of drawings and paintings spanning the artist’s first involvement in the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1950s to the end of his career in the 1980s.  The exhibition is divided into two galleries with the first displaying relatively small-scale works from de Kooning‘s iconic Women series.  The second room showcases the artist’s later abstract paintings realized between 1980 and 1985.

Willem de Kooning Two Women II, c. 1952. Photo credit Joshua White courtesy of L&M Arts

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Roy Lichtenstein, I Know How You Must Feel, Brad!, 1963. Via Albertina

Roy Lichtenstein’s work has long been considered key in defining American pop art, and the three recent exhibitions in New York speak to how much of an audience he can draw in.  The exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum highlights Lichtenstein’s pop art beginnings: 55 large-scale, black-and-white drawings done in the 1960s.  Together on display for the first time, these drawings give some insight on how Lichtenstein developed his style of using Benday dots to simulate commercial reproduction, and his subject matter of appropriated comic strips and advertisements. Organized by curator Isabelle Dervaux, the exhibition will move to The Albertina in Vienna, Austria from January 27 to May 15, 2011.

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