Archive for April, 2012

Beijing: Tony Cragg ‘Sculptures and Drawings’ at Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum through April 15, 2012

Friday, April 13th, 2012


Tony Cragg, Sculptures and Drawings, Exhibition View. Images courtesy of CAFA Museum.

British sculptor Tony Cragg presents his first museum show in China, Sculptures and Drawings, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Museum in Beijing. Cragg, whom the exhibition’s press release hails as “one of the world’s greatest living sculptors,” has compiled 127 works—50 major sculptures and a series of watercolors and drawings—for the large-scale show, focusing mainly on his creations from the last 15 years.

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Thursday, April 12th, 2012

‪‬Stolen Paul Cézanne painting recovered by Serbian police from a Swiss gallery heist four years ago when three suspects stole four paintings at gunpoint. If authenticated, the Cézanne will be the third painting recovered and could be worth $108m [AO Newslink]

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Thursday, April 12th, 2012

‪‬Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’—one of four versions—is on view now in London at Sotheby’s today for one week before heading to New York for May 2 auction, expected to fetch $80m

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Thursday, April 12th, 2012

‪‬Thomas Kellein steps down from director position with Chinati Foundation, agreeing to stay on as consultant for next 6 month period, “I am gratefully wishing my colleagues and my board of directors the very best in the future.”

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AO On Site – Los Angeles: Cai Guo-Qiang at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary through July 30, 2012

Thursday, April 12th, 2012


Cai Guo-Qiang in front of Desire for Zero Gravity (2012) at MOCA’s Cai Gu0-Qiang: Sky Ladder. Images via MOCA unless otherwise noted.

In the first West Coast solo exhibition of world-renowned New York-based Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) presents four commissioned projects, including the most recent work in the artist’s Projects for Extraterrestrials series, which began in 1989. Trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, Cai Guo-Qiang’s projects are spectacular and theatrical gestures, embodying the ethos of action painting and a long history of creation/destruction strategies in terms of today’s complex (pyro)technical mechanisms. Using gunpowder as his medium, Cai creates large-scale drawings in a matter of seconds with the dramatic transformative potentials of this volatile material.


Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2012). Photo on site for Art Observed by Megan Hoetger.

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Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

‪‬Ed Ruscha models Band of Outsiders spring line

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Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

‪‬Damien Hirst’s ‘Hymn’ sculpture graffitied with simple ‘occupy’ word in blue spray paint outside the Tate Modern in London, The Occupied Times calling Hirst, “the man who has defined the capitalist approach to art more than any other”.

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Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

‪‬James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem speaks with David Byrne and John Schaefer at a Gregory Crewdson organized symposium at the Yale University School of Art, proposing musicalized turnstiles at New York City subway entrances

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Washington D.C.: Doug Aitken ‘Song 1’ at The Hirschhorn Museum through May 13, 2012

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012


Doug Aitken, Song 1 (2012). All images via Hirschhorn Museum.

The work of LA based artist Doug Aitken spans across a range of media and genres, traversing formal and conceptual terrains from watercolor to Fluxus-like happenings, book publishing to operas, and photography to public art. Largely known for his video installations, his work is equally anchored in audio, shifting in recent years to engage closely with sound as an index of space and time, deeply resonant with the contemporary human experience. The collusion of visual modalities with sound experiments and musical production propels his investigation of perceptual experience in his most recent work, Song 1, now exhibited at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington DC, on view from dusk until midnight through May 13. This spectacular temporary exhibition epitomizes the fluid integration of music and image in a site-specific installation that literally inverts the art museum and transforms the surrounding landscape into a 360 degree cinema. Projected upon Gordon Bunshaft’s cylindrical cement fortress, Aitken has composed a 35 minute loop of video that revolves around the museum’s cylindrical facade, veiling its bulky structure in a graceful and arresting play of light. Yet it is the accompanying score that is truly at the core of this project, comprised of a succession of covers of the song “I Only Have Eyes for You,” interpreted by a diverse checklist of musicians, which feature as the organizing principle governing an entangled loop of fragmented narratives and flashing images.


Doug Aitken, Song 1 (2012)

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AO on Site Photoset – New York: 'Bruceforma 2012: The Resurrection' at MoMA P.S.1

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012


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All photos on site for Art Observed by Aubrey Roemer.

The Bruce High Quality Foundation held an Easter celebration at MoMA PS1 this past Sunday in typical DIY Bruce fashion. From 3–6 PM, a gamut of bands played in the Performance Dome while a lamb roasted outside, and an Easter egg hunt included cigarettes. While the group’s Brucennial 2012 exhibition continues through April 20, the one-day event in the courtyard of PS1 was titled Bruceforma 2012: The Resurrection.

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AO On Site – New York: Nigel Cooke at Andrea Rosen through April 14, 2012

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012


Nigel Cooke, Nature Loves You (2011–2012). All photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.

Andrea Rosen Gallery in Chelsea is currently showing Nigel Cooke’s 4th solo show in the multi-room space. Cooke was on hand at the press preview to speak about the ten new paintings that marked for the artist a move into a much more dynamic and engaging direction. The press release references de Kooning‘s infamous “No Holidays” quote—that none of his work should ever have a caesura, that work should be an endlessly ongoing practice. Cooke displays reverence to that adage; every work is “three paintings in one.” Conceived by first laying a figurative layer full of characters and interaction, followed by sweeping obscurative strokes, and then capped by an attempt to rearrange order from the chaos induced—flushing out imagined smoking flower women, tree branches, and odd clown-skull masks.


Artist Nigel Cooke at the press preview

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Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

‪‬Magma Group protests Damien Hirst exhibition outside Tate Modern in London wearing clown costumes and holding signs, “Artists against flagrant self-promotion” [AO Newslink]

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New York: Catherine Opie ‘High School Football’ at Mitchell-Innes & Nash through April 14, 2012

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012


Catherine Opie, Faifo (2008). All Photos courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

Catherine Opie’s current exhibition, the photographer’s first since joining the roster at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, is on view now at the gallery’s Chelsea location in New York City. Shot from 2007-2009, High School Football, consists of large-scale portraits and landscape shots of playing fields. Through the American ritual of football, the identities of young athletes are displayed intimately, both individually and as teams.

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AO on Site – Stockholm: Sturtevant ‘Image over Image’ at Moderna Museet through August 26, 2012

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012


Sturtevant. Photo by Loren Muzzey. All images courtesy the artist and Moderna Museet unless otherwise noted.

For half a century, Sturtevant has built her practice on the citation of other artists’ works. Challenging authorship through acts of appropriation long before it was made popular by the likes of Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince, Sturtevant made her artistic debut in 1965, when she presented a roomful of Warhol silkscreen flowers at a gallery mere months after the originals had been created. Although largely overlooked until recent years, Sturtevant won a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at last year’s Venice Biennale. Her latest exhibition, Image over Image, opened March 17th at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Showcasing 30 works, 4 of which are the artist’s “originals,” the exhibition fosters a sort of wall label guessing-game. As visitors travel from room to room they are confronted with familiar works from modernist art history—a Jasper Johns here, a Duchamp there. Among other artists cited in this exhibition are Joseph Beuys, Keith Haring, Félix González-Torres, John Waters, and Paul McCarthy.

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AO On Site – New York: David Shrigley ‘How Are You Feeling?’ on High Line Billboard through May 7, 2012

Monday, April 9th, 2012


David Shrigley, How are you feeling (2012). Photos on site for Art Observed by Douglas Cloninger and Samuel Sveen.

Installed April 5th, 2012, the Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley‘s dry, absurdist sense of tragi-comedy is now on display as the third “Friends of the Highline” billboard. The 25 by 75 ft billboard is located at 18th Street and 10th Avenue in the Chelsea area of Manhattan and had previously featured work by Anne Collier and John Baldessari. Known for emploring a childish aesthetic and comic wit to navigate the tense world we create for ourselves, Shrigley’s new billboard poses the question, “How are you feeling?” and provides us with an uncommon but honest response. The work speaks largely to contemporary culture and the internal pressures that attempting to “keep up with the Jones” can create. The bubbles read, “HOW ARE YOU FEELING?” “I’M FEELING VERY UNSTABLE AND INSECURE. I ALSO FEEL VERY WORRIED AND ANXIOUS ABOUT EVERYTHING.” “I ALSO FEEL TRAPPED AND I FEEL THAT I AM MUCH TOO FAT AND THAT PEOPLE ARE LAUGHING AT ME. I FEEL VERY FRUSTRATED AND DEPRESSED. I FEEL THAT I AM UNABLE TO MEET THE DEMANDS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE OF ME. I AM IN A BIT OF A RUT CREATIVELY AS WELL.”

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AO on Site – London: Damien Hirst Retrospective at Tate Modern through September 9, 2012

Monday, April 9th, 2012


All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

Damien Hirst‘s first official retrospective is on now at the Tate Modern in London. The retrospective spans two decades of the artist’s notoriously grand-scale artwork, featuring some 70 pieces. Often dealing with themes of life and death, Hirst’s works are known for their high prices and marketability. The show includes his spot paintings, pharmaceutical cabinets and vitrines, a diamond covered skull, as well as several large preserved animals and a room full of live butterflies.


The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)

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Hamburg: Louise Bourgeois ‘Passage Dangereux’ at Hamburg Kunsthalle through June 17, 2012

Sunday, April 8th, 2012


Louise Bourgeois, Untitled (1996)

Passage Dangereux, on view now at the Hamburg Kunsthalle, is a centennial celebration of the late Louise Bourgeois, showcasing work from the last 15 years of her life. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Bourgeois’ work evades stylistic categorization, toeing the line between figuration and abstraction in a range of artistic genres, media, and modes of display. The Kunsthalle honors this unique artist on the advent of what would be her 100th birthday, in a diverse show of sculpture, installation, and print, several of which have never before been seen in Germany, to confront existential and deeply autobiographical themes.


Louise Bourgeois, Maman (1999)

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Sunday, April 8th, 2012

‪‬George Condo confirmed as artist of Kanye West’s new single ‘Theraflu,’ the image tweeted Wednesday night; it is Condo’s second work for West [AO Newslink]

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London: Martin Creed ‘Work Nos. 1100, 1343, 1347’ at Gallery Restaurant, Sketch

Saturday, April 7th, 2012


Sketch Restaurant, London. All photos on site for Art Observed by Ryann Donnelly.

In celebration of their 10th anniversary, London’s Sketch restaurant in Mayfair unveiled a new installation from Turner prize winning British multi-media artist Martin Creed on March 1st, 2012. Creed’s installation is comprised of three main components: opulent marble tiling, large-scale murals, and an assemblage of mix-matched furnishings and tableware, each piece as functional as it is aesthetically compelling and intricate.


Martin Creed, Sketch Installation View (2012)

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Brussels: 'Cy Twombly Photographs' at Palais des Beaux-Arts through April 29, 2012

Friday, April 6th, 2012


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Cy Twombly, The Artist’s Shoes (2002)

On view at Palais des Beaux-Arts is Cy Twombly: Photographs 1951-2010, featuring a series of 100 photographs selected by Twombly before his death in 2011. Known for his paintings that subtly changed the course of contemporary art, Twombly had been a productive photographer since his student days. However, it wasn’t until late in his career that photographs were exhibited to the public. Taken with an instant Polaroid camera, Twombly’s photographs are consistently out of focus, concentrating on the ethereality in mundane objects such as a pair of slippers, a lemon, a can of paintbrushes.

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Friday, April 6th, 2012

‪‬Bravo releases trailer for ‘Gallery Girls’ and other upcoming shows, following “seven young women who dream of living a chic and fashionable existence in New York City… all share a passion for art, but are divided amongst their Manhattan and Brooklyn lifestyles with vastly different attitudes and tastes towards fashion, art and men.” [AO Newslink]

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Friday, April 6th, 2012

‪‬Rirkrit Tiravanija to host 12 hour soup banquet, ‘Soup/No Soup’ within Grand Palais in Paris as prelude to La Triennale 2012, noon to midnight tomorrow, April 7 [AO Newslink]

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AO on Site – New York: Hennessy Youngman ‘ITSA SMALL SMALL WORLD’ Opening on Tuesday, April 3 at Family Business through April 16, 2012

Thursday, April 5th, 2012


Hennessy Youngman and Maurizio Cattelan on participating artist’s pop-up red carpet. All photos on site for Art Observed by Aubrey Roemer and Douglas Cloninger.

YouTube art-theory phenom Jayson Musson A.K.A. Hennessy Youngman‘s show Itsa Small Small World opened Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at the new Chelsea gallery of Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni, Family Business. Originally approached to offer a lecture (Youngman has been touring the country following his sudden rise to fame due to 2011’s “Art Thoughtz” web series), the fitted hat and medallion-wearing, gun-toting Penn MFA graduate instead decided to offer the space to his affectionately addressed “Internet” following. In an intensely saturated salon style hanging—with works crammed atop more works—over 300 artists submitted to the 150 sq ft window-front space, as well as various performances outside.

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Thursday, April 5th, 2012

‪‬Christie’s to auction Jeff Koons’ ‘Baroque Egg with Bow (Blue/Turqoise)’ at Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London on June 27, the 2-meter tall sculpture, one of five in multi-colored ‘Celebration’ series, expected to go for £2.5–3.5 million [AO Newslink]

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