Luc Tuymans, Allo!-Technicolor (2012), Courtesy David Zwirner
A show of Luc Tuymans featuring his latest series entitled Allo!, inaugurated the new David Zwirner Gallery in Mayfair on October 4th. To further heighten the significance of such an occasion, this is Tuymans’ first London show since 2004 at the Tate Modern.
Sean Kelly, who just inaugurated his new space at 10th avenue and 36th Street, posits that galleries may migrate north from Chelsea as the Hudson Yards development is completed. The neighborhood formerly known as Hell’s Kitchen, from 28th to 43rd Street and west of Eighth Avenue will have access to the No. 7 subway in 2014, as well as the the High Line extension and new residential investment. Rents are less expensive than in Chelsea and offer large warehouse-style exhibition spaces. (more…)
Image: Doug Aitken, Tilda Swinton in The Source, 2012, via Sky Arts Ignition
American artist Doug Aitken has his first public installation in the UK entitled The Source, which asks a variety of leading arts practitioners questions about where their creative ideas come from. Viewers can watch video conversations with artists such as Tilda Swinton, Jack Pierson, Jack White, and Mike Kelley, projected inside a temporary structure on Liverpool’s historic Albert Dock built in collaboration with renowned British architect David Adjaye.
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The Art Newspaper reports on rumors that publisher Louise Blouin (Art+Auction, Modern Painters, Gallery Guide) is in talks with Merchandise Mart Properties (MMPI) to acquire its art fairs, including the Armory Show, Art Platform Los Angeles and Volta. Another buyer, Next Editions Partners, an art media company based in Vienna, is ready to negotiate but has said that MMPI has designed the deal around their first bidder. A spokeswoman for Blouin said, “Louise Blouin Media is a privately-held company, and we do not comment on speculation in the media about the company’s business activities.” MMPI also declined to comment. (more…)
Performance artist Joey Arias with 60th gala cake
Tuesday night marked Aperture Foundation’s Sixtieth Anniversary Gala Dinner & Photography Auction. The live auction featured an incredible selection of 60+ works up for grabs by such notables as: Diane Arbus, Chuck Close, Dorothea Lange, Sally Mann, Vik Muniz, Hank Willis Thomas and William Wegman. (more…)
Tino Sehgal, Installation view, 2012, courtesy Tate Modern
The Turbine hall has been home to the Unilever series and currently welcomes its thirteenth commission in the form of These Associations by Tino Sehgal. Despite Sehgal being the thirteenth artist to exhibit as part of the series, he far from blends into the crowd of his predecessors. Sehgal gives the inaugural ‘Live Art’ performance of Unilever coinciding with the Olympics as part of London 2012.
Walead Beshty, Installation View, 2012, courtesy Roldophe Janssen
Walead Beshty’s second solo show with Gaelerie Roldophe Janssen is entitled Diapositives, after the medium he used to construct his images. Since 2006 Beshty’s work has been comprised of experimental photography whereby he explores different effects on underdeveloped film.
Diapositives is an installation that takes the form of what appears to be a futuristic office space. Desks and other seemingly aesthetic furnishings are replaced with copper surrogates that have had the developed film experiments printed on them; their purpose however is not to serve as a visual element, but to be a fully-functioning room component within the space (i.e. a table that is fit for purpose). The interaction with the visitors and the works within the exhibit is implicit to the work itself – in fact Beshty does not acknowledge his works as art forms until this interaction takes place.
Edvard Munch’s The Scream goes on view today at MoMA with extra security measures. Ann Temkin, the chief curator of painting and sculpture, is expecting huge crowds. “The Scream is really a household word, a household image, and from the time it was made, that was true,” Temkin said. “It’s somehow so startling and so odd that it caught people’s imagination”. Of the four versions made, two have been stolen and recovered. (more…)
Liz Magic Laser has been chosen as the commissioned artist for the 2013 edition of The Armory Show, which celebrates the centennial year of its namesake exhibition of 1913. Laser’s performance and theatrical work has been presented at the Malmö Konsthall, the Performa 11 Biennial, The Kitchen and MoMA PS1. Laser will help create the visual identity of the 2013 fair, which takes place from March 7–10th, 2013. (more…)
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation We The People via Art Observed
Curator Alison Gingeras and artist Jonathan Horowitz have teamed up to organize an exhibition at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s new project space in Chelsea which coincides with the upcoming election. Using the famous opening words of the constitution as a framework, We the People explores identity politics and creates a vision of the American demographic that both embodies and contests the categories that politicians and pollsters have used to divvy up the American population in recent years.
Norman Rockwell, courtesy Norman Rockwell Museum Collection ©1943 SEPS
Leo Villareal is installing his BUCKYBALL light sculpture (an homage to Buckminster Fuller) in Madison Square Park. The piece is a honeycomb-shaped, 20-foot-tall interactive structure with changing colors. The work will be on view from October 25, 2012 through February 2013. (more…)
The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum will open on November 10th, 2012 at Michigan State University, of which Mr. Broad is an alumnus. The Broads donated $26 million to the school in 2007 to build the museum, which has been designed by Zaha Hadid. The Broads also donated 19 works to the museum from their private collection. (more…)
Lucas Samaras, photo by Art Observed
Pace inaugurated its new Chelsea gallery space at 508 West 25th Street on September 28th with a show of new works by artist Lucas Samaras. XYZ is comprised of four series of works created between 2010-2012. Twenty works, each a unique formal exploration of color, space and abstract patterning, announce the latest stage of evolution in his investigation of material manipulation, splicing reality through formal deconstruction and digital adulteration to offer a vibrant virtual universe.
Lucas Samaras, XYZ 0927 (Razor Cut) 2012
Vanity Fair profiles Nate Lowman as he prepares for his new show at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, opening on November 11th. The exhibition will house 10 gas-pump panels, large-scale air fresheners, paintings on studio drop cloths, a tow-truck boom in the shape of a cross, “Trash Landing Marilyn” paintings and digital prints of oil rigs named after stars from the TV show Dynasty.
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More information about the quantity of purportedly fake paintings sold by Knoedler has surfaced. The recent filings outline that Knoedler earned approximately $60 million in revenue from artwork it took on consignment from Glafira Rosales, clearing about $40 million in profit. Many of the works lacked full provenance records and were offered at below-market prices to the gallery. (more…)
Disaronno liquers is launching limited edition bottle designs in collaboration with Galeries Lafayette and Toilet Paper magazine. The magazine is a collaboration between Maurizio Cattelan and the photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. Both based in Milan and New York, the publication is both magazine and artistic book, combining photographs and texts. (more…)
FIAC crowds, photo by Tiphaine Popesco for Art Observed
FIAC closed today, Sunday October 21st, with dealers reporting strong sales and a collective sigh of relief that the proposed inclusion of artwork over €50,000 to France’s wealth tax had not passed. The fair was, by all accounts, well-organized and exhibited an impressive program of young galleries alongside work by established blue-chip artists. This year the fair added exhibition space in the Salon d’Honneur, the newly-renovated upper floor of the historic Grand Palais. In past years the fair has seen more European collectors, but this year dealers reported sales to many collectors from Asia, Russia and the Middle East as well. The fair was directed by Jennifer Flay.
Marc Quinn, The Origin of the World, 2012, photo by Tiphaine Popesco for Art Observed
New York’s November auctions will offer several Warhol works, among them Christie’s $100 million sale of works in three separate sales from the Warhol Foundation, and at Sotheby’s two “A-plus” paintings from the “Death and Disaster” series. Concerns that an influx of Warhols on the market have lowered demand stem from weak London sales for the artist earlier this month. (more…)
Richard Prince will design a can for the AriZona beverage company’s Arnold Palmer line, called “Lemon Fizz”. Prince proposed the project to the company with the idea of re-appropriating commercial imagery that depicts American masculinity. The drink will be on sale beginning at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach in December. (more…)
Larry Gagosian has dropped his lawsuit against collector Ron Perelman, stating that legal action had been taken only to establish Gagosian was the owner of the named artworks. The Perelman lawsuit concedes this fact, says Gagosian’s attorney, so he has no need to continue with the complaint. Mr. Perelman’s suit against Gagosian continues; it is related to the purchase of Koons‘ Popeye and other works for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract. (more…)
London’s gallery district in Mayfair may face higher rents and an influx of retail tenants as soon as 2016, due to retail and residential developments in the area. A £90 million redevelopment of a building into luxury apartments coincided with an announcement by the developer that seven galleries’ leases will not be renewed, including Cork Street’s oldest, the Mayor Gallery. A separate landowner plans to redevelop another site on Cork Street, the current location of four other art galleries. The Westminster Council plans to rule on the developments early next year. (more…)
Gallerist Adam Lindemann and artist Peter Coffin, photo by Art Observed
Peter Coffin’s first solo show in New York City in four years, A,E,I,O,U, is on view through November 2nd at Venus Over Manhattan Gallery at 980 Madison Avenue.
Prepared in just three months, the show features several large scale sculptures: an iconic Warholian larger-than-life dog, a skeletal wooden hand forming the “ok” symbol (reminding us of Nauman’s hand series, where each hand makes a sign whose meaning changes depending upon context), to a panel holding spools and spools of satin ribbons of various widths and colors.
Peter Coffin, Untitled (Dog) (2012). All photos by Ryann Donnelly for Art Observed
There are also several unassuming additions one might only find from reading the show’s checklist: a marble slab installed at the entry of the gallery and planter boxes which are hung outside the open windows. A round speaker mounted to a stand near the middle of the gallery– a piece labeled Untitled (Pet Store)— also fills the space with sounds of birds, dogs, and bubbling fish tanks.
Art Observed recently sat down with Coffin to discuss the nature of the work, which he identifies as “Idea Art”.
The New York Times reports on Jeffrey Deitch, highlighting that the controversy regarding the LA MOCA director is not one-sided. While Deitch entered direction of a museum in dire financial straits, he in fact has strengthened its online presence, has presented almost two dozen exhibitions – some groundbreaking – and has hosted successful celebrity fundraisers. However his critics assert that he has appealed to both the public and billionaire board member Eli Broad, while neglecting artists and curators, turning the museum into a “black hole”. (more…)
Robert Irwin – Dotting the i’s & Crossing the t’s: Part II (2012), Courtesy Pace Gallery
A pioneer of the Light and Space movement in 1960s Los Angeles, Robert Irwin made monumental contributions to the conceptual art practice, bringing considerations of interrelation, perception, condition and experience into the broader art lexicon. Continuing an ongoing exploration of Irwin’s 40-year career, the Pace Gallery in New York is currently hosting a large-scale exhibition of new works.
Robert Irwin –Dotting the i’s & Crossing the t’s: Part I (2012), Courtesy Pace Gallery (more…)