JR, Au Pantheon! via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

The 31-year-old French photographer and artist JR has completed an impressive installation for his global INSIDE OUT project, which allows participants to express themselves through photographing their own portraits and allowing JR to paste them in a new artistic statement.  The French artist started the project after he was awarded the TED prize in 2011, which gave him $1 million to make a world-inspiring idea to come to life.  Since then, INSIDE OUT has traveled across the country: California, New York, and Minnesota; and the globe: Italy, Brazil, Palestine, etc.  Now in Paris, JR has covered the floor, cupola, and dome of the Pantheon in Paris with 2,500 of his signature black and white portrait posters. (more…)

LACMA is reportedly in talks regarding the potential construction of a massive tower project by the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax Avenue.  The new space would act as host for LACMA galleries, particularly a new architecture and design wing and would tentatively host space for architect Frank Gehry’s archives. (more…)

The New York Times has published a profile on Ryder Ripps, the net artist and designer who has worked on major branding campaigns and web design projects alongside his own online practice, including his role as the founder of image community Dump.FM and the viral WhoDat.Biz hoax, a website falsely attributed as a new project from Kanye West. (more…)

Pierre Huyghe, L’Expédition scintillante, Act III (Black Ice Stage) (2002), via Museum Ludwig

Working in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Museum Ludwig is showing a major retrospective of Pierre Huyghe, containing over 60 works and projects. When the exhibition was previously set up in Paris, Huyghe took the layout of the previous show, dedicated to Mike Kelley, and transformed it by moving and cutting walls inside the space. When the show moved to Cologne, he cut the pieces out of the walls of Pompidou and reassembled them in a sort of collage. This dissection and reassembly reflects Huyghe’s exploration of the reliance of art on time and specific events. The works he displays carry with them their own physical timelines. (more…)

Curators, artists and museum directors are preparing to open the 2014 Pittsburgh Biennial this month, a 10 month long event focusing on Pittsburgh-based artists and special events at many of the city’s arts organizations.  “We want to show how rich an environment this is for artists,” says Laura Domencic, the director of the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. (more…)

The Tuscan town of Porto Ercole has announced plans to bury the remains of Renaissance painter Caravaggio after the artist’s remains were discovered in a church there in 2010.  Caravaggio’s body will be stored in an enormous arch monument created by the sculptor Giuseppe Conte, which will be inaugurated on July 18th, the date of the the painter’s death. (more…)

Marina Abramovic has partnered with Adidas for a recreation of the artist’s Work Relation, ostensibly as a promotional tie-in with the world cup events the brand is currently undertaking.  The video features a group of performers in white lab coats and Adidas sneakers, recreating the piece as the artist looks on. (more…)

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park has earned Britain’s prestigious Art Fund Museum of the Year award, earning a £100,000 prize and a reputation as one of the country’s best art spaces.  “A perfect fusion of art and landscape, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park has gone from a modest beginning to one of the finest outdoor museums one might ever imagine,” says Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund and panel chair for the award. (more…)

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The Four Paintings about Sun, via Thaddeus Ropac

Now through July 12, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is presenting Paintings about the Sun, new work by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The exhibition will take place in Salzburg at the gallery’s Villa Kast location. The works on view represent a departure from many of the artist’s previous installed and illustrated investigations, with the conversational capacity of an image being tested while form and frame are disrupted then elaborated. The sun is a consistent presence throughout the work, represented as either a blinding impediment to vision or impossibly illuminating.

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On Kawara, 5 Feb. 2006

Artist On Kawara, whose ongoing artistic project involved the painting of each day of his life, has passed away at the age of 81.

Born in 1933 in Japan, Kawara worked in Tokyo until 1965, when he moved to New York City.  Shortly after arriving, Kawara began his famous “date paintings” series, painting the calendar date for each day of his life, meticulously recording the passage of his life on canvas through a simple, tracing of dates and time.  His absurdist, heavily conceptual bent opened a new engagement with the processes of time and context in art, making him an unlikely air to the work of early Dadaists like Duchamp and Magritte. (more…)

Ed Ruscha, Periods (2013), all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian Gallery in New York is a survey of prints and rarely seen photographs produced by Ed Ruscha from 1959 until the present. The exhibition was organized by Gagosian’s director Bob Monk, and will remain on view through July 11, 2014.

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The New York Times has published another survey on the contemporary auction market, focusing on the gradual concentration of collectors at the highest tiers of art collecting towards blue-chip artists and trusted names, making competition for these works all the more fierce, and the prices that much higher.  “The sleepy days of collecting are over,” says Amy Cappellazzo of the New York-based Partners agency. “The wealthiest of the wealthy now view art as an alternative currency. It’s become a very big business.” (more…)

The New York Times reports on the growing arts scene in Uruguay’s Punta del Este, a coastal resort town on the nation’s eastern coast, as well as the nearby villages of José Ignacio and Pueblo Garzón. A new generation of artists, bolstered by the increased traffic of wealthy collectors buying homes and vacation villas in the area, has resulted in a quickly growing arts scene.   “A few years ago I began to see that Uruguay started moving in a very interesting direction,” says dealer Renos Xippas. “There’s a new generation with fresh, ironic ideas.”  (more…)

A recent Wall Street Journal interview with Agnes Gund reveals the former MoMA President’s views on the current state of the art world, and its movement towards greater accessibility and access.  “The market will start to correct as more collectors, in it for the game, will drive the prices of women artists up as will buyers recognizing the talent that has been there all along,” she says. (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (Macro) is reportedly facing a financial crisis, after government officials slashed the museum budget from from €350,000 in 2013 to €61,000 this year.  “The exhibitions are programmed, and funded, until spring 2015… We spend very little on the shows as we have several sponsors,” says former president Alberta Campitelli. (more…)

The dispute surrounding Aby Rosen’s display of a Damien Hirst sculpture on the grounds of his Old Westbury, home in Long Island, has reached a resolution, with Rosen agreeing to position the statue in a place that will prevent neighbors from seeing its partially exposed skeleton.  Rosen will also employ a landscaping scheme to further shield the statue from view outside his estate.  “They were very cooperative,” says Mayor Fred J. Carillo. (more…)

Josh Kolbo, Untitled (2013), all photos via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

There was a vibrant buzz around Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea as one of the gallery’s smaller exhibition space filled in for the opening of the group show Fixed Variable, featuring the work of Lucas Blalock, Ethan Greenbaum, John Houck, Matt Keegan, Josh Kolbo, Kate Steciw, Chris Wiley and Letha Wilson, and examining the relationship between the nature of the photograph, the nature of the object, and the intersection between the two.

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An Henri Matisse painting stolen 10 years ago from a Venezuelan museum has been returned to its home in Caracas.  Odalisque in Red Trousers was recovered in Miami Beach in 2012 after a couple tried to sell it to undercover FBI agents for $740,000. (more…)

The Rauschenberg Foundation has launched a competition for young curators, inviting proposals for exhibitions using works from the Foundation’s extensive collection.  Winners will be selected by a panel of judges, including curator John Elderfield and artist Shirin Neshat. (more…)

Several artists have redesigned classic British battleships in London and Liverpool commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of the start of WWI.  The designs pay homage to the practice of “dazzle” paint jobs on battleships, designed to confuse attacking German U-Boats.  (more…)

The New York Times reports on the city of Oslo, and its role in the life of painter Edvard Munch after the artist spend several years healing from the abuse of his alcoholism.  Known for his tortured, dark works, Munch’s later canvases exude a certain brightness achieved as the artist returned to a degree of mental clarity.  “My mind is like a glass of cloudy water,” he wrote to a friend during his treatment in Copenhagen.  “I am now letting it stand to become clear again. I wonder what will happen when the dregs settle at the bottom.” (more…)

Carlito Carvalhosa, Possibility Matters (detail), 2014

Carlito Carvalhosa’s works, similar to early Renaissance church paintings, have the potential to make viewers feel equally enclosed and daunted by scale. The artist’s installations look upon the viewers, asking their submission and surrender towards their magnitude in structure and constructive. Utilizing a broad range of materials in conjunction with his work’s scale and size, Carvalhosa’s practice includes wood, plaster, wax or glass in forms that seem challenging or exceedingly fragile to execute.  It’s this delicately immense style that Sonnabend Gallery is currently presenting with Possibility Matters, a two-room installation transforming wood columns into a room-sized piece in Carvalhosa’s hands. (more…)

The New York Times has published a by-the-numbers review of the recently opened Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney, charting the show’s contents in figures and facts, like the heaviest work (Gorilla, which weights 15,000 pounds), the number of gallons of water in his Equilibrium series (117 and 1/2), and the number of shipments to deliver all of the works (75). (more…)

Richard Long, Four Ways (2014), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

Richard Long’s first solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery in over three decades brings together photographs, text, and natural elements as records of his walks in England, Switzerland, and Antarctica. Working in conjunction with the materials and forces that make up his surroundings, Long brings the fruits of his lone experiences in nature to the imaginations of a gallery audience. Long made his reputation in the 1970s with his sculptures born of days-long walks to remote locations, acting as bridges between natural design and human creation. His present exhibition reveals his persistence in investigating the themes that run through his lifelong body of work. (more…)