The Guardian notes the recent completion of two new European contemporary art spaces (The Garage Center in Moscow and the Fondazione Prada in Milan) designed by Rem Koolhaas, heralding what some consider a new era in the shape and strategy for cultural centers. “If you want to change the world you also have to decide what you want to keep,” Koolhaas states.
Robert Motherwell. Opens (Installation View) All Images Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery.
Now through June 20, Andrea Rosen Gallery will host a comprehensive exhibition of Robert Motherwell’s Open series, composed from 1967 through the 1970s, and set to coincide with the centennial of the artist’s birth. This historical marker exemplifies the gallery’s ongoing commitment to looking to the recent past of contemporary art in order to expand upon trends currently emerging, and to trace the influence of major figures in the art world. As the gallery’s press release states, “Opens not only allows us to compare these masterworks against the present-day focus on abstraction, but also encourages us to reconcile the breadth of Motherwell’s rigor and clarity.” This comprehensive exhibition of one of the artist’s lesser-known series provides the opportunity to deepen public understanding of the legacy of Motherwell as an artist and a significant force in mid-twentieth century New York City.
Maccarone Gallery is the latest New York gallery opening an exhibition space in Los Angeles, the New York Times reports. The gallery will take up residence at 300 South Mission Road, a location that inspired gallerist Michele Maccarone. “I saw the space and was very inspired by it,” she says. “The departure point was really the building.” (more…)
Karen Kilimnik, The Cold Winter Lane, The Polish Countryside, A Delft Landscape (2013) via Sprüth Magers
Artist Karen Kilimnik returns to Sprüth Magers this month, showcasing her small-scale, painted appropriations, mixed with the influence of traditional Delftware. Kilimnik’s work focuses on expressing her own views of openness and precision, elegance and humor through a variety of mediums, often creating site-specific projects that mimic 19th Century interiors and often incorporating the design and fashion of the era. Her small paintings overlay found imagery with new landscapes and imagined scenarios, reinforcing the atmospheric effects of the painterly surface while maintaining the scale and shape of the landscape and her palette. (more…)
Following the example of collectors seeking tax breaks for their donation of art works to museums, artists themselves are seeking more equitable tax treatment for donating works. While collectors currently can claim fair market value for the works they donate, artists themselves can only write off the cost of materials. “It seems to me there is a discrepancy in treatment there”, says Philippe Vergne, director of MOCA. “What’s extraordinary is that artists keep giving.” (more…)
Yinka Shonibare MBE, Ballet God (Apollo) (2015)
Currently on view at James Cohan Gallery is Yinka Shonibare MBE’s new body of work, including exuberant, playful sculptures along with digital prints. The UK-based Nigerian-born artist came into recognition with his hybrid sculptures, utilizing Dutch wax fabric, a textile material of complex patterns and tight allusions to colonialism due to its long, bureaucratic history of trade. In his recent exhibition, Shonibare weighs on a broader issue compared to his familiar themes of colonialism, political supremacy and racial identity, looking at global climate changes and growing effects of these permutations throughout the world. (more…)
A Los Angeles Judge has rejected a lawsuit against the nation of Spain and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid to return a Camille Pissarro taken from the Cassirer family through forced sale by Nazis in 1939. The painting, Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie, was subject to Spanish law, Judge John F. Walter ruled, and therefore could not be removed by his decision. The family plans to appeal. “Museums and governments around the world recognize the need to return Nazi-looted art to its rightful owners,” said Laura Brill, a lawyer for the Cassirer family. “Here, it is undisputed that the Pissarro was owned by the Cassirer family until it was stolen by the Nazis in 1939.” (more…)
Amid a New York State Attorney’s investigation and the resignation of five board of trustee members at Cooper Union, the University’s embattled President Jamshed Bharucha has resigned. Bharucha headed Cooper during its controversial decision to begin charging tuition, and has been the subject of numerous protest actions since. He will take a position as visiting scholar at Harvard. (more…)
Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (2002 – present), via Art Observed
Yayoi Kusama returns to New York City this summer at David Zwirner, bringing a new body of paintings, sculptures, and one of her popular, full-room installation pieces, all of which offers a nuanced look at the 86 year-old artist’s prolific output.
Yayoi Kusama, My Life (2014), via Art Observed
Tony Oursler, EUC (2015), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.
The new body of work by acclaimed new media artist Tony Oursler is currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s Chrystie street location. Aligned with his signature style of analyzing high technology and its idiosyncratic tone in correlation to the human body, Oursler delves into the limits of human expression in his new exhibition. Although he was born in New York City, Oursler emerged in late 1970s along with a group of West Coast artists such as Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw after graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied under John Baldessari. (more…)
A long-running investigation into the contested work Saul and David has resulting in the painting’s reattribution as the work of Rembrandt, an attribution that was previously denied in 1969. “For eight years, a large team of international experts has contributed to the research. A wide range of trusted and innovative research techniques have been employed,” says Mauritshuis Museum Director Emilie Gordenker The result is significant: the Mauritshuis has one of its most famous Rembrandts back.” (more…)
Sotheby’s has announced that its London Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale, scheduled for June 24th, will lead with Edgar Degas’ iconic sculpture Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, estimated at £10-£15 million. “The artist’s ambitious and highly innovative work marks the pinnacle of his achievements as a sculptor, and its forthcoming sale represents a rare opportunity to acquire an icon of Impressionist art,” says Helena Newman, Sotheby’s Co-Head of Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide. (more…)
Mark Flood, Shrek Your Privilege (2015), via Art Observed
For years, Mark Flood has mined a specific aspect of the artistic vocabulary when it comes to pop culture, a sort of irreverent mirror that plays the often cloying imagery of advertising, corporate branding, and the Hollywood star machine against itself, often performed against the backdrop of more formally-oriented paintings and text-based works, a combination of styles that spreads the artist across a spectrum that seems to mix commentary with composition in any number of permutations. (more…)
Lisa Yuskavage, Bonfire (2013-2015), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
In her fourth solo show with David Zwirner, Lisa Yuskavage furthers her now-signature style as a figurative painter, while moving towards new territories in both content and technique. At the center of the show is Bonfire, a large diptych strikingly positioned facing the gallery entrance, and capturing the gaze of onlookers and passerby with its profound green tones and accentuated, yet oblique narrative. Situated on opposite sides of the painting are two female nudes, sporting Yuskavage’s recognizable stylistic features, such as bulging abdomens and voluminous hair. (more…)
A selection of works by Fanny Allie, via Art Observed
Bushwick Open Studios has come and gone in the North Brooklyn arts hub, with another year of exhibitions and projects spread across the sprawling industrial landscapes of the borough closing to strong attendance.
Paul Gauguin’s Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When will you Marry?) seems to have had its massive $300 million price tag confirmed by the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, which has currently taken the work on loan for a new exhibition. “Nafea Faa Ipoipo was recently purchased by the Qatar Museums Authority from the Swiss collection of Rudolf Staechelin for more than $300m,” reads text released by the museum, further supporting its new place as the world’s most expensive piece of art. (more…)
Anish Kapoor has opened his new installation of works at Versailles to controversy this week, after the artist noted his new work Dirty Corner, as a reference to the sexual organs of Queen Marie Antoinette as she rose to power. “I know it is a composition, but let’s say that this is ruining the perspective that visitors of the castle may have,” says retired professor Pierre Dhainaut. (more…)
Dean Levin, Surface Support (Road Goes on Forever) (2015)
Marianne Boesky Gallery recently presented A Long, Narrow Mark, the gallery’s first collaboration with artist Dean Levin, at its Clinton street location. Levin has enjoyed a growing recognition in recent years, proven by an impressive range of group exhibitions he has been included in the U.S. and Europe, as well as his debut solo at Upper East Side space of Robert Blumenthal last year. (more…)
MoMA has acquired several hundred photographs by artist August Sander from his series “People of the Twentieth Century,” the New York Times reports. “His ambition is nothing less than to use photography to describe the people of the 20th century,” says Sarah Hermanson Meister, a MoMA photography curator. “He is doing this through the German people, but it’s not limited in its intention to that.” (more…)
A former employee of sculptor Dale Chihuly has been accused of stealing over $3 million in works from the artist’s Tacoma, Washington warehouse. The accused assistant, Christopher Kaul, had been dealing with drug addiction, and began stealing works after leaving rehab. “We’ve seen this story before — an employee is hooked on drugs and steals from his boss,” said Prosecutor Mark Lindquist. “The twist here is the boss is a world famous artist.” (more…)
Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Cyber Iconic Man sculpture, an inverted and gorily wounded subject dripping blood, is set to be installed at Sheffield Cathedral’s Chapel of the Holy Spirit this summer. “The congregation is up for it,” says The Very Reverend Peter Bradley, Dean of the Cathedral. (more…)
Outside Fuchs Project Space During a previous Bushwick Open Studios
With another summer comes another edition of Bushwick Open Studios, the vastly popular arts open that brings a flood of visitors, artists and events to one of North Brooklyn’s strongest arts communities. (more…)
Tabor Robak, Drinking Bird (Season) (2015)
Currently on view at Team Gallery is a new body of works by Brooklyn-based artist Tabor Robak, the digitally-focused artist whose LCD video pieces mine the aesthetics and possibilities for interface design in the 21st century. Computer-generated graphics and lifestyle technologies doubtlessly strike as the main threads in Robak’s work, yet his spontaneous employment of ubiquitous cultural icons, and mundane components into his otherwise convoluted compositions expands the array of his statement. The artist’s use of oblique narratives, hinted at through lines of text and simple graphic juxtapositions, fall in line with the phantasmagorical, responding to the utilitarian aspect of high-tech elements, while suggesting a certain submission by the user, a transposition of their role into that of a passive viewer or consumer. (more…)
Maja Hoffmann, founder of the LUMA Foundation, a board member at Palais de Tokyo and Fotomuseum Winterthur, and a trustee at the Tate, has been named board chair at the Swiss Institute. “Swiss Institute has a unique voice with a long tradition of championing innovative perspectives in contemporary art,” she said in a statement accepting the position. (more…)